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Show B-1 WINTER HOME INSIDE! Winter is here. The latest edition of our Park City Home offers all the help you need to stay cozy all winter long. ‘SKIING IN COLOR’ AIMS TO SPARK COMMUNITY CONVERSATION ABOUT WINTER SPORTS AND RACE REAL ESTATE & MOUNTA 2021 IN LIFESTYLES | WINTER CLEVER GIFT-WRAPPING IDEAS FROM A PRO SAFER TRAVELS, A-5 MAPPING TOOL SHEDS LIGHT ON BIG GAME MIGRATION COLUMNS, A-16 DRY, WARM AND LUCKY – 10 STEPS TO A SAFE & SPECIAL HOLIDAY DINNER – Park Record. The PA R K C I T Y, U TA H | Have yourself a merry little WINTER W W W. PA R K R E C O R D . C O M Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, November 28-December 1, 2020 Serving Summit County since 1880 IS YOUR HOUSE A FOREVER HOME? Ski season of unprecedented uncertainty opens Vol. 140 | No. 86 $1.00 Vaccines are on horizon, but wait isn’t over County prepares for distribution, though it’ll be months until there are enough doses for everyone ALEXANDER CRAMER The Park Record TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD Ski season bumps Park City Mountain Resort is managing lift lines this ski season to account for social distancing, putting space between people as they wait. The line at the PayDay Express lift on the opening day of the 2020-2021 ski season, shown, illustrates one of the numerous measures the ski industry is taking in an effort to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. There is broad uncertainty regarding the ski season at the outset of the winter. ANALYSIS JAY HAMBURGER The Park Record By the evening of Sept. 10, 2001, the Park City community already understood the ski season, weeks away from beginning, would be unusual, and likely challenging. The 2002 Winter Olympics scheduled the following February, during a traditionally busy stretch for the ski industry, were expected to draw some of the largest crowds in Park City’s history. The season itself, though, was forecast to suffer. Skiers and snowboarders, worried about Games-influenced price gouging, scarce lodging and the winter-long hassles of an Olympics, could opt to vacation elsewhere. The Sept. 11 attacks, coupled with the economic and security nervousness that followed, further darkened the prospects for the ski season. 1.8 M Summit County skier-days Unknowns essentially cover the totality of tourism industry 1.9 M 1.7 M -12.09% change from 2007-2008 season to 2008-2009 1.6 M -9.15% change from 2000-2001 season to 2001-2002 1.5 M 1.4 M 1.3 M 1.2 M 1.1 M 2000- 2001- 2002- 2003- 2004- 2005- 2006- 2007- 2008- 20092001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Please see Uncertain, A-4 The latest estimate from state and local health officials is that all Utahns will have access to a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of July. Gov. Gary Herbert said on Monday that the first vaccinations could begin in two to three weeks for health care workers, and indicated that all state residents could begin to receive the vaccine in March or April. But there’s a lot of work to be done between now and then. Summit County’s staffer in charge of the vaccine rollout locally says the county is prepared to establish mass vaccination centers as early as December, but that it appears those won’t be needed until the spring. Chris Crowley, the county’s public health emergency preparedness coordinator, said his office was working to fine-tune plans of where and how to deliver vaccines, even as information about how many doses will be available when — and who would receive them — are still unknown. “I can’t predict exactly when vaccines will come into Summit County,” Crowley said in an interview Wednesday. “In Utah we could potentially see 225,000 doses of Pfizer, 115,000 of Moderna by the end of December.” Crowley said vaccine distribution decisions will be made on federal and state levels. If there was a COVID outbreak in Illinois, for example, Utah might not receive as many doses at first; and if there was an outbreak in Wasatch County, fewer doses might come to Summit County. There are also logistical and priority decisions that will impact early distribution, like the fact that the Pfizer vaccine comes in packages of 1,000 doses and that a facility would need an ultra-cold freezer to store them. Summit County has such a freezer, Crowley said, recently obtained from a planetarium in Salt Lake City. State and federal officials decide who will receive the first vaccine doses, and a Utah Department of Health official outlined preemptive plans at a briefing Nov. 18. The very first vaccines to come to the state are slated to go to the five hospitals that have been hardest hit by the pandemic in an effort to protect the state’s medical infrastructure, according to Rich Lakin, the Utah Department of Health immunization program manager. Those hospitals include four in the Wasatch Front and the Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George. Crowley and Lakin both said that they were working with incomplete information and that the rollout Ski season Please see Vaccines, A-2 Source: Park City Chamber/Bureau County sues Hideout — again A trot, then turkey Lawsuit accuses town of transgressions in pursuit of annexation ALEXANDER CRAMER The Park Record The winter winds recently resumed their place among the sagebrush and hillsides of Richardson Flat as they have for centuries, but in a courtroom miles away, a new front recently opened in the legal battle to determine which government controls the land’s future. On Nov. 19, Summit County sued Hideout once again, attempting to thwart the town’s bid to annex and develop an area the county would rather see undisturbed. The county alleges Hideout committed several technical transgressions in the process to annex the land, including violating open meet- 2 sections • 26 pages Classifieds .............................. B-5 Editorial................................ A-17 Restaurant Guide.................. A-12 Weather .................................. B-2 ings laws, improperly adopting a land-use regulation, engaging in unlawful contract zoning and failing to meet the Oct. 19 deadline to make the annexation effective. Hideout Town Attorney Polly McLean wrote in an email to The Park Record that the town had yet to be served with the lawsuit, but that Hideout’s legal counsel would respond accordingly. “(The town) feels that this is another desperate attempt by Summit County to challenge a valid annexation,” McLean wrote. Summit County’s claims echo many complaints it made in a lawsuit regarding the town’s initial annexation attempt over the summer that sparked the controversy. Hideout abandoned that attempt before restarting the effort, which ultimately resulted in a vote to annex the land. The courts have so far declined to bar the town from annexing the land, though the developer reduced the project area by nearly half for issues related to another piece of litigation. In the earlier lawsuit, which remains unresolved, 4th District Judge Jennifer Brown indicated she was receptive to arguments that Hideout had violated open meetings laws, though the town has repeatedly denied those claims. Brown is assigned to this case, as well. Hideout is a fledgling town of about 1,000 residents that, due to its strange beginnings as a residential development in Wasatch County, has almost no commercial development and little commercial tax base to pay for municipal services, despite an influx of residents and near-constant residential construction. Town officials see the answer to some of those problems in Richardson Flat, specifically 350 acres of undeveloped land adjacent to a mining soil repository with Superfund-level contamination. The Hideout Town Council voted to Please see County sues, A-2 TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD Jackie Perron, from left, Meghan Higgins and Francesca Huey participate in the Park City Turkey Trot at Matt Knoop Memorial Park on Thursday morning. The ninth-annual run was conducted differently this year, with runners able to take part in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, rather than showing up for a largescale gathering on Thursday. The event helped collect non-perishable food items and hygiene products for the Christian Center of Park City and the Peace House. CORONAVIRUS TRACKER Summit County Utah Known cases: 2,183 Hospitalizations: 85 Deaths: 5 Known cases: 190,044 Hospitalizations: 7,948 Deaths: 849 DATA AS OF NOV. 27, SOURCE: UTAH DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH |