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Show The Park Record A-10 Outgoing governor reflects on 11-year term, pandemic PARK RECORD FILE PHOTO Utah Gov. Gary Herbert speaks in Salt Lake City in 2018. Herbert did not run for reelection in 2020 and is leaving office after 11 years as the state’s top elected official. Herbert always 'looked forward’ to work of governing SOPHIA EPPOLITO Associated Press/Report for America SALT LAKE CITY — Gary Herbert has been in Utah's highest office for over a decade, but his greatest challenge arrived less than a year ago. The coronavirus pandemic brought death, economic upheaval and even angry crowds outside his personal home, away from the governor's mansion. Herbert, a Republican, was one of several governors that resisted implementing stay-athome restrictions or statewide mask mandates early in the pandemic. He instead stressed “personal responsibility,” pleading for months for people to follow public health guidelines. Eventually, Herbert issued a statewide mask order and a twoweek pause on social gatherings in November amid a surge in infections, but the decision was met with outrage by those who accused him of government overreach. Some went further, calling him King Herbert and comparing him to Adolf Hitler. “People get angry and frustrated, and when they get emotional about issues, the first casualty is common sense,” Herbert told The Associated Press in a video interview Monday. “I've been disappointed that ... there's so much pushback.” The governor said there is little he would change about how his administration handled the pandemic but added that he was surprised by the backlash to the state's restrictions. Anti-mask protesters came to his home in Orem following the announcement of the mask mandate. He called that “the wrong way” to protest. “Some of their approaches were outlandish,” Herbert said. “We had one lady flipping off the neighbors there when they asked about it, which was just kind of crass and means that they really aren't serious about it.” The governor said he still believes that COVID-19 rules ideally should be made at the local and county levels and that he would not support President-elect Joe Biden implementing a nationwide mask order. Herbert spent nearly two decades in public office in Utah before becoming governor in 2009. He was a Utah County commissioner for 14 years and then served as the state's lieutenant governor for five years. As governor, Herbert said he is especially proud of improvements made to education and economic growth seen since the Great Recession. He had hoped to invest even more money in the education system this year before the pandemic hit. “I can tell you that truthfully there's never been a day that I've not looked forward to going into the office and working,” Herbert said. “Some challenges are a little harder than others, and sometimes the criticism that you get — even though you're doing your level best — stings a little bit, but that's just part of being in the arena.” State Rep. Brian King, the House minority leader, said he appreciated that Herbert took a balanced approach when appointing judges and aggressively pushed for education funding. But the Democrat said he wished the governor would have enforced a statewide mask mandate earlier in the pandemic. “We have this, quite frankly, juvenile pushback from people who say, ‘You can't tell me I shouldn't have to wear a mask,’” King said. “I begged the governor for months to put the force of law behind such an obviously important public health and public safety measure ... but he wouldn't do it until just very recently, and it was still halfhearted.” Herbert chose not to seek another term and will soon be replaced by Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, who won the gubernatorial election in November. Cox's inauguration will take place on Jan. 4 — the 125th anniversary of Utah's statehood. Herbert plans to spend more time with his wife and family after his term ends and said he may pursue teaching at Utah Valley University. As COVID-19 vaccines have started shipping across the country, Herbert said he feels optimistic about the future and what the Cox administration will be able to accomplish. “We can see daylight now at the end of the tunnel ... if we can get through Christmas now and have people do the right thing for the right reason,” he said. Scoreboard AH – Not available High School Sports Results – December 19 Beaver 55, North Summit 47 Union 54, South Summit 47 Results – December 18 Basketball Kanab 53, North Summit 52 South Summit 62, North Boys Sanpete 32 Results – December 17 Results – December 18 Davis 45, Wasatch 31 North Summit 53, Tabiona 23 Results – December 16 Carbon 59, South Summit 57 Union 49, Park City 18 Timpview 58, Wasatch 49 Results – December 15 Results – December 17 North Summit 55, Wasatch Logan 68, Park City 52 25 Results – December 16 Carbon 59, South Summit 31 South Summit 60, North Summit 54 Standings Region Overall Lone Peak 73, Wasatch 59 Division 5A Region 8 Results – December 15 W L W L Wasatch 65, Mountain Crest Springville 0 0 5 2 51 Maple Mountain 0 0 3 3 Provo 0 0 3 3 Standings Region Overall Wasatch 0 0 2 2 Division 5A Region 8 Payson 0 0 3 4 W L W L Salem Hills 0 0 3 4 Park City 0 0 2 2 Park City 0 0 1 4 Provo 0 0 3 4 Spanish Fork 0 0 0 6 Maple Mountain 0 0 2 3 Payson 0 0 2 4 Division 3A Region 13 Salem Hills 0 0 2 4 Judge Memorial 0 0 5 1 Wasatch 0 0 2 5 Grantsville 0 0 5 2 Spanish Fork 0 0 1 6 Morgan 0 0 5 3 Springville 0 0 0 6 Providence Hall 0 0 2 2 South Summit 0 0 3 6 Division 3A Region 13 Summit Academy 0 0 1 5 Grantsville 0 0 3 0 Providence Hall 0 0 4 1 Division 2A Region 16 Morgan 0 0 2 2 Gunnison 0 0 3 1 Summit Academy 0 0 3 4 North Summit 0 0 4 3 South Summit 0 0 3 5 Duchesne 0 0 4 3 Judge Memorial 0 0 1 3 Altamont 0 0 1 3 Monticello 0 0 1 4 Division 2A Region 16 North Sevier 0 0 0 6 North Summit 0 0 3 2 Altamont 0 0 2 2 Gunnison 0 0 3 3 North Sevier 0 0 2 2 Duchesne 0 0 3 4 Swimming Monticello 0 0 1 4 Park City vs. Payson Battle of the Sexes – December 16 Girls Team Scores Women pts Results – December 22 1. Park City 344 Wasatch 51, American Heri2. Payson 89 tage 32 Wasatch 13 13 17 8 - 51 Men 1. Park City 428 American Heritage 8 5 12 2. Payson 387 7 - 32 Combined Scoring 1. Park City 1260 W – Pulsipher 7, Serre 15, 2. Payson 796 Wunder 2, Shultz 8, Berg 6, Heath 2, Noyce 11 Recreation Sports Park City MARC Ice Holes Murder Hornets AK Bars Altitude Painting Bears 7 6 5 4 0 2 4 5 5 11 2 1 1 2 0 16 13 11 10 0 Adult Volleyball Standings Killer Tofu Chewblockers Squid Panthers Premier Ball Busters Wapacha Setting Ducks Freeballer Setting Ducks Bite the Mango W 6 5 5 5 4 4 1 2 0 0 Gold League Results – December 20 Spa 8, Resurface 1 League Champs Spa Results – December 13 Resurface 5, Marmots 4 Spa 6, Puckers 5 Results – December 6 Resurface 9, Marmots 8 Puckers 7, Spa 4 W 8 6 5 1 Results – December 13 Canadiens 5, Yellow Jackets 1 Blue Lightning 6, Ice Cats 3 League Champions Canadiens Results – December 6 Yellow Jackets 4, Blue Lightning 3 Canadiens 5, Ice Cats 1 W 5 5 4 4 L 3 3 5 6 T 3 2 2 1 pts 13 12 10 9 South Summit Aquatic & Fitness Center Adult Basketball Results – December 17 No Names 77, TGIT 66 L T pts New Recruits 79, Rim Run2 1 17 ners 68 4 1 11 No Option 80, Trump Train 53 5 0 10 9 0 2 Player of the Week Kael Atkinson – No Names Silver League Results – December 16 Bladerunners 4, AK Bars 2 Murder Hornets 7, Altitude Painting 3 League Champs Bladerunners Results – December 15 Ice Holes 4, Bears 4 Results – December 9 AK Bars 3, Ice Holes 2 Bladerunners 5, Altitude Painting 4 Results – December 8 Murder Hornets 4, Bears 1 Standings Bladerunners Bronze League Standings Canadiens Blue Lightning Yellow Jackets Ice Cats Park City Ice Arena Standings Resurface Spa Puckers Marmots L 1 2 3 2 3 3 1 5 6 7 Standings No Options New Recruits Rim Runners Trump Train TGIT No Names W 3 2 1 1 1 1 L 0 1 2 2 2 2 Please forward submissions by noon Sunday for Wednesday’s edition and by noon Wednesday for Saturday’s edition to scoreboard@parkrecord.com W L T pts 7 2 2 16 Compiled by Joe Lair Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, December 26-29, 2020 More Dogs on Main By Tom Clyde 2020 — annus horribilis 2020 will be remembered as the year when the movie “Idiocracy” was reclassified from a comedy to a documentary. And it went downhill from there. Of course the plague was the big news, sickening everything else along with it. It wrecked havoc on the economy, and killed too many. There was never a coherent response to it. Instead, we maximized the economic damage without getting much health benefit out of the uncoordinated shutdowns. It should have been a common cause that brought a bickering nation together. But that’s not how things worked in 2020. The vaccines were developed in record time, truly a miracle of modern science, and the Trump administration deserves some credit for that, though it is largely offset by the bungled response to the outbreak. Police shootings of unarmed black men were all too common. The Black Lives Matter movement grew up around legitimate issues of police reform. Progress seemed possible — then the movement got conflated with flatout riots. The message was lost in the fray. We had murder hornets. Wildfires burned whole states to the ground. While the West withered under a persistent drought (with not a word about water conservation from our highly sustainable community), the Southeast was pummeled with more hurricanes then they could name. Salt Lake had an earthquake, biblically timed with the arrival of the plague, that knocked Angel Moroni’s trumpet off the Salt Lake Temple. The federal government, under the astute leadership of a very stable genius, simply folded up. Congress passed emergency relief legislation early on, then abandoned us. It finally got something done, but nobody knows what’s in it. By the time more relief checks get out to people, it will be too late. We have 20 million people unemployed and on the brink of eviction, but at least we rolled back the energy efficiency standards for light globes and showerheads. For some reason, incumbent members of this corrupt, incompetent Congress were overwhelmingly reelected to keep doing the Good Work. We’ve now been conducting business and television news interviews over Zoom for 10 months, and network television still can’t make the sound work. In fact, nothing really works smoothly. Instead of demanding things function, we dialed back our expectations. Stores without inventory are somehow OK now. Locally, we were on a roll. The resorts closed early and abruptly, leaving tourists and employees stranded. Local businesses endured months of chaos, color coded with health regulations that changed almost daily. Wearing a mask at the grocery store in Kamas was simply too much to ask, and the east side of the county got sick. Park City filled up with plague refugees from all around the country who decided that if they could work from home, they could work from their second home. The Maverick gas station and convenience store closed. The city is planning to dump another $90 million on the arts and culture district even though the anchors, Sundance Institute and the Kimball Art Center, aren’t in any position to build new buildings. The nefarious hamlet of Hideout has thrown a monkey wrench into years of Summit County planning by staging an incursion across the Wasatch County line. It’s on hold for a few months, but it seems likely that we’ll see a repeat all of the mistakes at Kimball Junction out at Quinns. The Jordanelle Parkway was feted to a grand opening, though it isn’t open. It created the illusion that the Mayflower project is alive. The ski resorts are up and running with a “reimagined” set of rules that will work right up until they quit working. It takes some imagination to think you need to make a reservation to use the toilet at PCMR. For those unable to schedule their urination several days in advance, they have a few portable toilets available for 10,000 guests on the mountain. Can’t wait for the tree skiing to open up. If you failed to anticipate what time your child would become hypothermic and reserve time in the lodge when the blizzard rolls in, try reimagining a warm place. I guess you can do laps in the gondolas for shelter. Awful as it was, there were some bright spots in 2020. We got through a terribly dry summer without burning the place down. The big fires were in isolated areas. Toilet paper is generally available, so there’s that. The vaccine is a ray of hope, somewhat distant, but on the horizon. We can always treasure Rudy Giuliani’s press conference in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping. I can’t think of a better metaphor for the criminal incompetence of the last four years than Rudy scheduling a press conference in a parking lot between a crematorium and a porn store instead of the Four Seasons Hotel ballroom downtown. There was the Monolith in San Juan County. It sat there undiscovered for five or six years, then captivated the entire world for a few days before it was removed. By a professional slackliner. It was a joyous distraction from the annus horribilis of 2020. After what we’ve been through, I hope in this next year will be full of hidden monoliths. They’re out there, somewhere. Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986. Sunday in the Park By Teri Orr The Age of Aquarius — then and now And so this is Christmas — that anti-Christmas song that really was an anti-war anthem. It has a depressingly haunting melody. The John Lennon and Yoko Ono song was released in 1971. We were still three years from Nixon resigning and young men were dying for no understandable reason in Vietnam. I have been humming the song in a loop in my head for weeks now. It seemed like we were in such dark days then. Nixon sure, Vietnam yes, but Yoko was changing John — we could all see that. I had given birth one month after turning 20 in 1971 which made me just barely not a teenage mother. We lived in a rented house in Reno that year, we were going to college with two male roommates in the big house. We were all friends. One guy lived on the top floor — affectionately known as The Attic. One in the basement. I made dinner for the house each night — lunches and breakfast were on their own. But I grocery shopped for everyone. And everyone had different schedules at the University of Nevada at Reno — we Californians nicknamed it Yahoo U. Basement Bob would leave in the fall and take a job working at Alpine Meadows ski area in Tahoe. First, as ski instructor and eventually he became the director of marketing. Attic Ryan, who had the most beautiful opera-quality voice, sang lullabies to my baby. But mostly show tunes. He would leave at the end of that summer to attend university in Boston. He explained his decision by repeating an insider student joke. “They say Be U or Be Jew or Be Gay ... I’m not coming out- as Jewish.” The show tunes made more sense. The house came with a feral German Shepherd we had to care for. We had a VW bus painted like the American flag — the white roof and red body led to the stars and stripes paint job by my authentically flag-waving husband. I had bought the bus — brand new — as a senior in high school. And we also had a '47 Packard — deep navy blue. I had only paid $50 for that car. I had it fluffed up by the Harrah’s Car Collection folks for our wedding. My marriage at age 19 had unlocked a trust fund on my father’s side. He had died in Australia when I was 16. I hadn’t seen him most of my life. My mother saw to that. Years later when I decided to sell the fabulous car — I found the title didn’t work — the car was literally hot-fenced — which explained my steal of a deal. Sigh — wood-paneled dash, map lights, navy velvety seats and suicide doors in the back. God, I loved ... that car. When I divorced my husband at 26 was when I discovered he had spent most of the trust. Mine and Crocker Bank's. In the '70s married women needed permission from their husbands to have credit cards and bank loans. Men didn’t have to ask permission to order stocks sold or to take out a mortgage on a fully-paid-for home. I managed to keep all the liabilities in the divorce. That included the children’s clothing store I had created in a tiny mall in Tahoe City. I loved that store and I had to sell it to finance my move to a funky ski town in the almost-Rockies — the Alpine Meadows folks had purchased — Park City, Utah. The store has sold about five times since now, I’m told, but Ruffles and Ruffnecks is still there, in the Cobblestone Mall, selling high-end designer clothes for children. I loaded up the children — the second or third year I sold the lake house — and was living in a rented home in Tahoe. The dark green Porsche had gone by the way of the heated driveway. I was driving a trusted, rusted Jeep Wagoner. I decided what the kids needed was a trip back to my homeland to see the lights so I drove them down to The City. I had read in the San Francisco Chronicle, “The Tree is UP!” That declaration for City Folks meant The Tree — four-stories tall inside the rotunda of the City of Paris department store — would be fully covered in giant dolls and teddy bears and wooden trains and shiny balls. My children were probably 3 and 5 that year. ... We stayed with my mother but kept ourselves busy enough that we didn’t have to really interact with Mean Jean. We drove back Sunday afternoon with visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads. The Jeep broke down about Grass Valley — just as we were hitting the blizzard. I called a friend — really, just a friend — a man named Micheal who I had nicknamed Norman Nice (don’t ask) from a payphone in a little gas station. He drove right down in two hours flat and somehow fixed the car and I drove it home. Later Micheal said, “Now, do you understand why you need a man in your life?” He was what we used to call “well-heeled.” He wanted an instant family and we fit his bill. And I can remember being as clear as the sky became that night, saying, “No, I don’t need a man, I need a new car.” Which I got — a leased Subaru. It was 1976. I have been driving Subarus ever since. And I found out I was right — as long as I kept the service up and had a membership in Triple A — I didn’t need a man, just the occasional mechanic of any gender to “save me.” And for the record, Micheal really was a great guy — just not a great guy for me. So this is Christmas — the first full year I lived in Park City, in December of 1980, John Lennon was murdered. The radio — like the band — played on. This year I have canceled Christmas — for the big family gathering. My son had made the tough call for Thanksgiving dinner — he knew his two teenagers had been good about all things COVID — just maybe not good enough. It is a month later now and all three Grands — from both families — are tired of quarantine life. Yes, there will be driveway moments and Zooms but no giant meal or the politically incorrect whoosh! of wrapping paper tossed in the fire. Or multi-houred board games. And in a pandemic — this is an OK decision, I tell myself — and then I hum — So this is Christmas. And it is — for all the upcoming next 12 Days, including this very Sunday in the Park... Teri Orr is a former editor of The Park Record. She is the founder of the Park City Institute, which provides programming for the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Center for the Performing Arts. |