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Show Meet Park City' s New City Attorney, Tom Clyde New city attorney Tom Clyde was born In Salt Lake City where he grew up there and in the Summit County community of Woodland. He has degrees in English and Law from the Univ. of Utah. He was formerly with the Salt Lake Law firm of Clyde, Pratt, Gibbs and Cahoon before becoming Park City's first full-time city attorney. Record reporter Anne Burnett interviewed Clyde In his Marsac Building office. There are absolute limits on growth and water is the factor that's going to dictate the absolute limits. We're approaching them now. Q: It sounds like Park City is going to have some definite impacts on the rest of the county. Do you see yourself getting involved in legal problems or hassles with the rest of the county? The water problem is a regional problem. pro-blem. You can't develop five thousand housing units at Park West and White Pine at the same time we're putting 2500 housing units or whatever what-ever it js in Deer Valley without running short. Park City doesn't have the financial finan-cial resources to run 25 or 30 miles of pipeline downstream down-stream to where we could pick water up again. The Jeremy Ranch people don't, the Summit Park people don't. We're all impacting on the same thing. There's a tendency to say 'well, I'm here now I've got my tap, anybody who comes in after me is the problem.' I disagree with that. I think anyone who is in Park City as a result of the ski boom is a part of the problem. It's a basin-wide problem that needs to be controlled. Somewhere off in the future I can see forming a conservancy conservan-cy district in the Snyderville basin that has the power to go out and acquire water rights by condemnation, that has the financial strength to bond and come up with the money to build a pipeline and possible treatment plants. I hope we can deal with it without having to get to that large a scale and we may get to the point where the economics of building a water system into this area become more expensive than the housing they can serve is worth. but I irrigate with it, you can't take it first. Q': Who has priority in a situation like that? The general principal in Utah water law is first in time first in right. Whoever got there first has the right to use it. The mine water is a little bit different because it's being imported into this basin, it didn't naturally occur here. To apply straight priority theories won't work because if the mine tunnel collapsed nobody up here has any obligation to go in and dig it out for the benefit of these ipeople downstream. down-stream. So the mine water is ' different and the law in Utah is most unclear on what it will turn out to be. In Colorado the law has come down to those who develop water and import it from a different basin are entitled to continue using it. It's a theory that I think the Utah court will adopt but it's never faced before. Q: There's only so much water to divy up - what do you see as alternatives for the citv? However, there needs to be some better coordination among all those experts. There will be times when information that comes out of one lawsuit will be of critical importance to another lawsuit. law-suit. Right now, they're being handled by different firms and nobody ever really puts them together. So I'm hoping to do some coordination coordinat-ion work. Then there's the day-to-day work and even that got to be more than Mike (McCoy) could handle on a day-to-day basis. Q: Do you think we have more than our share of lawsuits? Lawsuits is probably not the most accurate term. You've got an awful lot of lawsuits that have grown out of inadequate legal foundations in the past. You've got an awful lot of basic legal problems over complicated issues. A recent article on the Snyderville Basin Sewer Improvement District (is an example). When I grew up in Woodland we used to jokingly joking-ly sav. 'flush the toilet. Salt Q: You're the city's first full-time attorney -- do you see it as a full-time job? So far it's been more than a full-time job. If I can get home by 9 o'clock at night I consider myself luck...I think it's going to be more than a full-time job for quite a while. Q: What will be your main emphasis here in Park City? Right now my main emphasis empha-sis has been involved in trying to improve some of the city ordinances. We've discovered dis-covered great gaps in some of them or ordinances that were written a long time ago that don't really address the city's needs now. I hope to get to a preventive law kind of thing where we're looking at long-term arrangements, long-term acquisition of water wat-er resources and some long-term planning. I think most of the legal work that Park City has had in the past has been directed strongly towards dealing with imminent immi-nent crises here is enormous. Q: There have been a Buying reservoir water way downstream and piping it back upstream at horrible cost. The use of what water we have for irrigation purposes pur-poses is going to be hard to justify. I think we're going to have to look very hard at what we're doing with planning and zoning. I know already we're starting to discourage people from putting putt-ing in large grassed areas. Lawn requires a lot of water, bushes are basically self-watering. So we need to take a look at what we're doing there and make sure we're not making more serious problems by requiring large areas to be irrigated. Q: So you plan as city attorney to get involved in landscaping ordinances? That's right. And another thing we're looking at is a water-saving ordinance. It governs what kinds of appliances you can put in your house and what they do. it's a very hot issue but I think most toilets use between bet-ween seven and ten gallons (of water) per flush. There are toilets on the market that , will do it for two or three. That ought to be something fairly easy to require in new construction but we haven't done it yet -- water softeners are another thing we should look at and simple things like shower head flow restrictors. We're not trying to change the quality of life here but if we could cut back from ten gallons a flush to two gallons a flush I don't know that anyone would miss it and it would save quite a bit of water. Q: Water is a very serious . issue, isn't it? Lake needs a drink.' In Park City we do the same for Ogden. That eventually may lead to litigation, I " hope it doesn't, it's the kind of problem that should be dealt with outside of litigation. But your problems are growth and any time you - have enormous growth problems you have enormous legal problems. What are the legal rights to the water that starts in this basin? We're right at the very top of them and we have the cities of Ogden and all of Davis County down below saying 'wait a minute, that's our water you're running through your toilet.' Well, partly it is, partly it isn't, sorting that one out is going to be a complicated process. Q: Do you see the water problem as one that is going to grow for us? i It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Partly because of the legal uncertainties uncer-tainties of using water out of the mines. The mines developed deve-loped that water at a time when it was a nuisance to them. Their only consideration considerat-ion was getting rid of it. Now Park City is saying we bought it and now we want to use it, but somebody down- y stream is saying that's fine. number of crises in the past involving former city attorney attor-ney Mike McCoy with everything from real estate to fired, city employees - is this something you'd like to change and is it normal for a city of our size? Nothing in Park City is completely normal because Park City is not a normal city of its size. Population-wise you need to compare Park City to Heber and the volume of work and development pressures there are negligible negligi-ble compared to what you have here. Park City's problems are more like those they're experiencing in Sandy San-dy or West Valley City or other rapidly growing cities. One big problem that has developed is that not all legal work is the same. Legal work is like medical work, you don't go to a podiatrist if you're having a headache. The city, I think, has wisely t adopted a policy of dealing with people who are experts in their fields. People like Suitter Axland on the time-share time-share ordinance, they know what they're doing. People like the firm I just left on the water rights problems. I see that consulting role continuing continu-ing because I don't claim to . be an expert in all fields. look at it. I think the Summit County dispatch is doing a 1 pretty good job. ..but I understand there are only two lines going through, that seems inadequate especially as the county grows. Q: Does your plan of preventive legal tactics include in-clude the fire safety area in order to avoid lawsuits? Lawsuits are certainly something we want to avoid but loss of property and loss f life are more important, wsuits you can live with i. if the system breaks iown and it doesn't work, then everyone's not doing their job so making the system work is our number one concern. The dispatch system may well be something some-thing we need to take a close look at to determine if we should go into the fire business on our own. ..we may never know exactly what -happened on the Blue Church Lodge fire but people need to be more informed about emergency procedures especially visitors. . Q: What are some of your personal goals in your new position? Park City has felt abused for a hundred years because the voting clout has always been in the other end of the county. I hope we're mature enough that we don't say well we're going to take the bone and run the other direction and we'll bump you a few times and see how you feel. We've really got three comunites of interest in Summit County. The school district boundaries pretty much set them off.. .all three of those areas deserve representation on the county commission if we're going to remain one giant county. Q: Do you see any other immediate crises coming up for you? No. The Gage-Davis review of the land management code will probably be perceived per-ceived as a major crisis. I'm hoping we can work through their drafts, distribute them and discuss them with people in town. Our goal is not to complicate or set up unreasonable standards but to streamline procedures. We are, however, trying to make substantive changes in the land management code that will address critical problems we have like water and open you involved in that? So far, I haven't been. Our concerns have been primarily primar-ily with that to do with cars after we tow them away and how to protect the city against giving the car to someone who has a key that fits but doesn't own the car. Should indictments come down I'm sure the city will ask me to take a detailed look at what happened, what led to the indictment and how to prevent that kind of thing from happening again. Q: Do you see, other than the water and zoning problems, any other issues or conflicts between Park City and the rest of the county? Park City is not on the best of terms with the rest of the county. Growing up outside of Park City I've seen both sides of this issue now. We are looking at a way that we can get more input into planning and zoning in county areas between here and Parley's Summit because be-cause they impact on Park City visually and economically. economical-ly. Annexation going out towards Park West is probably prob-ably inevitable. Right now, it's not economically viable and I don't think the city wants to get into the position If you've done one mortgage, you've done them all. Partly that and partly a feeling .that I wanted to get some independence from the firm that has my father and my brother in it. There are twenty others but it's a family operation in a lot of ways. I've also been interested inte-rested in Park City all my life and decided to try a different kind of practice. Q: As city attorney, you're also involved in other things. The city strike and the grand jury are other issues the city attorney has had to deal with in the past. How are you planning to deal with these? Fortunately, the grand jury is looking at things that went on long before I got here so they've left me alone. I'm hoping that by laying some careful legal ground work we can avoid future grand jury's. The city council, I don't believe, has generally had the luxury of having an attorney available on call to check the agenda. There are a lot of times when things come up on the agenda that should have closer review than they've had so we are tabling things and taking a better look at them. That sort of thinp. I hone will avoid Q: So a lot of your legal counsel is going to encompass encom-pass water useage and development related problems? pro-blems? That and zoning ordinances. ordinan-ces. That's the other area though I'm not as strong in the zoning field as I am in the water field. I'm familiar with real estate development and we've got zoning ordinances . that, in my mind, are not enforceable in some areas. My favorite is one that says a building permit shall not be issued in an historic district for any project that fails to maintain the rhythm of the historic district. Well, sooner or later someone is going to come up with a project that is just plain ugly, a modernistic building that doesn't fit on Main Street. And our planning plann-ing staff, who are capable people, will look at that and say 'we can't build that on Main Street, that's awful' and they'll turn it down on the basis that it fails to maintain the rhythm and we'll all be up at Coalville trying to find out what the rhythm of the historic district is. I hope we'll be able to come up with a standard through the consulting group we're working with now that is better than 'rhythm'. I'd like to see the growth in Park City take a direction that is more controlled so that it's quality growth. A lot of early growth was totally unrestrained and there's a lot of junk in town... Park City might as well grow as a first quality resort rather than something that is always marginal. I'd like to get the mechanics in place for a summertime business here. ..a sound convention center, a good financial footing so that Main Street businesses aren't reljing on a three-month economy. Q: If the economy takes a dive, do you see your job getting tougher? Yes. We'll be bailing out a lot of projects that have made financial commitments commit-ments to the city. If they can't keep them up we'll be salvaging a lot of wrecks. In addition, Park City may always need a full-time attorney but I'm hoping that over the next few years we can get it to the point where we're on a sound enough legal basis that we can get by with somebody who's a full-time city attorney and full-time city prosecutor. Right now, we're still separating sepa-rating the two functions. Q: What do you plan to do in your spare time? I like to ski. I skied Deer Valley for the first time. I thought it was nice but not $20 nice. I think both Park City and Deer Valley are overpriced. I think they're going out of their way to exclude the Salt Lake skier. Maybe they don't care about the Wasatch skier but I think the Main Street businesses would like that traffic up here. ..I think the resorts are doing a disservice to the PfesMtwratapfa iQ . space... people in Utah are always trying to make the state look like the Ohio Vlley. From 1847 forward we've never been willing to confess that we live in a desert and need to act that way. They'll also be some changes in fire safety in the historic district. Last week's fire demonstrates demon-strates the need to make some changes but again we have a difficult tradeoff there. Some of those old buildings need to be preserved preserv-ed but fire sprinkling is expensive and we're reaching reach-ing the point that on balance it's cheaper to tear down than to rebuild. Q: Do you see what happened with the last fire affecting the city's latest better fire rating? Of course, that's the fire district's problem not the city's. The expense of maintaining a full-time fire department is I suppose something we could live with but it's not a decision to rush into. Bountiful has lived with a volunteer fire department for a long time. I think they're now going to more of a full-time system but they got by pretty well with it (part-timers). Q: Aren't there legal ramifications? ramifi-cations? They (fire issues) all do have legal ramifications. If there's negligence involved in the dispatch operation or if for some reason the system falls apart and we don't get notice of a fire as soon as we need to, there are some problems there. I don't understand why our dispatch is all through the Summit County sheriff. I guess it helps coordinates different departments but we need to - - where we're rendering service serv-ice there but 15 years down the road I think it's unavoidable. unavoid-able. The worst thing that could happen would be to have Snyderville incorporate so that you'd have two jurisdictions bumping up against each other like we have in Salt Lake County, where things don't work and when you call the 911 emergency number, the question isn't whose house is burning or who is dying but whose ambulance do I send. That's terrible government and something we ought to be able to avoid here. Coalville is on the verge of a boom that we're in the midst of. There's will be a different boom... right now our community com-munity interests are different, diffe-rent, but I think in a few years they'll be calling down here to ask us for help in dealing with similar growth problems. Q:Are you in favor of the proposed change in county government? I haven't looked at the proposal in great detail. 1 don't know if an elective process ever guarantees good people. I can't see any reason at all why the county recorder, clerk, treasurer, etc. need to be elected. It puts those people through a lot of expense. The incumbent, incum-bent, unless they're absolutely abso-lutely incompetent, always wins and always ought to. Those are offices where the continuity is worth a lot. Q: Some Park City residents agree with you to the point where they're willing to vote no on the proposed change and use the city's voting clout to later elect the entire commission instead. 0, r . grand jury investigations. Q:News of the grand jury was greeted by some city officials and community members with amusement. Isn't a grand jury a serious issue? Judge Croft appeared serious' when he instructed them. Judge Croft is always very serious but in the case of a grand jury with cause - a jury is a very serious thing. I'm not a strong proponent of the grand jury system because it's open to so much abuse and really is legitimizing a lot of backdoor gossip. Anybody in the world who wants to can go whisper to the grand jury and your -motivations for whispering are never asked. The grand jury's investigative team then goes out and tries to see if there's any merit in what you've said but the damage is done by getting an indictment issued. That's as bad as a conviction. Q: Will you have to address the grand jury should any indictments come out of it? If indictments come out of it, they will be in the form of criminal charges against individuals. It would be my position that the individual is the one with the problem and not the city. If we were to have a city official or a member of a city advisory commission that were indicted indict-ed I think the city would have an interest substantially different diff-erent than from that person. I don't see myself in the position of defending someone some-one on a grand jury indictment. Q: The grand jury is looking into the police department as is the department itself. Are Q: There's already a good deal of pressure from developers deve-lopers concerned about the pending guidelines for the historic district. As the city attorney, how are you going to cope with that pressure? What would really be nice is if we could turn off a switch and have the growth pressures pres-sures just stop for a period of six or eight months while we get our dots in line. We had the hearing on the Main Street moratorium last week that obviously didn't make it. Moratoriums are a legally violent kind of thing to do. The disruptions to people who own property are almost intolerable. So I don't really favor adopting a moratorium although it would make my job easy. What we're doing is getting by as best we can with the weak and sometimes some-times inconsistent ordinances ordinan-ces that we've got and doing everything we can under those ordinances as the consulting people devise new ones. I hope that by this time next year we have new ordinances on the books. I don't envision anything more stringent than the things people are now facing. Park City has the tightest building and zone requirements, in terms of what it takes to get a plan from planning stages to a hole in the ground, of any city in the state of Utah. Q: You mean we're playing catch-up? We're really playing catchup catch-up and we've got a long way to go before we're caught up. Q: What made you accept the job in Park City? A lot of frustrations with the kind of practice I was doing. . more city attorney Continued from Page community that supports them if they say 'we will only " cater to the destination skier.' Sure the destination skier spends a lot more money than the people whc drive up from Salt Lake bul every doughnut sold at Alpha Beta is a couple of pennies in sales tax revenue. Everybody who stays a little late to have dinner, helps somebody here and as long as Park City is doing well financially we can afford to get the consultants to help the city. It would be tough to do it alone. |