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Show Mfiftqpipnaill There are better ways to spend public money Courche-what? That was the reaction of many of us last September when it was announced that Park City had been named the sister city-slash-ski area of Courchevel, France. It turned out that we had been competing against esteemed American resorts like Aspen, Vail and Heavenly Valley for the honor of being linked with Courchevel, a city-slash-ski area in the Alps of Southern France. The announcement hardly sent shock waves around the community. We buried the story on Page A9 of our Sept. 29 issue. The big story that week, as we saw it, was the grease fire at the Claimjumper Restaurant. If we were less than awestruck by the announcement, that's because we (as a community) played no role in the decision. Most of us weren't aware that we were under scrutiny last summer, or we would have dressed a little better bet-ter and maybe cleaned up our language a bit. And most of us weren't asked how we felt about establishing our own French connection. So, to some of us, the news that we had been annointed by Courchevel smacked a little bit of the Mormon practice of baptising one's ancestors into the church. Adding to our apathy was the knowledge that the announcement announ-cement came not from the city but from the Park City Ski Area. That somehow made the Courchevel connection more of a business transaction than a cultural exchange. Since that first story we have run a few others, the latest coming Jan. 5 when a group of Park City people left for a 10-day visit to Courchevel and Paris. Most of those represented the business community. But a few of them including City Councilman Bill Coleman, City Planner Plan-ner Bill Ligety, School Superintendent Tony Mitchell, and School board member Nancy McComb were public officials. of-ficials. And three of the four (Coleman excluded) were traveling to France on public money. Both Ligety and McComb told the Record that they expected ex-pected to get some heat when they got back, and they haven't been disappointed. Taxpayers have been wondering won-dering out loud why this new French connection which they had nothing to say about is being used to justify junkets by public officials. What makes Courchevel the perfect per-fect model for a city planner or a school representative from Park City? Aren't there cheaper and better alternatives? We don't know if the public outcry had anything to do with it, but we were told Jan. 12 that Mitchell would be reimbursing reim-bursing the school district for his plane fare. Ligety and McComb, on the other hand, are sticking to their guns. They argue that their trip represents a good investment in-vestment of the taxpayers' money. Their Courchevel trip, they say, was more productive and less expensive than, say, a planners' convention in Kansas City or a National School Board Association convention in Dallas. Maybe that's true. But maybe that's more a criticism of the conventions than an endorsement of the Courchevel excursion. ex-cursion. For years the budget of the Park City School District has included an allowance to send members to one national convention a year. On Nov. 22 of last year the board voted to change that policy to give individual members "the prerogative to attend board-related conferences and workshops as appropriate, within the budget limitations." We interpret this as the board's stamp of approval for Nancy Nan-cy McComb's trip to Courchevel. The board could have taken another tack. Since all its members had attended at least one national convention, it could have voted to turn the convention money back into the general fund. What keeps gnawing at us is the knowledge that the Courchevel Cour-chevel trip wasn 't set up to be a seminar for city planners or school board representatives, but rather a glorified tour like those conducted by the Park City ChamberBureau. It came with everything from airplane rides to floor shows. It reminds us a bit of the professional conventions that multiply in Park City during the winter months, with lectures lec-tures conveniently scheduled during the evening hours so as not to interfere with the skiing. Then, of course, there's the tax write-off ... They're legitimate, but only just. We don't doubt that some value will come from the Courchevel Cour-chevel exchange, and that both the city and the school district will benefit. And the "twinning" with Courchevel. as it has been called, could pay some tremendous dividends, divi-dends, particularly on our side of the Atlantic. But we still don't feel completely comfortable with using public money for this kind of trip, especially in the wake of a voted leeway lee-way election which asked local taxpayers to dig even deeper deep-er into their own pockets. -DH |
