Can We Make Developers Actually Build Affordable Housing?

This weekend I wrote an article entitled What I Don’t Get About Affordable Housing. I wrote that locations like Kamas and Oakley are already “affordable” without us jumping through hoops to try and figure out how we put the horse back in the barn. A community member responded saying that “outsourcing our affordable housing only exacerbates the problem” …

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No Park City School Board Member Has Voted ‘No’ in a Year?

Last September I penned an article entitled, “By Abstaining, School Board Member Tania Knauer Exemplifies What Is Wrong With Many Park City Leaders.” She had abstained from a tax increase discussion. I said, “I don’t know Ms. Knauer personally but judging from her resume she seems very competent and dedicated to education and our children. In …

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What I Don’t Get About Affordable Housing

I was reading Bubba Brown’s article in today’s Park Record about Economic Growth in Summit County. It brought up the need for affordable housing for local workers. Yet this article seemed different because it is in the context of Summit County and not Park City. For so long I have heard people lament that their children …

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Do You Want an 82 Foot Tall Tower in Kimball Junction?

It appears Verizon Wireless is appealing to the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission for an 80+ foot tower behind Walmart. This will be a monopole type tower and will likely look something like this: That’s a little over two and a half times the allowed upon height of a building in the Basin, but it is …

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Let’s Look At Growth in Summit County Historically

This morning on KPCW’s Local News Hour they were talking growth again. I heard there are 4,000 units of unbuilt density (basically homes) in Park City and about 14,000 in the Snyderville Basin. The theory presented is that because of those rights to build, that people are going to flock to the Park City area. …

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100% Renewable Sourced Energy in Utah

The Solutions Project has an interesting graphic that talks about how each state could shift to 100% renewable energy by 2050. It’s an interesting experiment to think of something so daunting and break it down into how to accomplish it and the benefits of doing so. Here is Utah’s breakdown:

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Do We View Commercial Sprawl and Residential Sprawl Equally?

People concerned with the design of our cities often use the word urban sprawl. Urban sprawl or suburban sprawl “describes the expansion of human populations away from central urban areas into low-density, monofunctional and usually car-dependent communities” according to Wikipedia. There is the concern that urban sprawl is coming to the Snyderville Basin (if it isn’t already here). …

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