A reader wrote in with “a better metaphor” for the Mountain Accord. I’m inclined to agree.

I think a better metaphor for The Mountain Accord goes something like this. A man hires an architect to make plans for a simple new home for his family of 4. You might call them “blueprints.” 6 months later the architect comes back with designs that include a 5 car garage, tile roof, heated driveway, solar panels, brick exterior, and indoor swimming pool. Instead of the expected cost to build of $500K it’s over $1. The man calls the architect and says, what are you thinking? The architect tells him he’s an idiot. He needs the 5 car garage. He need the tile roof. He needs a heated driveway. He needs solar panel. He needs brick.He need an indoor swimming pool.

Later that night the man goes out to the architects website and clicks on the Partners page. It lists all the companies the architect is affiliated with, including a garage door company, a tile roofer,

I don’t have kids in the Park City School District but I have friends who tells stories of their kids being glad spring break happened, “so they could catch up on school.” As we approach the end of the school year, I hear that kids are so busy getting ready for finals. I think back and try to remember if any of my classes in high school had finals. I don’t think so. There was a test at the end but it was over what we last covered. I think back to spring break and I guarantee I was not looking forward to it as an opportunity to catch up on school work.

I don’t say this criticize. My opinion is “each to his own.” Whatever you want to do is great. Just be happy, if you like being happy.

With that in mind, I read an article from Lit Hub called, “AGAINST WUNDERKINDS…HOW LATE BLOOMERS ARE LEADING A REVOLT AGAINST THE CULT OF THE LITERARY PRODIGY.” This article was clearly about writing but it has a broader message. It is about

Today the County Council met with the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission to discuss the General Plan. Community Development Director Pat Putt led off the meeting by urging the council to consider the amount of development that is in the pipeline, and that he feel it is necessary to limit future entitlements.

I was just about to write my mea culpa regarding the Park City Film Studios.

On Monday morning, Basin Recreation’s Rena Jordan was on KPCW. Leslie Thatcher asked questions about a proposed field house at Silver Creek Village. Ms. Jordan said that nothing formal

If you haven’t heard of it, the Georgetown Energy Prize is a “$5 million prize born of a mission to tap the imagination, creativity, and spirit of competition between communities across the country to develop sustainable energy-saving innovations. Through this competition, communities will be challenged to work together with their local governments and utilities in order to develop and begin implementing plans for innovative, replicable, scalable and continual reductions in the per capita energy consumed from local natural gas and electric utilities.”

As good as that sounds, perhaps the better news, is that Summit County and Park City are currently in first place.

Dear Supporters of Summit Community Power Works,

 I am writing to share with you some very exciting news. Georgetown University shared the first round of rankings among the 50 communities in pursuit of the $5,000,000 Georgetown University Energy Prize. Summit County/Park City is currently ranked #1. This ranking is based upon the first quarter of data from 2015. And although it is only the first quarter’s data, and rankings may shift based upon weather normalization as future data is added, this first look is truly encouraging news. We are thrilled and thankful for the support each and every one of you has offered.

In short, we can win this competition and fund energy efficiency forever in Summit County with a $5,000,000 endowment. 

 Georgetown is still struggling with bringing its dashboard online, but we didn’t want to wait any longer to share the good news with all of you. We are over a quarter of the way through the competition, and we have a lot more good work to do. The support you have shown SCPW is making a difference – a very measurable difference. We can leave a brighter environmental and economic legacy. Every meter matters – especially yours.

SCPW is participating in Live PC Give PC this year for the first time. It is an opportunity for us to share our message and program in a BIG way. Our focus for the fall is marketing and outreach. We hope that all of you will be involved. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram (Summit Community Power Works) and on Twitter

 Thank you sincerely for your support of Summit Community Power Works. Let’s win this thing!

Mary Christa Smith

SCPW Project Manager

We’ve heard from a few people over the last week about their concern over increased enforcement of leash laws. Some appear to be going over the top and looking for confrontation with Animal Control officers on the trail. While I don’t know if these people are full of bravado or actually mean it, we’d like to offer an alternative.

One of the things we have heard from new Summit County Animal Control Administrator, Clay Coleman, is that they will have an officer walking trails looking for off leash dogs. If you are against increased off leash enforcement, you probably think this is a waste of time and money. Therefore, why not ask your elected officials to help? How exactly do you do that?

The Summit County

Did you know that Vail owns the trademark for the term “Park City” in relation to “Providing facilities for skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, hiking, alpine slide, mini-golf and horseback riding, and conducting classes and instruction in skiing and snowboarding and providing rental of skiing and snowboarding equipment; resort services, namely, entertainment in the nature of ski and snowboard races and conducting entertainment exhibitions in the nature of sporting events and musical concerts; resort lodging services.”

So What Does This Mean?

What does this mean? Vail owns the name Park City in conjunction with anything related to skiing, mountain biking, hiking, horseback riding, ski rental, resort services, and lodging. Yep, that’s pretty much everything most people in Park City care about.

Next question, “How did this happen?”

First, let’s get something out of the way. We don’t really think Park City, the city, sucks. We don’t think Park City, the resort, sucks. We don’t even think Vail Sucks. What we think sucks is the choice, by Vail, to use both the name Park City for its resort here and for enforcing its trademark of “Park City.”

So, back to the question, “How did this happen?” It appears our friends at The Greater Park City Company (AKA Talisker) trademarked “Park City” in early 2014 and then assigned that to our friends at Vail later that year. So back when this was happening in early 2014, it wasn’t that our city couldn’t stand up to the big boys at Vail; it was something else. So what was it?

Was Park City Municipal unaware that this was happening? Did no one on the city council ever hear about his? Did the Chamber of Commerce not seen this coming? Or were any or all these groups aware but they decided not to fight it. We don’t have the answer for that.

Why Does it Matter to Locals

What we do know is that it is a big screw up; perhaps one of the biggest in a long time in these parts.

The problem is that there is confusion over the name. Even in the local paper, The Park Record, you’ll see the word Park City and its often not clear whether it is speaking of the resort or the town.

For example, if we hypothetically wrote…

Park City sucks
Park City parking is terrible
Park City restaurants are bad
Park City hotels are overpriced
Park City snow is the worst
Park City people are rude

… are we referring to the city, the resort, or both? Our beloved city is now inextricably linked to a ski resort. The fact that Vail, the city, and Vail, the resort, share the same name is not lost on us. However, in Park City’s case, the city was around about 150 years before the newly-named resort was even a glimmer in Robert Katz’s eyes.

This even becomes more of an issue with events that have defined Park City, the city, for years. Imagine in ten years someone saying to their friend “Park City is the host of the Sundance Film Festival” and their friend replies, “I didn’t know the film festival was at a ski resort.” It’s much like if we said, the “Vail Food and Wine Classic is coming up in May.” Are you thinking the wine is being served in the city of Vail? For most people they would associate that statement with the ski resort.

Why Does it Matter to Local Businesses

The thing about patents and trademarks is that they usually need to be defended, or they are no longer valid. Coca Cola can’t sit idly by and let 100 other soft drink manufacturers use the name Coke, or their claim over the trademark would no longer have merit.

The same is likely true with the trademark for “Park City.” That trademark covers a lot of ground. Let’s say you grew up in Park City, were a budding entrepreneur and wanted to open a ski shop. Do you think you could call it “Park City Ski Shop?” Unlikely. Perhaps you want to do something with lodging. Do you think you could trademark Park City Lodging? Oh, that’s a bad example, that trademark request is already being challenged by a subsidiary of Vail Resorts. Could you open “Park City Mini Golf.” Not likely, they own “mini golf” too. If you were into music, could you bring in bands around the world for the “Park City Music Fest?” Looks like conducting musical concerts is defined as part of trademark, as well. We could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Of course, we wouldn’t want to speak for Vail and what they would or wouldn’t legally do. That’s up to them, but they do own the trademark. We’ve always contended that they are the “smartest guys in the room” and we say that in an admiring way. Their acquisition of the trademark could, in the end, be huge for the company. We would call that savvy.

Yet, that doesn’t make it right. It’s not right for our town. It’s probably not right for our people. It’s likely not even right for Vail. At some point that confusion, in some way, will likely come back to haunt them.

What We’ve Done

We at the Park Rag are pretty much powerless, except to make commentary, criticism, and point out the issue. About all we can do is host this web page and hope that people read it. You may have noticed at the top of the page, we have exercised our fair use rights to combine the Park City Municipal logo with the Park City (ski resort) logo. They actually go very well together (maybe too well). We think this parody is a nice looking logo and would at least ask Park City, the city, to make it easy on us all and just adopt the logo. Perhaps they could go one step further, and just become a wholly owned subsidiary of Vail Mountain Resorts (kidding).

What We Hope Vail Will Do

We are under no illusion that Vail needs to do anything, but we hope they will consider doing two things for the sake of our joint community. First, we’d like them to rename their resort. There are so many good options that still contain the words Park City and can do the resort justice (i.e., the obvious one I’m sure Vail has considered is just Park City Mountain). Second, we would like them to use their braintrust to find a way to turn their trademark over to the public domain. It’s not enough just to disown it, as someone else will come in and pick it up. However, if the name could be protected but available for anyone to use it (forever), it would be a grand gesture to the people of Park City.

We Love Park City

Again, we love Park City. It’s a great place to live. It’s a great place to raise children. It’s almost perfect. Vail’s decision to use the words “Park City” for its resort are confusing and tarnishes the city. Vail’s trademark over the name Park City, and its ability to control its use in a number of areas, is somewhat chilling. We hope they’ll make a good decision for everyone involved and both rename the resort and set their trademark free.

Overall, I’m supportive of Park City’s move to make Round Valley an off leash dog area. Granted, I understand some people’s concerns that the city went from a total ban on dogs in the area to the exact opposite in one fail swoop. However, the fact that it’s a trial program, helps mitigate the issue a bit.