A Difference Between Summit County Government and Park City School District Government

This morning Derrick Radke and Pat Putt, both from Summit County government, were on KPCW. They were discussing a potential bond (or taxes) to pay for transportation related improvements across Summit County like adding intercept parking (i.e. often park and ride), creating a better Interchange at the Jeremy Ranch exit, and improvements to accommodate traffic for a 5/6 school at Ecker Hill that the school district wants to build.

KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher asked if a bond was necessary or if they could just raise taxes. The response was that the cost would be in the multi millions, and that taxes only raise a few million a year. So a bond would likely be necessary for these improvements. However, given our recent discussions about the school district’s bond, another statement made about the possible transportation bond highlighted an apparent big difference between the county and the Park City School District. The representatives from the county said before they would consider a bond, they would need to start by developing a list of specific projects that would be covered by it, in order to see if residents would even support it.

I contrast that with the school district’s method…. We could likely argue all day over the level of REAL community input into the school district’s plans to rebuild the campus. However, you’d be hard pressed to argue that the school district came up with a final list of specific projects and then passed that by the community to see if they would support it. They were still debating what they wanted on August 5th. On August 18th they voted to put a bond on the ballot for the projects they finalized in the previous two weeks. There wasn’t exactly a long public vetting process once the final decisions were made.

I know everybody has their own view on the school bond. In this case, defenders of the bond may say that it was a 10 month process, that the community got their say, and that ultimately we elect school board representatives to… represent us. I can see that argument.

Yet, it seems the county may have been watching what is going on with the school district bond. It appears they don’t want their own George Santayana Moment.