When Basin Recreation Screws Up… People Notice
Anger is overflowing in parts of Jeremy Ranch. A field that many neighbors use to play soccer with their kids, let their kids run loose, and from all accounts, a good use of open space, has been converted into a small dog run. Residents are voicing concern, such as “It is a dog park and I cannot understand why they took the field away to do it! We used that field all the time. I wish they would have asked the neighborhood for input. Bummer! And I own a dog!” Another said, “I emailed a person at Basin Rec. I really feel they should have asked for neighborhood input prior to doing this. We play kickball and soccer on the field.”
The response posted from Basin Rec was “I can provide you a little back ground as to why we put the park in there. Through our community surveys and needs and wants assessments off leash dog areas were an item that we were lacking according to both reports. And with the county starting to put more emphasis on having dogs leashed in public areas we felt the need to provide areas where the community could legally have their dogs off leash. So our goal is to provide an off leash area in every community park to accommodate park users that bring and like dogs and park users that want to avoid dogs but still use our services. We understand that it is a change from what you have had up there but hopefully the community is able to embrace it. Please let me know if you have any other questions.” –Brian Hanton, CPRP, CYSA Recreation and Park Manager
Basically … we have orders to put in small dog parks and we did it there. We hope you’re OK with it but if not…oh well.
It highlights an issue we’ve never considered before with Basin Rec and open space. We always thought of open space as these wide open swaths of land. However, what if the open space they are buying are smaller parcels and then convert them into whatever they want? Perhaps they buy a couple of lots next to your house and build a trailhead with parking. The county needs more trailheads with parking and they hope you are OK with it. If not, sorry. What if they buy land behind your house and convert it to a dog park. There’s nothing like being woken and going to bed with the sounds of dogs.
Basin Rec has done many good things for our community. Many of us use their trails, parking lots, and facilities every day. However, this highlights the other side of the coin. At what point do they start doing things that aggravate the population. Perhaps it’s not enough for them to tell us they are going to spend $15 million of the upcoming bond on “open space”. Now we have to question what that really means too. The devil’s unfortunately in the details.
While open space always sounds good, it appears that sometimes reality doesn’t meet expectations.
As always, we don’t want to tell you how to vote on the upcoming recreation bond; however, its becoming apparent that we can’t put blind trust even in some of the things that have worked out well for us in the last decade. You may end up wishing the $25 million dollar Basin Rec bond wasn’t passed when the “open space” ends up right next to you and you have little warning and even less say … or you may love what they do with the money. Unfortunately it appears both outcomes must at least now be considered.
Just Try to Complete The Sage Test Yourself… We Dare You
We are excitedly awaiting the SAGE testing results that are due to be released next week. SAGE is a new state of Utah standardized test where our all students did so poorly that they are considering changing the grading system. It sounds like most school districts as a whole got a D or F and when the results are released to the public it’s expected that parents are going to go ballistic.
As much as we like to pile on to criticism of …well anything… we had some extra time so we went out and tried the SAGE sample tests in math. You see, we were pretty good in math back in the day. AP math classes throughout high school. Quizzed out of basic college math. A’s in every college calculus class taken. Minor in Computer Information Systems.
The state offers sample tests in the various areas quizzed on the test.We started with 12th grade math to see how “awesome” we were going to do and how easy the test was. UHHH… we had to work our way down to 6th grade math to really feel confident in most of our answers. What’s an imaginary number again?
Now, it’s true that the concepts should be MUCH fresher to our current students than those of use who graduated in the previous millennium. However, before you go all Adrian Petersen on your kid (or school district), you may want to give the test a go yourself.
You can take a sample test here. Good Luck.
Shoyu Sushi Restaurant Inspection
Summit County Health Department inspected Shoyu Sushi on 9/14/2014. We have created a page on how to read the Inspection Report. We’ll highlight the things that may be of interest. Please read the full report below for a complete and accurate report.
Good Practices:
- Variance obtained for specialized processing practices
- Utensils properly stored
Temperatures:
- Shrimp / Display 29º
- Crab/ display 35º
- Tuna / display 58º
- Salmon / reach-in 36º
Observations and Corrective Actions:
- No sanitizer bucket
- Item in ice machine
- Tuna in cold hold display over 41º
- Employee food needs designated area out of food prep area
- Remove child play equipment in back
- Use gloves during food prep
The Battle For Boyer Heats up (Again)
In the Snyderville Basin, there are roughly four obvious areas for development: Silver Creek, the area by Home Depot, land north of Highway 40, and the Boyer Tech Park. The homes are starting to pop up in Silver Creek, 1000 units are planned near Home Depot, and the Highway 40 land is awaiting treatment per the EPA. What about the Boyer Tech Park?
The Boyer Tech Park is an area between the Village at Kimball and the Olympic Ski Jump. There is over a million square feet of development approved there. The catch is that it’s been tagged for businesses related to technology, science, and R&D. In the original development agreement there are certain uses (fitting the description above) that are allowed. If it’s not in that list, then it can’t be built there. The idea was to bring high-tech, high-paying jobs to Summit County. They also wanted to ensure that they wouldn’t canibalize other areas of town like the Kimball Village. So, they didn’t allow generic office space or restaurants. Finally, they didn’t want a lot of traffic. They felt the limited types of businesses would limit traffic.
You may then ask why the one building built so far has a visitors center, coffee shop, physical therapy office and a resort check-in located in it. Please don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to. We’ll leave that one for never another time.
When the original building was built, the Summit County Council was responsible for deciding whether each individual tenant met the requirements for the “Tech Park”. They felt this was untenable going forward. The main issue with the existing process was that it required the county council to micro manage the process. Secondarily, a full plan had to be created and evaluated to see if it met the stringent requirements. This required a significant amount of money from the developer. So, about a year ago a new process was implemented.
A company could submit a “description of use” document to Summit County. This went to the Community Development Director, the County Manager, and the Chair of the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission. They would then determine whether the use described was consistent with the uses in the Development Agreement.
Over the past year, it appears there were a couple of informal discussions between organizations and the the county on whether it made sense to submit the “description of use” document. We have no definite information on those but it appears that formal requests were never made. However more recently, a brewery has formerly completed the request and was denied by the county. Since this is the first denial using the process it will be interesting to see what happens. The brewery has the option to appeal the decision to the Summit County Council. If they decide to do that we would expect to see that in the next month or two.
The Boyer Tech Park is an interesting development but perhaps is even more interesting due to the upcoming battle it represents. On one side are people who don’t want more growth. They feel it damages the character of the Basin. On the other side are those people who say we need growth. They feel that the only way to have good schools, great roads, and a diversified economy is through growth. This battle was put on hold due to the Great Recession but with the Park City Film Studio, Park City Heights, East Creek Ranch, and now renewed interest in the Tech Park, it is starting to heat up again.
The next 5 years should tell us a lot about what Park City’s future will be.
in Election
Does Our County Treasurer Need to Have a College Education?
Thursday on KPCW, Corrie Forsling, a candidate for Summit County Treasurer, mentioned she was the only candidate for the position who had a college degree. We thought we may have misunderstood her, so we checked. It appears that she is correct. Her opponent, Amy Yost, has a high school degree, while Ms. Forsling has both a college degree and a Masters in Business.
So, how important is a college education for this position? First, what does a County Treasurer do? According to the Summit County website, “The Summit County Treasurer collects property taxes, receipts and accounts for all county funds, reconciles cash balances, and invests available cash.” So, effectively they collect most of the money the county receives, tracks how much money we have and how it was spent, and invests money.
While we at the Park Rag are big proponents of experience and self-education, these are important responsibilities impacting lots of money and thousands of people. Therefore, we don’t want to be cavalier about it. We look at it this way… does having a generic college degree matter? A college degree demonstrates some ability to complete a task that took many years, that likely contained some adversity. It also shows some worldliness as whether you go to Brown, Miami of Ohio, or the U you are thrown into a situation with a diverse people, many whom are probably as smart or smarter than you. You could possibly gain that without going to college. You’d likely need to search it out, but you could find it.
However, let’s take the thought exercise a step further. If you were looking for someone to manage your money, be it an investment advisor, private banker, or the person who manages your organization’s pension fund what educational background would you want? You’d likely want someone with a business degree, or better yet some sort of masters degree related to finance. You’d want them to have both practical experience and the academic knowledge to backup decisions.
So, our opinion is that something like an Art History degree wouldn’t do much for our Treasurer. Just having a random college degree isn’t enough. In a county like ours with so much money and so much going on, we should demand the best and brightest person available. That person probably should have some sort of business degree.
in Election
Bravo KPCW! You should do this more often!
Right now (as we are writing this), KPCW has Doug Payne and Julie Eihausen, candidates competing for the School Board on the radio. Having both candidates running for the same position on the radio at the same time allows citizens to compare and contrast not only the answers to questions but each candidate’s style. At the end of the broadcast they then took calls from citizens who had questions.
It was really informative and compelling. We hope they can do more of this in the future!
How Other Areas of the State Want to Take Money From Park City Schools
We just read an interesting Salt Lake Tribune Editorial from late September by Utah State Representative Aaron Osmond. He takes a view counter to what many Parkites feel. He argues that we need complete equity in our schools and that places like Park City should not be able to use our higher property taxes to achieve better schools than locations with lower property taxes. Therefore, he argues for a Utah State Property tax to make sure all schools receive equal funding. Essentially, those tax dollars would be distributed equally across all schools (based on number of students).
Perhaps this is what representative Kraig Powell meant when he said he feared bringing up anything with regard to equalization in the legislature (i.e. the use of our tax dollars to fund other school districts).
It’s worth a read to understand where other areas of the state are coming from. Click here for the editorial.
Silver Star Restaurant Inspection
Summit County Health Department inspected Silver Star Cafe on 9/25/2014. We have created a page on how to read the Inspection Report. We’ll highlight the things that may be of interest. Please read the full report below for a complete and accurate report.
Good Practices:
- Adequate ventilation
- No contamination during food preperation
Temperatures:
- Milk: 40º
- Shrimp in the reach-in: 54.5º
- Ham on cold table: 60.8º
- Beef in walk-in: 41º
Observations and Corrective Actions:
- Employees not wearing gloves
- Dishwasher does not have enough sanitizer
- Cold table temp above 41º
- Ice machine needs cleaned
- Need to Date mark all items
Restaurant Inspections Online … Starting Tonight
Ever wondered how clean that restaurant you love is? After a bad experience in SLC, we did too. We contacted the Summit County Health Department in order to find out how we could access restaurant inspection reports. We completed a government records request last week and were provided access to recent records today.
We feel that as citizens, we should all have access to all public information, especially about the things we eat. With that in mind, we’ll be posting the inspection for one restaurant tonight, followed by a new inspection every day or two. There are a few things to keep in mind:
- These are point in time inspections. The Health Department finds problems and the restaurants are supposed to correct them. So, hopefully by the time you are reading about an inspection, the problem has been taken care of.
- Every restaurant has “violations” but many are far less egregious than what you have going on at home.
- Inspections are typically performed twice a year. Things change quickly, so your results may vary from what you read on these reports.
- We didn’t realize how important the Health Department and their inspectors are to our dining experience. We said to one of the inspectors during our review, “Wow some of this is pretty scary”. She said, that we had it wrong. We should be glad they found these things and they are fixed. We’ve watched enough Kitchen Nightmares, that after thinking about it, we completely agree with her.
- Our intent isn’t to harm our local restaurants in any way. In fact we want them to succeed. We believe they are the life blood of a tourist location like Park City. That said, we do hold them to a high standard since no one wants to get sick and the average diner only sees about 3% of what’s going on.
So, we hope you’ll find these as interesting as we do. First up tonight is Silver Star Cafe’s 9/25/2014 inspection.
in Taxes
School Board Property Tax Increase Will Not Be Postponed Because of PC CAPS Building Deferral
Someone contacted us and asked if property taxes increases would be delayed due to the PC CAPS building being put on hold. The answer is no.
The School Board voted to increase property taxes in order to accommodate student growth. It wasn’t directly tied to the Professional Studies Building that was agreed upon but is now delayed — awaiting a needs assessment.
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