Summit County Council… How Many Times Must Citizens Speak?
I was speaking with a friend this week from Jeremy Ranch about development around Park City. She said, “yeah there is a lot of development but at least our hill is safe.” She is referring to a hill across from the Jeremy Store where the owner of the land asked for increased development rights to build a hotel, grocery, retail, condos, etc. When the topic was brought up before the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission, approximately 175 Jeremy Ranch residents showed up at meeting at Ecker Hill Middle School to protest expansion of development rights.
Out of that meeting, and because of the response, the Summit County Community Development Department and the planning commission decided to table the concept of “receiving areas” which could have been the tool to allow the developer to switch from 66,000 sq feet of office space on that hill to 250,000 sq feet of Sandy in the Mountains. One of the ways they seemed to accomplish that was to put a section in the General Plan saying that no new entitlements will be allowed until existing entitlements are used up. Effectively I believe the Planning Commission and Community Development Department heard the cries of Jeremy Ranch residents and said something like, “you know, there is so much development already approved around Summit County, and these residents obviously don’t want development on top of what has already been approved, so let’s state in our general plan that we don’t want excess development until the existing rights are used up.” This is formally known as section 2.3 of General Plan.
So back to my friend. I responded to her glee over “winning back her hill” by saying — “NOT SO FAST.” I explained that the ultimate decider on the hill, vis a vis the General Plan, was the Summit County Council. They still need to decide whether they support section 2.3 of the General Plan, and from what I have heard I wouldn’t say that is extremely likely. What she said next was enlightening.
She said, “How many times do I need to tell these people what I want? Me and a whole bunch of other Jeremy Ranch people showed up at a meeting [of the Planning Commission] and told them what we want. Now, a few months later they don’t remember? That is bull**it. How many f****** times do I need to say the same thing?”
I actually cleaned up the language a bit, believe it or not. The point is that residents don’t distinguish between the Planning Commission, the County Council, etc. All they know is they showed up in numbers for a meeting and said they don’t want growth in their backyard. If this had happened in Pinebrook or Old Ranch Road people would have showed up and said the same thing.
From my viewpoint, there seems to be a structural problem with the process. I was at the meeting at Ecker. You could not come away with any other impression than that these people were angry and they did not want increased development. Yet, a couple of people (developers and real-estate from what I’ve heard) show up at a County Council meeting on the General Plan two months later and said, “I have concerns with section 2.3 and if we don’t allow entitlements it could be a major disaster for our area” … and somehow they are on equal footing with 175 people who don’t want it? What about the previous meeting at Ecker? Does the County expect all 175 to show up again and say what they already said? Do they have to show up for EVERY meeting of the County Council that pertains to the General Plan to make sure their opinion is not forgotten?
The obvious answer should be no, but unless they do, it appears their opinion may not be accounted for. I have sat in countless hours of county council meetings and I understand that the squeaky wheel gets the grease and what’s heard most recently tends to carry more weight. The problem is that it’s not representative of what people think. There has to be some way for the County Council to take into account what’s happened before it and especially with the commissions it creates and is responsible for.
I’m not sure if the Planning Commission is not conveying the message appropriately or whether it’s just too hard to do. If it’s too hard, and we continue down this path, I’m sure Jeremy Ranch will try to muster the troops for one last push up the hill. They’ll do everything in their power to prevent growth above what’s already been approved.
Yet, that will be wasted public input. They already mustered one out of every five Jeremy Ranch residents to tell the county what they want. Why do they need to show up again? I constantly hear that the public never attends meetings. Yet, they seem to do that at lower levels of public government. The public seems to attack problems early, as you would probably expect (and want). Yet, it seems that that strategy may not be optimal or capable of achieving what our community wants.
Perhaps residents should ignore the Planning Commission, Basin Rec, and all other sub committees under Summit County. Then residents can wait until issues rises to the level of the County Council before they gather their limited resources to fight the fight. I guarantee you that you would have read a different story in the Park Record if Jeremy Ranch residents hadn’t attended the Planning Commission meeting but instead waited for the issue to hit the County Council and then showed up with 200 people to protest.
It seems like an unfortunate, and inefficient, way to act. However, given the actions around General Plan Section 2.3, it may be the only way to ensure that your opinion is heard.
I hope the County Council finds a way to consider the opinions of the 200 Jeremy Ranch citizens attending the meeting. If it helps, here is the recap of that meeting. While I don’t think limiting new development FOREVER is a solution that most Jeremy Ranch residents would be in favor of, I do think they would support limiting it until we use up rights already entitled. I hope the Summit County Council will see it the same way and take into account the view of residents throughout the entire process.
As Seen on I-80
Yesterday the State reminded us via road signs that they were increasing patrols to watch out for DUIs. I think the sign said “Increased enforcement of DUIs this holiday weekend.”
Today the message changed and I think it’s much better:
PSA: Recent Burglary Victim? Ask Your Detective to Contact American Fork Police
I heard from a reader that American Fork police recently made a huge bust. Evidently they captured people responsible for a large number of burglaries across the region. American Fork police have said that if you have an unsolved burglary, you should ask the detective who was handling your case to contact them in order to identify if your missing property was found.
in Education
A Different Perspective on PC CAPS
A community member wrote in with a different perspective on PC CAPS and one I didn’t consider in my previous article. She wrote, “Please watch Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk. ALL of education is broken. CAPS maybe a way to re-think how we engage students in wanting to learn…”
While I still question the value of PC CAPS for reasons previously stated, the counter argument would be that we should embrace PC CAPS, not because of getting into college or future jobs, but because it is a better way to learn.
It’s an interesting take, and if true, perhaps the CAPS style of learning should be expanded past “client projects” to subjects like math and science.
Below is the TED Talk that our community member referenced. It is known as the quintessential TED talk on education. Watching it is time well spent:
in Schools
Is The PC CAPS Program Money Well Spent?
I was 18 years old and standing in line for my high school diploma. It was graduation night and I was standing next to one of my friends, Tim. I’ll never forget the moment when Earl G. got his diploma and the stands erupted with cheers and clapping. Earl may now be a fine member of whatever community he ended up in, but back then he was a bully… a very popular bully. He spent more time in detention than class. At one moment he would be hitting your books out of your hand and in the next moment trying to stuff you into your locker. He was a “model” student.
Yet here he was getting more applause than everyone else combined up to that point. I turned to Tim and said, “wow, I wish I got that sort of attention.” Tim, who looked a lot like Paul Pfeiffer from the Wonder Years, stared at me in that “you just don’t get it” sort of way. Finally he opens his mouth and says, “For some people this will be the biggest night of their entire lives. That’s high school.”
That’s sort of how I feel about PC CAPS.
PC CAPS, for those who haven’t heard of it, is a three year old program that enables students to get real-world experience. Students work on a specified project for a company — and often in teams. It is a program that is adapted from a similar program called Blue Valley CAPS, in Overland Park, Kansas. To be completely fair, the program was awarded a STEM Excellence award earlier this year, so it is doing something right.
Yet, I wonder what it really does for kids and at what cost. According the PC CAPS website it says, “At PCCAPS our goal is to fast-forward students over college into their area of professional interest by giving them real-world project experience for real companies.” That seems to imply that somehow this program is going to be useful in getting a job after college. Imagine an 18 year old working on a marketing campaign for a local company or even go bigger and imagine them doing that for a company like Adobe or EBay (in Salt Lake). When they graduate from college 5 years later will they even remember what they did on that project? More importantly would a recruiter from a company like Proctor and Gamble, or Nationwide Insurance, or Facebook, or Google care what someone did in high school?
That takes me back to my quote from my friend Tim. Those people who live in high school, mainly administrators, probably place a higher value on this program than anyone else. You also look at other factors a post-college recruiter may look at. If a college graduate actually put this on their resume and a recruiter actually asked about it, what questions might she ask?
- “Tell me about the project.” You are going to describe how you worked in teams and with a real company to do something. My response would be that if you haven’t done a ton of that in your 5 years in college, you aren’t even going to get that job interview.
- “How did you get this internship?” Yes, they will call it an internship, because that’s what it seems like. You’ll respond that you took a course and they found a job match for you. Would you have been better off hitting the pavement and trying to get that internship with Overstock.com on your own? It would be a better story to tell.
- “Did you work onsite at the company with professionals”. You would answer, well usually we worked in the school library and our mentors would come there. That’s going to seem even more like it’s just another high school class to a recruiter.
Those questions could go on and on. The point is that if you are going to college, you’ll get most of these experiences during your tenure there. You also will want to actually talk about those and not what you did when you were in high school.
So, what’s PC CAPS good for? The best use it probably to try to help get into college and there could be merit there. PC CAPS could give students something to write about in an essay. It might also give them a recommendation from a person they worked with on a project. However, those things are probably possible to get through working a traditional internship as well.
The question is whether that is spending money wisely. To accomplish that goal they’ve been renting out space for the program and now are spending up to $200,000 to renovate the high school’s library for the program to make a temporary home. When they rebuild the high school they will construct space for the program. Budgets have been running about $450,000 per year and they need to add another partial FTE to the program. That’s real money being spent that could be used on more teachers, smaller classroom sizes, etc.
Instead, in my view, the money is being used a “neat” program that is probably a lot of fun but may be questionable value. In a few years I could be proven wrong. There could be students who comes back and says that PC CAPS got them their jobs at Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft and the PROGRAM MUST CONTINUE. I’ll believe that when I see it.
If you have a few minutes, I would recommend listening to this Bloomberg Radio interview with a well known author and recruiter. It was eye opening for me. Who would have known being a taxi driver may help you get a better job than having a string of college internships.
PSA: Be Prepared for Your Health Insurance Costs to Go Up
I was reading a Wall Street Journal article yesterday that caused me a little pain… in the pocket book. It looks like my health care insurance rates are going up by about 30%. My insurance is from out of state, because the company I work for is from out of state. However, that led me to wonder whether there will be similar impacts for our local insurance companies.
It appears Utahns are going to be hit as well. According to Fox 13, it appears that (given state approval):
- Select Health insurance costs will increase 15.9%
- Blue Cross insurance costs will increase 17.2%
- Humana insurance costs will increase 20.2%
- Altius insurance costs will increase 18.11%
This matters on a number of levels. First, most of us pay a portion of health care costs, even when our company covers most of it. So, there will be more out of pocket expenses to the average person. Second, if you own a company, this will likely hit your bottom line pretty significantly. Third, local government entities like Park City Schools offer insurance for employees. In the case of the schools they pay 100% for family coverage for a full time employee. When the district’s rates rise that means those dollars are tied up in insurance and not in education.
Perhaps this is old news to the community. However, it was news to me … so I wanted to share.
in Schools
Did The School Superintendent Deflect Questions About Conflicts of Interest Related to Rebuilding Kearns Campus?
I received a comment from a reader about School Superintendent, Dr Ember Conley’s, appearance on KPCW on Monday. The reader said:
“On KPCW this am PCSD supt. Ember Conley was asked several questions about the potential conflict of interest with VCBO Architects running the planning process and then being the architectural firm for the design/construction of the project. Either she didn’t understand the clearly stated questions or she dodged the questions.”
I decided to go back and listen to the portion of interview related to the rebuilding of the Kearns Campus. Below is a transcript. I believe there seems to be some deflection going on… on many topics. That said, you should give it a read and decide for yourself.
I’d also encourage you to go listen to the interview on the KPCW website. They now post most “Local News Hour” broadcasts online.
Here is the transcript (to the best of my ability):
Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): The district or VCBO is moving forward with scheme 3. This would build a 5/6 school at Ecker. It would demolish the district office, Treasure Mountain Junior High, Relocate the track and field and football stadium to the east end of the campus. So, this is has really got to be the expensive scenario?
Ember Conley (School Superintendent): They have started pulling some numbers together and I anticipate to be able to look at those this week. The Master Planning Committee is doing a report. We finished our 3rd workshop for Master Planning and basically putting all of the input we have gathered from our stakeholders into a schematic for that. It is still very moldable and bendable and looking at the process we’ve used to engage our stake holders and how many different people we have that have been part of Master Planning, not just small a small group that has been part of the steering committee, that we really do have an organic and authentic initial plan that I would stress that this is… we are still in the initial stages to look at what that plan looks like for Kearns BLVD.
Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): I guess with the demolition of more buildings in the scenario that means that it will need to be rebuilt. Then talking about moving the stadium itself.
Ember Conley (School Superintendent): That’s massive.
Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): I’ve heard up to a million dollars that we spent on Dozier filed [already].
Ember Conley (School Superintendent): I know that we did an update on Dozier recently. I would say that there are so many possibilities with Kearns and as we look at Treasure Mountain Junior High we know that we have to do something. I would say that demolishing of any building at this point is a ways out just because right now we have got to be able to utilize the buildings to their capacity until we get our 5/6 building built that really is…we need to expand our high school for our students and courses and look at where we are going to put our 5/6 building and everything else will be under that umbrella.
Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): At one time, we talked about putting the high school at the PRI property at Kimball Junction where the Tech park is currently being built. If we were really to look outside the box, especially since the most of growth is taking place in the Snyderville Basin, should we take a look at that?
Ember Conley (School Superintendent): That has been a discussion topic of our Master Planning Committee from day one as far as what do we have available, where should we look at expanding. I would say in working directly with the city, there’s been such a great partnership with the city and …and … and our county I don’t want it to make it sound like we don’t have a great partnership with them. The campus on Kearns really does bring value to Park City municipal and to our our residents in Park City. So, there has been a conscious effort for us to keep the high school there along with our sporting facilities. That certainly is not to say that as we look at properties that we have elsewhere, of course you know we have bear hollow.. we have a parcel out at Silver Creek, we know that those are opportunities where we can be outside of Park City Municipal boundaries and into the Snyderville Basin.The other one we said that I wasn’t aware of, and now have become acutely aware of, is the space we have at Ecker and the flexibility that we have to expand to expand at that location anywhere from putting 5/6 there o expanding the aquatic center when the time comes. We have some nice pieces of property.
Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): So the price tag thrown around last week was upwards of $100 million. When do you get firm number. When do you decide whether we go forward with a bond in November’s election?
Ember Conley (School Superintendent): The June deadline is coming up for the bond and as you throw out the $100 million, I would say that that is the “dream” price tag. We know that the most immediate is a 5/6 school which runs about $20 million right now. So, that’s our estimate. We’ve worked with our internal business as well as VCBO and some outside estimates. So, as we look at the 5/6 school and we look at the expansion of the high school, and I’m talking facility and not football field, tennis courts, etc., etc. We are probably talking about $15 million because of the amount we need to do. So, you are looking, and I’m throwing rough numbers out, it definitely isn’t the $100 million price tag there.
Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): The reality though…going forward with the bond. 65% of the money will come from tax payers who don’t have the opportunity to vote. They are second home owners or business owners who live outside the school district boundaries. Isn’t that taxation without representation?
Ember Conley (School Superintendent): I disagree. We do have added value because of our excellent School District. When you look at why people …even if second homes..why they come here. Park City is know for its excellent education that we provide and …in a public venue which is unheard of across the nation, what we do. I would say that also we add value also to what we offer from anywhere from our aquatic center at Ecker I bring that up because it’s used by community to our fields, which are joint with our city. We are willing to share the property.
Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): Is it a conflict of interest having VCBO in all of this.
Ember Conley (School Superintendent): They have a contract with the District to do the planing or do the actual drawing. Once a decision is decided upon. I would say we were meticulous in researching this with our attorneys. And We received thee different opinions form Legal and they all came back that with the process we used to engage VCBO…the process we engaged for planners, we’ve been right on… Todd Hauber has been instrumental in making sure we followed the process specifically for securing through procurement and making sure there is no grey in VCBO.
Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): So they have been hired as just planners at this point
Ember Conley (School Superintendent): Right. They were hired for the planners in this process of master planning. In addition it is important to know that we have construction that goes on throughout the year. From remodels of classrooms… I mean..maintenance … and so we have gone through the procurement process and we have a contract that is ongoing with an architect and they have been the architect that has been chosen through he process. So, it’s very clear and there is no grey area.
Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): So, this wouldn’t be put out for an RFP to get the best bid.
Ember Conley (School Superintendent): So, the next process we have to engage in is…so as you know we have engaged in the financial and we have to look at even proposing a bond and then the next one is for construction and I have learned so much from Sean Morgan and Rory Murphy with their background in planning. I was always under the impression that it was very linear. So, the next process is pulling in a construction company.
in Schools
PC CAPS Use of Library is Only Temporary?
A quick note about something I heard last night. The Park City School Board Master Planning Committee discussed the High School library changes that were being put in place for PC CAPS. I had been under the assumption that this was a long term place for PC CAPS to live. It appears that assumption was wrong.
My assumption came from the meeting notes of the School Board meeting that approved up to $200,000 for renovations on the library related to PC CAPS needs and a Park Record article that starts, “The Park City Board of Education’s recent decision to allow the district to renovate the high school media center means the Park City Center for Advanced Professional Studies will have a home for next year and the foreseeable future.”
As often happens with school board meetings, it just seemed as if the decision to make the PC CAPS use of the building temporary, came out of thin air. The spin provided by board members was that the changes being made to the library are what’s best in the long-term for students and PC CAPS is just a temporary user of that new design.
I ‘ll be digging more into this later but wanted you to be aware of the change in plans, if you weren’t already.
in Schools
Vote on Bond By Park City School District for New Kearns Campus Postponed Until August
On Wednesday night, the Park City School Board Master Planning Committee (also called Steering Committee) voted to postpone providing a recommendation to the school board on a bond for the new Kearns campus. Many thought the school board would vote on the bond in June but now it appears that decision will come a few months later.
The committee noted that the delay will give them more time to understand costs, reach out to the community, and finalize plans, but the reason really seemed to stem from the fact that they had run out of time this school year. There were only two school board meetings left and more time was likely needed to get everything in place.
So look for more discussions this summer and a vote by your board members in the middle of August.
in Schools
Live Blog of Tonight’s Master Planning Committee Meeting
On Wednesday evening I live blogged the Park City School District’s Master planning Committee meeting.
Please forgive misspellings, grammar, etc as it moved pretty quickly.
Parkrag
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