It may seem like I’m are beating a dead horse on safety issues on the Jeremy and Pinebrook roundabouts. However, the Park Rag continues to point out issues because they may be heard and maybe improvements will be made.

With that in mind, a friend of ours was driving last night in the roundabout and encountered a driver going the wrong way. Her comment was informative. “If you know it’s a roundabout and you are somewhat competent, you will likely do the right thing. However, what if you don’t know it’s a roundabout?”

Her comment was enlightening. This morning, I drove from the Jeremy side and underneath I-80. At that point, the road goes left and right. I imagined it as if it was dark, or snowing as it sometimes does in the winter, and what if you didn’t see the Keep Right sign? If you didn’t know it was a roundabout, you’d likely go left toward the I-80 on-ramp. That, of course, is the wrong direction.

I could see myself making that mistake if I was unfamiliar with the intersection. If say, I was visiting for Christmas or New Years or Sundance or President’s Day.

We have a long winter ahead of us and lots of opportunities for a mistake. That mistake will cost someone thousands of dollars and could cost them their life if they meet up with a construction vehicle.

I have been in meetings with Public Works personnel and I think between Kilby Road Curves and these roundabouts they are tired of hearing about it. They give off the impression that the public is just over-sensitive and everything is OK.

It’s not.

If something goes really bad, some lawyer is going to find negligence in the actions of leadership. They are going to dig up the 30+ reports of issues with the roundabouts (so far). That liability claim may go past Summit County and to the individuals directly responsible for the negligence. The “corporate veil” will be pierced.

If that doesn’t incent individuals in the county to try harder on this, then I’m not sure what will.

The new Coronavirus is coming to Park City — or better put — the new Coronavirus is already in Park City.

A few days ago I wrote that the Park City School District needed to tell parents and teachers that school will be remote until the end of the school year. My reasoning is that it allows us all to make better decisions.

I had some push back via email and social media that “I’m an idiot and school will be back soon,” that the decision to close school is not that simple, and a defense of our Superintendent that says Dr. Gildea is awesome.

I agree with all of them. At times I am an idiot. The decision to remote-teach through the end of the year is not simple. The Superintendent seems to be decent at her job.

Yet, when will our schools be back in session? Given the party-line, I guess I am planning on schools being back in session on May 1. I am inviting all my relatives to fly into graduation in June. My wife and I have told our employers that we’ll both be back at work full-time on May 1. Things are going to be back to normal in three weeks! Yeah.

Except, none of that is true. I’m a realist.

You may love or hate Donald Trump, but either way, you probably respect Dr. Anthony Fauci. Today he was asked “A lot of parents are resigned to the fact that their kids aren’t going back to school this year but are looking ahead. What do you think summer camp holds and the start of next school year holds?”

The gist of his response is that his daughter is a teacher and she asks him that too. He says, “It’s unpredictable but you can get a feel [for how the curve is coming down] and it will have a more immediate effect on things like summer camps than it will in the fall… I fully expect that by the time we get to the Fall we will have this under control. It will certainly not be like it is now where peopl are shutting schools.q

We all know that Deer Valley isn’t the same place it used to be. A short three years ago the resort was awarded the best ski resort in North America. Fast forward to 2020 and Ski Magazine now splits things into East and West Coast. This year DV was ranked 5th in Western Resorts. So, I guess we were still somewhere in the top 10 in North America? That’s great, I guess,

Yet, I wonder about the future of Deer Valley, let alone the DVE (the Deer Valley Experience). In 2019, Deer Valley announced they were investing millions into the resort, but that was mainly to incorporate new electronic gates so more people couple be pumped through with fewer employees (at least in my experience).

This Summer DV was supposed to renovate Snow Park Lodge, They just announced they are postponing the effort. According to KPCW, “the resort’s plans to spend the summer renovating Snow Park Lodge are off. In an email to Deer Valley staff from President and COO Todd Shallan, he wrote, due to the closure of the resort and all operating business March 15th, the resort, as well as all of the Alterra Mountain Company resorts, have generated zero revenunes. As a result, he says they have decided to postpone the Snow Park Lodge renovation and all large capital projects until a future, and still to-be-determined, date.”

Happy 4th of July. I hope everyone is doing as well as they can given the odd circumstances we find ourselves in. This is the time I start thinking about schools and the fall. This year, that is a particularly interesting exercise.

No one knows how Park City schools will function come late-August. The Governor has said classes will be in-person; however, that could be one day a week or five days a week. Things could get worse and in-person learning may no longer be possible. Certain types of education, like specialists or art, might be remote, while other classes are in person.

What I was taught from my high school Civics teacher, tennis coach, and later a good friend was simple. Hope for the best. Expect the worst.

One thing is certain. As we head into the fall, schools can’t function as they did in the spring. My kids had generally good experiences, interspersed with technical glitches. My kids, who were in kindergarten and second grade had good experiences. This was due to my wife being able to teach them and our teachers trying hard (and in some cases exceeding every expectation). Yet, as we gather with friends, talk turns to school. About half have had less than optimal experiences.

In some cases, the teachers disappeared. There was little communication from a teacher.

In many cases, the day-to-day work was pushed onto parents. The parents were doing the teaching with a little help from educators.

Many comments noted that a family could complete a day’s school work in far less than two hours. It made them wonder why their kids were in school for five to six hours a day under normal circumstances.

“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” Mary Antoinette uttered as french citizens starved in the streets in 1789. Let the starving eat cake.

Yet, recent events in Park City make for an interesting discussion, given the recent Black Lives Matter murals panted on Main Street in the last week.

Across the country, recent protests around police brutality make sense to me. You and I could have a good three-hour discussion over beers on the topic but my world-view is that in many places police have gotten out of control. This is especially demonstrated within minority communities.

However, I struggled with the Black Lives Matters graffiti (and the others) being painted on Main Street. Why this cause? Should other causes be allowed to paint a mural? I think back to an old Simpsons Episode where Maggy (the baby) is swiped through a cash register and the screen says NRA-4-Ever. Would Park City allow me to paint NRA-4-Ever on the street? What about “Workers of the world unite?” Why not a painting denoting native Americans’ struggles?

Then I found out Park City Municipal actually paid $15,000 to the Park City Summit County Arts Council to create the graffiti. What?

We are in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. We hope schools will open in the fall. We don’t know if anyone will actually travel to our resorts this winter. Sundance has already dropped the bomb and said the festival won’t be normal. Local businesses are closing.

And Parkites paid $15K for spray paint on a street. That’s very Park City.

Three things…

First, if Park City and Summit County wanted to actually contribute to the issues impacting minority populations, they would find ways to decriminalize drug offenses in Utah – not paint pictures. Second, they would audit the county and city law enforcement agencies to ensure that justice isn’t biased. Third, they would spend this money on mental health services.

Instead, $15,000 was invested in painting a mural that will be gone come January. Well, it won’t be completely gone because only part of it will wash off in the snow. Then next May, Park City will pay someone $1500 to power wash the rest of it off.

It’s a misallocation of money. Those funds could have been used in so many better ways .If money was infinite then sure, pay artists to fill Main Street with all sorts of political statements that match the City Council’s values.

However, in a pandemic where city leaders should be worrying about the future of is citizens, perhaps paying for graffiti isn’t the best use of funds. Perhaps there are a million better uses for that money.

“I’m announcing a change in our color-coded guidelines We are going to make a modification t the orange guidelines to accommodate Salt Lake City School District and those schools within the district limits so they can open up.”

Park City is a tourism economy. We depend on Sundance

You have to love Utah. Rich, entitled developers manipulate the legislature to make up rules that can make them millions. One of their last names is Romney.

Such is the case with the town of Hideout.

Hideout is a town of about 900 people, near the Jordanelle Reservoir, on your way to Kamas. I knew of it, from a few years ago, as a place where you may live if you couldn’t find anyplace else to live. It seems the town wants to grow up, but like most adolescents, it is doing it in a stupid way. Hideout is trying to add land, that they can control, which isn’t adjacent to the town. They want to annex parts of Summit County, that don’t touch Hideout, whichare actually in Summit County, even though Hideout is in Wasatch County.

It would be like if Park City wanted to annex the Kennecott Copper Mine near Herriman. “Dude, can you imagine the money we could make if we annexed a mine?!!!!! Eff- Yeah!”

So, with joy, I read the motion Summit County filed in the 4th District Court to stop Hideout’s abomination. Summit County wants to stop Hideout from annexing parts of Summit County and laid it out in real terms. I’m often at odds with what Summit County does, but in this case, their filing is an absolute treasure.

The motion opens with the following: “Plaintiff Summit County will be immediately and irreparably harmed unless the Court enjoins and restrains the Town of Hideout in Wasatch County from taking any action to annex portions of Summit County over the objection and without consent of Summit County.” That’s standard legalese that says that our county has standing to object to annexation.

Then they go for the jugular immediately, “The Town of Hideout, a nefarious and arguably unconstitutional hamlet of 900 persons located on the eastern banks of Jordanelle Reservoir in Wasatch County is seeking to annex non-contiguous lands located in neighboring Summit County which until just weeks ago was prohibited by law.”

The motion then says, “Much like the scheme used for the creation of Hideout in 2007 through special-purpose legislation, Developers Nate Brockbank and Josh Romney through surreptitious and deceptive means , spearheaded the passage of HB 359 in an amended form during the 2020 General Session of the Utah State Legislature.”

They are basically saying that the entire town of Hideout is some forsaken spawn of power and the legislature.

Then they say, “Knowing that the Governor and Utah Legislature potentially intend to repeal that deceitfully obtained provision during the 6th Special Session currently scheduled for August 20, 2020, Defendants have initiated and hope to complete a 700+ acre cherry stem annexation and thereafter grant to Developers Romney and Brockbank, a high-density urban level development ten time the size of the current town and landing the monstrosity on the doorstep of Park City, Utah.”

Basically, Mitt Romney’s kid wants to take advantage of “a mistake” and get entitlement rights while he can, knowing that in a couple of weeks, those rights will probably go away.

You can read through the 105-page motion to draw your own conclusion, but as a local, political junky, I love it. Here are some highlights from Summit County’s motion:

“On information and belief, Romney and Brockbank intentionally sought to thwart the Utah Open and Public Meetings Act, Utah Code §52-4-101, et. seq. (the “Open Meetings Act”) by meeting with individual members of the Hideout Town Council, so that their meetings, discussions, negotiations, deliberations, and decisions with respect to the Annexation would be in secret and not subject to public scrutiny.”

“According to Romney, he concluded that ‘there was no hope to getting something done in Summit County, because the Chair of the Summit County Council was not willing to meet with him secretly and outside the public process.”

I’m not sure which chair that was, but if that was Kim, Chris, Glenn, Doug, or Roger … good on you — whoever it was. You REPRESENTED.

Then came the following in the motion, “On information and belief, Romney, Brockbank and their attorney Bruce Baird (“Baird”) used lobbyist Michael Ostermiller (“Ostermiller”) for the purpose of influencing the Utah Legislature to unknowingly adopt tailored-made special purpose legislation which benefited Romney and Brockbank in their Enterprise.”

It continues, “Based on Romney and Brockbank’s interactions with Hideout during this same time period, Plaintiff believes the Application to Summit County was a subterfuge to redirect the focus of Summit County away from Hideout, all the while waiting for the legislative scheme to unfold which would allow them to proceed with the Annexation over the anticipated objections of Summit County, Wasatch County, and Park City Municipal Corporation.”

“Hideout, Romney and Brockbank seek nothing less than to overturn decades of careful land use planning and community development: with non-contiguous land in Summit County they do not own.
The import of this cannot be overstated. From the available information, which is scant, Romney and Brockbank intend to put its North Park development, a high-density mixed- use development on approximately 655 acres of land in Summit County near the junction of State Route 248 and US-40 (Quinn’s Junction) to attract thousands of additional residents and workers. Part of the stunning scam in HB 359S1was that it removed the ability of counties to withhold consent and protest annexations under Utah Code §10-2-418(3) to the Boundary Commission”

So let’s review some of the terms and phrases used by Summit County to describe what Hideout is doing:

• Nefarious
• Unarguably unconstitutional
• Scheme
• Until just weeks ago was prohibited by law
• Through surreptitious and deceptive means
• Chair of the Summit County Council was not willing to meet with him secretly and outside the public process
• Benefited Romney and Brockbank in their Enterprise.

Of course, I’m only citing from Summit County’s motion against Hideout. I don’t believe Hideout, Romney, or Brockbank has responded. So, I will leave it up to you the reader to imagine their responses to this.

One last statement from Summit County’s motion is important. “Hideout does not have the current capacity to provide municipal services to the Development Parcels and does not currently provide for itself the following municipal services: water, sewer, law enforcement, fire and ambulance, transit, animal control, public health services, justice courts and prosecution services, recreation, or libraries.”

What that means is that Summit County would need to provide these services to Hideout — whether we want to or not. Our tax dollars would fund essential services for people who don’t live here, while millionaire’s children get richer.

That may be the Utah way, but it is not the Summit County way.

For the counter argument, please read Hideout Mayor Phil Rubin’s Editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune.

My opinion is that Hideout should go to Hell. You’re a parasite attempting to suck on the success and tax dollars of a successful community. You are trying to benefit from either a knowing or unknowing Utah Legislature that provided developers with an advantage to enrich themselves at the expense of us regular people.

Hideout, I hope you disappear into the sands of time.

For those who are/were part of Hideout,

Margaret Olson, David Thomas, and Jami Brackin, I salute you.