It was during the heart of the most recent ski season when Mike Goar, then the top staffer at Park City Mountain, appeared at the Marsac Building to discuss the state of the ski season with Park City’s elected officials.
The February meeting was tense. There had already been a litany of complaints about operations during the ski season, and the mayor and Park City Council, as well as the community, wanted answers and assurances. There was only so much that the Park City Mountain leadership could offer, though.
With the next ski season just weeks away, the current top staffer at Park City Mountain, Deirdra Walsh, is preparing to make her own appearance at the Marsac Building. The meeting on Thursday between Walsh and the elected officials is an important one even if it is designed as a presentation about the ski season rather than a detailed dialogue between the resort and City Hall about the winter.
Walsh will likely address the various steps Park City Mountain has taken as it attempts to better control the crowds, the traffic and improve the broader operations. Paid parking on the Park City side of the resort and a limit on sales of lift tickets are the highlights.
But the work to date, everyone must realize, amounts to a tabletop exercise. It will not be until the ski season, and then not until the crowds arrive, before the community will realize whether the work of Park City Mountain and City Hall is effective in managing the masses that are expected in the winter.
Walsh can offer assurances that paid parking will reduce traffic and the limit on lift tickets will alleviate congestion on the slopes, but those assurances would merely be projections. City Hall officials can offer the community the assurance they have devised a plan to address skier parking in the area of Main Street, but any such statement would be untested.
The leader of Deer Valley Resort, Todd Bennett, is also set to appear at the meeting on Thursday to discuss the upcoming season there, although any issues at Deer Valley have been far overshadowed by those at Park City Mountain.We expect the meeting on Thursday will not be marked by the tensions of the one in February. And we also hope the apparent progress by all sides since the 2021-2022 ski season will eliminate the possibility of a February-like gathering of disgruntled Parkites in the coming February.