Note: The Park Record asked the Park City Council candidates questions about a range of key issues in the community. The answers were published first in the Nov. 4 edition of The Park Record. This is part of a series of eight questions that were posed to the candidates.
The Park Record:
The Park City government has only limited influence on the affordability of the community, even as the issue has impacts on topics ranging from socioeconomic diversity to traffic. Please discuss a measure you would introduce as a member of the City Council designed to maintain or even increase the affordability of Park City, particularly for those of the lower and middle classes. Moreover, if you support an affordability agenda, will you make a no-new-taxes pledge that covers the municipal government during the four-year term you are seeking? Why or why not?
Bob Sertner:
Affordability and cost of living are a national problem. We have limited local tools to address them, but we must attack them nevertheless.
As a fiscal conservative, I love the concept of a no-new-taxes pledge. But as a realist, we never know what crisis could lie ahead, so we must keep our tax-as-a-last-resort option open.
The drivers of the cost of living include housing, transportation, childcare, and utilities. I would attack each of these, because incremental savings add up.
I support affordable/attainable housing, but we should be focusing more resources on the middle class, including critical workers (police, fire, teachers, medical staff), city employees, and seniors.
Regarding childcare, we need to involve everyone in the conversation, including employers, government, regional partners, and non-profits. We should start by incentivizing employers, and the city should be a leader with its own employees.
Park City is the most expensive city in Utah, with a huge disparity of wealth. We must look for ways to incentivize businesses and non-profits to help get residents what they need cost-effectively.
If we come together and lead with our hearts, we can make life better for the community.
Bill Ciraco:
Park City is a resort town which by definition will mean that we will always have an affordability problem. As a city with robust but ultimately limited resources, we need to be judicious with how we deploy those resources. To begin I would look to better define what our goal is and why we pursue it. Ultimately this is a question of workforce and availability of essential workers to keep our town operating. With the small geographic area of 84060 and over 9,000 workers commuting into Park City we have limited ability to have impact in the core of town. I believe we start with our essential workers as a priority (municipal, police, fire, school and hospital) and focus our efforts on policy, planning and legislative incentives from City Hall. There are examples of private investment into workforce affordable housing that have not involved City funding, such as the recent ground breaking of Studio Crossing, the largest such effort in the City’s history, with no subsidy. If the city doesn’t fund it there is no need to raise taxes. With smart forward thinking on transportation and land planning we can address these needs and continue to evolve our resident demographic.
Ryan Dickey:
Affordability consistently rates as a top challenge in town, and impacts nearly every segment of the community, from young families and seniors, to small business owners and our workforce. Our community suffers when entire classes of our workforce critical to our fabric – teachers, nurses, first responders, and others – are imported from elsewhere.
The greatest challenge to the affordability of living in town is the rapidly escalating cost of housing. During my first term, I’m proud to have helped champion and deliver the Homestake project – ninety-nine affordable, rental units in the heart of town. I’m also proud to support the Holliday Village/Parkside redevelopment, which will reimagine and expand one of Park City’s most important rental housing developments. With new opportunities in place, the housing pipeline has never been more robust, and I’ll continue to champion housing opportunities.
From a policy perspective, we should continue to work regionally, and scrub our development code to reduce barriers to affordability. I’m also working to pilot the type of “lease to locals” programs that have recently found success in Lake Tahoe and Summit County, Colorado. I do not support property tax increases – we already have a large operating budget and strong balance sheet.
John Greenfield:
I would introduce a measure to set up a community-based advisory board focused on affordable housing and childcare issues that helps us respond to community needs and make recommendations to the Park City Council.
Any proposal addressing affordability issues will require funding. Short term, I would push to repurpose a portion of the Transient Room Tax (TRT) to advance whatever housing/childcare projects we can justify to code. Taxes are not raised because the TRT already exists, but the strategy also does not create a fund. It is more project-based, in that the efforts would tag onto specific development purposes established through Utah law, like establishing and promoting tourism or recreation. If we are creative, we can get some of what we want through this strategy.
In the long term, I support the application of a voter-approved funding mechanism. Aspen has a dedicated .45% sales tax, renewed by residents three separate times since 1990 that funds affordable housing and child care. We need to get support from other communities and lobby our legislature together for that one, which we should. Of course, we can always make the second homeowners pay for 70% of it through another Bond.
Matthew Nagie:
Housing is a national issue, a state issue, a regional issue, and a local issue. I agree that the city has limited influence. With that in mind, I would like to see through the conversation about a regional housing authority.
While it’s true that Section 8 funding is waning, there are many priorities that a regional housing authority can and should address. Bringing existing housing efforts across the Wasatch Back under a single umbrella organization would allow the impact to scale up.
On affordability in general: I do not intend to raise any new taxes.
Ed Parigian:
As a local who constantly loses neighbors due to their rental unit being converted to nightly rentals, sold to a second-homeowner, or the rent being raised above their affordability level, I am dismayed that the town is losing demographic diversity. As a Councilor, I will champion both housing availability and affordability at every opportunity. I believe government’s role is to champion for its locals and community. We are currently at 30% local occupancy of our homes, and most free-market options for affordability are now gone.
I will not be inclined to raise taxes for housing, but I don’t think that is needed to accomplish our housing goals. We have just begun to explore public/private partnerships to move us forward, and the potential is there. Within each project we initiate, I am in favor of mixed levels of rents based on AMI, from 40% up to market rate. This not only allows for socioeconomic diversity, but gives private developer partners an opportunity to build projects that work for them financially … win-win solutions.
Important dates:
- Nov. 13: Last day to register to vote in person or online at vote.utah.gov.
- Nov. 16, 17, 18 and 20: Early voting in the general election from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Nov. 21: Election Day. The polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.