The Park City Council swearings-in are scheduled on Wednesday.
Mayor Nann Worel and the new City Council are slated to hold their first meeting the day after.
As the ceremony approaches for the three city councilors who will take the oaths of office, one point regarding the changes has drawn little attention in Park City: How inexperienced the slate of elected officials will be as of Wednesday.
Each of the six elected officials — the mayor and five members of the City Council — will be in their first full terms in their respective offices. It has been rare over the past 25 years for a slate of elected officials to be without at least one veteran member — someone who has won reelection at least once in their current office.
In the case of the roster that will be in office as of Wednesday, Mayor Nann Worel, by a wide margin, brings the most experience. Although Worel is a first-term mayor, she also served on the City Council and, earlier, on the Park City Planning Commission.
The others:
- City Councilor Tana Toly is midway through her first term.
- City Councilor Jeremy Rubell is midway through his first term.
- City Councilor Ryan Dickey will be starting his first full term after a midterm appointment two years ago.
- Ed Parigian will be at the start of his first term.
- Bill Ciraco will be at the start of his first term.
The five city councilors who will be in office starting on Wednesday as a group also had minimal experience in the municipal government prior to their election wins. Toly was a member of the Historic Preservation Board — City Hall’s Old Town panel — while Parigian was a member of the Recreation Advisory Board, as examples. None of the five served on the Planning Commission in Park City, traditionally a step toward winning elected office in the city.
Voters in the past two municipal elections showed a willingness to forego political experience in their decisions, although they did not have such a choice in 2023 after two incumbent members of the City Council — Becca Gerber and Max Doilney — did not seek reelection. Two years earlier, in the 2021 municipal election, voters opted for Worel as she unseated an incumbent mayor who was seeking reelection and chose Toly and Rubell over one incumbent city councilor who was attempting to win another term.
Some elected officials in the past have described a learning curve that required much of a first term. City Council freshmen who bring experience at City Hall into the role need to adapt to a post far more wide ranging than service on a municipal panel, while those who take a City Council seat without experience at the Marsac Building must adjust to the levers of government after perhaps bringing a business background into a campaign.
The City Council will take on some major issues in the next year, such as the future of municipal land along Bonanza Drive and Kearns Boulevard, the efforts to host a second Winter Olympics in the state with Park City playing a key role and possible traffic-fighting transportation upgrades.
The swearing-in ceremony for Dickey, Parigian and Ciraco is scheduled at 4 p.m. on Wednesday in Bob Wells Plaza, at the base of the Marsac Building on Swede Alley.