Living in Park City Heights, we get a lot of questions.
“But why is the traffic so bad, Dad?”
“It’s a nice place, buddy. People want to come here.”
“But why don’t they fix the road, Dad?”
“They tried to once, sweetie.”
That happens with little kids. We have a lot of them. Which means a lot of questions.
And so, it’s no surprise the adults of our neighborhood are also inquisitive. Makes sense. Our neighborhood is full of hardworking types, whose children take after them.
And given we are hardworking, we make our questions count when we get to ask them.
Some of those questions:
“For Clark Ranch, why don’t you build really dense affordable housing across the street on flat land next to the biggest road we have?”
Or,
“So, why should we spend nearly a million dollars to study whether a road on a ‘severe’ slope is feasible instead of building a road on the flat land across the street?”
Or,
“Why is it not OK to build a home on a prominent ridgeline, but it is also OK to build a new road on an entire neighborhood’s prominent ridgeline where the road is 20 feet away and 20 feet above the nearest homes in Park City Heights, and in doing so, you also lower a substantial part of the U.S. 40 berm, revealing the entire highway to the neighborhood, which was previously hidden?”
Or, the even harder question:
“What is the city doing to ensure cooperative regional development in a fiscally productive manner in an era when legislative municipalities like Kimball are precedent and the Miller Group just purchased most of the land between Park City, Hideout and unincorporated Summit County, and the resort tax base is moving out of the city limits for Mayflower and the Canyons’ base?”
Now, any parent deals with the question of “why?” on a daily basis. Way more than you think you would. I know, it’s hard, it’s tiresome, but it’s important to answer.
Unfortunately, when the adults who reside in Park City Heights ask the majority of their City Council these questions, we get the bare minimum, “Dad is tired,” response.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Some on the council are engaged parents, more concerned with their children’s wellbeing rather than whether the tourists are in town, or if the many second homes they manage in the HOA are cleaned appropriately before the clients get here.
But some, well, they just want you to recognize authority.
“I know what’s best.”
“Because I said so.”
“Well, your opinion is cute, bless your heart.”
Whether that is paternalistic or maternalistic, I guess it just depends on how easily you are offended.
I am not personally offended by how the majority has acted. If anything, that is what I expected. They don’t know what lifestyle we want for Park City. They just understand that we need more “workforce.”
Sure, some claim to have a native ear for the “whisper of what the trees want.” But other pragmatic Utahans live here, too, and I would say the majority of those individuals require much more transparency regarding our impending “momentum” than we got the first time around in 2002. Fool me once.
And that starts with listening to us. Everyone I know in our neighborhood works hard in the community, supporting sectors both inside and (mostly) outside of tourism. Doesn’t that give us a voice? Is this “workforce” in the room with us? Because, those of us in the actual room seem like their imaginary voices are louder than ours.
I guess what I am trying to say here is this: What I know as a parent is that sometimes you have to answer profoundly basic questions honestly.
“Because I said so” only gets so far.
So, what this opinion piece ultimately invites is a substantive answer from those on our City Council, and those who wish to be, to the following question: “But why Clark Ranch instead of the flat land on the major road across the street?”
And the answer to that is: “Yes, building across the street is the most efficient way to accomplish the housing goal in the most affordable way possible.”
Danny R. Barber
Park City