A critical change to the terms of the federal Paycheck Protection Program loans that were issued as part of the CARES Act could alleviate a financial burden that some Park City businesses were fearing could have hampered their recovery from the economic shockwaves of the coronavirus pandemic.

As the deadline for the recipients of the loans to apply for payment forgiveness arrived on Monday, the final version of the law’s language was released by the Treasury Department. To qualify for forgiveness of the loans, businesses must retain their staffing levels, and the language released Monday includes a provision allowing businesses to measure their current head count against what it was during a time period including the summer of 2019.

Previous language mandated businesses compare their employment levels to a fixed period in February and March, a worrisome requirement for many ski industry or seasonal businesses in Park City that staff down in the spring as a matter of course when the ski season ends. The eight-week loan period would have coincided with this decrease in staffing.

The National Ski Areas Association and its constituent state organizations such as Ski Utah helped spearhead the push to make the change at the federal level, according to Ski Utah CEO Nathan Rafferty.

The lobbying effort culminated in a May 13 letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin signed by 16 governors of states with ski industries, including Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, that asked for winter businesses to be protected from being “unfairly penalized” in the absence of a change to the rules similar to one that was implemented for summer businesses.

“Gov. Herbert understands the importance of ensuring that PPP loans are helpful to many different types of businesses, including our ski resorts, which is why he led a multi-governor letter to Secretary Mnuchin and the Small Business Association on behalf of our ski areas,” Gov. Herbert’s office said in a statement. “We’re grateful to the SBA for granting the flexibility we asked for, and hope these loans will make a positive difference for Utah’s winter resorts.”

Kerry Washington, owner of Alpine Ski Properties, said she was glad to see the changes being implemented to make the economic recovery faster in Park City.

“It was great to see this bi-partisan effort to correct a seemingly insurmountable problem,” Washington said in an email. “For ski area lodging businesses like ours, it means we’ve been able to bring back many employees who are thankful and enthusiastic about being back to work in our beautiful town.”

Casey Metzger, chairman-elect of the Park City Chamber/Bureau and owner of Top Shelf Utah, a bartending service, said that the change in the PPP loan forgiveness rules will help ease the burden on many of Park City’s businesses that applied for the loans and weren’t able to sustain their employment numbers due to the seasonal nature of the tourism economy.

“I think it will have a positive effect particularly for the ski resorts,” he said. “Without the ski resorts, we don’t have a lot of people to cater to.”

However, for his part, Metzger said the financial outlook for Top Shelf Utah, which supplies bartenders to large events and social gatherings, remains uncertain. The majority of his seasonal employees, which number around 100 during the winter and 50 during the summer, are part-time workers. He has a management team of eight still on his payroll, and he said he will have to “crunch some numbers” to account for the partial repayment of the PPP loan.

While Park City and Utah have escaped the worst of the coronavirus’ health toll so far, the curtailing of travel and the negative effects on economies worldwide has been a blow to the local and state tourism industries. While Rafferty celebrated the positive news for the winter-focused businesses of Utah, he acknowledged that the ski industry’s counterparts to the south in places such as Moab, which thrive on summer tourism, still face a tough road ahead as the pandemic began shutting down economies just as the spring was beginning. Rafferty said an equivalent event in the Utah ski industry would have been “catastrophic.”

“In the ski industry, with the virus and the timing, this would be the equivalent of shutting down in December,” he said.

As with many aspects of the year 2020, Rafferty’s outlook for the overall impact to Utah tourism and hospitality is unclear.

“Tourism and travel is a $9 million business in Utah,” Rafferty said. “The total cumulative effects are unknown as of yet, so it’ll be hard to get our hands around that.”

The post Utah’s tourism industry pushed to make critical change to federal small business loan program appeared first on Park Record.

Utah’s Republican and Democratic parties held their first-ever digital conventions over the weekend, though neither of the races for the GOP nomination in state House District 54 and Senate District 19, the only Statehouse seats covering Summit County featuring more than one candidate from the same party, were resolved. Both will go to a primary election in June.

House District 54

Mike Kohler, a Wasatch County-based businessman, defeated Parkite Randy Favero 34-23 in the GOP convention vote. Kohler’s victory didn’t meet the 60% margin necessary to avoid competing in the June primary election, however. In an interview with The Park Record, Favero, who leads a consulting firm, declared his intent to keep campaigning.

The race will determine which Republican will go on to face returning Democratic candidate Meaghan Miller in November to replace outgoing state Rep. Tim Quinn, who did not run for reelection. House District 54 covers Park City and Wasatch County.

Miller, a Midway resident who formerly lived in Park City, came close to upsetting the incumbent Quinn in 2018 with a campaign that emphasized her experience in the health care industry. Quinn, a Republican, narrowly held onto his seat by 162 votes. Miller is not facing an opponent in the Democratic primary.

Favero, a native of Utah and a longtime Republican, said that participating in the first-ever digital state GOP convention wasn’t as daunting of a task as it could have been, since he is experienced with remote work through his current job.

Senate District 19

Pleasant View resident Johnny Ferry was also unable to pull out the vote margin needed to avoid a primary contest against Ogden-based John D. Johnson in the race for state Senate District 19. The winner of that election will face Democrat Katy Owens, a Pinebrook resident who is running unopposed in her party’s primary.

The candidates are running to replace outgoing state Sen. Allen Christensen, a North Ogden Republican who last year announced he would retire from his post after the current term.

Race overview

Both candidates to represent state House District 53, which covers eastern Summit County and a large portion of the Basin, are running unopposed in their party primaries. Kera Birkeland, who was appointed to the seat that Logan Wilde vacated earlier this year, is set to defend the seat against former Summit County Democratic Party chair Cheryl Butler, a Park City resident. In House District 28, which covers a large part of Salt Lake City and Summit Park, incumbent Democrat Brian King is set to face a Republican challenger in fellow Salt Laker Carol Hunter.

The post Republicans vying to represent Summit County in the Statehouse will head to primaries appeared first on Park Record.

Recently, as the economic consequences of the new coronavirus pandemic became clear, more Utahns have filed for unemployment than at any point since the Great Depression. I was one of them.

Without the commute through Parleys Canyon — or, tangentially, my work as The Park Record’s copy editor — on my schedule, I’ve got a lot more time on my hands until this furlough hopefully ends. I haven’t wanted to spend any of it putting myself through “Contagion,” “28 Days Later” or even “Osmosis Jones.” However, I did decide to knock one 20-minute, post-apocalyptic tale off of my to-watch list: “Time Enough At Last,” the iconic eighth episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

This 1959 televised story of a man who receives a near-cosmic punishment after surviving Armageddon is timeless. In 2020, it’s a clear warning.

The episode centers on Harold Bemis, a bespectacled bank teller who wants nothing more than to read his books in solitude. He believes that the main obstacles to his ideal existence are unreasonable customers, a hyper-conformist boss and a shrew of a wife.

All of them are removed from the picture when he emerges from a solo lunch in the bank’s vault to find that the bombs have dropped, everyone’s dead, and he’s got all the time in the world to spend the rest of his days reading the surviving books in the local library.

When he sits down to begin his literary binge, Bemis drops his reading glasses, shattering both the lenses and his plan for spending all of his newfound time. “It’s not fair,” he cries, as he’s sentenced to a life of atomic myopia, guilty of an unstated crime.

Bemis’ mistake was his conclusion that people were his problem. Right now, as our response to COVID-19 causes us to pause the global economy, a lot of people are coming to that same, misanthropic conclusion, whether they’re aware of it or not.

That’s alarming.

Earth is defending herself, they say. Check out the satellite imagery of the pollution we’ve cut; watch these videos of the dolphins and monkeys and mountain goats that have found a bravery that they haven’t demonstrated in years. Humans have done enough damage and a balance is being restored.

So, who is the problem?

Jason Hargrove, a Detroit city bus driver, went live on Facebook on March 21 after he witnessed one of his passengers coughing without covering her mouth. He angrily pleads, “We out here as public workers, doing our job, trying to make an honest living to take care of our families.” The video amassed almost 200,000 views and Hargrove became a voice advocating for the safety of public servants everywhere.

He later died. COVID-19 killed him. He was 50.

Was Jason Hargrove the problem? Was this middle-aged, working-class Michigander a viral molecule that Mother Earth’s antibodies needed to fight off?

Science tells us that industries, not consumers, are the biggest culprits behind climate change. And history tells us that when crisis strikes, it’s marginalized groups who suffer most, not their regional managers nor their CEOs. For example, 26% of Milwaukee County’s population is African American, yet that group has comprised more than 8 out of 10 coronavirus deaths in that area so far. It’s not hard to imagine how Summit County’s dynamics could create its own parallel.

This isn’t a moral dilemma. If you’re concerned about the climate — which you still should be — don’t make it a choice between saving the flora and the fauna or saving your bus drivers, bartenders and lifties.

People like Jason Hargrove didn’t kill the world. Whichever conclusion you draw from that fact, you’ll either be in this for all of humanity or for none of it. If you go for the latter, no one will be around to help you when your glasses break.

The post Guest editorial: We aren’t a disease, and Earth is not fighting us with the coronavirus appeared first on Park Record.

Summit County’s stay-at-home order still allows people to exercise outdoors, provided they keep their distance from others. But where do you go when there’s a pandemic on and you sprain your ankle on the Rail Trail?

For cases like that, Intermountain Healthcare and Vail Resorts have agreed to keep the Park City Mountain Resort Clinic open past the traditional end of the ski season to take care of anyone whose medical needs don’t involve a low fever, dry cough or body aches that they can’t attribute to an injury, according to Chuck Morrison, co-medical director of the Park City Mountain Resort Clinic.

“This way, we have a center where people can get adequate medical treatment without being exposed or having the fear of being exposed to the coronavirus,” Morrison said. “These injuries are still going to happen, right. People are still active, they’re still walking, talking, hiking, some of them are still cross-country skiing … people definitely need somewhere to go where they won’t have that fear.”

That also means the Park City InstaCare urgent care clinic, which is one of Summit County’s COVID-19 testing sites, will now only take patients who have symptoms indicating a coronavirus infection in order to isolate their care.

“It’ll help inside that clinic to prevent that spread from getting out into the community,” Morrison said.

Patients with physical injuries and other conditions unrelated to coronavirus symptoms should also steer clear of the Park City Hospital unless their situation is truly an emergency, he said. Instead, head to Park City Mountain Resort.

When it’s time to resurface for fresh air, whether you’re working from home or planning quality time with your family, it’s tough to beat living in the Wasatch Range. But Morrison said that anyone planning to go backcountry skiing, mountain biking or hiking shouldn’t take this as a time to push their limits.

“As the pandemic goes up, our resources go down,” he said. “I would reel it in; take a lot more caution than you would in normal times because those medical services that we all take for granted may not be available.”

With that in mind, Morrison said that if you’re not sure whether that cough is just from having the wind knocked out of you while skiing or if those body aches are from falling off of a bike, visiting the InstaCare first is the safer bet as a clinic staffer is present to screen patients and refer them to the PCMR clinic if needed. It’s possible to both injure oneself and carry the coronavirus at the same time.

“If you are running, for example, you can sometimes generate a bit of a temperature,” Morrison said. “Sometimes people just aren’t aware that they have a low-grade fever.”

The Park City Instacare clinic is located at 1750 Sidewinder Drive and is only seeing patients with possible COVID-19 symptoms at this time, as well as offering testing, though Intermountain Healthcare asks patients to first call its coronavirus hotline at 844-442-5224. For all other immediate medical concerns, visit the Park City Mountain Resort Clinic at 1493 Lowell Ave., in the parking lot near First Time lift.

The post Park City Mountain Resort Clinic remains open for non-coronavirus urgent care appeared first on Park Record.

The year 2020 is three and a half months old, and among the threat of war, a divisive presidential primary, a divisive presidency and a near-total disruption of everyday life in response to an encroaching pandemic, one wouldn’t be blamed for feeling as if they’ve lived several lifetimes in recent weeks.

And for Summit County residents feeling the stress from some or all of those things, waking up to the earth literally shaking beneath their feet last Wednesday didn’t help.

Aaron Newman, Summit County’s director of behavioral health, says that people feeling burdened by all of that are far from alone.

“During this time there’s a lot of unknowns for individuals that can cause a lot of stress, panic and anxiety for them,” he said.

The Summit County Health Department has activated its “continuity of care plan” to make sure that mental health care remains constant throughout the crisis, Newman said, whether it’s through online support groups or through other means.

Whether you’re worried about the risk of exposure to COVID-19, the personal and financial effects of the pandemic or attempting to explain the unexplainable to your kids, local leaders in the mental health field have offered various strategies for taking care of your brain and seeking support — at a distance — during a time where pretty much everyone is as confused as everyone else.

An everyday crisis

The experience of living through an unexpected event followed by months of isolation isn’t new to Mary Christa Smith. The coordinator of Communities That Care, an initiative of the Summit County Mental Wellness Alliance nonprofit, went through all of that as part of becoming a mother.

“The life experience I’ve drawn upon in this time is being a new mom,” Christa Smith said. “I had a brand-new baby in January, I holed up at home for three months. I did not go out. People brought me food; I had to create this rhythm of the day in a period of pretty great isolation during that time.”

To stay in control of her situation, she sharpened her yoga practice and played guitar. Many of the effects of the response to the coronavirus pandemic, she said, are reflected in peoples’ smaller crises.

“Most of us have had something really unexpected happen in our lives,” Christa Smith said. “Some people have blown out their knees and have been incapacitated and out of work, some people have lost their jobs in surprising fashion or some people have had to move or had an illness in the family.”

Could this email have been a meeting?

For those lucky enough to find themselves still employed but working from home, the practice of social isolation can present its own challenges. Newman said one way to address the possibility of cabin fever is to meet face-to-face remotely or speak on the phone in situations that might have previously called for an email or a quick Slack message.

“Having that human contact over the phone can really help someone that’s not used to working from home or to that isolation,” he said. “Email’s nice right now, but people still need to have means of having that human conversation.”

Colton Miller, a licensed psychologist at the new Psychiatric Clinic at Park City Hospital, said establishing a routine and a discrete workspace at home, as well as staying informed about the outside world, are two other important aspects of staying sane during isolation.

“Set aside work hours and dedicate a space in your home to do that work that’s as distraction-free as possible, and kind of mentally prepare yourself, ‘Hey, this is my work area, this is work, but when I leave this room I’m going to go back to my personal life,’” Miller said.

There’s a difference between staying informed and overdosing on the news, he said.

“I’d recommend that people stay aware of current guidelines from experts, and turn off the news outlets that are 24-hour cable news that are based on a lot of fear and conjecture, because that can really play into peoples’ anxieties and paranoia,” he said. “Pay attention, get your news for 10 to 20 minutes during the day, then focus on your life and what you can do.”

Rising to leadership

Presidents, prime ministers, senators, congresspeople, governors and local officials are all navigating uncharted waters right now.

There’s another group of leaders who are being called upon to take on that difficult task: parents.

Smith, the Communities That Care coordinator, says that it’s OK for parents to be honest and say “I don’t know,” but not to burden their children with their own anxieties and abdicate their position as guiding forces of a household.

“I would be advising parents to be comforting and reassuring to their kids; to let them know that we will get through this, we are resilient, we are going to be OK, life is going to be different for a while,” Smith said.

While every family will face varying degrees of physical, financial and spiritual stress in the upcoming months, according to Smith, the process of isolation and the disruption to normal schedules presents a chance to find a silver lining in the absence of school, sports and other social interactions.

“This time actually offers us a unique opportunity to slow down and be very intentional and spending quality time connecting with our kids and asking them, ‘What would be fun that we could do together today,’” she said. Activities could include exercise or learning a new and useful skill like how to make a bed.

Miller, who recently enrolled his child in online preschool, advocated for a balanced diet of interaction and “me” time, as well as that of activity and, yes, screen time.

“It’s OK to allow your kids to watch a show here and there; Netflix is not the devil,” Miller said. “You’ve got to implement some structure for your family and use this as an opportunity to really get to know them, and at the same time it’s OK to take breaks from each other; to have some quiet time in your bedrooms and to relax and kind of breathe a little bit.”

As for teenagers who may already be restless and who may be separated from their peer groups, Smith said that time spent online can be valuable in allowing them to maintain those friendships whether it’s a session of Dungeons & Dragons over Facetime or interactions on social media.

Just not hours spent scrolling aimlessly, though. That was unhealthy even before the virus.

‘Don’t be a hero’

As Summit County’s leaders urge residents to isolate themselves and their families, new, remote options for mental health care are emerging on a regular basis. The Psychiatric Clinic at Park City hospital is preparing and deploying its own remote telehealth options, county officials and Connect Summit County are rolling out their online support groups and the SafeUT smartphone app is a standing option among many others. The Park City School District is continuing all of its counseling services remotely as well.

Deanna Rhodes, executive director of Connect, said her nonprofit is ready to help guide residents to finding care if — or when — they need it.

“With the panic, anxiety and fear, that very much takes a professional,” Rhodes said. “Logging into these support groups or wherever people find support is really, really important. Don’t be a hero with it.”

If you’re starting to feel the pressure, visit the Psychiatric Clinic at Park City Hospital online, contact the Summit County Health Department, Connect Summit County or the Summit County Mental Wellness Alliance for resources. Summit County maintains a “community concerns” hotline at 435-333-0050.

The post The new normal: Fighting off cabin fever while isolated in your cabin (3 things to consider about mental health during isolation) appeared first on Park Record.

When’s the last time a pandemic threw a wrench into your dinner plans, travel schedule or entire livelihood?

Almost all Summit County residents would answer that question with “never,” and might feel more than a little stressed out about it. To fill the need for conversation and support in an isolated time, Summit County mental health organizations are rolling out free online group support sessions and webinars aimed at helping attendees cope. Connect Summit County is beginning a series of Facebook Live talks with local experts, while the county Health Department will hold what Director of Behavioral Health Aaron Newman calls “watercooler conversations” every Friday from 3-4:30 p.m.

Newman said that his department’s sessions are intended to provide residents a space to air out their thoughts safely, without needing to book time for an appointment with a mental health professional or to travel to be around a group of people. The sessions are sponsored by University of Utah Health and will be delivered through Zoom, a messaging and video chat service, since in-person gatherings aren’t possible.

“This week, not only do we have the COVID-19 taking place, but as a result of that we have a lot of people either getting furloughed or (who have) lost their jobs, and not knowing where that next paycheck is coming from that’s caused people a lot of stress and anxiety,” Newman said. “Traditionally a lot of those folks would go to their community watering holes, they have a network of people that they could support and talk to and get it off their chest, and with everything closed right now that’s just not an option.”

Connect Summit County Executive Director Deanna Rhodes, meanwhile, said that the nonprofit’s sessions will each have a central theme, such as Saturday’s “Staying Mentally Balanced Through These Unprecedented Times,” which is scheduled for 10 a.m. and will feature Park City psychiatrist Melissa Lopez-Larson. The talk will be delivered via Facebook Live on Lopez-Larson’s page, @drlsquared. The sessions are open to 20 attendees.

“We’ve had a lot of outpouring of support from providers during this time; ideally we get one a day,” Rhodes said. “We’re really trying to get this up as quick as possible so that there is at least this resource to get people started.”

More sessions are in the works, including a Health Department series focused on parenting. Among the possibilities for Connect are sessions aimed at teenagers and Spanish-language sessions.

Newman said that his department’s sessions have been in development since the beginning of the week and that, as with many services and providers, he and his staff have been working overtime to account for the new coronavirus pandemic and its disruptions to everyday life.

“This is a marathon right now, and we’re not sure where the finish line is,” he said. “You don’t get into behavioral health work to have a 9-to-5 job.”

Without a clear endpoint for the crisis, both Newman and Rhodes said they’re actively searching for volunteers to help monitor the sessions and provide input of their own. Prospective volunteers can get in touch by contacting the respective organizations.

The post Park City mental health organizations plan remote support groups amid coronavirus crisis appeared first on Park Record.

At the conclusion of the 14th annual Park Record Spelling Bee on Tuesday, the last student standing on the stage at the Egyptian Theatre was Caroline Turner, a Timpanogos Middle School eighth-grader who had just correctly spelled a word that has dominated the headlines recently — “quarantine.” Turner placed first in the fourth- through eighth-grade bee.

“I remember when we studied, I spelled that one wrong, like, two times, so I’m glad I got it right this time,” Turner said. “Quarantine.”

The second-place finisher, Ecker Hill Middle School seventh-grader Emilia Lytle, who won the bee in 2019, went out like a Spartan with the word “laconic,” and her classmate, David Hendel, placed third, after tripping up on “antithesis.”

For Turner, it was a striking return to the spelling bee stage.

“I feel great,” she said in an interview following the spelling bee. “I didn’t do very well (previously), so I’m glad I had redemption.”

Turner’s win advanced her to the televised Scripps National Spelling Bee, which is currently still scheduled to be held at the end of May at the National Harbor in Maryland, near Washington. But before all of that, she said, she had tentative plans to celebrate with her family.

“I’m probably going to commit to something like, eating ice cream or something,” she said.

Park Record Publisher Andy Bernhard said that the bee, in its 14th year, is a unique part of the community’s fabric, and the question of whether or not the national bee will move forward doesn’t change that fact.

“It’s an honor for our community to be involved at that level,” he said. “We’re such a sports-minded community and this is more of an academic competition, and I think that’s an important aspect to consider when you’re growing up in a community like this.”

Before the main event, Park City Day School second-grader Alex Keenan took first in the second- through third-grade bee by correctly spelling “assistance.” Parley’s Park Elementary third-grader John Ginster finished runner-up off of “insubstantial,” and Kira Berkman, a second-grader at Parley’s Park, finished third with “generation.”

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is set to take place from May 24-29. Scripps announced on its website on Thursday, March 12, that planning for the annual event is going forward, but that the organization is monitoring the recommendations of health officials. Visit spellingbee.com/updates for more details.

The post Park Record Spelling Bee champion sticks to the headlines, winning with ‘quarantine’ appeared first on Park Record.

For Park City’s workers who commute to or from the Salt Lake Valley, the morning drive can sometimes feel like a battle.

And for visitors road tripping west or coming in from the Salt Lake International Airport, traffic in Parleys Canyon can sometimes hit like a sucker punch even when it isn’t snowing.

That could change in the coming decades.

The public has until March 9 to submit comments on a Utah Department of Transportation draft proposal intended to radically improve the flow and safety of traffic on the roads leading in and out of the western mouth of Parleys Canyon, which is a critical local, state and national economic node that hasn’t been updated in more than half a century. It’s a big undertaking, and UDOT officials estimate that the project could be completed as late as 2040, but a number of variables like an early approval of funding or a successful Winter Olympics bid could speed up the process.

“It’s a vital corridor to transport goods all over the nation,” said UDOT spokesman John Gleason in an interview. “You can’t overstate how important I-80 is.”

UDOT plans to release the final Parleys Interchange environmental impact statement in July following the public comment period, which included an open house in Salt Lake City on Feb. 12 where alternative construction plans were presented to a crowd of more than 100 people.

The over-under

The Utah of the 1960s was a much different place from the Utah of today.

The state’s population, the vast majority of which lives in the cities of the western slope of the Wasatch Range, nearly quadrupled from 1960 to 2019, according to Census Bureau estimates. A number of factors, including the 2002 Winter Olympics and an explosion in the tourism and service industry, have propelled the state to be one of the fastest growing in the nation.

The Salt Lake County interchange is the primary eastbound gateway to Park City, where an ever-increasing amount of commuters and visitors from multiple high-traffic roadways in Salt Lake City and Millcreek merge onto I-80 eastbound and head uphill through Parleys Canyon. Naomi Kisen, a UDOT staffer leading the environmental study, said that one of the main problems facing travelers through the interchange today are the areas where the roadways merge into each other, resulting in claustrophobic merges and traffic jams that can surprise drivers coming around its curves.

A core part of the UDOT proposal is to lengthen the amount of time drivers have to make decisions and merge onto the various roadways, Kisen said.

“The 215 on-ramp onto I-80 in the canyon is kind of a very aggressive movement to get on, and also the off-ramp,” she said. “Coming straight across on I-80, what we’re trying to do is separate the flow of traffic a little more so you’re not competing with people trying to get on 215 southbound.

“Less competing, less merging, less dealing with basically people going in other directions.”

About 60,000 vehicles pass through the interchange into the canyon daily, according to a 2017 UDOT study. UDOT has identified five areas of the interchange where crashes tend to occur as well. Between 2010 and 2015, 341 injury accidents occurred at the interchange.

Another aim of the project is to widen the area where Foothill Drive enters onto I-215, which doesn’t affect eastbound traffic to Park City but sees significant backups that cause headaches for commuters and travelers on their way to and from the University of Utah.

Inputs and output

A crucial part of UDOT’s assessment is on the environmental impact of such a project — how it would interact with the Wasatch Front’s watershed, its effects on local trails and the noise generated by a higher volume of traffic passing through Salt Lake City and Millcreek. Kisen said that noise walls have been considered for the project but are unlikely to be used, as their effect would be minimal.

The input of commuters and visitors is crucial to the planning process, Gleason said.

“We really do want to hear from everyone,” he said. “We can only be better when we hear from the people who our projects are going to affect, so that’s why we are going to involve people early and as often as they’d like to be involved.”

Summit County is listed as a participating agency in UDOT documents, but country transportation manager Caroline Rodriguez said that, for now, the county is focused on addressing traffic concerns that are closer to home.

To view the draft proposal of the Parleys Interchange Environmental Impact Statement and submit comments, visit the UDOT website for the project at parleyseis.com. The public comment period ends on March 9.

The post With Parleys Canyon overhaul, Park City-Salt Lake City commute could change dramatically appeared first on Park Record.

Iowa, New Hampshire — Utah?

The 2020 presidential primary election on March 3 marks the first time that Utah has counted itself among the 14 states taking part in Super Tuesday, the largest single day of action in the race and one of the most significant. Unlike 2016’s ill-fated shift to a caucus system to decide which presidential candidates earned Utah’s delegates, this contest is a traditional primary election with Utah’s usual mail-in ballots — no hours-long gatherings in high school gyms, negotiating with neighbors or shadowy smartphone apps are in the mix.

“It’s a regular primary election. … It should feel exactly how a primary election feels in other years,” said Justin Lee, Utah’s director of elections.

The state of Utah will mail out ballots for the Democratic open primary and the Republican closed primary on Tuesday, Feb. 11, the same day of the New Hampshire primary election. Anyone may vote in the Democratic primary, while only registered Republicans can vote in that party’s contest — which does include candidates other than President Trump.

The state Legislature passed a law last year to hold the state’s GOP and Democratic primaries on Super Tuesday, a move officials have touted as giving Utah voters more influence in determining who ultimately wins the parties’ nominations. In the past, Utah voters sometimes made their selections well after a frontrunner had essentially locked up the nomination.

“I’m feeling good about it,” said Meredith Reed, chair of the Summit County Democratic Party, of the state’s move up in the calendar.

Reed said that with a crowded Democratic primary field, voters will benefit from demonstrating some restraint as the New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina primaries play out and the race matures before the deadline for voters to return their mail-in ballots.

“If that’s who you wanted to mark on the ballot, that’s who you marked on the ballot,” she said.

As with typical vote-by-mail elections, primary ballots this year will need to be postmarked by March 2, the day before votes are counted.

Summit County will also host voting assistance centers at various locations throughout the region, as well as in-person voting at the County Clerk’s office in Coalville.

The Democratic candidates will be vying for 35 delegates in total from Utah, 29 of which are determined by the popular vote and six of whom are superdelegates. The power of superdelegates has been somewhat diluted this time around as the at-large delegates, composed of prominent party figures, may only vote after the first round of ballots at the national convention.

Voters in the Democratic primary will decide among Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Deval Patrick, Michael Bennet and several others, including a few candidates who have dropped out of the race but remain on the ballot in Utah. While President Donald Trump is a virtual lock to win the GOP nomination, he faces a handful of challengers in Utah’s GOP primary, including former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, former Congressman Joe Walsh, Bob Ely, Matthew John Matern and Robert Ardini.

The 2020 primary process marks a return to simplicity in state presidential politics after institutional unfamiliarity with the caucusing system and other factors resulted in controversy on March 22, 2016. Long lines and confusion plagued caucuses throughout the state, including in Summit County, where more voters than anticipated showed up to cast votes. Lee, though, said that hiccup was different in nature from the debacle that took place in Iowa on Tuesday. He said Utah’s primary voting system will safeguard the state from issues that have struck the process in the Hawkeye State.

“A lot of it came down to organization on that one,” Lee said of the 2016 Utah caucuses.

Now that Utah is taking its place in the election alongside heavy hitters such as California and Texas, though, Lee said he is looking forward to Utah becoming a bigger part of the national conversation, but not at the expense of a smooth ride.

“There should be some excitement around that, but we’re focused on making sure the election works well.”

Registered voters who are affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican parties will automatically receive a ballot, while residents who are unaffiliated may register with a party and vote at an early voting center or Election Day polling place. People who are not members of the Democratic Party but who would like to vote in the primary may also do so at an early voting center or on Election Day. For more information about the 2020 presidential primary election and for a full list of rules and dates, visit summitcounty.org/281/Voter-Registration-Elections.

The post With Super Tuesday primary, Utah elevates itself in 2020 presidential nominating process appeared first on Park Record.

Arthur Jones’ first-ever feature documentary was inspired by an internet meme, but it’s about a lot more than just a JPEG.

“Feels Good Man,” an entry in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, charts the decade-plus, “inexplicable” journeys of Pepe the Frog from versatile avatar to far-right dog whistle, and his creator, an indie cartoonist named Matt Furie who only wanted to make a zine about four friends hanging out.

So, who is the man behind the frog?

For starters, Furie is definitely not a Nazi. He’s not a viral content creator, either. He isn’t even particularly fond of the internet, according to Jones.

“He’s one of the least-online people I know, he doesn’t have an Instagram account or go on Facebook,” said Jones, an animator by trade, of Furie. “This kind of happened because he really is a pen-and-paper kind of guy; he really was unaware of any of this stuff and truly does not (care) about it.”

Before the first rare Pepe ever showed up on message boards, Furie was part of a vibrant printmaking community in San Francisco.

“Matt had a following as an indie cartoonist, but indie comics is pretty niche in America,” he said. “It was really unexpected when the character became a wildly popular meme.”

In 2005, he posted one panel of his comic zine “Boys Club” onto his MySpace profile. In the panel, Pepe, in describing the act of pulling his pants all the way down to urinate, utters that fateful phrase: “Feels good man.”

Three years later, a user on the imageboard 4chan uploaded a scan of the panel, and an extraordinarily long-lived internet meme was born.

At first, Pepe was simply an expression of whatever a poster happened to feel at the time: Feels good man. Feels bad man. A smug Pepe. An angry at offline “normies” Pepe. Pepe’s face on a Pokemon.

Furie didn’t mind. Remix culture has existed for a long time and he had a family he was starting.

“He was concentrated on other things, you know,” Jones said.

As the decade went on, though, the internet changed. Corporate social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter gained prominence in place of rag-tag message boards and chat rooms. 4chan, for example, was once an anything-goes message board where conversations only had one guaranteed quality: irreverence.

But a series of upheavals led to 4chan becoming a place where users blamed others — parents, women who develop video games, women in general — for their frustrations and eventually became a breeding ground for what would become the alt-right soon after Donald Trump announced his run for president in 2015.

On Oct. 13 that year, the man who would become president tweeted an image of a Pepe clad in a suit, standing at a dais and sporting a blond combover.

So went the internet and so did Pepe, Jones said. The frog became the mascot of a far-right movement and was even branded a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League. That’s when Furie attempted to rein things in via copyright law, an agonizing decision that was intended to, in his words, “stop dumb shit from happening.”

“The movie is really about him negotiating that uncomfortable reality for himself,” Jones said. “Matt’s personal journey really makes the movie really unique that I hope a lot of people find satisfying for a lot of reasons.”

Furie and Pepe’s journey reflects how the internet has changed culture and vice versa, Jones said. The documentary includes original animation by Jones featuring the character and is structured in four acts based on variations of Pepe’s mood — which is a deployment of the meme itself.

“It really was this way of simplifying much larger ideas that I think is pretty unique to the film,” Jones said.

Jones only finished cutting the film together the Friday before the festival and said the process was like a “slow-rolling panic attack,” but that he’s excited to show it to the Sundance audience. “There’s been times this past week where I’ve been at my wit’s end,” Jones said.

Jones hopes that audiences will come away from “Feels Good Man” with a greater respect for the reality of what goes on online — whether it’s a dancing baby, a bug-eyed hockey mascot or just a white guy who happened to blink in a relatable way on camera, nothing is “just a meme” anymore.

“We think about the internet being something as ‘other,’ but the internet is no longer ‘other,” he said. “The person who you are online is maybe who you actually are.”

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