I never thought I’d end up a journalist, but what I’ve learned about reporting — from a hodgepodge of hands-on experience and mentorship — is that most of my work involves learning about other people’s work. 

As someone who grew up watching shows like “How It’s Made” and “Dirty Jobs,” it’s pretty awesome. I get a crash course on topics from experts in their field, whether that’s whiskey making at Alpine Distilling, chocolatiering at Montage Deer Valley or even researching Utah’s cannabis program. I even recently got to observe a cadaver lab training day with Park City Fire District as part of an upcoming series on its emergency medical services program. Awesome.

Over my three short years at The Park Record, forestry and fire have been two recurring subjects, a key part of my makeshift beat.

In my first year, the Yellow Lake Fire blew up in the National Forest past Francis, and being the lone volunteer for a visit to the fire camp, I found myself headfirst in a whole new world. 

Nomex, tents, portable handwash stations, fire maps, “swimming in acronym soup” — I felt like I was on the set of a movie, as close to a military deployment camp as I’ll probably ever get. Our escort out to the fire line was pretty generous, setting us up on a meadow with a full view of smoke plumes, aircraft dropping water on the flames as if putting on a show on an otherwise gorgeous fall day. 

The next spring, our photographer and I got red cards, the nickname for an Incident Qualification Card issued by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group. It’s an entry-level wildland firefighting certification that acknowledges a person has completed the necessary training, experience and physical fitness tests to work on firelines.

There are about 40 hours of online coursework to go over fundamentals like the science of fire, fuel types, tools and their uses, firefighting hierarchy and the national systems for fighting fire. Then there’s the beloved pack test, a 3-mile hike with a 45-pound pack in under 45 minutes, followed by an in-person practice day — held by Alpine Forestry — with tasks like laying hose line, operating a water tender and a mock crew scenario to dig a scratch line, respond to a spot fire and deploy a fire shelter. 

That one day left me sore and exhausted for a full week. 

When we were re-certifying this Tuesday — another pack test followed by a classroom refresher led by a few guest speakers — I was reminded how much these crews give to the work. And they’re all so tough. A cold, rainy, muddy pack test at 7 a.m.? No big deal. And for the “old dogs” who came to lecture, stories ranged from summers spent deployed to remote fires, running on foot from gigantic flames and largely shrugging off traumatic experiences.

That attitude of recklessly risking life and limb for the cause has shifted over the years, they admitted. Nowadays, firefighters are prioritizing mental health, clearer communication among crewmates and a greater emphasis on safety.

Those values are something course attendees were told to remember going into the 2026 fire season. 

With the worst snowpack on record in the Great Basin region and an expected El Niño developing way out in the Pacific Ocean, meteorologists predict the fire season could be long and devastating.

In these conditions, focusing on safety and taking one day at a time are essential to a successful season, the young firefighters were told.

As for me, I don’t plan to get out into the real action (though I wouldn’t say no if I could!). But when it comes to my job of relaying information to the community, these long, tiring days only make my reporting that much richer. 

In a best-case scenario, having my red card may allow a public information officer on a future wildfire to escort me closer to a fire front or maybe even tie us in with a crew near the front lines. If not, just having one has helped me better translate a fire conversation into lay person speak. It’s also led to better relationships, where I can clearly show a firsthand respect for what these crews do.

Because while people enjoy the safety and comfort of their homes, these men and women head out into harm’s way as the first line of defense, and sometimes on the offense. The more our communities know about the work they do — the sacrifices and the physicality and the genius — the better we can appreciate them. That’s my hope anyway.

The post Learning to think like a wildland firefighter appeared first on Park Record.

Lately I’ve found myself on the transit beat, covering the bus rapid transit project, High Valley’s new campus, the city’s alternative transportation incentives program, how a bus route gets made — one day I looked up and realized I should probably ride a damn bus. 

I live in Salt Lake. It turns out High Valley actually has a commuter bus that runs between Salt Lake Central and Kimball Junction, the 107. I decided to put my money where my mouth is and see what it’s like.

Here’s the score: It’s typically about 50 minutes by car from my apartment in the Avenues to The Park Record office in Prospector Park. I usually show up to the office by 10:30 a.m. on production days. Could I become a bus-only commuter despite living in a different city? 

I decided I would allow myself to at least drive to Salt Lake Central. The 107’s 90-minute frequency doesn’t exactly line up with my ideal departure time: I could either leave on the 7:41 a.m. bus and arrive in Kimball Junction at 8:45, or take the 9:11 a.m. bus and arrive in Kimball at 10:15. I’m not one for sleeping in, but my hour, hour-and-a-half, sometimes two-hour morning routine doesn’t really lend itself to leaving my house before 8 a.m. Good hygiene takes time. Not budging on that one. 

I decided on taking the 9:11 for this experiment and left my house at 8:30 to give myself a buffer for navigating Salt Lake Central. I honestly don’t know the last time I was here. A hub for the city’s light rail, bus system and the Frontrunner train, the place is not particularly fun or friendly. It’s gray, drab, a place to get on, maybe off, and nothing else. There’s no one there to help you or talk to you. After parking, I walked up to a Greyhound building and pulled on the door handle. Locked. The building’s empty. I would have looked stupid if there were anybody around to see or care.

I walked around and saw a High Valley Transit bus in a sea of Salt Lake buses. I walked closer and realized the bus was charging, attached at its roof to a fixture above, parked in a drivers-only area. Whoops. The curb over here is painted red. The curb on the pickup area is painted bright lime green. Right, OK, I see that now. Going back.

It was a cold April morning. I hadn’t dressed warm enough, fool’s spring and all that. In a car you can crank the heat in July if you like. And here I am, bumbling in the nip, opting to be on someone else’s schedule. 

But I love public transit — I used to ride the bus every day in college, and the best part of traveling to any major city is mastering the metro, light rail, train, whatever. Give me a station map to gnaw. A couple rides and I’ll have it memorized. 

At 9:07, four minutes before the scheduled departure, the 107 drove past me. The driver looked at me and held his hand up in a fist, his thumb out, gesturing behind him. I’m sorry? I don’t know what that means. Does he want me to follow him? Is he abandoning me? Did he just receive news of a more interesting passenger down the way? I walked into the drivers-only zone again in awkward pursuit. He was parked behind a car wash building, idling. Another bus had taken its charging spot — he was just getting out of the way. Oh. Back to my bus shelter. He pulled up again at 9:10. I got on and said, “Hi!” He asked me if I was going to Park City. Yes, I am. 

Being the first passenger on a bus is what I imagine being a feudal lord is like. My kingdom, every seat a potential patron for my ass. I selected one halfway down from which I might survey my incoming denizens. Another person got on carrying a snowboard and sat behind me, all the way at the back. Not even a “my liege.” I spun around. “Hi,” I said. “Do you ride this route often?”

He didn’t say anything, just nodded. He seemed taken aback. “I’m writing about this route for the paper. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?” He shook his head, didn’t even say anything. Apparently not even a lord is allowed to breach bus mores. “That’s OK,” I cheeped, heartbroken. “Have a nice day.”

I slumped back on my throne. Most of my experience with public transit has been a rowdier affair. I could tell now that this bus had more of a discerning, mature vibe, a respite from freaks like me looking to fraternize and ask people such harrowing questions as “How are you?” I should have brought wine. 

We took off, and I was quickly back in a good mood. We traveled along 200 South and picked up a couple of people on the way. The seats on this particular bus were exceedingly nice, nicer than you imagine a bus being. Padded, with seatbelts, aisle and window arm rests, A/C to blow cool air, and individual lights like an airplane seat. Posh! It was easy to get comfortable.

By 9:22 a.m. we hit 300 East. A few more passengers. I was feeling insanely shy after the mute snowboarder had put me in my place. I’d imagined getting some great quotes about the merits of public transit from my fellow riders, but now that I was here, I couldn’t bring myself to breach the bus’s relative quiet. I hadn’t expected it to feel so peaceful. I looked around and decided to just shut up and enjoy the ride. 

There’s a mirror at the front of buses that’s angled so you can see your driver’s face and they can see you. It’s like picture-in-picture. For a few minutes I couldn’t look away from our guy. He looked like his name would be Tyson. He reminded me of someone I’d known from three jobs ago, same beard and resting bemusement. He kept it professional and on time, didn’t even seem to mind my obvious staring. O Captain! My captain! 

The route took us up to the University of Utah and snaked around the hospital, onto Foothill and south down 2100 East until we finally hit Parley’s at 9:46. There are 10 people on the bus at this point, including me, and by 9:48 we were on Interstate 80. 

This was the moment I’d been waiting for. I don’t know about you, but I find this drive harrowing, even after a hundred times. Do you know why they call it I-80? Because I have to drive 80 miles an hour or I’m part of the problem, apparently. The two left lanes are for testing the known laws of physics, and the right lane is for semitrucks that know better. Have you ever enjoyed driving on I-80? I have, once or twice. The other 998 times were white-knuckled hell. I admit there’s nothing quite like flying at 45 degrees past those rolling hills — it’s a thrill, it’s just not for me. 

The appeal of the 107 is that I-80 becomes Tyson’s problem. It may be a longer commute, requiring transfers and preparation, but it’s worth it if I can avoid intrusive fantasies about careening into a golf course. As a passenger, knowing that there’s nothing I can do is soothing. If this is how I go, at least I’ll be with my friends in public transit.

For the first time in probably a year I enjoyed myself traveling on I-80. Especially in spring, when the mountains are lush, there’s a lot to appreciate when you aren’t having to keep an eye on who’s riding your tail.

At 10:04, we stopped at Jeremy Ranch Park and Ride, and by 10:11, we’d arrived at Kimball Junction. I still needed to get to Bonanza, so I hopped on the 10X, an express line between Kimball and the Old Town Transit Center that runs every 20 minutes. That took us down S.R. 224. I got off just past Kearns Boulevard at Fresh Market. 

And here was the thing I’d hoped to avoid. Walking through the Fresh Market parking lot toward Bonanza, something in me died a little. This unnaturally long trek across empty stalls on asphalt brought me down to Earth. This is just how Utah is — how the West is: designed in increments of car lengths. When you’re driving, it feels perfectly normal, everything’s portioned to your hulking, metal exoskeleton. When you’re walking across it, you suddenly feel like you don’t belong, like you’ve made a mistake. 

The feeling persisted as I passed First Community Bank, Boneyard Saloon and Auntie Em’s Baked Goods. I had been hopeful I could avoid this feeling on my little journey, but what can you do? It’s the deal we make, our parking lot in life. We live in sprawling, gorgeous valleys, God’s country, and we pave over a lot of it in order to access all of it. Buses use roads too, of course, but, I don’t know, I’ve never loved the ubiquity of cars, here or anywhere. A bus feels like a good compromise with the infrastructure it necessitates. 

Here’s where I say it: We should all be taking the bus more. (Maybe you already do. I don’t know you.) I get it — it seems like you’re giving up a lot to be on someone else’s timetable. What could possibly be better than being able to go exactly where you want, when you want, with everything you need in tow? For some there’s no competing with convenience. Taking the bus is not that. It’s letting go of the need for an answer to the question, of needing to control every detail. Of bringing everything with you. It’s letting yourself be swept up in the flow. 

And I know, now I’m just being an asshole, but it’s not that driving a car has fewer hurdles, it’s that you are used to those hurdles and that our pro-car culture makes those hurdles seem natural. You’re jumping through a lot of hoops with a car. You’re getting a license, you’re buying gas, you’re paying for insurance, you’re driving the damn thing and maybe even driving it poorly, or maybe you’re driving it well and you’re sharing the road with someone driving poorly. You’re yielding. You’re checking your blind spot. You’re internalizing rules of the road that we supposedly all adhere to but that if asked can’t always agree on. You’re doing maintenance, you’re putting wear and tear on an asset you either own or owe money on. We are choosing this.

I got to the office at 10:50 a.m. — 20 minutes later than the latest I prefer to show up, an hour and a half after departing Salt Lake Central and two hours after I stepped outside my door. Is that practical? Kind of. I’ll leave earlier next time, take the 7:41 out, get up earlier and, yeah, budge on my routine. We are a car society. I get that. I’m part of it, too. (Ironically, I drove to work the next day to cover a High Valley Transit open house.) 

I wish it were different, and with things like bus rapid transit, Park City at least will be closer to my personal utopia. For now, taking the bus is becoming one of my favorite parts of the day. Maybe it could be yours, too. 

The post Salt Lake to Park City: A commuter’s sermon  appeared first on Park Record.

It has been a joyous few weeks in Park City, starting with the outpouring of pride on July 24 as the International Olympic Committee selected Salt Lake City to be the host of the 2034 Winter Olympics.

A crowd of 4,000 later that day gathered at the Utah Olympic Park to celebrate the selection. Park City and Summit County sent officials to Paris for the IOC meetings and to begin learning about the staging of a Games. They returned from France with observations about the Olympic transportation system and the impacts on businesses. And City Hall, the County Courthouse and the Park City Chamber/Bureau are readying to tap a consultant to craft a plan for the Games that will outline a decade of work.

But the excitement generated by the awarding of the Winter Olympics, and the buzzing final months of the bidding for the Games, perhaps acted as a distraction of sorts, at least momentarily, from the widespread concerns in the community about a range of issues like traffic, the state of the resort industry, growth and affordability.

The IOC selection put Park City, as well as Summit County, into the planning stage for the Winter Olympics after the efforts were focused for years on the bidding. There are three competition venues in the Park City area identified on the Games map — Park City Mountain, Deer Valley Resort and the Utah Olympic Park — and the community will be critical to the transportation, security and celebration plans. Leaders in Park City and Summit County in coming months are expected to begin laying the groundwork for a plan for the Games that will extend through the months after the cauldron is extinguished in 2034.

The mayor of Park City and the City Council, though, will need to accomplish that work while attempting to lead a populace that already had deep concerns about the state of the community even before the awarding of the Games. The pending Winter Olympics, still more than nine years into the future, could exacerbate the worries, as Parkites dwell on the potential impact the event could have on the issues that are already so difficult. There had been indications during the bidding that some Parkites were worried about a Winter Olympics even as others expressed excitement about the prospects of a Games. A series of community conversations in the fall of 2022 highlighted the wide-ranging opinions.

With Park City having entered a second Winter Olympic era, another recent reading of the sentiments of Parkites, covering many of the most pressing issues, becomes notable again. The National Community Survey, conducted on behalf of the municipal government in late 2022 and early 2023, showed fractures were forming or, worse, widening in Park City. Some of the results were especially damaging and seemed to lend credence to the broad-based angst that was so apparent around the time of the survey.

One of the key questions inquired about the overall direction of Park City. Just 41% indicated the direction was excellent or good, representing a cratering in the response over the course of five surveys starting in 2011. The drop was 29 percentage points from the 70% who saw the overall direction of Park City as being excellent or good in 2011. A question centered on the cost of living of Park City resulted in a disastrous response, with a mere 12% rating it as excellent or good. The figure had dropped 14 percentage points from the response of 26% in 2013.

Other responses that are of consequence in the context of the beginning of an Olympic era included:

• The traffic flow of major streets, dropping to a 25% excellent or good rating from a high of 68% in 2011.
• The ease of travel using public transportation, falling to a 67% excellent or good rating from a high of 89% in 2013.
• The overall confidence in the Park City government, dropping to a 56% excellent or good rating from the 66% in 2013.
• The community as a place to visit, garnering a strong response of 92% excellent or good. The result, though, was a slight drop from the 96% figure in 2013.
• The overall economic health, at 88% excellent or good, up 7 percentage points from the 81% in 2013.
• The overall image or reputation, at 83% excellent or good after falling from 96% in 2011.

It seems almost certain the shock of the coronavirus, the intense concerns about what Parkites saw as unchecked tourism during the pandemic and fast-rising real estate prices at that time greatly influenced the results of the survey taken in 2022 and 2023. Still, the community has seemed to remain in some sort of funk, if not a malaise, that is difficult to define, even as Park City exited the worst of the pandemic with strength and then moved into the final phases of the Games bid.

It is impossible to predict what sort of influence the Winter Olympic efforts will have on the issues in Park City over the coming decade. The Games could provide new momentum, and access to monies, as City Hall and the County Courthouse attempt to address traffic and transportation. The Games under that scenario could be hailed as a catalyst for progress in the long-running efforts to combat traffic. The Winter Olympics could, at the same time, though, eventually push up real estate and rental prices, already seen as the most expensive in the state, as buyers are attracted to a Games-era Park City. If that were to occur, the Winter Olympics would likely be blamed in some circles for aggravating an already challenging housing situation, particularly for the rank-and-file workforce.

City Hall plans the next National Community Survey in late 2024, giving Parkites an opportunity to consider the impact of the Winter Olympics as they answer questions like the one about the direction of Park City.

By then, the celebratory atmosphere this summer surrounding the awarding of the Games may have encountered the stark realities of organizing a Winter Olympics in a community that already had so many concerns for the future.

Jay Hamburger has been a staff writer at The Park Record for the past 27 years.

The post Games could widen fractures in Park City appeared first on Park Record.

The coal mining industry reacted with outrage when the Bureau of Land Management recently announced plans to stop issuing new coal leases on the eastern plains of Wyoming and Montana.

From its headquarters in Washington, D.C., the National Mining Association predicted “a severe economic blow to mining states and communities,” while the industry’s political allies likened the move to declaring “war” on coal communities.

The truth is that coal has been steadily falling from its past dominance as energy king for nearly two decades. Domestic coal consumption dropped to 512 million tons in 2022, down 55 percent since its 2007 peak.

With the downward trajectory expected to continue, the Biden administration’s decision to end coal leasing in the Powder River Basin — the nation’s largest coal-producing region — reflects clear market trends. And far from killing coal, the administration’s plan allows mining to continue as the market transitions. 

Billions of tons of previously leased federal coal remain available for mining from 270 tracts across the nation, which combined cover an area larger than Rocky Mountain National Park. One Montana mine has enough coal to keep operating until 2060. Taken together, economic effects related to ending new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin may not be felt until the 2040s and beyond.

Coal companies are well aware that U.S. energy markets have rapidly changed, a fact they soberly tell investors: “Over the last few years, customers have shifted to long-term supply agreements with shorter durations, driven by the reduced utilization of (coal) plants and plant retirements, fluidity of natural gas pricing and the increased use of renewable energy sources,” Wyoming’s largest coal producer, Peabody Energy, disclosed in its 2023 financial filing.

Even with declining markets, the Biden administration did not come to the decision on its own. Arguing that BLM’s past reviews of coal’s contributions to climate change were inadequate, a coalition of environmental groups sued the government and won. That forced the agency to revisit whether more coal leasing was warranted.

“For decades, mining has affected public health, our local land, air, and water, and the global climate,” said Lynne Huskinson, a retired coal miner. She’s a member of the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a Wyoming landowners’ group that was among the plaintiffs.

Now, she said, “we look forward to BLM working with state and local partners to ensure a just economic transition for the Powder River Basin as we move toward a clean energy future.”

Huskinson lives in Gillette, Wyoming, where a dozen highly mechanized strip mines sprawl across the grasslands of the Powder River Basin. The Wyoming mines alone produce 40 percent of U.S. coal while employing less than 10 percent of the nation’s 44,000 coal workers.

The Basin’s mines have leased 8 billion tons of federal coal since the 1990s, a cheap and plentiful supply for the industry. The leasing process allows companies to nominate desired tracts, and then bid with little or no competition. Winning bidders often pay less than $1 a ton for coal, plus a nominal annual rent and a royalty after final sale.

There is little question that leasing helped launch and sustain the region’s energy boom. But in his 2022 decision, Judge Brian Morris of the Federal District Court of Montana cast his eye toward the future. Morris wrote that federal law required BLM to consider “long-term needs of future generations” that included “recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic, scientific, and historical values.”

The judge also gave the federal agency an out: “Coal mining represents a potentially allowable use of public lands, but BLM is not required to lease public lands.”

Morris’ words cleared the way for BLM to stop leasing, a decision that dovetails with a Colorado College poll that found most residents in eight Rocky Mountain states—including Wyoming and Montana—want Congress to prioritize conservation over energy development on public lands.

The legal wrangling will likely continue, with the BLM reviewing protests from the coal industry and its political allies that lay the groundwork for more lawsuits. For now, though, it seems the Biden administration’s decision to keep coal in the ground not only follows the market and the law, but public opinion, too.

Peter Gartrell is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a consultant in Washington, D.C., and covered coal leasing issues as a journalist and congressional staffer.

The post Writers on the Range: Coal continues its precipitous decline appeared first on Park Record.

My life as a journalist frequently is a lone wolf venture. I go into a flock, try to mix in while conspicuously different from everyone else, and observe as closely as I can. I might pick up a scent, I may well howl or growl, less often even bite. Metaphorically, of course. A story is something you track down, hunt. Even the sweet features.

But I ran in packs through the bulk of my 20s. Firefighting largely is a team sport. I looked at it as sport, anyway, with all the elements of competition with the fire, other crews, crewmates, self.

I grew up playing team sports, mainly baseball and basketball. One year in junior high, my last chance, I weighed a pound over the minimum and had my lone season in organized football through Pop Warner.

Mostly, though, I had to settle for playing basketball as if football, more than one coach remarked. Not in praise.

Baseball dropped off because I couldn’t hit. But I tackled basketball well enough to top out as the only one on my varsity team shorter than 6 feet. I only played because I was the ultimate hustle monkey, and I kept our star player, the league co-MVP, fed with passes and covered the best perimeter player on the other team. In summer league, a point of pride, I fouled the crap out of a guy who went on to the NBA, a 6-5 guard in high school.

I was a better wildland firefighter, built like an actual wire-lean sled dog, able to chip away forever on the line, and apparently I had the right instincts for the work. It helped that most of us had been athletes. One member of the crew before my time had been a No. 1 draft pick in Major League Baseball. Hurt his arm.

Hotshot crews of 20 become ultimate teams through fire seasons, always traveling, in a sense always competing. At least that’s how I viewed it: The lowest form of professional sports. Others looked at it as paramilitary service, or more realistically, grunt work beating dirt with occasional excitement and very little sleep. People who’d been sent to prison did this stuff. There’s perspective.

I was good at it, I think. I could hang individually. I could read fire, had a natural feel for tactics, strategies. I could match talent to positions, lineups, keep a squad or a crew plugging along. I did my homework, especially with investigative reports about fatalities on the fireline. Knowing I inevitably would face what I read about had a way of keeping my attention.

So it’s probably not a complete surprise I got to run one of two squads that make up the full hotshot crew as a seasonal, which was unheard of then. This was a bigger deal to me, looking back, than any editor or publisher gig after that. Never mind this came at the tail end of what turned out to be my last season on the crew.

Then I literally came out of the woods into journalism. I joke that I could barely type when I began this career as a cub reporter, my first assignment to take a picture and write up “Pet of the Week” from the pound. Somehow, I convinced my wife to pick up that gentle, soulful puppy, which turned out to be anything but. The little hell hound tore a couch to shreds one night while we were out for a movie.

The much harder adjustment was going out alone into always foreign territory and coming back to report on those forays, also alone, or if not exactly alone, not cheek to jowl on a fireline, either. There’s no running in a pack with this work, White House press corps jokes aside.

It took a long time to get used to. Newsrooms do develop team-like cultures, let’s say, with shared pressures imposed by deadlines and breaking stories that share a lot with initial attack on a running fire. More than most jobs, I’d say. But nothing will match a season on a hotshot crew. I was spoiled, forged.

I love this work, love my colleagues. We share the struggle and joys of getting our stories online and performing the symphony required for print editions, everyone expertly (one hopes) playing our parts.

There’s no “but” coming here. I knew the pack and had an ache to break away. Then I ran largely alone and missed the pack. I know these instincts are simply part of being human, our need for belonging rivaling our need for individual expression, to make a difference.

Which leaves me at heart that oxymoron, the lone wolf.

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached atdrogers@swiftcharge.netor (970) 376-0745.

The post Journalism Matters: No running in a pack with this work appeared first on Park Record.

The Democrats are doing it again. If Ruth Bader Ginsburg had resigned from the Supreme Court during Barack Obama’s first term as president — when the Democrats controlled the U.S. Senate — then Roe v. Wade would still be law. Obama would have replaced Ginsberg with another liberal justice and there would still be, today, five votes at the court preserving Roe.

Instead, Donald Trump replaced Ginsberg with Amy Coney Barrett several years later, and the court overturned Roe by a 5-4 vote.

Joe Biden is committing the same mistake Ginsberg did: He’s staying on the job too long. The implications, however, are far more ominous.

What’s been obvious for some time now was painfully clear during his debate with Donald Trump: Biden needs to step aside. And by refusing to, he may cost the Democrats the presidency and all the vital powers that come with it. 

Biden is a good man, to be sure. He has served his country admirably over many decades, in the Senate, as vice president, and as president.

And he ousted Donald Trump from the presidency several years ago, eliminating the significant danger a Trump victory would have entailed. 

But he’s now bumbling and stumbling toward an entirely different legacy as the man who gave the presidency back to Trump for no good reason. 

Indeed, there are several big problems with Biden continuing to run for reelection. For starters, presidential candidates should be at the peak of their intellectual powers for the entire term they seek.

This prerequisite shouldn’t be controversial. And yet Biden doesn’t qualify. Put simply, it’s irresponsible— for both Biden and his advisers — to continue trying to run the country at this point. 

Second, campaigns are hard and there are still over four months to go. Being on the ground in key battleground states is vital. For all his flaws, Trump is more vigorous than Biden, by a wide margin.

As bad as the debate was for Biden, it could very well go downhill from here. 

Finally, independent voters will be key in November. Hardcore partisans might not be swayed by Biden’s debate performance. But independents surely will be. They will care, as they should, about the candidates’ vigor and ability to perform in one of the world’s most demanding jobs.

There’s nothing wrong with Biden being in his 80s. But there is something very wrong with clinging to positions of power for too long. He shouldn’t be president anymore — today —l et alone seeking the job for four more years. 

Ginsberg didn’t resign, and conservatives eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion. Joe Biden should be applauded for his service to his country. And he should not seek another term as president.

William Cooper is the author of “How America Works … And Why It Doesn’t.” He lives in Truckee, Calif.

The post Guest Editorial: Just say ‘I’ll go,’ Joe appeared first on Park Record.

It was some kind of Easter miracle. I understand the drop off in visitors happening this late in the season, but the drop off in traffic seems far greater. I don’t think of the traffic on 248 as being visitors.

Both resorts have cut back their operations. Deer Valley has closed Snow Park and Empire lodges. Park City Mountain has started closing lifts and reducing food service. Demand on the mountain is way down, and there’s no reason to keep the food service operating at mid-winter levels with no customers.  But our terrible morning traffic mess can’t possibly be attributable to the kitchen staff at Snow Park Lodge. .  (After my print deadline, Deer Valley responded to customers’ requests and Snow Park breakfast was back on Friday on a limited scale. That’s responsive and adaptive management. I had already had doughnuts from the Kamas Chevron or I would have had a Snow Park breakfast burrito.)

School is in session, construction work continues unabated — in fact picks up this time of year — and the cement trucks are not driving any faster. Local skiers are still here because, well, they are local. But the traffic is gone. 

I drove into town at 50 mph on 248 every day last week, not seeing traffic until the light at Comstock, and that was nothing more than a normal stop light. I made left turns across major streets at uncontrolled intersections and business driveways. Left turns! I haven’t made a left turn since December, instead carefully mapping out errands without needing to turn left. That largely meant doing anything I could in Heber instead of shopping in Park City.

We got our town back. Take a look around. Rediscover why you live here. There are familiar faces everywhere again. It’s wonderful, even if there is dog crap everywhere as the snow melts. Roll back the crowds and chaos of our over-packed, over-capacity, winter season, and when it’s just us, this is a really great place.

Still, if the city is looking for a place to spend some more money on consultant studies, I think a careful look at the sudden and dramatic reduction in traffic is merited. How much of the morning rush is Airbnb traffic from around Jordanelle? Is sticking more hotels out in the bush, like the proposal for a hotel behind Home Depot (for people vacationing on the plumbing aisle?) a good idea? 

The Richardson Flat bus isn’t running. That really did reduce traffic this year. It was often a miserable, cattle car-kind of experience, but it worked. With that out of the mix, traffic is still gone. Can we figure out who was driving there two weeks ago who isn’t driving there now and why? Where did they go?

At the same that time we are choking on success, there is, of course, the looming plan to add even more success to it. The Mayflower expansion is well underway. If you haven’t driven U.S. 40 or looked across the reservoir from either S.R. 248 or S.R. 32, it will be a shock. The base area has been strip mined, with no clod of dirt left where God had put it. 

I keep reminding myself that Deer Valley itself looked like that 40-plus years ago in the early construction stages. It will get finished, eventually, but the size of it means it will be torn up for years in the process.  Since first proposed 40 years ago, I’ve been skeptical of the East Village base area. The terrain looks good, but the low elevation is problematic. The high-density village plan has its challenges. It seems like a redo of the Canyons base — a whole city built for 100 days a year. That’s an issue at every ski resort in the country.

I got a look at the upper terrain this week and feel better about the whole idea. Deer Valley has been opening a couple of runs through the expansion area this week. Ironically, the only part of the mountain that was busy was the part that technically isn’t open yet. Season pass holders were allowed to cross out of bounds and ski a couple of runs that offer views of the expanded area at the top of the mountain. It’s as high as Flagstaff, with exposures similar to Bald Mountain, and will offer some really good skiing when it all opens. The number of lifts involved will take several years to install. The views are beautiful — you can’t see any of the real estate development.

We did the tour on the same day we discovered that Snow Park was closed — no porridge for you — even though we were 40 minutes early because the traffic has vanished. The employee at the gate said closing the lodge was probably a staffing issue. That, of course, raised the question of how they are going to find the employees to double the size of the ski operation, plus base lodge and hotel operations. They don’t exist. 

Unemployment in the area is very low, nobody can hire enough help and there’s no place for them to live. So we’re going to fix it all by doubling the number of employees needed? Do I hear commuter rail to Roosevelt?

It’s going to be a real challenge to integrate that into the Deer Valley operation and still have anything recognizable as Deer Valley left. I hope they can pull it off.  

Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.

The post More Dogs on Main: We got our town back appeared first on Park Record.

$30 million bond? No!

I’m sorry, I simply cannot get on board with all the avid fans of a $30 million bond to support pickleball and ice hockey.

The letters to the editor in this newspaper, and the publicly paid-for mailings from Park City Municipality all offer the same excuses for this massively increased indebtedness in order to benefit a small percentage of Park City citizens.

Many years ago, we went through the same exercise in order to justify a public purchase of the racquet club. There were similar pro and opposed voices on that issue, but the proposal passed. Today the MARC provides recreational opportunities to quite a small percentage of Park City residents, but those do tend to be the most vocal residents regarding publicly funding Park City recreation.

It is very clear, as has been mentioned in a few good letters here, that there are much better places for that $30 million of public funds to be used. I believe a project well-worth consideration for public financing needs to be one for wildlife corridors to protect animals along Highway 224. Can you imagine how many deer, elk and moose that $30 million could buy?

The tennis players, pickleball, players, skaters and fitness users of the MARC should get upgraded facilities. But it does not make economic sense for those upgrades to be shouldered by the wider taxpayer base. And we need to keep in mind that the $30 million only addresses acquisition and building expenses without mentioning the ongoing operation and maintenance costs, which already run at a serious deficit.

I do sympathize with the various organized recreation fans, but I don’t really think the totality of Park City should be paying any more for their fun. One question to keep in mind: What percentage of the current users of the existing ice rink and MARC facilities actually are paying to fund them now?

Personally, I am a big fan of air racing, but I have not gone to my friends and neighbors to ask them to contribute to my fuel and maintenance cost, especially not with a long-term debt for those monies. I doubt that you would see many supporting letters here were I to propose that.

Very simply put, I believe that a city’s long-term public indebtedness should be reserved for significant improvements or high-value open space purchases. There simply is no real justification for using taxpayer monies to build your ball court or ice sheet.

Please think very carefully about how you are going to vote on this $30 million bond proposal.

David Gorrell

Park City

What Park City does not have

Every great city or town has a vibrant, engaging arts district — a place where their local artists and creative makers are able to create and sell their work and are able to engage with the community.  These areas are not fancy, and are usually born organically in areas with low rent and minimal amenities. These areas attract tourists and locals alike, and are a valued and loved part of their communities. Park City does not have this. 

Yes, Park City has galleries on Main, but that is not the same as an engaging local arts district that features retail shops for local makers, collective gallery space and studios. The Main Street galleries serve their purpose catering to second-home owners and collectors that can afford expensive paintings and art, and that’s great. Local art does not compete with that. There is room in this town for both. 

The Kimball Arts Center also deserves a space in this district. It is important to note that the arts center and local art representation are not synonymous. The Kimball does an amazing job at offering classes, and interesting exhibits, but local art gets lost in the middle of those two ventures. 

When I worked at CreatePC, the local arts collective retail and gallery shop sponsored by the Arts Council, literally every person that came in said something like, “I’m so glad I found this place. I always look for the local art shops when I travel.” It was loved by the tourists and locals alike. Now, with CreatePC gone, there is very little representation of local artists and creative makers in Old Town, and indeed, it kind of feels like we are not wanted or valued there. 

Summit County’s local arts community is full of talented, passionate artists, yet the local arts scene has largely been lost or certainly not nurtured.  As a result, the arts scene in Park City is becoming less diversified and not as unique. 

There is always an argument for more affordable housing and that’s valid, but this is not the place for it. Do you really want a bunch more condos in generic buildings rising up in this area? 

I would argue that Park City/Summit County is doing a great job in adding affordable housing to the area: Silver Creek Village, Engine House, in the Canyons, by the film studio, to name just a few. What we do in this space will affect the feel of our community forever. We need more than Main Street. Development decisions must be made thoughtfully, as once this area is gone, that’s it, no more opportunities to add flavor to this town. 

A community full of art is a community full of culture. Imagine an area where this culture is thriving!  The 5-acre parcel and surrounding area is an exciting possibility for activating a cool, vibrant, engaging space.

Imagine Kimball Arts Center on one corner, artists in their studios interacting with people while they create. Affordable art that is accessible to all. Add in creative-maker retail spaces. Murals on buildings. Music. Food trucks. An atmosphere that is lively, and creative and fun. 

This is art reflecting life, and this is the kind of arts community locals and tourists crave. This type of vibrant local arts scene is sorely missing in Park City and would be a huge benefit, now and in the future. 

Karen Millar Kendall

Park City

Forum Monday focused on climate change

Last month, I had the privilege of attending an event hosted by Summit County Health that shed light on the profound connection between mental health and climate change. During the event, I came across a particularly striking statistic from a 2021 survey of 10,000 young people in 10 countries, aged 16-25. The survey revealed that close to 60% of these young individuals expressed feeling “very” or “extremely” worried about the impending threat of climate change.

A year ago, I found myself deeply disheartened by the escalating impacts of climate change. It was at that point that I decided to step off the sidelines and actively engage with organizations that were dedicated to combating the adverse effects of our rapidly rising temperatures.

Through my involvement, I’ve had the privilege of meeting numerous individuals who are dedicating their intellect, passion, and time to effect change at the local, state, federal, and global levels. Moreover, I’ve come to appreciate the significant contributions made by public, private, and non-profit organizations that are on the front lines of innovation, policy change, and conservation efforts.

My perspective has significantly shifted, and I am now more optimistic about our collective ability to confront and address climate change than when I was solely an observer of news reports and documentaries.

For anyone grappling with climate anxiety, my heartfelt recommendation is to get involved in climate action. On Wednesday, Nov. 1, 6 p.m. at the Santy Auditorium, the Wasatch Back Chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a non-partisan group committed to building political will for climate solutions, will be co-hosting a panel discussion with Park City’s six city council candidates.

The purpose of this event is to explore the ways in which Park City’s actions can make a meaningful impact on addressing climate change. I encourage you to join us and take part in the conversation. It’s an excellent opportunity to delve into the issues and discover how you can contribute to the cause.

Tracy Harden

Park City

Grateful for Live PC Give PC support

We would like to express our immense gratitude to Park City Mountain and Vail Resorts EpicPromise for their unwavering support as presenting sponsor of our community’s annual giving day on November 3. Live PC Give PC epitomizes the spirit of unity and generosity that defines Park City, and Park City Mountain’s involvement exemplifies their commitment to our local nonprofits.

Beyond their steadfast support of Live PC Give PC, Park City Mountain has recognized our community’s critical challenges and stepped in to invest in real solutions. Last year, Park City Mountain supported by Vail Resorts EpicPromise contributed $4,500,000 to 24 Park City nonprofits providing critical programming for local families.

In deep partnership and understanding of the need, they focused on two key areas of support — child care and affordable housing. They’ve pledged over $675,000 to expanding child care and preschool in the community, including $400,000 through our Red Pine gondola cabin fundraiser, and $250,000 in multiyear support to Mountainlands Community Housing Trust for working families’ access to local housing. It’s heartwarming to watch Park City Mountain genuinely care and play a pivotal role in bolstering our nonprofits and helping them move their missions forward.

As we gear up for Live PC Give PC, we want to extend our heartfelt thanks to our entire community for participating and to amazing sponsors like Park City Mountain and Vail Resorts EpicPromise that help make it all possible. Cheers to an amazing year!

Alexis Brown 

Park City Community Foundation 

The best day of the year is Nov. 3

Seriously the best day of the year in Park City is LivePCGivePC when everyone in the community comes together to give to the non-profits – that make Park City what it is. Our community is based on what our citizens and non-profits give to make our community what it is. I hope you’ll join me in going to the website livepcgivepc.org on November 3 and giving to your favorite organizations. And join in the enthusiasm and energy throughout town on that day. Thank you!

Julie Hopkins

Park City

Let’s stem the wildlife carnage on 224

We all know what happens on our roads — Park City’s S.R. 224, in particular. Drivers and large animals too frequently collide. We need real solutions. 

Next year S.R. 224 will be expanded by 40% and 60% between Kimball Junction and Park City proper, becoming at least a six-lane thoroughfare. The intention is to increase Bus Rapid Transit by adding dedicated bus lanes on either side, plus bike lanes, walking lanes and curbs. S.R. 224 will change from its current 82-foot width to between 115- and 131-foot width, according to BRT designs. Travelers will still be incommoded with traffic pinch points at the beginning and end of 224. More importantly, this project will increase driver-wildlife collisions unless our community takes action. 

Utah taxpayers spend an estimated $130+ million annually in damages and deaths from driver-wildlife collisions. As it stands, Park City’s S.R. 224 is the fifth most dangerous stretch of road in the entire state of Utah for these types of collisions. The new road will fill the corridor from Swaner Nature Preserve, past McPolin’s historic white barn, and into Park City proper, resembling I-80.

The number of driver-wildlife incidents and deaths will increase without additional safety measures. If we must expand the road, wildlife fencing and a natural wildlife passage over or under S.R. 244 should be included and built before spreading asphalt. These wildlife connectivity measures will pay for themselves in nearly two years, costing one sum of $3-$5 million, plus maintenance. Compare that to the annual millions we pay for incidents without these safeguards.   

As we see and lament the carnage of deer, elk and moose daily along 224, not to mention what we do not readily see in human consequences, I wonder why safety was not factored into the project. Why are Park City and Summit County acquiring open spaces to protect views, wildlife and habitat while concurrently planning to significantly expand this wide-open, unprotected road?

Wildlife fencing and passage over or under the road would reduce incidents and deaths by up to 90%. Wildlife passages are that effective. Google the praise given UDOT for building the wildlife overpass that we hardly notice at the Parley’s Canyon summit.

If we care about wildlife, drivers, safety and views, let’s act on this and insist on fencing and animal connectivity. The animals know no better. They cross the road to seek water, food, partners and herds. They are most active at dusk, night and dawn when drivers struggle to see them and can’t avoid collisions when they finally do. We have the knowledge and wherewithal to address safety on behalf of both drivers and wildlife. Let’s do it.

I urge that individually and together we communicate with our Summit County and Park City Council members. Council members have expressed a preference for email. If you support safe wildlife fencing and passage on 224, which naturally increases driver safety, please write an email letter as soon as possible to savepeoplesavewildlife@gmail.com. All email letters will be given to the Park City and Summit County councils. Also, visit https://savepeoplesavewildlife.org/. The folks who run this organization have done the lion’s share of research for the rest of us, tracking this subject for years.

Meg Leaf

Park City

Candidate forum focused on climate

Living on the outskirts of Park City, I have had the privilege of witnessing and taking advantage of the remarkable strides made in sustainability in Park City, from their eco-friendly electric buses to the flourishing green businesses.

That’s why I’m thrilled to be part of the Citizen Climate Lobby Wasatch Back group, one of the key sponsors of the upcoming Climate Solutions Panel on Nov. 1. Together we will explore the candidate’s strategies for advancing Park City’s pioneering, leadership role in curbing polluting emissions, protecting our common home from a changing climate and safeguarding the air we breathe.

This is an opportunity to hear the ideas of Park City’s future candidates, as we pose pressing questions from both our youth and the wider community.

Are you curious about their plans to reduce waste, improve transit systems, and create eco-friendly buildings? Eager to understand how they’ll preserve the invaluable trees and soil that act as carbon sinks in our community? What questions do you have?

Join us on Nov. 1 at 6 p.m., when the conversation takes center stage at the Jim Santy Auditorium, in the Park City Library. Let’s collectively speak up for a greener, more sustainable future for our beloved Park City.

Joan Entwistle

Citizens Climate Lobby Wasatch Back

The elusive ‘S’ in a grand ol’ name

Park City exists because of treasure — primarily, silver treasure. Back in 1868 a couple of miners found some promising looking rocks up behind what is now Cushing’s Cabin at Deer Valley.

They stuck a staff in the ground and attached a flag to mark their claim. This eventually became the Flagstaff Mine, the first mine in the Park City area. This original silver treasure eventually gave way to the current winter sports treasure.

On Dec. 21, 1963, Treasure Mountains ski resort opened. That is Treasure Mountains, with an “S,” not “Treasure Mountain.” It remained Treasure Mountains until it was renamed Park City Resort in 1968.

Ever since that time many folks have been misspelling the original name. Perhaps the confusion started in 1965, when the Treasure Mountain Inn officially opened; or 1982, when Treasure Mountain Junior High Schooo opened. There is a Treasure Hill (top of Payday chairlift), and a Treasure Hollow Ski Run at Park City Mountain, but there never was a Treasure Mountain ski resort. 

It’s time we started showing our grand old mountain some respect. Don’t forget the “S” when writing about Treasure Mountains. See you there on Nov. 17.

Jim Tedford

Treasure Mountains Ski Patrol

Should share the cost burden for recreation

Facing consistent pressure from non-Parkite pickleball enthusiasts, the Park City City Council deftly and purposefully deflected responsibility to ballot in the form of the shortsighted and frankly punitive Go Bond.

Park City is indeed a recreation town. We love our non-downhill activities from Nordic to mountain biking and more recently pickleball.

That said, I’m bewildered and appalled that the surrounding community has the audacity to harass our government to put this irresponsible initiative to vote. There are 70,000 people in Wasatch and Summit counties who use our facilities at the same fee structure as Parkites, while not sharing in the property tax onus.

Why are we Parkites even considering this handout? The City Council did Parkites a disservice. Go Bond supporters encouraged aspirational youth figure skaters and other athletes into publicly supporting the bond via council meeting comments and letters to this very newspaper. Attempts to manipulate public sentiment haven’t persuaded me. This initiative isn’t fair. 

If approved, the Go Bond will cost the average non-resident Parkite an additional $20 per month to support facilities they most likely won’t even use. That’s $240/year or $144 to subsidize facilities that most of us won’t use. I support recreation, but this bond is an affront to Park City taxpayers. These construction costs should either be shared by the surrounding citizens or there should be a zip code based fee structure.  

Vote no on the Go Bond. If Parkites and the surrounding community truly want these facilities, let’s equally bear the tax burden. 

David Kleinman

Park City

Where will the water come from?

Where is the new Mayflower ski project getting its water to make snow? Because they’re obviously going to have to make snow. The Jordanelle? Has the local government granted permission to use this community resource? If we don’t have enough water for our grass, how could we possibly have enough water for more snowmaking?  The snow isn’t going to fall from the sky no matter how much people hope it will. Scientists tell us that it needs to snow for eight and more years like it did this past winter in order to return to some type of “normal” — which, of course, won’t happen. This is the new normal.

What’s happening with the Park City government? Why do real estate developers almost always get approval for what they ask? There are new builds everywhere, not to mention the projects at Deer Valley and Park City Mountain. Where is the affordable housing that has been promised for decades? I agree with Angela Moschetta that Park City and its environs need some type of moratorium on building to have time to do studies and develop plans.

We have 1) diminishing water resources and no water conservation plan; 2) no urban development plan; 3) no infrastructure plan; and 4) no traffic mitigation plan that I can tell. If the city does have these plans, it would certainly be nice to know. 

What about the often-discussed parking lots/structures on the outskirts of town that would allow workers to park their cars and take shuttles to/from their jobs in Park City in a bus-only lane? Less traffic, less pollution of both airborne and noise levels, less aggravation. This summer, northbound 224 was a parking lot at 3:30 p.m., with one person/car. It’s outrageous, a waste of fuel and human energy, and so unnecessary. 

We have skied in Park City for almost 40 years, and lived here part time since we bought our condo in 1999. We are increasingly saddened by the “progress” that’s happening in our beautiful and special part of the world. 

Dr. Jan E. Prokop

Park City

The post Letters to the Editor: ‘$30 million bond? No!,’ ‘What Park City does not have,’ ‘Forum Monday focused on climate change’ appeared first on Park Record.

In 1940, Ralph Ingersoll believed he’d built a better newspaper.

Ingersoll had been the managing editor of the fledgling New Yorker magazine and held the same position at behemoth Time-Life publications, where he launched Fortune, the business magazine. All of those publications had lucrative advertising. Meanwhile, Ingersoll had developed different dreams. He wanted to establish a news publication with no advertising, to be in the business of news and at the same time, he said, to free himself from business interests.

The better newspaper was called PM. It was a New York City daily, and a liberal sheet, in the vein of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which had inspired Ingersoll. Roosevelt pushed hard for public works projects, which were achieved in some prominent instances by the federal government constructing power dams and reservoirs, including in the West, to sell consumers electricity at tax-subsidized rates (over the objections of many businessmen).

Ingersoll created a newspaper that was just as progressive. Instead of the government, PM was subsidized by Marshall Field III, polo player, heir to the Marshall Field department store fortune and a forerunner of the limousine liberal. The next year, in 1941, Field launched the Chicago Sun newspaper to compete against the archly conservative Chicago Tribune; it still exists today, as the Chicago Sun-Times, an ad-supported news operation now owned by Chicago Public Media, a public-radio concern.

Field and other investors kicked in $1.5 million to capitalize PM, the equivalent of about $32 million today. The rest of PM’s costs and profit — although there never would be a profit — was supposed to come from sales and subscriptions.

The paper created a stir out of the gate. It ran large photographs. It touted its independence. Theodore Geisel, already the children’s book author Dr. Seuss, drew cartoons for its editorial pages, including some depicting Japanese and Japanese-Americans in crudely racist ways. James Thurber, Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway were among PM’s contributors. Its photographers included Weegee and Margaret Bourke-White.

In another departure from American newspaper norms, PM only ran signed editorials, sometimes on the front page. Its first, by Ingersoll, applauded the overseas resistance to Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, at a time when many Americans were isolationists and appeasers. It proclaimed, “We are against people who push other people around.”

That became PM’s motto, one that’s still serviceable today. Newspapers are supposed to punch up, if they must, and never down.

Being free from business interests quickly led PM into financial trouble. It needed to sell 225,000 copies a day to break even; it averaged 165,000. After its demise, in 1948, Ingersoll theorized the paper was done in by a conspiracy among the same business interests it scorned, although that looks unlikely. More probable is that there was no American news-media escape from the advertising model. PM couldn’t avoid the influence of business interests because it was a business interest.

Little has changed in that regard since the paper went under.

In an edition this week of the Columbia Journalism Review newsletter, we read an interview with Victor Pickard, a media policy expert at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, who “envisions a clear fix for the funding crisis hamstringing public media and local news organizations: the injection of more tax dollars.”

The crisis, as CJR and Pickard see it, is exemplified by a steep loss of advertising revenue as well as layoffs at National Public Radio, and at newspapers from The Washington Post to The Roanoke Times.

Pickard believes that “commercialism degrades journalism.” He says we “know what happens if we allow our media to be so driven by … market imperatives.”

Yet our media has been driven by market imperatives for a long time — since before the founding of the country, whether it was the money that came to printers from purchasers of the pamphlet “Common Sense” or the advertisers who eventually supported landmark journalism on CBS (making CBS a bundle) or in The Washington Post and The New York Times. How are we to escape them?

According to Pickard, “municipalities should purchase dying local papers and … the federal government should fund locally-operated city papers.”

This is a terrible idea. At the core of the missions of many local papers and news media, dying or not, is covering local government critically and impartially.

Several weeks ago, in Greece, a freight train collided with a passenger train between Athens and Thessaloniki, killing at least 57 people. Some leading Greek politicians attributed the crash to human error. Elements of Greek radio and television, which are under direct state control, seconded that view. Then Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis apologized in a Facebook post, saying the crash was due to a lack of basic safety measures. A principle union of Greek journalists also apologized, stating, “As long as the media are removed from their mission to control power, as long as the prioritization of news is dominated by criteria unrelated to the defense of the public interest, as long as media enterprises are limited to operating simply as businesses and in terms of television ratings and traffic, as long as journalists are subject to limitations in investigating, the institutional guarantees for the functioning of the state will be weakened.”

If local governments owned local papers, the governments would become the business interests that degrade journalism. If we were to ask Park City Hall what it would change about The Park Record if it owned us tomorrow, we suspect it could come up with a lengthy list without having to ponder much. Every article that local government has ever asked local news media not to publish, another lengthy list, would never see the light of day once the government ordered rather than asked.

According to NPR, 37% of its income now comes from corporate advertising and sponsorships. Another chunk comes from local public radio stations that pay hefty fees to air NPR programs, which the local stations raise in part from corporate advertising and sponsorships. If local and federal government replaced those fees with taxpayers’ money, the pressure to defund public radio any time a listener, a taxpayer or, even more likely, a legislator heard something they didn’t like would probably be immediate and irresistible. Right-wing talk radio, all ad-supported, would notch a greater walkover. And we would lose stalwart news programs like “Morning Edition” before you could say “media policy expert.”

Markets can be cruel and advertisers fickle, but compared to the powers of the state, they’re still little more than trifles.

The post Editorial: Pipe dreams of news appeared first on Park Record.

After we published an article last week about the ongoing rumpus over the proposed Dakota Pacific project near Kimball Junction, “Limited but strong support for Tech Center development emerges,” we saw a few comments that were so sharply worded, castigating The Park Record for reporting on any support for the development, that we wondered whether we were in agreement about what news is and what news organizations such as ours do.

There’s hardly a soul in Summit County who is unaware that many voices have been raised in strong and sometimes rancorous opposition to the Dakota Pacific project. We feel confident in that statement because The Park Record has published many of them. A recent Park Record guest editorial, for instance, calls Dakota Pacific “soulless, immoral, unethical, and greedy.” And that’s fair game. People have a right to punch up. The people behind these voices are taking their parts in acts as fundamental to this democracy as the Boston Tea Party.

We should remember, too, that there were British loyalists in the colonies in the Tea Party days who were treated atrociously for holding views that once had been de rigueur. During World War I, Americans who demonstrated in opposition to the war and the draft were jailed. Some were deported to the Soviet Union while the U.S. Supreme Court took a nap. As the republic has grown, it has remained radically itself while becoming more tolerant of dissent. We’d like to think Americans believe it’s better to countenance it, and learn from it if we can, than to quash it. We believe we’re ultimately better this way.

There’s no issue, locally, nationally or internationally, on which people are of one mind. We can’t even agree about what time it should be on the moon (yet). There are important arguments to be made for free ski parking for locals, deficit spending, and the defense of Ukraine; even if we support none of those things, we are stronger for considering them. There’s probably no one sane person who would love, like or even agree with everything that is said just in a single issue of The Park Record — and that too is as it should be. We don’t issue marching orders. We try to provide food for thought; to inform, not compel.

In our news coverage of Dakota Pacific, we’ve written prolifically about the opposition to the project. We’ve written about it almost exclusively because it’s been manifest — and that’s the news. But it’s not all of the news. No one article ever is. When some support for the project emerges, as it did at a recent Summit County Council hearing, that’s a fact which the most hardened opponents should at least want to consider. And even if Dakota Pacific opponents vastly outnumber supporters, as seems to be the case, we still want to hear from both sides.

One recent commenter who opposes the project counted the number of words that were given to the supporters of the project in the “Limited but strong support” article, the words that were given to opponents, and concluded this ratio was not representative of the size and force of the opposition in the community.

This would be a stronger argument if the article were all we had to say about Dakota Pacific, but it’s not. It would be a stronger argument, too, if journalism were a strictly quantitative endeavor and we hired mathematicians as reporters. We probably couldn’t afford mathematicians, however, and then there is the small matter of not knowing what to do with them if we could.

Journalism is a quantitative and qualitative pursuit, both. The “what” and the “how many” are equally important. If we only wrote about support for Dakota Pacific, no matter how qualitatively well we did that, it would be disproportionate, at odd with the facts and poor reporting. And the same would be true if some strong but limited support for Dakota Pacific emerged at a Summit County Council hearing, such as a neighboring apartment complex manager saying there is a pressing need for still more apartments beside his — and we ignored that because while it sure seems like news to us, it doesn’t fit with the predominant opposition. That last judgment isn’t in our job descriptions. Here’s what is: We try to bring you a range of views, consistent with the facts, so that you can shape your own, well-informed opinions.

And if one day a man bites a dog, we might tell you about that, too, for legendary reasons.

If we do our jobs right, you may from time to time see a statement in The Park Record with which you disagree, even strongly. This shouldn’t be a cause for alarm, especially on the opinion pages. Disagreement can be an essential, wonderful thing. It’s only when you’re being told to march in lockstep that you should fear what comes next.

The post Editorial: Don’t fear dissent — or support appeared first on Park Record.