At the annual Park City Leadership Symposium on Friday, Park City Mayor Ryan Dickey set up a conversation with Sen. John Curtis by giving his thoughts about increasingly polarized U.S. politics, which he said was often focused on arguing rather than finding solutions.

“In local government, we don’t have the luxury of leading like that. … Every day we’re here to solve problems and bring people together,” Dickey said. “No one cares if the mayor is a Democrat or a Republican when they want to go to work in the morning and the streets aren’t plowed or, God forbid, if they want to get pickleball time and the tennis players are there. These are real issues. The pickleball party rises above partisan politics.”

When Curtis came onstage, Dickey asked whether the senator had observed an increase in political polarization.

Yes, he agreed, polarization has increased over the past decade, particularly due to social media.

“I could post how much we love puppies on my social media, and somebody would say, ‘See, I told you he was an idiot,’” Curtis joked. “It sadly drives a lot of the narrative in Washington, D.C.”

But he also said that polarized narrative overshadows the bipartisan problem-solving that does occur.

“If I could just literally transport all of you into Washington, D.C., into a day in my life … you would see that most Republicans and Democrats actually like each other, that we get along. We travel together. We eat together. We do things together. … In any given week, I’ll bet I hear four or five times, ‘Let’s find a bill to work on together,’” he said. “We’re kind, and we like each other’s personalities. And that, obviously, is boring, right? And it doesn’t make social media.”

Curtis pointed to the Fiscal Commission Act as an example of bipartisan collaboration. He introduced the legislation with the sponsorship of four other Republicans, four Democrats and an Independent this week. The Fiscal Commission Act would create a bipartisan commission focused on finding legislative solutions to decrease the national debt, which now exceeds $38 trillion, according to Curtis’ website.

Climate change is another way Curtis has pushed bipartisan collaboration. He founded the Conservative Climate Caucus in 2021 to address climate change from a Republican perspective.

“If you can flip climate to be a bipartisan issue, we can flip about anything. And I think that’s one of the things that I’m really proud of, is getting Republicans to actually say the word climate,” he said. “The reality of it is, look, we’re Utahns, and every Utahn, in my opinion, cares deeply about this Earth and leaving it better than we found it. Now, all of a sudden, that’s a basis for a conversation.”

He pointed to artificial intelligence as one way conversations around energy have changed in recent years. 

“Years ago, we were talking about 1, 2% growth in energy,” Curtis said. He believed that made it easy to have conversations about which power sources were best. 

Due to advances in artificial intelligence, “We’re really in a world right now where we need every electron we can get,” he said.

“And this challenges both sides of this debate,” he continued. “We’ve got the current executive branch trying to undermine wind and solar. … And some of my colleagues that have been traditionally against the fossil fuels are realizing themselves, ‘Wow. We’ve got to think about this.’”

He believes changing the narrative to focus on energy growth rather than the sources it comes from will lead the market to naturally “take control” and provide energy that is clean, reliable and affordable.

Water conservation is another issue Curtis believes is an issue that must be addressed at all levels of government and by individuals, particularly after the 2034 Olympics.

“There’s zero question in my mind that we will pull off the best Olympics in the history of the world,” Curtis said.

He said Utah must prepare for growth that may occur as a result of the 2034 Olympics. It’s something he observed after the 2002 Olympics, when people across the globe increasingly realized Colorado wasn’t the only state worth skiing in. He said that growth will create a need to address issues ranging from water conservation to transportation and infrastructure.

Wrapping up the panel, Dickey asked for advice from Curtis, who was Provo mayor from 2010 to 2017, about how to approach his first term as Park City mayor.

Firstly, Curtis recommended adapting the format of town hall meetings. When he was Provo mayor, he allowed public commenters to use their allotted time to meet with him one-on-one instead of speaking in front of a crowd. 

“It totally changed the dynamic of the information I was getting back,” he said.

Secondly, Curtis relayed something he’d heard recently from Brett Hart, the president of United Airlines — a leader is responsible for culture. He said the same is true of a mayor. Whether it’s how police officers treat residents or whether a pesky pothole gets filled, the mayor takes responsibility for everything that happens in their municipality. Similarly, the mayor is responsible for ensuring every resident feels heard.

Finally, Curtis told Dickey to enjoy it. 

“I’m now eight years away from being mayor. Nobody in Provo cares about what the tax rates were when I was mayor. You know what they care about? They will tell stories of the day you showed up at the elementary school in your pajamas to read stories to the kids,” he said. 

Dickey’s final question for Curtis was whether he had any advice about how to address Park City’s parking woes. Dickey said Curtis was spotted on Main Street during Halloween in a past year, dressed as SpongeBob Squarepants, rushing to his car, which was seconds away from being towed. Sadly, Dickey did not provide any photo evidence of Curtis dressed as the cartoon sea sponge. 

Curtis didn’t have any specific advice about parking, but urged Dickey to “figure it out.”

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Mayor Nann Worel later in July is headed to Paris as part of the state’s official delegation to International Olympic Committee meetings on the eve of the Summer Olympics in the French capital.

The 2034 Winter Olympics are expected to be awarded to Salt Lake City on July 24 and the mayor intends to remain in France on a fact-finding mission during the opening days of the Games.

But what lessons from the Games in Paris might the mayor bring back to Park City with the community likely to begin discussing the 2034 event more vigorously in the coming year?

The trip will be the first official City Hall outing to an Olympics — summer or winter — since the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. The Games in 2000 were the last to be held before the 2002 Winter Olympics, when the Park City area hosted upward of 50% of the events, and the final opportunity for an earlier generation of Park City leaders to study a Games in person.

It is almost certain the mayor’s trip to Paris will be the first in a series of Olympic-related travels for City Hall. There will be two Winter Olympics before 2034, in 2026 and 2030, as well as two Summer Olympics after this year’s event, in 2028 and 2032, prior to 2034.

City Hall will likely want to observe the transportation systems employed by the organizers of upcoming Games, learn about impacts on businesses, and study the plans for celebrations and security. Information like that is seen as being best gleaned in person and that line of thinking influenced the Park City officials who planned the Games in 2002.

More than 22 years after the Olympic cauldron was extinguished at the close of the Winter Games in Salt Lake City, the travels by municipal officials in the years prior to 2002 are again noteworthy. Much of what was learned during those Olympic visits appears to remain relevant even today as Park City readies for the initial stages of planning for a second Games in the state and with the community again being crucial to the overall concept.

A document produced by City Hall in the months after the close of the Games in 2002, “The Park City Experience,” provides a review of the earlier Olympic era and the municipal role in the staging of the event.

Key points in the sections about the travels are included as lessons learned from each of the Games, which City Hall leaders attempted to incorporate into the plans for 2002. In some cases the lessons identified by the municipal government were broad, even thematic, and in others they focused on specific issues.

“Upon the award of the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City in June of 1995 came the somewhat disquieting realization that it was one thing to campaign for the Games, quite another to actually stage them,” the City Hall document from 2002 says.

The document outlines lessons City Hall learned during trips to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and the Summer Olympics two years later in Sydney. There is also information about visits to 1994 Winter Olympic host Lillehammer, Norway, and 1992 Winter Olympic host Albertville, France, that were made in the time after those cities hosted the Games.

One of the sections about lessons learned in Atlanta, concerning the relationship between an Olympic organizing committee and the communities where Games venues are located, was notable in the earlier era and remains so today. The work between an organizing committee and the communities is one of the critical tasks during the planning of a Games, and there were widespread worries about the topic in 1996.

“Venue community relationships with ACOG were generally unsatisfactory when expressed by local government officials,” the document says, referring to the Atlanta organizing committee for the Games by an acronym.

It says there was a “lack of understanding of how (or if) local government costs were to be reimbursed” and there were “murky contractual relationships with ACOG.”

“There seemed to be considerable jurisdictional friction between cities, counties, and various state agencies, much of which seemed to predate the Olympics but was nonetheless detrimental to solving problems of mutual concern,” the document says about the Games in Atlanta.

Some of the lessons learned in Atlanta:

• “Major logistical challenges were often met with pooled resources, specifically public safety.”

• “Successful venue communities appeared to be those with significant development of facilities that could serve as economic development legacies, notably Columbus and Conyers, though that did not necessarily translate to positive relationships with ACOG.”

• “Some venue communities were facing serious budget deficits due either to a lack of planning, lack of understanding about resources impacts, lack of support from ACOG or the state – these included Gainesville, Hall County, Rockdale County, Conyers and Savannah.”

• “Areas with a pre-existing tourist industry suffered a significant economic downturn during the Olympic year, particularly the City of Savannah and the Buckhead area of Atlanta.”

Some of the lessons learned in Nagano:

• “Host communities may be more successful by staying within themselves and showcasing local culture.”

• “Utah needed to prepare its ski and tourism industries for Games-related downturn.”

• “Public gathering places are an Olympic reality that need to be managed and specifically produced and programmed.”

• “Logistics planners need to develop contingency plans for weather-related schedule changes. Delays create cascading effects on transportation, security, and traffic management plans.”

Some of the lessons learned in Sydney:

• “Business interests in areas away from the Olympic venues were generally supportive of the Games though business was flat or down in many places.”

• “Public celebration of the Games is an increasingly important aspect of the contemporary Olympics.”

• “Venue communities around Sydney had to be aware of ambush marketing activities and were themselves involved in protection and enforcement of Olympic marks.”

• “Olympic legacies were highlighted and very important to Sydney’s venue communities — legacies were not necessarily physical or tangible, some were organizational or behavioral.”

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