needing to regain the community’s trust<\/a>, I wondered what could be done in the future to get better numbers regarding capacity. In the article I said that going forward the public needed to question\u00a0everything. \u00a0That sounds good in an article, but in practice, the citizen rarely has as much\u00a0information as the person sitting on a government board. In practice, if citizens have to question everything, it’s going to be miserable for everyone involved. Isn’t there someone that could both have most of the information but is also responsible for vetting ideas?<\/p>\nOf course,\u00a0they are\u00a0already sitting on our city councils, school boards, county councils, etc. They just need to both have the confidence that asking a lot of questions is fine and be given the “freedom” from the rest of the board that being critical is OK. A great example is outgoing County Council Member Dave Ure. Mr Ure\u00a0was\/is the only Republican on the County Council. So, by default he was given the leeway to look at things a bit differently. Would Mr Ure\u00a0spend hours belaboring points? No. What he would do is have\u00a0a couple of critical points that he would\u00a0bring up that would be original and contrary to what other people were saying in a discussion. For example, when he was was one of the two County Council members to vote against continuing as part of the Mountain Accord,\u00a0he questioned whether the environment would be better off because of the program. He said\u00a0that the Mountain Accord was supposed to be about the environment and he felt our watersheds would be worse off because of the Mountain Accord. \u00a0He found a way to question the prevailing thought, and he did it in a constructive\u00a0way.<\/p>\n
We can contrast that with the Park City School\u00a0Board where there was a year without a dissenting vote. Would the school bond process have been stronger, and may it have even passed, if there was someone\u00a0on the board that questioned almost everything about it? For sure. The parts that were found to be weakest would have been fixed by the board. If those discussions would have been held out in the open, would the public have felt that the plan had been drug through the ringer and gained more confidence because of it? Likely.<\/p>\n
I’m not advocating for the person who beats the dead horse, who continually asks dumb questions, and wastes time. I’m advocating for the person who may say, “How did you calculate those enrollment numbers? \u00a0Can you explain that again, I don’t get it? Do they represent real capacity? It doesn’t\u00a0sound like our schools are going to be full? Does this plan still make sense if we have negative growth and our schools aren’t\u00a0at capacity? Is there another way to solve this?”<\/p>\n
I know that some people think that any dissention shows weakness, but my experience from watching other councils and boards is that the public gets comfort from knowing that conflicting views are being presented and understanding why either those conflicting views are strong enough to stop a process or why the process was strong enough to overcome\u00a0the negatives.<\/p>\n
The County Council is going to have a harder time\u00a0because Dave Ure isn’t going to be sitting next to them asking the tough questions. Luckily on that board there are a few contrarians that raise their hands on various issues. \u00a0So, they’ll likely be fine.<\/p>\n
I hope other\u00a0individuals on other boards\u00a0and councils around Park City have the confidence and wherewithal to play the part of contrarian now and then. Then in November, we the voting public need to remember there is value in those who see the world a little differently. A little contrarian questioning authority now and then\u00a0can be a good thing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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