{"id":6400,"date":"2016-11-23T07:51:49","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T14:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.parkrag.com\/?p=6400"},"modified":"2016-11-23T07:51:49","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T14:51:49","slug":"parkites-stop-freaking-trump-concentrate-real-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/23\/parkites-stop-freaking-trump-concentrate-real-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"We Parkites should stop freaking out about Trump and concentrate on our real issues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Can Park City stop freaking out about the election of Donald Trump yet? We hope so.<\/p>\n<p>From schools <a href=\"http:\/\/www.parkrecord.com\/news\/education\/after-trump-win-summit-county-schools-vigilant-for-bullying\/\">saying <\/a>they are going to enforce bullying (we thought they already did that), to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.parkrecord.com\/news\/park-city\/environmentalists-search-for-silver-linings\/\">worries <\/a>about whether snow will continue to fall during a Trump presidency, to the Sheriff&#8217;s Department <a href=\"http:\/\/www.parkrecord.com\/opinion\/editorial\/local-law-enforcement-and-the-community-will-not-participate-in-trump-deportation-plan\/\">saying <\/a>they &#8220;won&#8217;t participate in any sort of roundup&#8221; of undocumented immigrants&#8230; it&#8217;s frankly becoming a little too much.<\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t say that because we support groping women, or want to build a wall, or want to defraud you and your kids with some &#8220;school&#8221; aimed at changing your life. We don&#8217;t condone any of that.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, the immediate issues<em> that will have an impact on us<\/em> seem much more pressing. We hope you don&#8217;t get disillusioned with government over a Donald Trump presidency. It&#8217;s too important of a time to turn yourself off now.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the local issues we are thinking about:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We as a community have a lot of wants: Better transportation. Better schools. More Ice Skating Rinks.\u00a0Better fire service. Better recreation. More Pools. \u00a0Better athletic facilities. More Open Space. Higher teacher salaries. That all has a cost. \u00a0Do we have the money for it all?<\/li>\n<li>Park City has benefited from the financial bubble we have been living in. The wealthy have done well and that has flown into Park City. Interest rates have been low and that has benefited both construction, business formation, and home prices (for home owners).\u00a0Can that continue?<\/li>\n<li>More importantly, what does the above mean for tax revenues? Government additions over the last few years have to be supported. Transit Centers have to be maintained. Additional employees have to be paid. Capital expenditures have to be funded. Have those costs been adequately accounted for?<\/li>\n<li>The good thing about recessions is that they temper growth and development. It&#8217;s been a long time since we had a recession. There&#8217;s been a lot of growth. What does that mean when the next recession hits?<\/li>\n<li>This is the first time we have had five democrats on the Summit County Council. There was always something refreshing about Republican Dave Ure&#8217;s perspective. Tal Adair, a Republican who took over for Mr Ure\u00a0did a fine job in his short tenure. We&#8217;re not fearful, but we wonder what it will be like now.<\/li>\n<li>From what we hear, people close to the school board&#8217;s new master planning effort say it is an improvement over last year&#8217;s failed bond. We&#8217;ve heard nothing official but hope they can find the right balance that will achieve broad public support.<\/li>\n<li>While we don&#8217;t doubt they exist, who is going to buy all these new $400,000-$600,000 homes and town homes that are being built? There are only so many people that can afford a half a million dollar house (or second home).<\/li>\n<li>Then&#8217;s there&#8217;s that little Treasure Mountain deal. That&#8217;s a mess.<\/li>\n<li>Oh, and then there is Bonanza Flat&#8230; Park City voters were willing to raise property taxes to put $25 million toward buying it. We&#8217;re not savvy real-estate folks, but we&#8217;d guess the real number to buy it is at least 4 times that. Will Parkites be willing to pay that much?<\/li>\n<li>Then there is our pet issue, transportation. If you&#8217;ve read the Park Rag recently, you know we were against the sales tax increase for transportation. The voters voted to give\u00a0the city and county money to fix the transportation problem, and that&#8217;s OK with us. The people have spoken \u00a0So, now literally, the rubber hits the road. City and County, you&#8217;re now on the clock.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We think those local issues, and many others, are much more important that fretting over a Trump presidency &#8212; especially before anything has been done. We hope we can all concentrate on the real tasks at hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can Park City stop freaking out about the election of Donald Trump yet? We hope so. From schools saying they are going to enforce&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[74,37],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}