U.S. Congressmen John Curtis and Blake Moore, state Senators John Johnson and Ron Winterton and state Representatives Kera Birkeland and Mike Kohler: We in Summit County are very concerned with the state mingling in our zoning and planning for our land use development. We are all appalled that the four county representatives voted for this bill and pleased that our senators did not.

I have read your regret on the way some of you voted for this bill and ask you and the other representative to help Summit County prepare to file a lawsuit against the state to fight this, should the governor approve this proposed disaster. If the governor sees this proposal, then an immediate VETO is needed.

We understand the traffic survey is very skewed and distorted in favor of the developer as was the back-door lobbying to push this illegal bill. A Traffic Impact Study (TIS) was commissioned by Dakota Pacific and peer-reviewed by Wall Consulting, which was supposed to be an out-of-state audit with no known connections to Dakota Pacific. The study was fundamentally flawed since the assumptions were all given by Dakota Pacific. This includes just studying the traffic on weekdays only. No traffic data was collected for the weekends! We all know the entire valley comes up to ski on the weekends during the ski season. The vehicle traffic data was taken from UDOT cameras on a single day in April.

What they are not addressing with any of the proposals is the 500 to 600-plus school-aged children (as per the latest proposal of 700-plus units) that would reside in the housing units and the need to build a school for them in the neighborhood as well. The Park City School District owns land between the Kimball Junction Tech Center and Olympic Park. The traffic survey does not address that very real concern as well.

The backdoor lobbyists and the politicians that are pushing this are for the developers who are paying the donations and they are the only ones in favor of this proposal.

We encourage you to show up at county meetings to hear and speak to the corporations, lobbyists and politicians that are trying to override the existing county zoning laws. But mostly we encourage you to listen to your constituents in Summit County, particularly residents of Park City and Snyderville. 

The County and Dakota Pacific appear to be on a path for a lawsuit and we should welcome this and support the county if it comes to this.

Len Starbeck

Summit County GOP Snyderville Regional Chair