Cops win bike races
Members of the Park City Police Department, racing as ‘the Pedaling Pigs of Park City,’ won seven medals in bicycle races in Arizona recently.
Sgt. Mark Schaerrer, who is on the team, said the officers won one gold, four silvers and two bronzes in competitions in Mesa, Ariz. Schaerrer, officer Chris Oles and officer Ed Clouse competed for the Police Department.
Schaerrer said the team started with five members of the Police Department’s mountain-bike squad.
He said the team received permission from City Hall to use the Police Department’s logo in the competition, held March 15-18.
Schaerrer said the team held fundraisers to pay for the trip to Arizona, which took 12 hours to drive, meaning that taxpayer money was not spent on the competition, known as the Southwest Police and Fire Olympic Games.
“It’s just sort of bragging rights in law enforcement,” he said.
Other agencies that competed included the police departments in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Flagstaff, Ariz., Schaerrer said.
The Police Department’s bicycle patrol has operated for at least eight years, he said, and five officers are currently on the patrol. The mountain-bike patrols operate all year.
Schaerrer said the officers on mountain bikes are useful because they are able to travel on terrain that police SUVs are unable to access.
“We’re able to do some interdiction we’re not able to in a patrol car,” he said.
Transportation plan
The Park City Council has adopted a broadly worded document outlining the local government’s strategies along the city’s entryways, S.R. 224 and S.R. 248.
On Thursday, the elected officials adopted what is being called a strategic plan for the entryways that includes objectives, strategies and policies.
The two state highways carry virtually all of the traffic in and out of Park City and there have been ongoing complaints, especially in the last few years, about congestion on them.
Some of the objectives include planning on a regional basis, making sure that the government understands the amount of traffic on the roads and ensuring that the roads are used to capacity before expanding them.
Some of the strategies include expanding public transportation, assisting with developing and promoting a park-and-ride lot and analyzing the traffic impacts of development.
The elected officials adopted the document as there has been some talk about building park-and-ride lots somewhere along the entry corridors. That, the supporters say, could lessen traffic inside the city limits during popular ski weekends and the Sundance Film Festival.
There have not been detailed public discussions regarding those ideas, however.
Financial award
A national organization recently informed City Hall that the local government had been honored for its financial reporting.
The Chicago-based Government Finance Officers Association handed City Hall a certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting. The award honors the city’s comprehensive annual financial report.
The organization calls the award “the highest form of recognition in the area of governmental accounting and financial reporting” and says “its attainment represents a significant accomplishment by a government and its management.”
Stephen Gauthier, the director of technical services for the organization, said the certificate is awarded to governments that value transparency in its financial reporting.
He said more than 3,000 such certificates are handed out each year. Governments nominate themselves for the award. Local and state governments are eligible.
Gauthier said winners are “governments going way beyond the minimum standards” of financial reporting.
The organization said City Hall has been honored with the certificate each year since 1987.
Compiled by Jay Hamburger