This week was going to be a wrap-up of all the stupidity at the state Legislature. There was enough of that to take two weeks’ space. Their actions ranged from blatantly stupid to outright malfeasance.
For example, despite Utah’s terrible air quality, the Legislature thinks it is a great idea to require the power company to burn more coal. The rest of the world has come around to the idea that burning carbon is killing the planet and us along with it. Not here.
Even though it is actually more expensive to maintain and operate the coal-fired plants that have reached the end of their designed life, the Legislature wants them to keep burning more coal. They also want to exempt the power company from liability if they set the entire state on fire by failing to adequately maintain their lines. That happened in northern California, and ended up with the utility in bankruptcy.
That won’t happen here. Burn baby burn.
The Legislature also went whole hog on usurping the role of local government in land use. They have created a bunch of new state-level agencies to subsidize development: They want to spend a billion (yes, with a “b”) each on a MLB baseball stadium, and a NHL hockey rink, to be paid for by a bunch of special tax increases.
For the baseball stadium, increased hotel room taxes levied in Summit County would go toward paying for the facility because, you know, baseball fans are going to stay in Park City when going to the game.
Then on top of the existing special agency for the redevelopment of the old prison site, we have MIDA expanded to building hotels at Sundance and “inland ports” popping up all over. These are all operated by appointed state officials with no accountability to anybody. And they want to keep their records secret.
There is a proposal to require an armed guard in every school. Where the districts can’t afford to hire armed guards, they can use volunteers. Nothing would give more peace of mind to worried parents than knowing that the neighborhood gun nut has volunteered to sit in the hallway of the elementary school all day, waiting to shoot somebody. Maybe, in the spirit of efficiency, the armed guard could also look down the kids’ pants to make sure they aren’t going into the “wrong” bathroom.
And it goes on. They are spending more money to study how to study to get more water into the Great Salt Lake. (Hint: quit growing/use less.) Nobody is actually spending anything acquiring water rights, seriously reducing use, or God forbid, slowing growth.
Water consumption records on golf courses are considered a national security secret because golf courses are good for real estate development. And nothing says water conservation like our socialist state subsidizing the home building industry to build 35,000 new houses. The 150,000 people who will live there won’t use a drop of water and will be too heavily mortgaged to afford golf.
But the top news story of the week comes from Brighton, where a crazy old man with a shotgun threatened to shoot a guy on a snowboard who ducked out of bounds to ski back to his Airbnb. The snowboarder went down a plowed alley — some reports say it is a public street — and was confronted by a crazy old man with a gun.
We know that he is a crazy old man with a gun because he is sitting in a lawn chair in the middle of the road waiting for somebody to ski or board down the lane. He’s also wearing his pajama bottoms outside in February. (Perhaps he’s training to be the armed security volunteer at your kids’ school.)
As the boarder goes down the driveway, with his GoPro rolling, the guy confronts him and shouts, “This is private property. Are you an Ikon user? I don’t give a f##k.” The boarder says he’s sorry, didn’t know it was private property, and was just trying to get back to his Airbnb down the way. The old guy gives him a pretty good shove, but fortunately never actually points the gun, though it’s definitely there and has to be taken seriously. The snowboarder remains surprisingly calm and backs away quickly.
So even among the crazy-old-man-with-a-shotgun demographic, the Ikon pass is despised. It’s not clear which had driven him to the point of committing assault with a deadly weapon — the Ikon pass or the Airbnb next door, but one or both of them had pushed him over the edge.
While that reaction is obviously completely psycho, I suspect that more than one local skier, standing in last weekend’s long lines of people with the multi-resort passes, has wondered about the “benefits” of the multi-resort passes that have completely changed skiing. Before Ikon, parking at Deer Valley was tight, but generally was available. After Ikon, parking is filling by 8 a.m., and even midweek is gone by 9:30.
Ten years ago, there was no need for the Richardson Flat shuttle system. It’s now the Ikon Express, packed tight both ways. The passes are a great deal for everybody except the resort locals, be they Deer Valley season pass holders or crazy old men in Brighton.
The video of the Brighton incident is online if you search “Brighton shotgun.” I assume it will soon go national. It’s exactly the kind of marketing piece we need.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.