The Park City School District is taking on — with a lot of help from friends — what the professionals have declared a mental health crisis among the young.

Depression, anxiety and bullying have grown epidemic, in no small part thanks to social media addiction. Thinking about suicide has risen, and carrying it out by 2021 had exceeded 6,500 Americans between the ages of 10 and 24, according to the Pew Center. This is the second leading cause of death for children and teens.

Adolescent girls are the most at risk, and social media has emerged as a dangerous carrier of a contagion less obvious than COVID.

Panelists representing Live Like Sam, the Utah School Mental Health Collaborative, government agencies and others spoke in turn Wednesday evening at Park City Hospital’s Blair Education Center about their role on a team working ever closer together on behalf of local students.

Fun and fundraising fuel for Live Like Sam’s part will come soon at The Marquis on Main Street — Saturday, Sept. 21, including local “American Idol” finalist Wyatt Pike and Neil Diamond cover band Super Diamond. Tickets: livelikesam.org/gala

This was the more serious counterpart to a gala, the long warm hug that says we’ve got you to those giddy moments when you realize you’re so happy to be alive and sharing the phenomenon in this community, despite all.

The core, the catalyst to all this of course is as dark as it gets for a family, a greatest fear come true and now what? Live Like Sam’s founders lost a son and brother to a ski accident nine years ago, in October 2015, at the age of 16, not so long after winning the U.S. Junior Men’s National Championship in combined freeskiing.

Sam’s father, Ron Jackenthal, said plainly on Wednesday he was lost and needed the kind of help that his organization aims to deliver for Park City’s kids.

Underscoring the why of this team, a video showed how Sam lived larger than life and then Summit County Behavioral Health Director Aaron Newman, a Live Like Sam board member, talked about a community wake-up call when two junior high students died in 2016 of drug overdoses.

“The community realized this is an issue for us,” Newman said. “We had to find a better way to do this.”

Step by step, the county and the school district, the university and the state and others have learned to work ever more collaboratively, he and others who spoke said.

In Utah, the entity responsible for youth mental health is the county rather than a school district, he said. With state funding, the county was able to triple the mental health clinicians working in the schools from three to 10, along with beefing up crisis service with professionals available to help to six days a week, around the clock.

He encouraged the audience to download the app Safe Utah, a crisis line, which he credited as lifesaving. He also pointed out a flaw with the nationwide 988 mental health crisis phone number: For people with out-of-state numbers, the pickup is in that number’s area code, not Utah. Call 801-587-3000 instead, he urged.

Park City School District’s newly created mental health coach, Jed Thomas, a school psychologist, acknowledged the district’s issues with student bullying that culminated in an ugly civil rights report last spring that in its way has galvanized the district to do better.

“Many of you know this,” he said. “Probably the No. 1 protective factor for well being and resiliency is a trusting relationship with an adult.”

Through the University of Utah and grad students, the district has a relative wealth of access to mental health help, he said.

Along with the university and associated Huntsman Mental health Institute, Live Like Sam works with app-based Thrive and WeBeWell to extend its wellness and resiliency efforts among students. The founders of each also spoke.

Thrive, a state-certified, evidence-based mental wellness program, was developed in conjunction with and overseen by WeBeWell, that teaches local youths life skills.

The founders showed statistics about the pernicious effects on kids from social media, perhaps most responsible for an astonishing rise in anxiety in recent years. Cheers rose among the audience at the mention of keeping cell phones out of the classroom at the Park City School District, part of a nationwide drive now including statewide bans.

Live Like Sam’s fundraising efforts are key to supporting the team jelling around mental health wellness in the schools.

Jackenthal said the nonprofit he and his daughter, Skylar, launched five years ago expects to raise $500,000 this year to support the effort.

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This used to be a nice, quiet town. Everything has changed, gotten so congested and expensive. I can’t live here anymore.

This used to be a lively place. Now the town is dead and there are no jobs, and nothing to do. I can’t live here anymore.

Nothing ever changes. This town has been exactly the same as long as I’ve known. I can’t live here anymore. 

You can’t go home again. Well, duh.

How much ink has spilled over Thomas Wolfe’s book? The title, I mean. No one actually reads the novel, published posthumously in 1940.

This is like using “Alice in Wonderland” to talk about something else. “Catch 22” is another, right there with “Mission Impossible.” It’s way more fun to talk in metaphor than in straight up, plain words. Better yet in titles, so compact.

“You Can’t Go Home Again” is another cliché, true. It’s also a root truth beneath the tired indictments of where someone has lived for any length of time, voiced endlessly as if profound, revelatory, unique to this place.

But it’s not. Ski towns, beach towns, farm towns, factory towns, mining towns, every suburb defined enough to have a council and some that do not, college towns, big cities, little ones. This is Dr. Seuss, to fish out another metaphor from authors’ names or nom de plumes.

No place has changed in my lifetime more than Honolulu, where I lived young and returned right out of high school from one of those eternal suburbs, same as ever to this day. No place was more faded and worn out than upstate New York, save maybe the middle of Illinois, where I had the window seat in the 1990s as editor of a local daily in each.

I’ve stayed no place longer than in a ski community that in many ways I have to acknowledge grew better rather than worse, all considered. With roundabouts and development came amenities, more trail systems, better concerts, better athletics, a cancer center, the world’s best orthopedic surgeons, more choice among restaurants, improvements in education and opportunity for the kids. And as here, I could be in the wilderness within minutes, still able to find trailheads without another car in the lot.

An old, old rancher in the Vail Valley long before the ski resorts told me once: “Don’t let anyone tell you it was better then. Trust me, it wasn’t.”

Yet the mournful howls are joined en masse, almost eagerly as if joining a coveted club, a pack of true locals. Yes, all’s gone to ruin, I know. The place is pure hell now, red moon full, greedy monsters all about or else their factories gone for good.

The owners of a fancy clothing store in Vail Village made a lot of noise about bailing when I arrived in 1999. Colorado had voted out the Olympics, but still the skiers came. We learned quickly that you couldn’t get to Denver from there on a Sunday afternoon or evening, same as trying to come up from Denver on Friday nights and Saturdays, all bumper to bumper on I-70.

I respected that the disgruntled couple made a decision to move someplace quieter, one of those innumerable alternatives in the West alone. Doing something besides endlessly griping as if choices didn’t exist. We always have a choice, after all.  

Last fall about this time, I read yet another story about the end of the ski bum lifestyle, the latest of a genre going back to Warren Miller, who wrote a weekly column for the Vail Daily while I was there.

Heather Hansman’s “Powder Days” was a community read in Park City, so you might have read it, too. I loved it, but I also noted with extra interest the weary trope about how those days are all over now etc., etc., etc.

See, she didn’t even start her golden age in Beaver Creek until 2005, living the life and loving it all at a certain phase, just while we adults with kids in a whole ’nother stage of life duly noted others lamenting the end of it all with no hope for evermore as we suffered through a development boom. It’s all soured since, as she’s grown up, sure. Another cycle yet turns.

But you’ve had to have met some exuberant new young bums, as I have, on the lifts right here. Somehow it works, at least for a bit, as it did for Hansman, Miller and maybe you.  

The end of skiing is adjacent to town’s gone to all hell as skiing and ski towns together run at peak popularity in fact. There’s a Yogi Berra aspect to this: “No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” Except here they all are, still, skiing decidedly not dead or even stale.

In a blink this will change, someday. Climate change will have its way, and resorts are likely in the fullness of time to overextend or collapse of their own weight. Park City could well go the way again of a Leadville, or a Sterling, Illinois, or some other ol’ once was, used to be.

If so, the howling will be just as mournful and useless, and shared, the loss keenly felt. I heard it across the Midwest and Rust Belt, unvarnished, unpainted, unrelenting. If one must choose between poles, in rural poverty at least you know everyone in what restaurants and grocery stores are left. And homes are cheap — only you still can’t afford them.  

I confess I’m not with the howlers and the moaners, the victims helpless against the tides, whether flowing or ebbing. If this is you rearing back and opening your jowls, the urge is telling you something: Make a choice. Stay or go. Or make the choice that I see as solid a minority as I’ve ever seen making right here. That is, clamping down on the challenges of too much posterity and all the down sides with that.

There are in fact bigger problems in the world than ours, worse places to live, more to mourn than a long lift line. Just saying. The sun also rises.

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at drogers@parkrecord.com or (970) 376-0745.

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A rough year for the Park City School District got rockier with school board members who won’t be there next year saddling the district with an expensive contract renewal for a superintendent who may have outlasted her welcome.

I say “may have” because the issue here isn’t really Superintendent Jill Gildea, but the board. It’s been the board for a bit, I think, or more specifically a plainly temperamental president too often allowed his way. That’s not too personal, is it?

The three who rammed the renewal through all had abandoned their quests for reelection, whether growing weary of a hard job that comes with criticism in the best of times, reading the electorate that voted out the incumbents in the last school board race, or simply discovering better things to do with their time nearly all at once.

All of that is understandable. I’ve always thought the school board is the toughest public assignment, having observed plenty of these boards and administrations between upstate New York and the southern California coast, along with rich and poor communities in between.

You do get a sense for which school districts are functioning well and which are struggling. Covid and this still post-Covid era have tested especially the schools. I had the window seat on Truckee, Grass Valley/Nevada City, Aspen, now Park City. But I was most familiar before then with Eagle County, Colorado — the Vail Valley’s district — where my kids went and my wife worked.

A sign of the shoals came with the completely unsurprising discovery this week that Gildea has been job hunting. A network serving public charter schools in Colorado this week named her their only remaining candidate for CEO.

The wrinkle is that their board decided this nearly a week before the dramatic Park City School Board vote last week against the will of the board members and candidates who will be picking up the pieces next year.

A clause in her contract appears to stipulate that Gildea notify the board if she decides to look for a new job. The “board” didn’t know this. The full board also had no idea they would be voting to renew the contract this year instead of next when the school board president announced this in an interview with the thoroughly evil media.  

A Caesar complex is a sign of a dysfunction, sure enough. Whatever grip Caplan has on the rest of the board, that’s not healthy. It’s a big part of why I suggested he leave now rather than at the end of the year. He may have been a terrific school board member in earlier times, and maybe through Covid, those most trying and scary days. He’s not a positive force now, however.

Or is this just the news media making it all up? KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher made him to declare the board would renew the contract with her wily ways. The lame ducks didn’t power through with a 3-2 majority against the will of just about everyone else involved. Construction has gone well. The soil isn’t really toxic. What bullies? All that state and federal stuff? Figments of the media imagination. The media has all the power, not a school board president. Everyone knows that.

Ironically, perhaps, Dr. Gildea’s biggest problem is Caplan himself. I’m sure this is not his intention, but he’s dragging her down. We’re confusing issues with him as hers as well.

Rough patches happen. Education and bureaucracies cannot be rinsed clean of humans, after all. Kids are marvelous and they are the worst sort of brats. They are kids. It takes parents, a village, a community, the school system to raise them responsibly. By and large, though, the district is helping produce quality adults. Let’s acknowledge that, along with their teachers, principals and support staff including administrators.

Superintendents guide the slow turns in the big ship, influencing the classroom but not in it. Academically, the district is doing pretty well. The extracurricular opportunities are pretty vast. The teachers are pretty good. That’s more the fingerprint of the superintendent than the board.

Circling wagons and playing cat and mouse with the “media” and therefore the larger community is more of a board issue, frankly. There’s a tone that needs to change. I believe this will improve dramatically with the new year.

The Park City Follies were on to something, I think, piling on the district superintendent if at times meanly, I agree, though with sins better laid on the board. The real problem has been a board majority that has gone much too much along with the president and his temper, an Achilles’ heel now.

Gildea deserves a chance to show what she can do with a different, more open, more friendly board that also listens better. If she leaves now, which is understandable, I’ll credit the hubris and the predictable reaction to a lame duck majority ramming through the renewal. That was wrong, simply put.

I’m looking forward to the district again getting it right. I’ve seen that many times, too — a new board following a terrible reign with relief and a lot of positive steps from there. Tying the hands of next year’s board with the renewal now is problematic, but leave open the thought it could prove providential in the end. How’s that for an interesting paradox?

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at drogers@parkrecord.com or (970) 376-0745.

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A wagon train of mountain bikers more or less endured some words, some ribbon cutting, before bouncing in turn onto the new Bonanza Loop Trail shortly after 3 p.m. Wednesday, excited to try it out.

A Park City born and raised resident stepped out with her dad, also born and raised, for a quick Instagram hike, well pleased.

And finally a writer, seeing the trail empty and clear of embarrassment, took off on a slow, slow test run through brush near Guardsman Pass Road before turning into old growth aspen, part of a wide refuge chock full of wildlife including plenty of moose. Dogs are not permitted here for the very reason.

The ribbon cutting was the culmination of several years’ worth of collaboration on the trail since Park City bought the 1,500 acre Bonanza Flat Conservation Area in 2017 for $38 million, which required a $25 million bond to pass and $13 million more in old-fashioned fundraising.

The collaboration required to work on all this and the trail system would be wagons circled, wise counsel taken. Park City Municipal, Summit County, Wasatch County, Salt Lake County, a baker’s dozen of nonprofits including the trail and land conservation organizations. The cats all fit in the sack, well herded, on the same path, choose your cliché, it has worked out. Congress should run so cooperatively.

The loop goes 5.2 miles, and a network of trails weaves through the area. Another trail will connect to a longer one from Wasatch County in time.

Park City Councilor Tana Toly has worked on the project for at least the past two and a half years, actually longer.

“You know, I run up here a lot,” she said while explaining the work and the collaboration. But the council’s Trails & Open Space liaison said she had never imagined how much went into building a trail, especially a mountain biking trail, getting the grades right and making it all work together.

“There’s a science, there’s an art to building a trail,” she said. “So we definitely relied on our experts in the field, even when it came to council, to make decisions.”

Those experts included Mountain Trails Foundation and Utah Open Lands, whose director of community engagement, Alli Eroh, is another born and raised Park City resident who didn’t miss her chance to join the celebration and take in the wide views from the Bonanza Flat parking lot.

Toly recommended the shuttle from town as a convenient way to come to the area in summer as well as winter.

The hope is for hikers to traverse the loop one way and mountain bikes the other, with some signage to that effect. The early explorers on bike and on foot Wednesday went the same way, though.

For a runner, the trail requires close attention to one’s feet, as mountain trails tend to do, but the grade up and down was as comfortable as that can be, especially pushing up.

“There is no question that a well-built trail improves the recreational experience. What many don’t consider is that a well-built trail also considers other conservation values on the land,” said Wendy Fisher, executive director of Utah Open Lands. “It is always a pleasure to work with the team at Mountain Trails Foundation and their willingness to seek and work with us on the alignment of this trail was incredible.” 

She and others spoke of the rich wildlife in the area — moose, deer, bear, mountain lions and birds, lots of birds. Lots of calving and fawns, along with nesting and fledglings, convinced the partners to prohibit dogs here.

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Promontory’s foundation on Tuesday evening, during happy hour at many bars in town, distributed $400,000 and sure, drinks too, among familiar community service organizations.

To cherry pick among the 32 chosen this year, there was the Egyptian Theatre, Youth Sports Alliance, Hope Alliance, Peace House, Mountainlands, Friends of Mining History, People’s Health Center, the Christian Center of Park City, the Kimball Art Center. And so on.

The big winner was PC Tots, revealed at the end as the recipient of the annual Promontory Promise grant of $50,000. Elation among their representatives betrayed this as a happy surprise for them.

Quietly, without the notice or quite so much exhilaration, are the Promontory homeowners who donated the bounty to the foundation to hand out at The Happiest Hour.

Handing out isn’t quite the right description, however. The 10-person board made up of residents and a sprinkling of Promontory employees scrutinizes the applications and often visits the organizations seeking grants. This year 48 of them applied.

Each member of the board scores the requests and then the board meets as a group to sort through the applications.

“We … talk through what organizations do we really feel are in the biggest need, and where can our grant have the biggest effect,” said Kelli Brown, Promontory’s general manager and a member of the foundation board.

Their overarching theme is to support social services and the arts. It used to be about a 50-50 split between those two and over the years has tilted more toward social needs in the community, she said.

“When you read these applications and realize how many people out there in our workforce that’s so necessary to make this community work don’t have access to affordable services, we just felt like there’s just a lot of need out there,” she said.

Board members took turns at Promontory’s Nicklaus clubhouse to read off grant winners and brief descriptions of what each organization does while representatives came to the podium for certificates, along with handshakes or hugs. Then it was off to get their photos taken to the side of the room festooned with red and white balloons.

Afterward, they all mixed in a familiar happy hour setting with drinks and appetizers and commiseration, some old friends, some made new.

Promontory Foundation raised the funds through donations from Promontory Club members during its annual summer fundraising events. 

“Promontory Foundation is incredibly proud to be one of the largest philanthropic sources for our vital non-profits that make the Park City area so special. Our members feel deeply connected to Summit County and recognize the crucial role of non-profits in meeting the needs of the community, whether that is providing critical social services or access to dynamic arts and cultural opportunities,” said Meryl Van der Merwe, Promontory Club’s director of community engagement.

The Promise Grant winner, PC Tots, provides early childhood education and care to children and their families regardless of financial barriers, and will use its winnings on scholarships.

“The Promontory Foundation has been a consistent and generous supporter of PC Tots. This support has allowed us to provide high quality early education for children of working families in the Wasatch Back,” said Sue Banerjee, PC Tots’ executive director. “As the recipient of the Promontory Promise Grant, PC Tots will be able to use the $50,000 to provide more working families with tuition scholarships, thereby helping to make high quality care affordable. With the support of the Promontory Foundation, PC Tots is a step closer to realizing our vision of a community where all children have the opportunity to reach their full potential.” 

The foundation’s grant total exceeded last year’s then-record $372,000. The foundation began in 2006.

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A fire that started Saturday afternoon near the border between Tooele and Juab counties and swelled to 2,300 acres in a few hours stalled in the evening as up to 50 mph wind gusts died out.

Smoke from the fire flowed into Summit and Wasatch counties in the afternoon and evening Saturday.

Residents who had been evacuated between Vernon and Eureka were allowed back to their homes and S.R. 36 reopened at 1 p.m. Sunday. Fire officials said zero percent of the fire had been contained.

The Boulter Fire started around the same time, 1:30 p.m., as an up to 2-acre fire in Silver Creek Estates was knocked down in under an hour despite gusting winds by Park City Fire District crews. That fire, which didn’t damage any structures, is being mopped up while the one near Tooele has exploded.

The Boulter Fire began off Highway 36 near the Tooele County-Juab County border. Heavy, gusty winds pushed the fast-growing fire in grass and brush to 2,300 acres by 5:30 p.m., according to Utah Fire Info.

“A wind shift from the west is now pushing the #BoulterFire into the Tintic Mountain Range north of Eureka,” Utah Fire Info reported around 5:30. S.R. 36 is closed in both directions. The Northern Utah Type 3 incident management team has been ordered.

Residences were evacuated between Vernon and Eureka, and the highway closed. Multiple ground resources are fighting the fire and more have been ordered, according to Utah Fire Info.

“Bulldozers are being utilized to build the fire line,” according to Utah Fire Info, which said the fire is six to eight miles from 5 Mile Pass and “is moving quickly. Federal, state & local resources on scene.”

“Fire behavior has lessened due to higher humidity and winds not currently blowing 50 mph. Fire has not crossed Faust cut-off road at this time,” Utah Fire Info reported around 10 p.m. “Fire will be monitored tonight. The Type 3 team will be in — briefed at noon (Sunday).”

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Nextdoor neighbors Eric and Susan Hermann filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Third District Court asserting that they are harmed by the approvals of the Park City Planning Commission and rejection of their appeals to date of the plans for a large new home at 220 King Road.

The couple alleges in their claim against Park City’s government that they are harmed by the municipality’s actions and plans for a new house on the adjoining property they say is out of character for Old Town.

Their arguments through their attorney, Justin Keys, are the same as they have argued unsuccessfully at each turn of the approval process since last October, when the Princes submitted amended plans to tear down two homes on the property that were slightly taller on a slightly larger building footprint with slightly more square footage of finished living space than the 7,500-square-foot single family home they aim to build.

Their plans last week passed the final municipal approval in an administrative historic-design review led by Park City Planning Director Rebecca Ward, who determined that the roof overhang on the north end of the structure should be about 13 feet shorter, and that remaining floor-to-ceiling windows on the east-facing side in the plans needed to go.

The Princes bought the property in 2020 and since then have worked to build the home they have said they want to raise their children in and see their daughter married in.

Matthew Prince in spring 2022 unsuccessfully tried to have the state Legislature override the local approval process. In October 2023, the Princes put forward amended plans to the Planning Commission and invited feedback on those. At the beginning of 2024, they requested that the commission decide on their plans, triggering a 45-day deadline according to state law.

Among the bigger changes in the plans the Planning Commission approved narrowly on Feb. 14 at the close of a nearly six-hour meeting were a 24-section of roof line raised three feet to break up a 117-foot straight-line section, and leaving two stories of basement space unfinished to meet an interior height requirement that the applicants disputed was necessary in the master planning district where the property is located.

They also sought to shift the building footprint several feet further west, into the slope, which they said would also lessen the visual impact of the 33-foot-high structure.

The Planning Commission determined that the plans complied with the rules of the Sweeney Master Planning District, where larger homes on larger properties overlook Old Town’s historic district on small lots. The application for the home on 1.23 acres was complicated by the overlapping districts and the view of 220 King Road from City Hall.

The Appeal Panel upheld the Planning Commission’s process and approvals, and last week the application passed the design review, which is subject to appeal to the city Board of Adjustment.

In the suit, the Hermanns argue that the historic district codes should take precedence over the Sweeney Master Planning District rules and plat notes for 220 King Road, declare that the Princes made few changes in their application after planning staff in 2022 raised concerns about it, and forced the Planning Commission in 2024 to rush to a decision.

The suit also notes that the Appeal Panel declined to consider a late letter from the Hermanns questioning the Planning Commission’s determination that the city’s sensitive lands overlay boundary did not touch the Prince’s property and did not apply to their application. The suit alleged the Appeal Panel should have held another meeting after determining that the Hermanns’ assertions of errors in the commission’s meeting over the sensitive lands boundary were incorrect.

The suit also asserts that the Planning Commission improperly ruled that improvements to the driveway that crosses a Hermann property can happen as outlined in the plan within the easement.

The Hermanns in their 24-page suit argue that the commission approved illegal plat notes and therefore the body’s approval was illegal too.

They ask the court to reverse the Planning Commission’s approvals and award them reasonable attorneys’ fees.

The existing homes at 220 King Road were demolished in July. The new Prince house would have 7,461 square feet of finished living space, 5,898 square feet of unfinished basement space, and an 1,103-square-foot home office.

The largest plane of four levels, including the two basement floors, is 11,300 square feet and includes the area of the home, parking area, fire truck turnaround, and ancillary space.

The Princes own The Park Record.

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Citing a headline in New York Magazine, “Welcome to Kamalot,” an editor at The Deseret News decided in a recent commentary atop the home page that the news media is promoting the new Democrat presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, instead of covering her.

That was weird. I don’t mean the assessment of the coverage.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The New Yorker, The Atlantic et al are “the media” or “the press.”

So what does that make The Deseret News, The Wall Street Journal, FOX News, National Review? The anti-press? Reality shows? The definitive secular voice of God?

The conceit, of course, is that a conservative-minded commentator is somehow different — more accurate, more sincere, while standing apart from the lowly “press” — than a liberal-minded commentator critiquing conservative coverage, barely concealed lip curls and eye rolls as identical as their hairstyles and suits.

There’s nothing remarkable about either in the political press — let’s call that what it is — all intoning from on high. You know what you’re going to get tuning in to FOX or CNN, reading The Journal or The Times.

Pick your preferred Truth, basically. You’d have to read or view broadly if anything approximating reality is what you’re after. But so few of us are after that. There’s the real truth.

People don’t want an unbiased media. They want the media biased their way.

Blowtorch journalism

Last Saturday, the center piece of The Deseret’s home page was an analysis about “grievance journalism” — going for outrage instead of more even-handed coverage.

The commentary focuses largely on punditry about the press: New York Times columnist and author Frank Bruni and his book, “The Age of Grievance” (2024), along with other authors plowing similar themes about the ways journalists have gone wrong.

I have a minor quibble that the essay is more about commentary than news coverage, though the topic is sins in reporting. The author turns to pundits like Sean Hannity for examples as if journalists. Hannity will tell you he’s not a journalist, putting himself more in Rush Limbaugh’s shoes as self-described “entertainer” — cheese food, cherry flavoring, in essence. Limbaugh was honest about that much. Whatever ditto heads fell for, then, was on them.

But the grievances outlined by Bruni in this retelling do fit much of journalism’s failings in practice, left and right: reporting that hews to partisan tropes, magnifies slights, stokes tension, reflexively interprets differences among people as power imbalances, insinuates the worst, features only one part of a story as if the whole.

These pestilences have plagued American journalism from the beginning, though, especially in political coverage and comment.

There’s a part of us that reacts like a herd of cattle to midnight thunder. Reporting that appeals to this powerful force sold papers in the age of Yellow Journalism, and it has only metastasized with the advent of social media. Careers today are made and broken on clicks.

We’re also vulnerable to messaging that supports our instinctual us vs. them, which lies most obviously in the dark heart of cable news.

National outlets of all genres have done best appealing to their audiences — layers of liberalism or conservatism in culture as well as politics — each with a critical mass that community journalism can’t touch.  

The truth becomes secondary in this hierarchy. It’s all about attention now. That or join the news desert. The press has gone TikTok. This is a business decision, actually, though I’m not sure we recognize the empty calories, rage as sugar high, what should be our dollars flowing instead to the likes of Google and Meta free of reinvestment into journalism, a long desiccation.

Fairy tale; horror show

The coverage of the Ballerina Farm offers some useful insight.

Again I turn to the Deseret News, which milked the story for moral understanding after a reporter for The Times of London turned a profile of the family into somewhat of a feminist parable.

Of course the biz hinges on a fairy tale about family and farm life — hard work and a kind of rough bliss with Mormon faith at the center. This has all the charm of “Little House on the Prairie” with modern twists outside Kamas.

The interest for me is how a family makes a farm work in an age when family farms are about as endangered as the local press. Almost no one earns their living from their land this way anymore. They need day jobs, too.

So this family also harvests a rich story about a ballerina and a scion who discover their love for farm life and grow a large family while staying true to their faith. Oh, and the ballerina wins Mrs. American and does well in the Mrs. World pageant, too, eight children in.

The story entrances 10 million or so Instagram followers and about that many on TikTok, along with attracting no end of commentary about why or why not women buy in. It fits right in the seam between tradwife and cat lady, badass boss and bowing to a man’s every whim.

A woman’s proper role in life is a thing, still. A lot of ink and airtime have gone into this after The Times of London hinted at a domineering husband, and the ballerina mom responded that this just isn’t so.  

So what does this have to do with the political press? Nothing. Everything! With the peculiarities of the Electoral College, a close presidential race could well hinge on it.

The family’s Faustian bargain was a world looking on and commentators weighing in. And they’ve done so right in line with Bruni’s list of sins. Or are those just the fault lines that pull us in?

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at drogers@parkrecord.com or (970) 376-0745.

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Matthew and Tatiana Prince’s plan to build a new home overlooking Old Town on Thursday passed its historic-design review, albeit with the northern end of the roof clipped back by about 13 feet.

Park City Planning Director Rebecca Ward, leading the administrative review, also determined that remaining floor-to-ceiling windows along the eastern façade of the structure needed to be replaced by ones more compatible with “industrial mining patterns.”

She said that the determinations about the property at 220 King Road would not set a precedent for the general historic district since it is part of the Sweeney Master Planning District with much larger lots and sitting in a transition zone between the traditional Old Town neighborhoods and the open space above.

This property at 1.23 acres is nearly 29 times the size of lots in the historic district, which originally were plotted out at 25 by 75 feet each, and the plans for the new house conform with the Sweeney MPD and similarly large homes built in the Treasure Hill Subdivision, she noted.

City planners reviewed a long list of materials and design aspects of the house plans for compatibility with industrial mining structures, as the property has no history of residential use and is not in a residential neighborhood, they said. They also looked closely at massing, height and the roof line, which the Planning Commission did as well before approving the structure.

Prince attorney Bruce Baird argued against reducing the northern overhang to no more than five feet, producing slides intended to show no one would notice if viewing from any distance, and he tried to persuade Ward that enough had been done already with the windows to satisfy the Planning Commission. But Prince’s team didn’t object when Ward stuck with the planning staff’s recommendation.

The historic-design review is the last of the city approvals for the house, which has undergone four years so far of municipal scrutiny, reviews and decisions.

But it’s unlikely that the 7,461-square-foot house is home free. The adjoining neighbors, Eric and Susan Hermann, appealed the Planning Commission’s narrow approval of the plans in February, and this review can be appealed as well. This one would go to the Park City Board of Adjustment rather than the Appeal Panel, which at the end of April rejected the Hermanns’ appeal of the Planning Commission approval.

Only the Hermanns and their attorney, Justin Keys, submitted written comment ahead of Thursday’s hearing. And only one person spoke about the house during the public hearing itself, which lasted less than four minutes.

Nicholas Shaffer expressed concern about how the city would enforce a condition that the house not be used as a nightly rental, and worried aloud that an “industrial mining” design standard might establish a precedent throughout Old Town.

In her determination, Ward added language saying: “This historic design review is limited to the Treasure Hill Subdivision single-family dwellings in the Sweeney MPD and shall not create precedent nor interpretation of general applicability in the HR-1 Zoning District or (Land Management Code) regulations.”

Eric Hermann concluded his letter objecting to design approval by saying: “No matter how you try to prevent this being a precedent, people are watching to see if one can scrape multiple Old Town homes and in their place build castles.”

The existing homes at 220 King Road were demolished in July. They had a slightly larger building footprint, slightly more finished living space, and were slightly higher than the house planned to replace them.

The new Prince house would have 7,461 square feet of finished living space, 5,898 square feet of unfinished basement space, and a 1,103-square-foot home office.

The adjoining Hermann property consists of three interconnected houses, including a guest home and investment property, with a total of 16,500 square feet of finished living space, which includes 5,800 square feet of finished basement and other space, according to property records.

Besides the dispute over the house plans, Matthew Prince in recent months has sued the Hermanns over their dogs running unleashed on the Princes’ property, and filed another suit over a wall on the Hermann’s property crossing into his property. The Hermanns also own the property where the driveway to 220 King Road crosses through.

The Princes own The Park Record.  

Editor’s note: This story corrects the total finished square feet of the homes on the adjoining neighbor. Also, the square footage of the proposed home office was corrected, as well.

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The Doubletree by Hilton — Yarrow Hotel is seeking approval to redevelop the property into a mixed-use development featuring ground floor retail, a condominium hotel, affordable housing, a rooftop restaurant, and multi-use trail.

Hotel ownership is hosting an open house on Aug. 20 to present the latest design and answer questions. The project has undergone significant design changes over the last two and a half years through collaboration with local stakeholders and Park City planning officials.

The proposed development reimagines the property as a community hub, creating a new standard of livability, walkability, and inclusivity for Bonanza Park, according to the developers. The design features individual buildings to enhance open spaces and views. They said the buildings would be surrounded by a landscaped “greenbelt” with a multi-use trail.

Prioritizing community, they said, the proposed public space includes two plazas along the new signature trail, ideal for local events and gatherings. One building would feature three floors of affordable housing with a private terrace. There also would be ground-floor retail shops and restaurants. 

Opened in 1977, The Yarrow Hotel has been owned by Singerman Real Estate since 2013 and licensed to operate under the DoubleTree by Hilton brand for the past 10 years.

The open house with appetizers and beverages will take place on Aug. 20 from 5 to 7 p.m. in the DoubleTree by Hilton ballroom at 1800 Park Ave. A presentation detailing the plans will be presented at 6 p.m. In-depth information is also available online at www.1800Park.com.

The redevelopment’s second public input session with the Park City Planning Commission is scheduled for Aug. 28 at City Hall. 

Singerman Real Estate LLC, owner of the DoubleTree by Hilton, Park City – The Yarrow and Outlets Park City, is a Chicago-based real estate investment firm managing over $4 billion in assets across North America. It invests in both debt and equity across all major asset classes and owns several hospitality properties and outlet centers.

Learn more at www.singermanre.com. 

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