The Park City council agreed to a handful of capital projects it was willing to forego or delay in order to bring down the amount of the open space bond for November’s ballot. But there are many other projects that will go forward as planned. Melissa Allison has more:
The Brew Pub Plaza may have been the first to fall on the Park City chopping block to lower the bond to purchase Treasure Hill, but it wasn’t the only one.
When talking about the cuts and delays to projects and maintenance of the city’s infrastructure, the city hasn’t listed what the specific projects were that were cut.
So, KPCW went to City Hall and asked. Assistant City Manager Matt Dias said in addition to the Brew Pub Plaza, the city cut the funding for the proposed Public Utilities building and delayed spending for Old Town street projects, stormwater improvements, and sidewalk repairs. In addition, the city liquidated all of the city’s open space funds and even sold a parcel of land to the Park City Fire District for $1 million dollars.
With all of those projects cut or delayed, why then is the city having work done to the ice rink mezzanine? The city issued a request for proposal to demolish and remove some 3,300 square feet of concrete, and dig along the locker room to make repairs and then repour the plaza area with new concrete.
Dias said, there are some things that can’t be put off.
“The ice rink I believe, is about 13 years old now and the concrete wall on the northeast side of the building, sort of where the stairs are or more affectionately known in the community as the sledding hill, is pulling away from the building and lifting," Dias said. "There’s about 25 feet of fill there, so water is pouring into the building at times and during snowmelt.”
The city patched the problem three different times.
“You know there are things that they determined, you know business must go on and you can’t sort of starve things that are in need of, kind of fixing and our infrastructure is very important," Dias said. "And so, you know, the ice team came up here and worked with our capital projects team and, you know demonstrated a strong argument that after three years of patching, it was in the community’s best interest to try and fix this before it became more expensive down the line.”
The repairs will cost about $88,000 and Dias said all of these decisions were made during their budget process which runs from May through June.
For more information about the ice rink or other projects, visit parkcity.org.
I’m Melissa Allison, KPCW News.