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Members Of Park City Weigh In On Amendments To Park City's Special Event Regulations

Changes are coming to Park City’s special events policies and the city council Thursday considered cutting off fee waives and limiting the number of events. Melissa Allison has more:

Park City staff have been working on changes to the special event regulations to appease the community who have told council on several occasions they have event fatigue and are tired of the many impacts which include traffic, parking and noise.

During public comment, former Special Events Advisory Committee chair Sarah Klingenstein told council she liked a lot of what staff  has created for the regulations including a calendar which would limit events during peak season with February being the deadline to get something on the calendar.

The problem is applicants could still ask staff or council to approve their event after that. She said she knows how hard it is to say no when the argument is compelling.

“I hate the thought of applicants coming directly to you to plead their case for their really meaningful and valuable event,” Klingenstein said. “Because, I know as someone who sat on a committee, it is very hard to listen to a really good idea and something that’s going to benefit this group or that group and just sort of be hard nosed and just say, ‘Sorry, for the greater good, we’re not going to let this happen.’”

Overall – she said she’s impressed with staff’s work.

Ginger Rhies represents several different nonprofits in Park City which include the Park City Restaurant Association, Mountain Trails Foundation and the Park City Lodging Association along with her own events planning business.

She been producing events in Park City for 25 years and said the city is on the right track.

“I get that we want to have the language written so that folks don’t bring events to you to try to skirt around the system,” Rhies said. “I would say, absolutely - write hard language. If you are trying to plan an event in three months, that’s not the event we want in our community.”

Shelly Gilwald spoke on behalf of the Park City Soccer Club and the Park City Extreme Cup Tournament which just celebrated their 15th year.

She told council their tournament is important to their budget and staff’s comments about differentiating between established events and new events causes her some concern.

“Over the next year to two years, while we figure out these dates it is going to be difficult,” Gilwald said. “You may have already heard, we’re looking at some conflicts coming up next summer with the extreme cup and existing events and I just hoped as the city council considers all this – you will not adopt a code that would preclude the Extreme Cup from being able to happen.”

Council gave the special events staff direction regarding the amendments and told them to deregulate the resorts with the exception of the largest events, considered level 4 or 5 type events. The changes will also allow the special events manager to exercise discretion for level 1 and 2 events.

Staff will bring the item back to council one more time before council votes on the changes.

I’m Melissa Allison, KPCW News.