In his recent interview with KPCW, Park City Council member Tim Henney reflected on two pieces of good news. One, the overwhelming voter approval for the Treasure Hill bond—and two, a good post-mortem report on last summer’s Kimball Arts Festival.
Henney said he was thrilled about the resounding vote in favor of preserving the Treasure Hill and Snow Ranch Pastures properties.
“In my wildest and most optimistic hopes, and I’m probably somebody who could be accused of being overly-optimistic most of the time, I thought that maybe we would get to 70% approval. I was kind of feeling the shift from initial maybe 60 and as the facts were presented and people informed themselves which was my request. Make an informed decision, I’m going to honor your decision and live with your decisions so therefore I can say that I don’t really care about your decision, which wasn’t completely true I did have a hope. I’m so thrilled that people did just that. I think that as they did that we exceeded 70% and got up to 77% approval. That exceeds the Bonanza flat approval on the $25 million bond.”
Also, the City Council last week got a report that this summer’s Kimball Arts Festival was a huge success.
Henney said the report made him think about the traditional friction between the Arts Festival and the business community on Main Street.
“It’s funny because some of these things I have never really even thought about. I come to the Friday locals and I walk up and down. I don’t think about well what if I came back on Saturday night and I wanted to go to dinner on Main Street. How would I enter, and do I have to pay for a ticket or how do I convince the people at the gate that I’m going to dinner or going to the No Name or going to the post office? I’ve never really tried that to tell you the truth. I’m one of those folks who’s like it’s great that it’s here but I’m going to go Friday night and then stay away for the rest and let the festival happen. There’s a friction between our local merchants, retailers, restaurants and the festival. That’s something that they’re highly focused on they want to work through that.”
Another issue is controlling access to the festival.
“There are people who are ‘poaching’ the festival by claiming that they’re going in for another reason and then spending all their time at the festival and not buying the ticket. The ticket is what generates the revenue which is the fundraiser portion for Kimball Arts Festival and it’s incredibly important to them. So they’re trying to fine tune that as well.”
