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Park City Council Retreat Explores Policy For Four Critical Priorities

On Thursday and Friday, the Park City Council meets for its annual retreat. They’ll discuss critical and top priorities for the community. KPCW’s Emily Means has more.

The Park City Council established housing, energy, transportation and social equity as its critical priorities to address in the community at retreats over the past few years. This year, though, Park City Budget Operations Manager Jed Briggs says they won’t be adding any more priorities to the list, but rather will spend time looking at how to measure progress and achieve specific policy goals for the four priorities already in place.

"We’re putting increased effort and increased focused on these four critical priorities, and we’re saying these are the things that we want to make sure that we don’t mess up, that they could fundamentally change our community if we don’t get these things right," Briggs said. "So, we want to make sure that they are right. And so you look at something like housing, and we hired Jason Glidden as the housing manager a year or so ago—that’s kind of the commitment there of having staff time work and focus on that, but then we’re also putting a ton of capital money into housing as well, so it’s all kinds of resources."

In addition to the four critical priorities, they’ll also address three top community priorities: community engagement, arts and culture and citizen wellbeing. For all the areas of interest, though, Briggs says the city staff at the head of each initiative will suggest policy to the council to be considered in the next year.

"When we talk about what’s the difference between a retreat versus a regular council meeting, it’s the chance to kind of assess holistically, to kind of sit back and say, 'how are we doing on all this stuff,' instead of the council meetings where they tend to line up and you have to deal with just that one issue at hand," Briggs said. "This is let’s take an abstract and theoretical view of what housing is and what our role should be in that, and so that’s what they’re doing; they have all these different policies that are kind of philosophical in a lot of ways about what we think the city should be doing or could be doing in these areas."

The retreat takes place Thursday and Friday in the community room at the Park City Library from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is open to the public, with time allotted for closed sessions both days. The critical priorities energy and transportation will be discussed Thursday, and housing and social equity on Friday.

Emily Means hadn’t intended to be a journalist, but after two years of studying chemistry at the University of Utah, she found her fit in the school’s communication program. Diving headfirst into student media opportunities, Means worked as a host, producer and programming director for K-UTE Radio as well as a news writer and copy editor at The Daily Utah Chronicle.