More than 400 surveys were mailed out to Park City and Snyderville Basin residents a couple of weeks ago – to find out what they think are the area’s most important recreation needs. The rest of the community can add their two-cents starting Thursday.
The invites to fill out the recreation survey were chosen randomly by the consultant who was hired for the project. The addresses were selected using the voter registration rolls and emails on file.
The survey will also be available to anyone willing to fill it out. It will be posted on both the Park City Recreation and Basin Rec websites. Survey links will be posted on both their social media pages and they will also email links to those who have accounts with them.
Even though they are separate recreation organizations, Park City Recreation Manager Ken Fisher says they’re doing the survey together – because it saves money and it’s a sign of cooperation.
“This is the second community survey that we've done in cooperation with one another,” Fisher said. “The last one we did was in 2012 and really, it helps for us to set the priorities for the community. We are able to break it out by zip code so we can see the differences between the two demographics. But really it is one of the key tools that we use to help plan facilities in the future and there's a lot of reasons to do it together. Obviously, large recreation facilities are expensive, and it makes a lot of sense to try to cooperate on those when we can.”
The top three results from the 2012 community survey were a new sheet of ice, more playing fields and an indoor aquatic facility. Fisher admits that none of those have been built. Still Basin Rec Director Brian Hanton says it’s good to check in to make sure the priorities are similar to what they were 7 years ago…
Ken: “And no, we haven't actually built any of those. I mean new ice is potentially being built by a private party on the top of Browns Canyon. We did do a feasibility study looking at adding on to the ice arena and it was, so far, it's been prohibitively expensive.”
Brian: “And we know over time, the community has changed a little bit and we just want to make sure as we look to make investments, or see what the community is looking for, that we're still in line with what they want.”
While Fisher expects an indoor aquatics center will score high again, it’s good to know where that support is coming from because it’s such an expensive project.
“It makes a lot of sense wherever they get built that there's some cooperation between the two entities,” Fisher said. “As you know we try to work together and we’ve eliminated…you know 20 years ago we had fee differentials and we’ve eliminated all that and try to really work together to provide recreation seamlessly as possible to the whole community.”
The new survey also asks to residents to rank their recreation priorities. Results should be available shortly and will then be shared with the community.
