City council in Park City will return to regular session on Thursday with a packed agenda.
Thursday’s meeting will be held electronically over Zoom and Facebook Live.
Council will kick off the meeting with a work session starting at 3:30. First on the agenda is the Fourth of July festivities in Park City and what they may or may not look like.
At the last council meeting earlier in April, council indicated a willingness to reduce the size of gatherings in the city, if possible. Options at the city’s disposal are limited, however, after state legislation passed earlier this year will prevent the city from enforcing any pandemic-related health orders by the Fourth of July.
City Manager Matt Dias said the council will be weighing a number of options, including the possibility of holding the parade on an alternate date -- perhaps a Friday in order to reduce drive traffic on the weekend -- as well as exploring date and location changes for the fireworks display. Ultimately, Dias said the city is looking for the public to weigh in and give the council their thoughts before any final decisions are made.
“We are absolutely trying to shoot at a moving target,” Dias said. “The Fourth of July is relatively unique in that the city is actually the applicant, the promoter, and the regulator. We have a long and wonderful tradition in our community and if you’ve been in Park City for more than a few years, this is something that neighbors look forward to, long-time locals, visitors, but like most things, it’s grown and perhaps in some areas that overwhelms us at times. We obviously have the opportunity to run the same type of Fourth of July festivities that we have for several years, or we could scale back. There’s a lot of different levers that we could pull and really, we need to hear from the public get some feedback.”
Park City’s proposed arts and culture district is also back on the agenda as an item in the work session. On Thursday, the financial plan and scope of the project will be discussed.
Earlier in April, city staff disclosed that if the council were to green-light the project in its current form and price tag of $107 million, the city would effectively be prevented from pursuing any other significant projects like affordable housing or open space purchases for the next 10 years.
Deputy City Manager David Everitt, who is the city’s point person for the district, said he hears from council members that they are not willing to give that much up over the next decade.
“I’ve definitely gotten feedback, particularly from council members that they’re not prepared to do that,” said Everitt. “I completely get that, completely respect that, and as a result, we’ve been working on the finance side to figure out ways to basically scale down what could be the budget. To do that, we’ve been looking on the scoping side at what can we do to reduce costs overall for the project, what can we do, particularly on the housing side to bring down that per unit cost, and what can we do to really ensure that there’s flexibility moving forward for the council so that if they did commit to a certain scenario, there might be options for build-out in the future that preserves the ability to adapt in the future.”
No final decision on either the Fourth of July or the arts and culture district are scheduled to be made on Thursday.
Other items on the agenda include a resolution acknowledging the legacy of Adolph’s Restaurant, a Park City staple since the 1970s which is set to close for good at the end of the month, and considerations to allow the city’s public bodies to continue holding electronic meetings and to approve the supplemental plans for this summer's Park Silly Sunday Market on Main Street.
Thursday’s meeting is scheduled to begin at 3:30pm. The full meeting agenda can be found here. Details on how to participate can be found here.
