Longtime Parkite and local business owner Tana Toly announced her intent to run for city council on Tuesday.
Toly is a 5th generation Parkite and co-owner of The Red Banjo, which is Park City’s oldest family run business and will be celebrating its 60th year of operations this June.
She told KPCW she first thought about running for public office last fall and decided on a city council run earlier this spring.
“Right around February-March decided: ‘You know what? This is the right time for me to do this,’” Toly said. “I want to be involved in something that’s post-COVID. I think we have a real opportunity to look at a new direction for not only the city, but the whole world, and so I just felt like this was a good time.”
In addition to running The Red Banjo, Toley’s experience includes serving as the Vice President of the Historic Park City Alliance, a member of the Kamas Valley Business Alliance, and a board member of the Restaurant Association and the Historic Preservation Board. If elected, Toly would resign from those boards to avoid potential conflicts.
Toly has worked at Red Banjo in some capacity since she was only five years old and was even named “best waitress” in 1986. She continued at Red Banjo until 2011 before moving to Colorado to work for Vail Resorts in Breckenridge and entered the corporate world in Denver a short time later.
Toly returned to Park City in 2018 and said her mix of experiences growing up in Park City and working outside of the community would bring a different point of view to city hall.
“I saw what was happening at the city during that time and then went to Colorado for seven years and I’ve come back with a fresh perspective,” said Toly. “Almost like someone who’s new coming into town and having been back for three years, but also has that past connection to the town. I feel like I have a great sense of where we have been and a lot of those issues that were happening in 2011-2012 are still the same issues we’re facing today.”
Toly said her campaign will be based around what she calls “conscious community connection” and would work to ensure connectivity between all aspects of the community, whether it’s through roads and bike paths or more intangible connections between different parts of the city.
“I feel like everything that we do in town needs to have a conscious community connection to it,” she said. “Whether that’s with how do we connect Prospector to Main Street to PCMR to Deer Valley? How do those connect not only physically, but in an abstract way too, right? For example, how do we connect all small businesses? Not just the HPCA, but people who have businesses at home or people who have businesses that are in Prospector? How do all of us connect to one another? We all face the same problems, so I don’t feel like we have any way to all work together to come up with those solutions.”
Toly said an official platform, campaign website, and social media pages will be announced after the official candidate filing period on June 1st.
She said she will be paying the $100 filing fee to the city in order to get on the ballot as opposed to gathering signatures.
Park City will hold elections for mayor and two city council seats this November. Current city councilor Tim Henney has said he will seek a third term in office and Parkites Daniel Lewis and Jeremy Rubell have also announced their intent to run for city council.
Candidates interested in running for office will have to file official paperwork with the city between June 1st and 7th.
