The annual two-day Park City Council retreat is where the councilors, mayor, and city staff all come together to determine the city’s priorities for the next 12 months.
This week’s retreat is unique because all but two of the councilors are newly elected. Mayor Nann Worel and Councilors Tana Toly and Jeremy Rubell took office on January 4th, and Councilor Ryan Dickey was appointed to serve out the remaining two years of Worel’s council term on January 13th. Only Councilors Becca Gerber and Max Doilney remain from the last council.
Worel said with so many new faces in the room, it’s essential to make sure everyone is up to speed before deep-diving into any of the city’s pressing issues.
“I’m not sure there’s ever been the majority of council brand new, and we have three out of the five members that took office," said Worel. "I want to go back to basics and make sure that everybody understands the historical context of how [we got] to where we are with housing and with transportation and different topics that are so important to us.”
Worel said the retreat will be bookended by discussion on Vision 2020, which is the city’s community-led 10-year planning document. The vast majority of the Vision 2020 work was done pre-COVID-19, and Worel recognized that revisiting that document might be wise given how much Park City and the world has changed in the last two years.
Between those discussions, the council is expected to hash out issues that include land use, transportation, housing, events, open space, and sustainability.
Worel said she encourages differing opinions on all of those issues, but said if a majority of the council wants to move in a different direction than councils in the past have, the sooner city staff knows the better.
“If we have the majority of council that doesn’t buy into past direction, we need to know that now, then we can make adjustments and come to a consensus on where is this council wanting to head and how are they differing from what the previous council had given direction on?" she said. "It’s not fair to staff to have them spinning their wheels, thinking that they’re still doing what the old council wanted them to do when there may be differing opinions on the new council.”
The council will also be finishing the process of determining its assignments to city boards and commissions. That process started at last week’s meeting, but many key postings like liaisons for transportation and housing boards were left until the council discussed those topics at the retreat.
City Manager Matt Dais said in his experience working in Park City, councilors have expressed a desire to be well-versed in a wide variety of topics.
“This is my eighth year with the municipality, and just about every single year at the annual retreat, council takes a step back," said Dias. "We’ve had a very, very cooperative process where people say, ‘hey, I spent the last two years on transportation, now I’m interested in public infrastructure and water,’ or conversely, ‘I’d like to focus on affordable housing in the community and those types of issues.’ We’ve had a really, really good collection of individuals that have sort of traded the chips around.”
The council will also hold a shorter retreat this summer to revisit some of the decisions made this week.
The council retreat begins at 9am Wednesday morning at the Park City Library’s Santy Auditorium. The retreat is open to the public and will also be streamed online. A link to the full agenda and information on how to participate can be found here.
