It was made clear at the outset that this week’s Park City Council retreat wasn’t for specific policy decisions, but rather to revisit some of the city’s most pressing issues like housing, transportation, and land use, and to brainstorm a path forward.
Wednesday morning was dedicated to a recap of the city’s Vision 2020 initiative. The vast majority of work on that process occurred pre-COVID, and the council plans to end the retreat by discussing how the city should consider that roadmap in a post-pandemic world.
Diving in on specific topics, Councilors Ryan Dickey and Becca Gerber suggested creating an emergency housing fund that would allow the city to move quickly and purchase properties that appear on the market and have the potential to become affordable housing.
Dickey and Gerber used a recent example of a local condo going on the market for $500,000 and selling within days. Gerber said such a fund could be a mechanism for the city to be agile in a red-hot housing market.
“We have to be willing to try new things and maybe try to be more nimble," Gerber said. "It does seem like we should have some sort of housing emergency fund on hand and have some money available that we can have staff go out and try to preserve units when an opportunity comes up.”
It was also suggested that a future emergency housing fund could be coupled with the city’s proposed deed-restricted housing program. The city could buy a property, place a deed restriction on it that prohibits nightly rentals, then sell it.
The city’s planning department weighed in Wednesday as well. It’s seen a constant flood of applications over the past year and is currently working through two large and complex development proposals at the base areas of Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley.
Councilor Jeremy Rubell said many residents feel overwhelmed by all the development, and brought up the idea of a building moratorium in Park City until the current crop of applications is cleared.
“How on earth are we going to get through a meaningful update and get out of what I feel is a very reactive mode right now without taking a breath and a little bit of a pause in the spigot?" he said. "Like, kind of turning it off?”
Planning Director Gretchen Milliken said a moratorium has been a frequent topic of discussion in the planning department since she took the job a year ago. She said the council could put one in place, but she and her staff worry that there would be scores of applications pouring in once a moratorium is lifted.
“My first six months, we probably talked about it, if not on a daily basis, on an every other day basis," said Milliken We brought that up a number of times and considered the pros and cons of doing a moratorium. Our fear in doing that was that, yes, it would give us some time to get a handle on things and really build the team we needed to build, but what we were worried for was the floodgates when the moratorium was over and the amount of applications that we would have to process at the end of it. Not that it can’t be considered moving forward as well, it’s just there are pros and cons.”
A full recording of the retreat is available on Park City Government’s Facebook page. The council retreat continues on Thursday.
