Around 40 people attended to hear the candidates speak Monday evening at Park City Hospital’s Blair Education Center.
Each candidate was given two minutes to answer one question: What would be your single-most important accomplishment after a year in office and what differentiates you from the rest of the field in order to enable that accomplishment?
Candidate David Dobkin, who has added “Pickleball Traffic” as his middle name on the ballot to represent his top campaign priorities, said he wants to focus on short-term solutions.
“Traffic can be solved very quickly by using similar ideas to park and rides, but using technology as well… the micro transit has been working effectively” Dobkin said. “Secondly, I’d like to see [pickleball] courts that we can actually implement, while we’re still deciding what’s going on with arts and culture. We have the land in certain areas where we can actually make changes effectively, quickly. We do not have to think about it, we do not have to go to 10 consultants.”
Incumbent Councilmember Ryan Dickey said he wants to figure out the future of the Bonanza Park neighborhood.
“I think probably the most critical thing is the arts and culture district,” Dickey said. “It’s been an eyesore and a bit of an embarrassment for us as a city to see the lack of progress that’s happened there. If we’re still using “arts and culture district” in air quotes in a year, I’m going to be incredibly disappointed, so we need to do something there.”
Dickey added that he wants to break ground on senior housing and a new senior center in the next year, and that the city needs to have a transportation plan ready if Utah is tapped to host a future Winter Olympics.
Former television producer Bob Sertner said he wants to establish a plan for Park City’s future to prepare for new development.
“It’s critical that we get ahead of that wave before it crashes right over us and before the state steps in and does it for us," Sertner said. "But to do that, we need a long-range plan, and focusing on that plan is the most important thing I’d like to accomplish in my first year… We’re shooting a movie without a script. We have an outline, so we kind of know where things are headed, and each scene that we shoot is fantastic, but we have no real sense of how they all fit together.”
Old Town resident Ed Parigian said he struggled with the question because he’s focused on the accomplishments of the community, not individually as a councilmember. He said if he made it on the council, his goal would be to make residents feel heard. Parigian used his past activism to preserve Library Field as an example.
“Through community engagement, I found that of the hundreds of people I spoke with, the overwhelming majority favored preserving the Library Field,” Parigian said. “I acknowledge however that some folks, including myself, want affordable housing wherever they can get it. It was a difficult trade off for me… these are the types of hard decisions a council will have to make.”
Park City High School physics teacher Matt Nagie said his first year goals were somewhat abstract, but centered around optimizing transportation.
“I’m running right now with kind of a sense of urgency around a few big things,” Nagie said. “That would be the bus rapid transit project that’s coming up… and kind of set against the backdrop of the 5-acre site feasibility study and the Bonanza area plan. All of those things are coming up just so fast, so much quicker than I think any of us kind of realize. And so my first year, I really want to get in there and dig deep on that specific issue.”
Jody Whitesides, who was out of town Monday, sent in a video response. He said he wants to help move major recreation projects forward, some of which Park City voters could see on a bond in this November’s ballot.
“I would like to see that not only pass, but then be a part of the solution for all the aspects to it that are going to start coming into play for Park City,” Whitesides said. “I see Park City moving away from just being a ski town, but being a recreation town in general… It would be awesome to lead the recreation advisory board and all of those projects that are being built, and seeing that through to completion.”
Bill Ciraco said he wants to have a plan ready if the Olympics return to the Wasatch Back.
“One of my biggest concerns is that Park City will not be ready to capitalize on what will likely be a 2034 Olympics that will be happening here in Utah,” Ciraco said. “The Olympic committee doesn’t want to drive the solutions here on the Wasatch Back, they want the community to do that… In my first term in office, I will work tirelessly with my colleagues on the council to get an answer and to be ready when the 2034 Olympics are awarded to Utah to deliver the answer on how we’re going to capitalize not just for the Olympics, but for our future.”
Park City Heights resident John Greenfield said he wants to restart a project to build a park and ride lot in Quinn’s Junction adjacent to Old Highway 40.
“The goal is to get cars off the road, and I think you could do that by appropriately placing the park and rides,” Greenfield said. “The other part of that is removing the in town park and ride at the high school for out-of-towners. I’d really like to see that not be a place where people drive in from out of town to park. That might be a great place for a local lot.”
The primary election in the weeks ahead will cut the candidate list down to six. Mail-in ballots were scheduled to go out to voters Tuesday. In-person early voting will be from Aug. 29 to Sept. 1. Parkites can also vote in person during the primary on Sept. 5.
