After the recent summit meeting, where the Summit County Council and Park City Council discussed their transit operation, County Manager Tom Fisher says one major takeaway is that, still, the city and the county are connected.
Fisher told KPCW that after the meeting on March 4th, the county staff understands pretty clearly that they need to move forward with the current transit, while planning for a regional system.
“Don’t know what the outcome of that will be yet, but we’re already talking to our partners in Wasatch County, to start figuring out what are our first planning steps around transit, what is a future organization look like around that will manage that. A lot of things that take a lot of discussion up front so that we make sure that all parties get a voice in that.”
But while the county has discussed a regional system, at least one Park City Council member was apprehensive that the county is trying to intrude on the city’s land-use authority.
We asked Fisher how the different perspectives will be reflected in a new Interlocal Agreement between the city and county.
“I think we’ll probably solidify what those philosophical differences might be, or clarify them, from the standpoint of moving them from that philosophy into policy, if that’s where, again, the whole councils want to go, and we’ll take it from there. The other takeaway here is that we’re always gonna be connected. We cannot, not be connected. Whether the county with partners are running a regional system, outside in the unincorporated county into other counties, and the city or ourselves are running those connector routes in and out, and of course the city system. All of that needs to connect, and we need to do it in a way that makes sense to accomplish the goal of mitigating congestion.”
He said the county puts $13 million into transit, including what they fund in the Interlocal Agreement. We asked if they might cut back on that funding to go into regional transit.
“Somewhat. It’s not that simple. There’s revenues in there that we have agreements on, in how we’re gonna share those. And largely those have been put towards routes like the Express that cross jurisdictional boundaries. So we have to maintain those because those are important to moving people in and out of our communities.”
County Manager Tom Fisher who said a revised Interlocal Agreement is going to a meeting, later this month, of the Joint Transportation Advisory Board.
