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Summit County Council Responds Negatively To Report From Central Wasatch Commission

The Summit County Council Wednesday got a briefing from representatives of the Central Wasatch Commission. And some Council members responded with challenges and concerns for the visitors.

The council members said that some transit options linking the Wasatch Canyons to the Park City area—which they thought were taken off the table—seem to be back in the plan.

The Central Wasatch Commission, known in an earlier version as the Mountain Accord, was represented by Chris McCandless, a Sandy City Council Member who is also the Chair of Central Wasatch’s Executive Committee. He was accompanied by the CWC’s Deputy Director Jesse Dean.

They were presenting their 2019 goals and an Action Plan, as the CWC is asking Summit County for another annual contribution of $50,000.

Summit County Council Member Roger Armstrong said the county has put in $150,000 so far, and he’s not sure what they get from another contribution. He said he was taken aback when he heard McCandless mention that a tunnel link to the Park City area was again among the options.

He said that CWC director Ralph Becker had assured him that proposal had been shelved. He had also reviewed the issue with Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan.

“Chris and I have had this conversation specifically during the mountain accord process and Andy Berman and I have had many conversations about his position on tunnels,” Armstrong explained. “So it was a little bit surprised to hear the word tunnel come out of your mouth today because I thought the tunnels were long buried and gone and that's not going to happen. I thought that the last assurance that we received was that transportation plans were largely going to be rubber tire transportation plans up and down the canyons. Yet when I look at this I see trains, I see rail, I see other alternatives on the board.”  

In reply, McCandless said that a tunnel option was only listed because in their previous meetings as Mountain Accord, some stakeholders complained that they hadn’t been given a voice.

“So even though some of those ideas have been discussed, we wanted to make sure that everybody had a platform to speak, everybody,” McCandless continued. “Some of those ideas have brought up those old ideas again and we've just reintegrated them in. Don't know if they'll have any mileage and they may or that may not. It's important for us to be able to make sure of that because this is the definitive statement that will affect everybody Park City, Summit County, Salt Lake County all of it. This is it. We want to be able to make sure that they can't say we didn't get a chance to have our input in.”  

McCandless added he isn’t pushing the tunnel idea.

“From my personal perspective as a sitting city councilman I would object to a tunnel,” McCandless said. “It doesn't seem to give us an ROI. Too expensive, too cumbersome, too impactful to your community. So that would be my personal opinion on that. I doubt that it will see much of the light of day but our criticism from those people who are proponents is that they didn’t get to have a voice. Now I know they did, and you know they did, and we all sat in a million meetings. We don’t want them coming back and saying we didn’t’ get a chance. We’re giving them about a tenth bite of an apple.”

He said their position is just that if there are parties interested in the tunnel, they get another chance to talk about it.

“Just like everybody else who can come and discuss what they want to discuss and make proposals that they would like to make,” McCandless explained. “We didn't think that a connection to Park City was wanted at all until the last couple of weeks when a couple of players have said well maybe it's something, we'd be interested in.”

Among other comments from the Council, Kim Carson said it’s not necessarily a bad idea to look at the transit links again. She noted the resorts in Wasatch Canyons have been affected by the Ikon and Epic passes.

Council Member Doug Clyde said he was stunned to hear the tunnel idea come up again.

“The whole plan, the whole transportation plan that was put forward by mountain accord was upside down and backwards in my opinion,” Clyde continued. “I come from the ski industry. For past 30 years or so I was working on the interconnect. You know it's much easier to ski downhill and it is to drill tunnel through the mountain for no damn good reason at all.”

Council member Glenn Wright said if ideas like an all-weather road connection are revived, he will lie down in front of the bulldozer. But Wright said he would still like to talk about an aerial connection, which could take cars off the road.

“I think we should be very open to that option,” Wright said. “I think that’s personally the best option on the table right now. I'm in favor of it but if you start talking about all other roads or tunnels again not only are you going to lose the support of this council. You're going to face litigation that will go on until all of us are dead.”

In the end, McCandless said stakeholders from Sandy and Park City spend time in the same mountains and depend on the same watershed. He said that’s why he supported Park City’s acquisition of Bonanza Flat.

“Frankly Sandy City didn’t have anything to do with Bonanza Flats, but I think I'm personally responsible for raising a half a $1,000,000 that went to that fund,” McCandless explained. “It didn't have any impact on me other than I recognize that a watershed policy associated with our community’s, plural, is good. If we have watershed policy associated with the conservation recreation area, no pun intended, that will spill over into Summit County and has a benefit. The reason why I promoted Bonanza Flat as heavily as I did to a variety of people was because of that. Your watershed generally speaking eventually is my watershed.”

Known for getting all the facts right, as well as his distinctive sign-off, Rick covered Summit County meetings and issues for 35 years on KPCW. He now heads the Friday Film Review team.
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