Putt is Summit County’s community development director, overseeing development proposals going through the permitting process on their way to approval or denial.
He will retire on Aug. 1, 2024, after working in planning for more than 40 years "certainly not for a lack of interest, or a desire to do what I do.”
“I think after that period of time, there's some other fires in my life that I need to tend to,” Putt said.
He taught part-time at the University of Utah for over a decade too, until last December.
Summit County hired Putt in 2013. Before that, he did some consulting for Canyons Village and the Talisker Club in Deer Valley.
After working in planning departments in northern Arizona and Breckenridge, Colo., he moved to the Park City area in 1995. Putt became Park City’s planning director before stepping down in 2008.
He remembers learning Salt Lake City would host the 2002 Winter Olympic Games on the radio while driving into Utah. That, and the COVID-19 pandemic, would be two pivotal events in his planning career.
Both events brought waves of growth to the Wasatch Back, and with that growth, additional local interest in the planning process.
“If you just look at the sheer numbers, in terms of construction and building permits and planning and the stuff that's running through the process,” Putt said, “it's certainly busier than it's ever been.”
He has the utmost faith in the people around him at Summit County’s planning department. Putt takes pride in working side-by-side with “geniuses.”
“Truth be told, there's a younger generation around me that are incredibly capable, maybe in a lot of regards better than me,” the outgoing director said. And I think it's probably time for me to step aside and let the folks who are going to spend more time in the future than I, plan the future.”
Putt’s replacement has not been announced.
