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This week was supposed to be a recap of the stupidity at the statehouse. There was enough space to last two weeks. Their actions ranged from obvious stupidity to outright cheating.
For example, even though Utah's air quality is terrible, Congress thinks it's a great idea to require power companies to burn it. more coal. The rest of the world is starting to think that burning carbon will destroy the planet and us. Not here.
Congress wants coal-fired power plants to continue burning more coal, even though it actually costs more to maintain and operate coal-fired power plants that have reached the end of their design lives. . He also wants to exempt power companies from liability if they fail to properly maintain power lines and cause fires across the state. It happened in Northern California, and the utility ended up going bankrupt.
That won't happen here. Burn, baby burn.
Congress also did its best to usurp local governments' role in land use. They created a number of new state-level institutions to subsidize development. They want to spend $1 billion (yes, with a “b”) Each Construction costs for MLB's baseball stadiums and NHL's hockey rinks will be covered by large special tax increases.
As for the baseball field, an increase in Summit County's hotel occupancy tax would be used to pay for the facility. Baseball fans often stay in Park City to watch games.
In addition to the existing special agency for the redevelopment of former prison sites, MIDA was expanded to include the construction of hotels at Sundance and the construction of “inland ports” that were popping up all over the place. They are all run by appointed state officials and are not accountable to anyone. And they want their records to be secret.
There is a proposal to require armed guards in all schools. If a district cannot afford armed guards, volunteers can be used. For worried parents, there's nothing more reassuring than knowing that a neighborhood gun enthusiast volunteered to sit in an elementary school hallway all day and try to shoot someone. Perhaps in the spirit of efficiency, armed guards could also look down children's pants to make sure they don't walk into the “wrong” bathroom.
And it continues. They are spending more money researching ways to introduce more water into the Great Salt Lake. (Hint: stop growing or use less.) No one is actually spending anything to acquire water rights or significantly reduce usage or, God forbid, slow growth.
Because golf courses lend themselves to real estate development, golf course water consumption records are considered a national security secret. And nothing symbolizes water conservation more than our socialist state subsidizing the homebuilding industry to build his 35,000 new homes. The 150,000 people who will live there won't use a single drop of water, have huge mortgages and can't afford to play golf.
But this week's top story comes from Brighton, where a deranged old man with a shotgun threatened to shoot a man on a snowboard who ran off the slope to ski back to his Airbnb. The snowboarder descended a plowed alley (some reports said it was a public road) and was confronted by a deranged old man with a gun.
You can tell he's a crazy old guy with a gun because he's sitting in a lawn chair in the middle of the road waiting for someone to ride skis or boards down the driveway. He even wears pajama bottoms outside in February. (Maybe he's trained as an armed security volunteer at your child's school.)
As the manager rolled his GoPro down the driveway, the man confronted him and yelled, “This is private property. This is private property.” Are you an icon user? “I don't give AF##k.” The lodger says he's sorry, but he didn't know this was private property and was just trying to get back to his Airbnb on the way. I did. The old man pushed him pretty hard, but fortunately he never actually pointed a gun at him, but the gun is definitely present and should be taken seriously. The snowboarder was surprisingly calm and quickly backed away.
That's why Icon Pass is looked down upon, even by shotgun-toting crazies. It's unclear whether it was Icon Pass or the Airbnb next door that pushed him to assault with a deadly weapon, but one or both pushed him over the edge.
While that reaction is clearly completely psychotic, many of the local skiers who stood in the long lines of people who picked up multi-resort passes this past weekend were impressed by the “benefits” of multi-resort passes that have completely changed skiing. You must have wondered about this. . Before Icon, Deer Valley parking was crowded but usually available. Past Icon, the parking lot fills up by 8am, and even on weekdays he's gone by 9:30.
Ten years ago, there was no need for the Richardson Flat shuttle system. Now it's the Icon Express, and it's jam-packed with round trips. This pass is a great deal for everyone except the resort's locals, like Deer Valley's season pass holders and the crazy old man in Brighton.
A video of the Brighton incident is posted online when you search for “Brighton shotgun.” I think it will become national in the near future. That's exactly the kind of marketing element we need.
Tom Clyde was a lawyer in Park City for many years. He lives on a ranch in Woodland and has written this column since 1986.
