I admit I don’t live in Park City (too expensive!) but close enough (the Retreat, about one mile past the Park Cityline). My background was in state government (as a counsel for the New York Assembly Consumer Protection Committee) and I worked as a lobbyist (mostly for non-profits and progressive causes) and as a Syracuse University half-time faculty member. I love watching the political process, and I have to say, with the benefit of nearly 50 years experience, making the political sausage in Utah is about as ugly a process as I’ve ever seen.
Developers rule the roost, and state legislators think nothing of pulling the rug out from local decision makers on land use and zoning issues. The annexation of Richardson Flats by Hideout and the green lighting of the Dakota Pacific development (over enormous local opposition) are but the two latest and most visible manifestations of a complete disdain for home rule, broadly defined as giving local political subdivisions the right to self-governance. The state Legislature strips away local autonomy whenever a powerful, well-connected developer requests it. It is truly abhorrent.
But perhaps the clearest signal of how well a small local government functions is how good (or poor) a job they do of handling the easy stuff. Not where multimillionaire developers seek to quash home rule, or billionaires seek to ignore local zoning, but the everyday small potatoes, routine stuff. And I have to say, in watching the mayor and the Park City Council handle a really simple matter — the allocation of indoor court time at the MARC between tennis and pickleball players — I got to see first hand just how dysfunctional Park City government really is.
I was a tennis player my whole life, but after two hip replacements and the wear and tear of various ailments (plantar fasciitis was the worst!), I moved on to pickleball. I had a tennis membership at the MARC for several years, but after a while gave that up and began to play just pickleball.
As fate would have it, pickleball exploded in popularity, and very quickly it became quite obvious that there simply weren’t enough court hours for pickleball. So like the consummate government affairs professional I am, I went to meet with Ken Fisher. He patiently explained that tennis got 80% of the available indoor court hours because tennis produced far more revenue than pickleball.
In many decades of government life, on both sides of the political aisle, working inside and out, I have to say that was by far the most disingenuous justification I had ever heard. Of course, if you allot 80% of the available court time to tennis, then tennis will produce far more revenue than pickleball. Yhe reverse is also true: If Ken Fisher gave pickleball 80% of the court time, then the pickleball revenue would dwarf the tennis revenue. It’s really that simple!
Being a patient person and well versed in the functions of government, I began meeting with other Park City Council members, the Recreation Advisory Board, the mayor, and the city manager. I expected the following year we’d see significant changes. But alas, when Ken Fisher made his recommendations to the City Council, nothing changed. His explanation was (unimaginably) even more lame than the moronic revenue argument from the year before. He argued that the MARC was “purpose built” for tennis, and since it had been built for that purpose, tennis should remain the top priority.
Of course, he ignored the fact that the MARC was previously built as a private facility (the Park City Racquet Club), but it failed. Apparently the club didn’t have enough tennis players to keep it afloat. Park City Municipal Corp. bought it, hired a marketing firm to help rebrand it, and it became the MARC. All great, except for the fact that Ken Fisher was now arguing that a publicly owned, taxpayer-funded facility should allocate indoor court time based on its original “purpose” when it was built as a tennis club.
Apparently, the Park City Council (which meets in a converted school building) bought the argument, because they ratified the hours Fisher recommended. Tennis players still got 100% of the four very nice indoor courts in the MARC, and about two-thirds of the hours in the bubble.
Perhaps one of the simplest things a local government can do is survey its people to ask them what they want. Sometimes you don’t even need to do a survey. For example, you can just go to Willow Creek any morning and look at the 50+ people on the pickleball courts and two to four people on the tennis courts. It’s very obvious where the public demand is.
Several Park City Council members acknowledged this. But instead of asking the MARC patrons what they wanted, the council directed the Recreation Advisory Board (comprised of people they selected) to create a committee to look at how indoor court hours should be allocated. Not surprisingly, the small committee chosen by the Recreation Advisory Board chosen by the City Council made only a few minor tweaks. Tennis still got 100% of the time on the four nice indoor courts in the MARC, and pickleball got a few more hours in the bubble.
Then last year, Ken Fisher decreed that tennis and pickleball would be charged the same. Now understand that a pickleball court is half the size of a tennis court, so effectively Park City is charging pickleball players double what it charges tennis players to book a tennis court.
As you might expect, most of the pickleball players no longer play at the MARC. We go to the Pickler or to Kellsey’s in Heber or other private courts. Obviously, that means driving longer distances, with the attendant traffic and air pollution externalities. But in order not to inconvenience a few dozen tennis players, hundreds of pickleball players are routinely driving to play at much further venues.
As I said, one can judge the efficacy of local government most easily by their ability to deal with the simple, mundane, everyday issues. And based on six years of watching the mayor, City Manager, City Council and Recreation Advisory Bord completely botch the simple matter of fairly allocating indoor court times at the MARC, I’ve come to the conclusion that Park City government is hopelessly dysfunctional. They say all the right things, but in practice they are unable to do even the simplest, most basic task.
It probably makes little difference who is elected mayor. Until there is a commitment to fairness, ethics and transparency, nothing will change.
Gene DeSantis
Kamas