Molly Miller will do a fine job as a Park City councilor. The active mom from Prospector will draw from a wide net of experience and feedback from residents. She’ll do her homework (and bless her for her willingness to study endless dry documents and minutia few others would take on to the detriment of, say, watching “White Lotus”).
She’ll contribute to full discussions among the councilors and be thoughtful with her votes. She’ll have the courage to go against the grain or groupthink when that seems called for. That’s my belief, anyway.
As much as the emotional oversimplications we know as small-town politics boil over, the council will be just fine. Our country or state should be so well run, going by the objective evidence.
Jack Rubin would do a terrific job as a Park City councilor, as well. Personally, I was delighted that he applied for the appointment. Like Miller, he killed it in his interview. Actually, I think he did the best overall of all nine who went through the gantlet. He demonstrated knowledge, humor, enthusiasm, and I thought he signaled willingness to work cooperatively with the councilors interviewing him. He hit all my checkpoints like chimes, music.
Everyone seems to have forgotten there were 10 applicants for the appointment to the council seat Mayor Ryan Dickey vacated with his seven-vote victory over Rubin for the role that sets agendas and leads the meetings but doesn’t vote unless there’s a tie on the five-member City Council. Well, in this case four seeking that fifth, so ripe for deadlock though that wasn’t necessary.
But Laura Suesser, former Planning Commission chair, had a personal commitment she couldn’t shake for an interview. Turns out there are even more important things in life than securing a council seat.
So nine interviews went back to back to back for a long Tuesday morning into the afternoon. Then the council made, for them, short work of choosing on Thursday evening. Too short, I think.
Landing on Miller was controversial, and vocal Rubin supporters are making themselves heard, for sure. Their most obvious point is how close the mayor’s election turned out and their contention that had the council seat gone to a special election, surely he would have won.
Miller ran for a council seat but did not make it past the primary election that culled the field from eight candidates to four, finishing seventh in the initial pack.
Midterm vacancies in Utah’s municipal governments are filled by appointment. There’s nothing weird or bizarre or wrong about it. It’s the way. In a sense, think trial by judge(s) instead of by jury. If different than an election, appointment has its merits, too, and is the long precedent for these offices, not to mention the law.
Also, the notion Rubin would do as well in a crowded council race with a primary as he did in the mayor’s race is more than a bit iffy, at least in my mind.
Incumbent Park City Councilor Jeremy Rubell, who expressed very similar views and was in least loose alignment with Rubin, frankly was crushed by Tana Toly and Diego Zegarra in the council side of the general election. If you want to distill mandates, here was a clear one.
And this is a council seat, not mayor with the vastly different dynamic of a contest between two with no primary or wide field to rise through. In fact, the “people’s will” for mayor was Dickey, however slender that reed.
My own disappointment wasn’t along the lines of hypothetical election logic, which has an obvious hole or two in that apples-and-oranges way.
A special election would be interesting. My own suspicion is that neither Miller nor Rubin would emerge as winner. There were several other viable council candidates among the applicants, along with some chaff, true.
The problem here has more to do with stiff backs and unwillingness to actually work together. That’s what bugs me. That’s what we should be tired of. The four councilors resorted to their factions, hardened for this vote into unrelenting teams. Sigh.
I understand why Rubin was a hard no for Toly and Zegarra, and Miller was a hard no for Bill Ciraco and Ed Parigian. I’m sure I wasn’t the only observer to understand that as soon as the applicant list was complete.
The council went two rounds with Ciraco and Parigian voting for Rubin, and Toly and Zegarra for Miller, so deadlocked at 2-2. In the case of a tie, the mayor has the deciding vote. He went for the applicant most aligned with Toly, Zegarra and himself.
The alternative was to set himself up to repeat the frustrations of the previous mayor, Nann Worel, facing a majority of councilors out of alignment with her. Rubin would have faced the same challenge had he won the mayor’s race, and Dickey was not going to risk the same. Nor should he.
So all that is understandable and, no offense, a reasonable course. The council election showed a clear direction even if the mayor’s race was a wash. Miller does fit that.
My issue is with the deadlock itself. I understood the hard no’s, but there were nine finalists, not just two, and several were at least as viable as Miller and Rubin. Maybe none were No. 1 choices, but surely there was another who could get a 3-1 or maybe even a unanimous vote. The point is that several merited more serious consideration.
I don’t blame the mayor for his ultimate vote. It was entirely sensible. But the councilors could have done better. There was no need to cement themselves into hardened positions. Everyone had other choices. They coulda-shoulda at least tried to find a No. 2 choice they could agree on, and left the mayor out of it.
I also don’t fault alignments on a council, although like supermajorities in legislatures, they are more vulnerable to bad decisions. Still, Park City’s councilors each could have been a lot more thoughtful, done a lot more listening, and taken a much wiser course than this under the circumstances.
Of course, this is easy to declare from outside. They have two years to try to figure it out. Will they lock in from here with hockey-like power plays as the go-to? Unfortunately, that’s the signal with the quick intransigence the councilors displayed this time. There are other choices.
Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.