Hunter says the upcoming First Friday Artist Opening is "exciting," and she's been working on creating as many items as she can for it. Her recent focus has been on hats, bags and mandalas, and the fall is her busiest time.

"It is going into the season where you start to gear up for Christmas and fall, with hats and things -- fall is the time where all of that stuff sort of starts to come out," she said.

Hats have been her quickest selling items of late.

"Mostly, lately, what I've been working on is hats," she said. "It's fun for me and I kind of gave everybody hats and so being able to sell them is a good way for me to be able to just keep making them!"

Mandalas are the items Hunter crafts that take the most work. "Hours and hours and hours," she said.

"Because every single row is a different color, most of the time," she said. "They just kind of happen -- it's not something that's from any kind of pattern and typically I can't, or don't, reproduce the same pattern because I don't write it down, I just do it. So that's kind of fun."

"What I kind of feel like I'm doing is painting with thread," she said.

Hunter has been crocheting for more than 50 years, when her grandmother taught her at age 5. "Crocheting hats and bags has just sort of been part of my life forever," she said. She has a degree in textile design with a concentration in weaving from the University of Vermont, she said. She moved to Utah from Vermont nine years ago.

Fall is ideal for finding artistic inspiration.

"This time of year is a huge inspirational time of year for me with the fall colors," she said. "Sometimes I'll take photographs and sort of work the colors from that and sometimes I just try to remember. And I'll find nowadays, driving up and down the canyon, like 'Oh look at that tree, I have to remember that!'"

Artique's First Friday events are "just a fun night," Hunter said. "I'll also be at the store the next day, in case people can't come on Friday night."

Artique, 283 North Main St. in Kamas, is holding its October First Friday event Oct. 2, from 6-9 p.m. Mary Ellen Hunter's crocheted works, including hats, bags and mandalas will be featured.

The post Crochet in Artique’s spotlight appeared first on Park Record.

Silver Restaurant, located at 508 Main Street, closed for business in May when its building was sold to a new owner. Silver requested an "extended closure" of 60 days from the DABC, which would allow it to keep its club license, so that it could either negotiate a new lease or find a new location.

On July 6, Silver informed the DABC that its efforts had failed. It requested, and was granted, an additional 30-day extension of its license so that it could find a buyer and sell it.

On Aug. 25, Silver told the DABC at its monthly meetings that it had found a buyer for its license, Falcon PC Main Street LLC. That company was also working out a lease for the space at 508 Main St. formerly occupied by Silver.

Falcon PC Main Street LLC is tangentially connected to St. Regis Deer Valley, though they have no direct relationship. "Some of the financial backers for the St. Regis are also some of the financial backers for the restaurant," explained Thomas Bennett, an attorney at Ballard Spahr who is representing Falcon PC Main Street.

DABC employees and commissioners pushed back on Silver's latest request for more time at the Aug. 25 meeting.

"Yes, licenses are allowed to be transferred, however there [are] also operational restrictions that are throughout the entire statute," said DABC Director of Compliance Nina McDermott. "I think it's very clear that these licenses need to be used. We have 13 applications for club applicants, about six of those are already operational and could use that license today. It's very concerning to the department. How long can a person hold onto a license to be able to broker it or to sell it is really what's concerning the department. There needs to be some sort of limit."

"The department's concern is that even if you're able to get up and running in 30 days, this license will have gone unused for six months," said an attorney advising the DABC, Sheila Page. "There are a number of other businesses, in Park City even, that are up and running and could have used that license immediately."

Silver and Falcon PC Main Street LLC's attorneys explained that they were continuing to make progress on the license transfer and were eventually granted more time from the DABC.

"I'll take Mr. Gamble at his word because I know him and I trust him that the application will be filed no later than Sept. 10," said DABC Chairman John Nielsen, referring to attorney Jay Gamble, who represented both Silver and Falcon PC Main Street LLC. "I'm prepared to do that because I think this would be a good operation. But boy it can't go beyond that, that would be seven months."

Bennett said the transfer application was filed by the Sept. 10 deadline. If approved at the next monthly meeting, on Sept. 27, Falcon PC Main Street LLC will have 30 days to have its new restaurant operational or it will forfeit the club license.

DABC Commissioner Olivia Vela Agraz told Gamble the department was trying to be as accommodating as it could be.

"Jay, at our compliance meeting this morning we really put our heads together, all of us here, because we really want your success. But we're coming from a place where our hands are really tied by a lot of the law and what we do for you, you know, then other people feel like they're not getting what they need."

The new restaurant will be called Tupelo, which says it will feature "heirloom ingredient-driven cuisine with a deep, yet playful understanding of regional heritage and modern technique." The menu will be created by Chef Matthew Harris, who opened J&G Grill and the St. Regis Bar at St. Regis Deer Valley, among others.

A club license is important to Tupelo, Bennett said, because of the extra regulations the state places on typical restaurant licensees.

"If you had a regular restaurant license for a new restaurant you would have to basically put up one of those things they call Zion Curtains, you know that blocks the preparation of any of the cocktails and things, and so this [club license] allows you to have a place that looks like a normal bar and restaurant combination," he said.

At its Sept. 27 meeting, the DABC will have one club license newly available for 13 applicants. It will discuss four club license transfers, including Silver's.

"People really try to keep their club licenses because they're so valuable. And they should, you know, they're hard to get," said Ashby.

"They're really coveted licenses," she said.

The post A coveted club license on Main appeared first on Park Record.

Brown and Reade Gleim, both longtime residents of Park City, are executive board members at Drug Policy Project of Utah (DPP), a nonprofit that is advocating for medical cannabis (i.e., marijuana) in Utah.

DPP has been focused on advocating over the past year for legislation sponsored by Sen. Mark Madsen (R - Saratoga Springs) that would create a medical cannabis system in Utah under which patients suffering from a list of specific illnesses or maladies would have access to the plant to alleviate suffering.

Madsen introduced his bill during the last legislative session and, while it passed out of committee in the Senate, it ultimately failed before the entire Senate by a single vote. Summit County's two senators, Kevin Van Tassell (R- Vernal) and Allen Christensen (R - Ogden) both voted No.

Madsen will be re-introducing his bill again in the upcoming legislative session.

"All we care about is providing medical cannabis to patients and so whatever bill or whatever legislation that we can get that provides the greatest access is the legislation that we would support," said Brown, who noted that Madsen's bill is very conservative in its scope.

"In terms of the patient side of things, there is a fairly short list of disease states [or conditions] that are going to be allowed to have their doctors recommend medical cannabis to them. So AIDS patients, certain epileptic conditions, cancer, Crohn's disease and other inflammatory bowel diseases -- my point is, if you were to compare it to California even, the umbrella of patients it will cover is not really that vast."

Brown said one of the "sticking points from last year" was post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

"HHS Committee, as well as the senators in general, are worried that that could be too broad and there's not enough research," said Brown. "Sen. Madsen's bill has been tweaked to specifically cite combat-related PTSD. So that's not a bad thing, but PTSD unfortunately doesn't stop there.

"We're working with what we have here in Utah," she said.

"We want to advocate for as many different types of patients and many different types of symptoms as possible," said Reade Gleim. "And the other part of that is, let that decision be made with the physician and with the patient."

Brown and Reade Gleim have been participating in Utah's Health and Human Services (HHS) Interim Committee meetings in recent months.

"There is so much speculation and negative connotations or associations with cannabis in general. And we're really working hard at the DPP to share stories of patients, of how this bill can affect and change lives for people all over our state," said Reade Gleim. "And how this is something that is so necessary for so many people and they really need to take a serious look at this. A couple years ago the [medical cannabis] bill passed for children with epilepsy and it's wonderful that we've been able to provide help for so many children that need that help, but there are children that have other seizure disorders. There are adults with seizure disorders. The amount of people that could benefit from medical cannabis is so vast, and that's one of the things we've been wanting to share, and we've been invited to share, with the legislature."

Though Madsen's bill never made it to the House last session, Reade Gleim has gotten the sense that "they're definitely open to hearing more and learning more."

"They want to see medical evidence, they want to see research, and they want to see proof from physicians," she said. "And that makes sense, but the problem is that it's still a Schedule 1 drug. Research can't be done here in the United States -- very limited research."

The federal drug "Schedules" were created in 1970. According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, "Schedule I drugs are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence."

Other Schedule 1 drugs include heroin, LSD and ecstasy.

The HHS Committee members, Brown said, are "sort of fascinated" by "the Colorado situation."

Colorado is one of three states (plus the District of Columbia) that regulates recreational marijuana.

"Obviously in Utah, and I'm with them, we're concerned about cannabis in the hands of children, untethered access to children and advertising to children, and of course the problem is that none of that is allowed in any legislation, nor would it ever be," said Brown. "This is also strictly a conservative medicinal cannabis bill, not recreation. So Colorado is not really a great example.

"I sense a little bit of fear in some of the members of the Committee that 'it's a slippery slope to full legalization and there's going to be all this advertising to kids,' and this and that," she said.

"That's not what we're advocating for," added Reade Gleim. "We're not Colorado. I don't know if everybody realizes that there are 23 other states that have medical cannabis."

Brown and Reade Gleim are "so passionate about this" because of Reade Gleim's health issues.

"I have a nerve disease. I've been in chronic pain the last five years of my life," she said.

"And that has really put my life on hold in a lot of ways in the last five years. On top of that I've had brain surgery, and after that surgery I then started developing chronic migraines caused by another facial nerve. So I get pain from that, and it's just -- being young, not being able to have children because you take a giant cocktail of medications, I quit what at the time was my dream job last summer, because I couldn't keep up, I couldn't work 40 hours a week. And there needs to be more options than this. There needs to be more options that just saying 'Here's medication, if that doesn't work let's add some more doses.' And then you get the side effects of everything and you take more drugs and on and on and on."

"We have all these drugs approved by the FDA," she said. "We just had OxyContin approved as an option to treat 11 year olds, as young as 11 with chronic pain. Those drugs will stop your heart! Cannabis doesn't work that way."

The pair of Parkites will be continuing to educate about cannabis as the next legislative session draws nearer. They say a big part of the task is overcoming the "fear" ingrained in people. They explain to legislators that "you can't overdose on it" and that "cannabis sits right below coffee in its addiction potential."

They say Utahns are on their side.

"In Utah, we commissioned a poll," Brown said, "and 72 percent of Utahns support medical cannabis. This is not something that we're shoving down anyone's throat here. This is something the population is not scared of and is in support of."

For more information about the Drug Policy Project of Utah, including patient testimonials from dozens of Utahns and an October 16 fundraiser in Park City, visit its website (www.dpputah.org ), or follow it on Facebook or Twitter. Hear more from DPP Executive Board Members Erin Brown and Jessica Reade Gleim on Thursday, Sept. 10, when they'll be on KPCW's "Cool Science Radio."

The post Parkites lead the push for medical cannabis appeared first on Park Record.

Among the most infamous of Utah's liquor laws is the separate dispensing area rule, which requires certain restaurants to shield from patrons' view the mixing of alcoholic drinks, usually behind a wall colloquially known as the "Zion Curtain."

Rep. Kraig Powell, a Republican from Heber City whose district includes Park City, has pushed for reform of that rule for several years. During the 2014 legislative session, he focused on both the intent to dine and separate dispensing rules. Supporters of the status quo expressed frustration with the push to change any liquor laws. Powell dropped the intent to dine reform and pushed only for separate dispensing area changes. His bill narrowly passed out of committee but never made it to the House floor for a full vote.

In the 2015 legislative session, he again focused solely on the separate dispensing area requirement. Again, though, the bill did not receive a full vote on the House floor.

For the 2016 session, Powell is planning to try again. The idea is to allow restaurants subject to the separate dispensing area requirement to create a separate no-minors-allowed bar or lounge area in lieu of creating a wall.

"The dining club already has what I'm proposing," Powell said. "That is, in a dining club, in a separate bar or lounge area, minors are not able to be present.

"And that actually is not that unusual. If you look across the country there are lots of states that have restaurants or clubs or places that serve alcoholic beverages that have a separate bar or lounge area that says 'No minors allowed.' So that's what I'm trying to really focus on, is the fact that we've already got this in place now."

Powell said the dining club model should be preferable to all sides.

"It actually provides greater safety and greater regulation for the types of concerns that people have. For instance, a dining club -- they have to electronically ID patrons," he said. "So not only are they certain that they're not serving underage, but they also have a way to track if there's an incident or an accident or somebody has some liability."

The one significant difference between a dining club and a restaurant is that only restaurants are subject to the intent to dine rule, which forbids restaurants from serving alcohol to anyone not ordering food.

"But the dining club still has to maintain the 60 percent ratio of food sales to alcohol sales. So I think it's a good enough security guarantee that they're going to be serving alcohol responsibly," Powell said.

As an alternative, Powell says he will also introduce a bill to increase the number of club licenses made available by the state. There is a significant state-wide waiting list for the licenses. Last year the state began allowing club licenses to be purchased directly from existing license holders, which has created a secondary market where club licenses have reportedly fetched more than $100,000, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

The legislature should soon be getting over its "liquor law fatigue" and be opening up to the idea of reform, Powell hopes.

"Legislative leadership for many years have said that 'We just got done with a compromise, a big overhaul of Utah liquor laws,' and that was getting rid of the membership cards. But that actually was back in 2010, it was proposed in 2009, it finally passed in 2010. the time we get to the next legislative session that's going to be six years ago -- it's not just yesterday that happened," he said. "And we've now created a system where we have still more than half of our restaurants that are on an uneven playing field -- they're not subject to the wall requirement because they're grandfathered in and any [new] restaurants that want to come in have to comply with the law. We've also heard, you know, pretty uniformly across businesses and patrons, that they don't like the requirement. And so I think eventually that's going to change."

The post Another attempt to take down the ‘Zion Curtain’ appeared first on Park Record.

The awards ceremony took place Tuesday during a lunch at Grub Steak Restaurant.

Bob Richer, chair of Park City Rotary's Citizen of the Year committee, noted that the awards are for the year 2014, even though the ceremony was held later in the year than usual.

Colin Hilton

Myles Rademan nominated Hilton for the Professional Citizen of the Year award. Rademan said he's known Hilton since they worked on the Olympics together starting in 1999.

After the Olympics, Hilton worked for Park City Municipal Corp. for four years as its economic development director before Rademan and others sold him on the job of taking over the Olympic Legacy Foundation, where he's been ever since.

Rademan lauded Hilton's success during the Olympics and his work for the city, including developing the sports fields and ice rink facility at Quinn's Junction as well as downtown improvements.

"I had a lot of fun," Hilton said of his time working for the City.

"He's a real do-er," Rademan said. "Sometimes we get bogged down in too much talk, too many consultants, a few too many public meetings. Sometimes you want to get something done -- you want to see kids playing out on a field or ice skating, or traffic working. He's great at that stuff."

Luke Bodensteiner, USSA Executive Vice President, Athletics, and chair of the Olympic Legacy Foundation's board of directors, lauded Hilton's work for the Legacy Foundation.

"When we recruited him to become the CEO of that organization, he made it really clear to us that he wasn't interested in an Olympic legacy that was about keeping venues open and hosting the occasional event. For him, his vision of a legacy was how to really engage a community, how to get a lot of kids involved from a personal-developmental standpoint," he said. "That's what really turned us on to put him in charge of the operation. And he's certainly done that."

"And at the end of the day, the Olympic legacy is something that touches everybody in this community every day. Our families, it shapes how we view ourselves as a community, how the rest of the world views Park City," he said. "Utah's got arguably the best Olympic legacy worldwide and [Hilton] really continued to position this community as a logical place to someday look at bringing the Olympics back here."

Hilton agrees that his focus is on making the best use of the Olympic facilities.

"I had always felt like there should be greater emphasis on finding unique, creative ways to use these facilities after a major event, and I think we're setting a pretty good standard at the moment," he said. "With what we're doing, being four times busier from where we were just after 2002, and the amount of support that the community has given, I am very rewarded in what is going on and it's a terrific community to do this."

Glenn Artist

Glenn Artist, Rotary's Volunteer Citizen of the Year, was nominated for the award by John Hanrahan, a founder of both the People's Health Clinic and the Hope Alliance.

"I just think [Artist] epitomizes the spirit of volunteerism in our community. He has done lots of volunteer work for many, many years in a lot of different organizations and has just been outstanding," he said.

"We've worked together on the [Hope Alliance] board for seven years now and been on humanitarian expeditions overseas a couple of times, and he just puts everyone at ease and works hard and just makes things go smoothly," he added.

"We've always been able to count on Glenn at Hope Alliance," Ken Barfield agreed.

"Glenn embodies service above self," said Jenny Smith, former president and general manager of Park City Mountain Resort, on Tuesday.

Amy Roberts, public relations director at Park City Medical Center, where Artist has volunteered for around six years, said Artist's most common refrain is "I can do that for you," and, after the task is done, "What's next?"

35 years and counting

The two Citizen of the Year plaques hang in the Park City Room of the library.

"In my mind," said Richer, "that's kind of a who's-who of the last 35 years of Park City history, the people who helped make the town into what it is today. I always put the disclaimer that we exclude the Park City Rotary members -- they're not eligible for the honor."

Richer listed some former Professional Citizens of the Year.

"Nick Badami, Stein Eriksen, Bob Wheaton, people like that. It's a prestigious group to be a part of," he said.

Dean Berrett spoke Tuesday about the two awards' namesakes -- Jack Green, Park City's mayor from 1978 to 1986, and Linda Singer-Berrett, the first principal at Parley's Park Elementary and McPolin Elementary School, as well as the first female Rotary member and then president.

"As for the future, there are members of this club, in this community, who will be the future Jack Greens and Linda Singers, who believe that by serving others much more than themselves, they can make a positive difference," he said.

The post Rotary honors its professional and volunteer citizens of the year appeared first on Park Record.

The Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest sells fuelwood permits for $7.50 per cord.

"We begin selling firewood about the middle part of June," said Gay Hadfield, a USFS customer service representative in the Heber-Kamas district. "And we sell firewood permits from then until the end of October. It's real busy to begin with, then it kind of dwindles down, but it's always a constant thing."

Hadfield estimates she's sold around 300 permits so far this year out of the Heber office. Permits are also sold out of the Kamas and Pleasant Grove offices. There is a 4-cord minimum and 10-cord maximum for each permit.

"There are a few people that just totally heat their homes with firewood, so they always come in and get the max. But I would say the majority of the permits we sell are 4-cord permits," said Hadfield.

There are a few rules people should follow.

"If [a tree] has any type of paint mark, they have to leave those," said Brenda Bushell with the Heber district. "Paint marks are used for bigger timber sales that come up for bid."

"We also let them know that they can't cut in the developed campgrounds," said Gina Daniel, natural resource specialist in the Heber district. "We will try at some point to allow the public in to gather the trees that the Forest Service has cut down for hazard tree work at the beginning of the season. We'll let folks in there after the campgrounds close down. But that will probably be shortly after American Land & Leisure (the campground concessionaire) leaves some of these campgrounds and shuts them down for the season. Folks can call us after Labor Day and ask about that if they'd like."

Though fuelwood can be taken from remote areas, you can't necessarily bring your car in with you.

"We tell them that they cannot pull off into an area to gather wood with their vehicles. They can just pull to the side of a designated road," said Hadfield.

"The area for the firewood is anywhere on the Heber-Kamas district. So the boundaries are Mirror Lake Highway as far as Butterfly Lake, and then all the way to the south end of Strawberry Reservoir," she said.

Transplanting trees

The main tree-related permits the Forest Service issues are for fuelwood but they also issue permits for transplanting.

"They can go and dig up a seedling and then transplant it into their yard," said Bushell.

But, she cautions, it's not easy.

"That's kind of difficult. A lot of the trees don't end up making it. It's pretty tough to do," she said. "You want to do it when the trees are dormant."

"Aspen trees do not do well unless they are harvested when they are dormant," said Hadfield. "So that's why we usually tell people early in the spring, to go out before they begin to bud. Because once they begin to bud they just don't do as well."

"Subalpine fir -- that one is a little bit different," she said. "It is best to get that one when it's dormant too, but it's not quite as crucial as the aspen tree is. You have to take the same size [root ball] of a subalpine fir tree as the height of the tree. So you would not want to get a huge tree because you have to get a huge ball to go with it."

The ideal window for transplanting varies from year to year.

"It's always dependent upon the weather. If we have a really hard winter, the best time will be toward the end of May. If we have a real light winter it may begin the first of May or late April. And the same in the fall -- just depends when the weather starts changing," Hadfield said. "If people call about transplants in the spring, I usually make a list of their names and numbers and when we begin selling the transplant permits I call them. And so they have about three weeks to come and get the trees before they start to bud."

Bushell said that there are important factors, other than dormancy, in a successful transplant.

"There's a whole lot of old wives tales," she said. "Some of it is making sure that you mark which way is north on the tree so you have it planted north when you plant it. The big thing is just getting all of the root system out of the ground."

Transplanting permits cost $6 for subalpine fir and $4 for aspens. Unlike fuelwood, transplants can only be removed from a designated area, near Co-op Creek and Strawberry Reservoir.

The post Refueling in the forest: firewood gathering ramps up ahead of winter appeared first on Park Record.

The air in Park City and surrounding areas has been noticeably hazy all week long. The culprit is smoke from wildfires, but not any wildfires nearby. Rather, the smoke is from dozens of out-of-state wildfires that continues to blow our way.

"It's coming from all different directions. It's coming from Washington and Oregon and also from California," said Donna Spangler, communications director at the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).

Eric Shoening, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Salt Lake City office, agreed.

"It's kind of a combination of several fires, most of them probably up in the Pacific Northwest. We've had this kind of persistent northwest wind for a couple of days now and that just keeps pushing more and more smoke from that area into much of the rest of the West," he said.

Until the wind patterns change, Shoening doesn't expect the current conditions to change.

"As long as we stay in this northwest flow, we're just going to keep getting more and more smoke because those fires are still pretty active. They keep pumping out smoke and it just keeps blowing over towards us," he said.

"There's a chance that starting the beginning of next week, Monday, Tuesday, that area, winds will switch to the southwest and we'll also get some additional moisture come in from the south, so that could increase showers across the area. So that's kind of when we're expecting the possibility that we can sweep some of this smoke out of the area," he added.

The only thing people can do in the meantime is to drive less.

"It's particulate pollution. You still have the same health impacts that you would in the wintertime, so if you drive more, you're just putting more particulate pollution in the air and it's just going to become worse," said Spangler. "So let's try and drive less if we can, make fewer trips or consolidate them, again because driving does make things worse and adds to the pollution."

Parkites join the fight

Park City Fire Department Captain David Marsella is currently in Northern California with a PCFD engine and two other PCFD firefighters. The team is on a two-week assignment where it is working with four other engines to form a single "strike team."

The wildfire Marsella is fighting is called the River Complex, in National Forests east of Eureka. He spoke with The Park Record Friday morning, after finishing a 16-hour night shift.

"It was originally 18 small fires, which eventually grew into three large fires, which eventually grew into one really large fire," he said. "So when they get this big they call them complexes. And so what's happening in Northern California right now is there are five separate complexes and the River one is just one of five.

"The biggest real issue is there's just not enough firefighters to go around right now."

"Most of it is fairly rural," he said. "We've got one little community we've been protecting at night which consists of about seven homes."

Three firefighters were killed in Washington Wednesday afternoon and the news made its way to Marsella's team in California.

"You kind of reflect on what you do and family and stuff like that," he said. "And then you really do your best just to try and figure out what went wrong with them and learn from their mistakes -- if they made a mistake."

Marsella said his team will be working at the River Complex until next Wednesday, although that end-date could get pushed back a week.

Weekend forecast

The Summit County Health Department issued an advisory on Friday that will be in effect throughout the weekend. The department "is advising the following residents of the Snyderville Basin and Park City areas to reduce prolonged or heavy outdoor exertion: People with lung disease, such as asthma; Children and older adults; People who are active outdoors.

Residents of other Summit County areas with asthma or heart and lung conditions are advised to limit outdoor activity."

As of Friday, the DEQ reported "moderate" particulate matter ("a complex mixture of extremely small dust and soot particles") pollution in Salt Lake County. It forecasted worse conditions over the weekend, when the air quality is expected to go from "moderate" to "unhealthy for sensitive groups."

The DEQ warns that "[i]f smoke becomes thick, persons with existing heart or respiratory ailments should reduce physical exertion and outdoor activity. Individuals are asked to TravelWise by consolidating trips and choose cleaner transportation options."

The post Smoke seen, but not from Utah fires appeared first on Park Record.

On July 17, the Gang announced that it had come to an agreement on a "framework" for a Medicaid-funded expansion.

"The framework of this proposal provides coverage for a population up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level utilizing the greatest return of Utah taxpayer dollars through the ACA," a press release stated. "It protects the State from cost overruns through a formulaic funding model allowing providers and benefactors of Medicaid dollars to pay their share."

A spokesperson for the governor said Tuesday that those details are "pretty much it for now." She said the governor had been out of town last week and that she expects the Gang to begin meeting again in the coming weeks.

The Gang said it planned to "meet with stakeholders and policy makers in the coming weeks" as a "draft" of a plan is produced. Public hearings on the plan would follow.

"We're getting closer all the time, and I hope in the next three or four weeks we'll have this thing resolved," Herbert said Monday.

As the current plan is only a very broad framework, many steps remain before a health care expansion could actually take place. The framework calls for health care providers such as hospitals and doctors to pay a share of the annual costs of any expansion, so those groups will need to provide some level of "buy-in."

If and when those groups offer support for a plan, the Utah House of Representatives will need to be convinced.

RyLee Curtis, senior health analyst at Utah Health Policy Project, said that while the announced framework is light on details, the fact it would be a "full" expansion, meaning it would cover the most people and accept the most federal dollars, is significant.

"The House has never been at that place before and so that's a huge breakthrough," she said.

The House has been the legislative body most resistant to any form of Medicaid or Medicaid-funded expansion. It refused to hold a full vote on Herbert's Healthy Utah plan in the last legislative session after the plan passed the Senate.

"A majority of the House allowed their loathing of all things Obama to supersede Medicaid progress, and rejected the deal, offering a piddling alternative ironically dubbed Utah Cares," said the Standard-Examiner editorial board Monday. "We're not at all surprised at the cypher of a Medicaid deal that a six-member group has 'reached' to expand Medicaid in Utah. No one really expected the group to accomplish much," it added.

The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News editorial boards have also been critical of the glacial progress on expansion.

"In order to drag the matter out for three years, the blockade in the Utah House had to willfully ignore two facts," a July 20 Tribune editorial read. One, that delay "would leave tens of thousands of Utah residents without access to health care." Two, that "[a]ccepting Medicaid expansion, or some alternative, could not be anything but a net financial benefit, both to government and to the state's overall economy."

"As long as Utahns are required to shoulder hundreds of millions of dollars of new Obamacare taxes, rejecting a cost-sharing plan that address the unmet health needs of the poor does not make sense," wrote the Deseret News in February 2014.

The Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansions are 100 percent paid for by the federal government in the years 2014-2016, before that number winnows down to an ongoing 90 percent. Those years aren't up for negotiation, so if Utah is going to take advantage of the final year of basement-bargain prices, it will need to have a program in place prior to 2016.

The post Medicaid expansion inches along as deadline passes appeared first on Park Record.

Summit Land Conservancy worked with Nuzzles & Co. (formerly Friends of Animals Utah) over the past year to create a conservation easement on the land parcel owned by Nuzzles & Co. and adjacent to its Rescue Ranch.

The mechanism for the permanent protection of the land is a conservation easement, recorded on the deed of the property.

Cheryl Fox, Summit Land Conservancy's executive director, said conservation easement projects typically take longer than a year to complete, but a donor, who wishes to stay anonymous, stepped up.

"From our point of view this was really a quick one. Most times it takes us about two years to close on an easement deal, and that's because we have to raise so much money. And so in this situation, to be able to close the deal in under a year, it's because Nana B basically was very generous and facilitated this from a variety of points of view."

"Nana B" is the anonymous donor. Her grandchildren decided to name the newly protected lands "Nana B's Preserve."

"Now the two organizations will be able to work together to protect the land and animals from encroaching development, ensuring a better healing environment for the animals," Nana B said in a statement issued by the nonprofits. "At the same time, the natural land and habitat for wild animals and the wide open view will be protected for future generations."

Fox said there are transactional costs in an easement transaction -- surveys and legal fees, for example -- but the most significant costs will be with the continual oversight of the land.

"The real way that you protect property forever is that you have a third party, which in this case is the Summit Land Conservancy, that goes out every year and checks it out. Because the land can't speak for itself," Fox said. "So we put aside funding every time we get a conservation easement that ensures that we can continue to have a relationship with the current landowner and subsequent landowners. Which is the best way to make sure everything is good, because then everybody knows what's permitted or not on the property. We can send people out, we can do restoration, we can do enhancements."

For Nuzzles & Co., the biggest benefit is ensuring some open space between its Rescue Ranch and surrounding development.

"Now our animals have a quiet buffer from nearby quarries and future development where they can be healthy, happy and peaceful while they are with us. Our Rescue Ranch is enhanced forever," said Kathleen Toth, Nuzzles & Co.'s president.

The nonprofits' missions dovetail nicely.

"We're just super excited," Fox said. "We all here have our rescued pets This was a great partnership."

"A big thanks to Nana B and a big thanks to our members who make this kind of thing possible," she said.

The post Open space protected in Brown’s Canyon appeared first on Park Record.

Foregoing health care

The last time Dawn had health care insurance was in 2012, when she was married to an active-duty member of the Air Force. Then, they got divorced.

"My ex-husband was supposed to keep me on Tricare through COBRA for six months and he didn't. He let it lapse and I had cancer and I had to have surgery and I thought I had the insurance to cover it. We found out afterwards that no, he hadn't paid the premium for the coverage to last.

"I have skin cancer on my left eye," she said. "They did surgery and removed it, but that was a major hospital bill that I'm still trying to get paid off. I think I probably still owe around $3,000."

Dawn said she's been disabled since 2006 (she has a history of pulmonary embolisms, back problems, balance problems and esophageal gastritis, among other things), but has not yet been successful in obtaining Medicaid disability coverage.

"I've got about 21 different health conditions going on," Dawn said, and she hasn't been getting treatment.

"Somebody finally told me to go to Maliheh Free Clinic in Salt Lake (around 70 miles from her home). So I've been over to them twice now. That one is based on income so I qualify. But it doesn't cover prescriptions," she said.

Among the prescriptions she can't afford are an ointment for her skin cancer and medication for migraines, which Dawn said costs $10 per pill.

"There's a big list," she said of the medications she should be taking. "The doctor last month wrote me four prescriptions and I can't afford them. I'm going to have to wait to figure out if I can budget those."

Dawn is hoping to have a job that will bring in some income soon, but that's another area with health care issues.

"I was hired in October by Utah Advocacy Network to help start an intermediate care facility for intellectually disabled adults," she said. "A long time ago I had started a nonprofit organization and I worked for a couple other group homes when I was younger."

But, she said, the new job has been slow getting off the ground because "we're having a couple changes with the management."

"I'm not sure with that how much we'll be making, but it's not going to be very much," she said. "It depends on what the Medicaid and Medicare will pay for our residents to be there."

Dawn is "not really thrilled" with the Affordable Care Act, because 'it's geared for people in the middle class" and hasn't addressed the poor.

She said that the poor in rural areas like the East Side of Summit County have obstacles others don't.

"One of my biggest complaints is that not everybody lives on the Wasatch Front," she said. "A lot of times when they're calculating your cost-of-living expenses, they don't consider this little law that requires you to have car insurance."

"You don't have public transportation, you can't walk to town, you can't walk to a job, you can't always find someone to carpool with, there isn't always bus service available," she said. "And not everyone can just up and move to the city."

Food stamps aren't everything

As with Medicaid, there are often negative stereotypes associated with the use of food stamps -- a federal program Dawn uses to feed herself and her son.

"I remember the first time I had to go on food stamps. I had my older kids home and they were little, it was after a different marriage, and I remember first off being really embarrassed about having to use food stamps," Dawn said. "But on the other hand, I was thankful for them. It certainly beats starving to death."

Dawn said there are criticisms she hears that are off-base.

"I didn't have a car and so my mother would let me use her car to go grocery shopping. And so when I hear somebody say 'Oh you see someone paying for their food with food stamps but then they're going and getting in this car.' Well is that their car or is that a family member's car or is that a friend's car? Or did somebody give them a ride?

"There's a lot of misperceptions, I think," she said. "People aren't on drugs, can't afford them."

The foods that can be purchased with food stamps are another point of public and political controversy. It's another case, Dawn said, where people jump to conclusions.

"I know they've been talking about banning certain meats, banning the purchase of a steak with food stamps. So what do you do if you have somebody who's on food stamps and they're really anemic and their doctors tell them 'You need to get a steak and eat it, because you need to get your [red blood cell] count up?"

Dawn said she and her son receive about $139 a month, combined, in stamps. The cheapest meals she's found are $1 TV dinners.

"I buy between 60 and 62 TV dinners when we get our food stamps -- those are our meals for the month. That's breakfast lunch and dinner, and then sometimes we'll buy some cereal or something," she said.

"Let's put our elected officials on a $6 a day budget for their food for the day. I think they'd be changing their mind about 'Is this really enough to live on?'"

Utah taking its time

Utah is one of 21 states that has yet to accept the Affordable Care Act funds that are intended for it to expand its Medicaid program to provide health care to low-income Utahns. The Utah Legislature is ideologically opposed to Medicaid, a federal program, so Gov. Gary Herbert last year proposed an alternative plan, called Healthy Utah, that would use the earmarked Medicaid funds for a private-insurance program. That proposal died in the legislature and a committee of six lawmakers was formed to come up with some sort of alternative plan by later this summer, when a special session of the legislature would be called to vote on the plan.

There has been no indication that the "Gang of Six" has made significant progress on such a plan, and the next attempt to deal with the problem may not be until 2016.

"The people who would qualify are single mothers, they are low-income adults, they are families with children. Two out of every three of them are employed, many working more than one job to make ends meet. Of the other third, many are the medically frail, who have conditions that make it impossible for them to work. They are our neighbors, our friends and our family members," Herbert said when he pitched his Healthy Utah plan last year.

The post Living in the health care ‘gap’ in Summit County appeared first on Park Record.