In this week’s episode we’ll…
- Recap some big events that happened this past week including the Wasatch Back Economic Summit, a Council of Governments meeting, and the Trails, Tunes, and Trash Event!
- Celebrate High Valley Transit Micro’s one year anniversary, congratulate the 2022 Summit County Rodeo Royalty, and talk about Wildfire Awareness Month.
Wasatch Back Economic Summit
There was no County Council meeting this week, but on Tuesday (May 17) several members of the Council along with Summit County staff attended the Wasatch Back Economic Summit. The Summit, which Summit County helped sponsor, was a unique regional event that brought together elected officials, industry leaders, and businesses to study and discuss key issues facing Summit and Wasatch counties.
Council chairman, Chris Robinson, spoke on an Elected Officials Panel in the morning, alongside Nann Worel, Park City Mayor, Matt McCormick, Kamas City Mayor, and Mark Nelson, Wasatch County Council. He shared his perspective on regional challenges, opportunities, and unique areas for improvement.
Jeff Jones, Summit County Economic Development Director; Pat Putt, Summit County Community Development Director; and Caroline Rodriguez, High Valley Transit’s Executive Director, also spoke at the event.
Pat presented on future growth in the Wasatch Back. With the Wasatch Back being one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, he spoke about how the County plans to manage the growth and maintain our authentic community. He also spoke of development projects that are in the works in Summit County, including the 1,100 bed project at Canyons Village, the Highland Flats employee housing development, the MarketPlace mixed-use development, and the construction of the new High Valley Transit operations facility on the Gilmor parcel.
Jeff spoke on a panel called “The Future of Employee Retention and Recruitment” he talked about how the pandemic has reset major work trends and how Summit County is rethinking workforce and employee planning, management, performance, and experience strategies.
And, finally, Caroline spoke about regional transit solutions in the works to better connect Wasatch and Summit County communities. She addressed the challenges, opportunities, plans, and partnerships for future accessibility in the Wasatch Back.
Council of Governments
Also on Tuesday, the Council of Governments, or COG, met at the Ledges Event Center in Coalville. Derrick Radke, the County’s Public Works Director, was in front of the group to present Road Right-of-Way Preservation Project Funding applications to the COG.
Only one new application was submitted; it asked the COG to move previously approved monies to preserve land for a future Interchange at Ecker to the project fund for the Silver Creek to Bitner Connector Road. The Council of Governments forwarded a positive recommendation to the Council for the project. If the County Council approves the recommendation, these monies will help secure the final right of way needed for this project, and help pay for the associated land needed for wetland mitigation.
Derrick also presented Transportation Sales Tax (TST) Project Funding applications. A portion of the TST funds go to the Small Cities to help them with some of their transportation improvement projects. The amount of requested funding exceeded the amount currently allowed under the program. The County Council will have to decide whether or not to approve the entire amount.
In addition, the COG recommended new funding for the first and second phases of the SR-32 Multiuse Trail, and design monies for two projects applied for by Park City. They also approved reallocation of previously awarded projects related to multimodal/Transportation Demand Management which have become unworkable/unfeasible to be applied to the new High Valley Transit Operations and Maintenance Facility.
Micro One Year Anniversary
High Valley Transit celebrated the first anniversary of their Microtransit services. In celebration, they shared some impressive stats that illustrated a very successful first year in service.
Micro completed 152,266 rides; their vans traveled 677,802 miles; their drivers worked 42,900.7 hours; 20,881 High Valley Transit mobile app accounts were created; by the end of the year the service achieved a 4.8/5 star average ride rating.
Congratulations to them!
Rodeo Queens Announcement
Speaking of congratulations…this past weekend, the 2022 Summit County Rodeo Royalty were crowned!
Huge congratulations to:
- Queen Cheyenne Gawreluk
- 1st Attendant Jenasi Noss
- 2nd Attendant Brooke Steinfeldt
- Princess Quincee Call
- 1st Attendant Brooklyn Brown
- 2nd Attendant Nina Hurst
We were in attendance at the event and want to recognize every girl that participated, they did such an amazing job showcasing their talents!
Trails, Trash and Tunes Event
On Saturday, May 14, families, friends, and Summit County colleagues met up at the Wanship Trailhead for a belated celebration of our trails and the Earth (earth day every day, though right?!).
Nearly 50 people attended the “Trails, Trash and Tunes” event that was hosted by the Summit County Stormwater Coalition and the Summit County Community Development Department.
Kids read books and did arts and crafts supplied by the Library, adults enjoyed beer from Offset Bier, a new Park City brewery, and everyone tapped their toes to music by Summit County resident Andy Bailey.
Huge thanks to Blue Sky, Mountain Town Music, Offset Beer and Mr. Clucker’s Food Truck for contributing to this event’s success!
Wildfire Awareness Month
And, last but certainly not least, we wanted to remind our listeners that May is Wildfire Awareness Month. Here in Summit County we live with wildfire all year round, so it’s important to stay alert.
Our Department uses several channels to communicate information to the public in both emergency and non-emergency situations (including wildfires).
We want to take a couple minutes to give an overview of those channels in the hopes that as many people as possible start to utilize them!
- EVERBRIDGE: Receive critical information in a variety of emergency situations wherever you specify (i.e. home, mobile or business phones, email address, or text). Sign up at summitcountyalerts.org.
- SUMMITALERTA: The bilingual arm of the County’s emergency communications plan, individuals can text summitalerta to 888777 to receive emergency alerts to their phone in Spanish.
- SCFIREINFO: A wildfire specific line, residents can text SCFIREINFO to 888777 to receive text alerts on fire conditions (i.e. red flag warnings), prescribed burns, and active fire updates.
- NOTIFY ME: Be notified when non-emergency announcements are made from Summit County, via email or text. Things like service delays for trash and recycling or a notification when the Eastern Summit Couny Planning Commission posts an agenda for an upcoming meeting. There are so many different options and you can customize your alerts to what you’re interested in. Sign up at summitcounty.org/notifyme.
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