A terrible way to garner feedback

On Wednesday afternoon, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, our Park City municipality conducted a study aimed at defining the future development character and opportunities for a 5-acre site owned by the city within a busy area of town next to major road arteries.

The idea behind this community-led effort would be to create a vision for the site that reflects the desires of Park City residents, businesses, and stakeholders, while supportive the existing neighborhood character of the area. In addition, Park City is developing a Small Area Plan for an area near these 5-acre site address the planning needs and policy goals of residents, business owners, and stakeholders.

Both proposal are difficult to explain and comprehend, so the public should have been much better prepared prior to that session. The study was conducted by MKSK, a company made of planners, urban designers, and landscape architects, along with 3 other entities involved with studies and research. You get my rift, modern-days technocrats!

A presentation-survey was set up in a hotel meeting room circled with tables that were stations attempting to explain what was going on, staff members answering questions and practical tools for the audience to interact with stickers, block and other means.

There were even raffle tickets to reward us (one arriving at 5:30pm had to be present at 7:30pm to know if they had won!).

Obviously, there was no easy explanations of what going on for both project and a huge crowd showed up along with a ton of questions that created a literal gridlock at the various tables. The wait time was incredible. I thought the process would take me 15 to 20 minutes, it took me 45 to get through it and still having no clear idea or understanding about these two projects.

This could have been easily avoided by having good, explicit videos on the website the city put up for the occasion, explaining clearly the whats, whys, whens as well as potential hows, behind these projects.

Instead, the City served us a real zoo that I’m sure cost a lot to all of us, the tax payers. Another wasted opportunity and many dollars under the drain!