What are we doing to ourselves? Our “leaders” (now that is funny) all appear to be wet noodles, parrots and group thinkers influenced only by money and power. We are today being run down and heavily impacted by high volumes of gas-burning vehicles. Seventy percent of them service our growing resort economy that will never ride a bus.  We are a car culture, let’s be honest. Salt Lake City, 30 minutes away, is exploding in size and more so our surrounding counties, forcing upon us a 3% yearly growth in gas-burning vehicles.  Our mayor and city council have made the decision to widen our roads, the antithesis of the General Plan, falsely claiming barely ridden transit will miraculously solve our traffic mess. Predictably, it will prove itself to be a total failure.   High volumes of vehicle traffic driven by unrelenting growth is the biggest threat to this incredibly beautiful, small mountain community. The city will avoid any discussion regarding this, but wait a minute, it is worse than that, they are asking for more!  I am not alone in fundamentally understanding this.    Ignored by council:  1.) We are a dead-end town with limited space that logically should constrain, limit and carefully avoid any new growth that negatively impacts residents.  2.) Our General Plan, codes and zoning were put in place to protect our quality of life, but they seem to purposefully try to find ways around it.  3.) Our narrow roads and limited infrastructure is unable to serve any new large development without material decline in livability. Failure at every single intersection within city limits is upon us today. 4.) Affordable housing is a never-ending social reconstruct doomed to failure.   The Bonanza boondoggle 5-acre parcel is currently worth double what we paid, opening up options galore. We could build new, locally designed city muni offices with nearby relocatable art spaces and food truck pads in a park-like space with flowing water and sound-deadening mature deciduous maple trees, firs and big pine trees blocking out the heavy traffic on Bonanza and 248, attracting  residents on foot, by bike or by bus while generating no new traffic. This is only one superior option. Who is behind the current proposal?  Who do our council members represent?  City staff simply checks the “public input” box (legally required), then summarily dismisses all of it, upzoning public property instead. This relentless strategy wears residents down until they fold and go away, the primary tool that developers rely on to monetize our town. Works like a charm. The Main Street Destruction Plan will predictably come back with no real change using this tried and true strategy. It also requires ignoring a $1 million, two-year public process that approved and funded a resident plaza on the city-owned Brew Pub Lot. Forgetaboutit.   Now our fearless leaders want aerial gondolas and high-rise hotels that contaminate and dominate our mountain viewsheds and historic district. Convincing ourselves that our open space, water, natural world and wildlife are endless and disposable is complete insanity. Our municipality encourages big money to join them in these crimes being committed, instead installing metal moose figures in roundabouts while empty speeding buses on the Mine Road run down any that dare remain. Removing all the water from Daly has been devastating to wildlife, but that is A OK as well. You cannot make this up.  We have drifted too far from the shore, floating along in a leaking rubber ducky with no captain, complicit council members and no paddles to change course, exposing us to even more decline.  Public proclamations claim otherwise. The English language is a terrifying thing in the hands of apologists carefully crafting untrue statements that cannot be questioned.   Focused clearly on the Olympic dream, this new current team of deciders is asking residents to accept more decline while fleecing us of our hard-earned dollars. Who voted for these collaborators?  When you hear a city official use that word, it is nothing but a big red flag. Fire them all. Peter Marth  Old Town The post Fire them all appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less