Voters have some homework to do

The Park Record will begin releasing its election endorsements next week. We hope they will help guide some citizens who may not have had the opportunity to study the issues as thoroughly as we have tried to do over the last several months.

Of course, we respect and encourage residents to study the issues themselves and come to their own conclusions based on their personal priorities. To that end, we have tried to provide plenty of unfiltered information as well. In this edition of The Park Record, online and in print, readers will find a section devoted to the local candidates running for the Park City, North and South Summit school boards, the Summit County Council, the Utah Legislature and Congress. In those pages you will find the candidates' views on many local issues in their own words.

We are proud to say that this paper and Park City's esteemed public radio station, KPCW, are the only media outlets committed to highlighting these races of vital importance to local residents. These candidates are the ones who will set your property tax rates and then decide how to spend your money. They will decide how big your kids' classes are, how big your trash can is, and how often it will be picked up.

Through their management or mismanagement of the budget they will also choose which principals to keep or fire, which streets to fix and whether to build shopping malls or biking trails.

And, like their national counterparts, in many of this year's grassroots races the opposing candidates hold starkly different views about leadership, governance and spending. In fact you could argue that the outcomes of these local elections will have more impact on your day-to-day life that the man who's picked to live at the White House.

We hope you will take these decisions seriously. In addition to the coverage in these pages there are many other resources. We have gathered many of them on our website's new voter guide, http://www.parkrecord.com/generalelection2012

We also recommend the Summit County clerk's website, http://www.summitcounty.org/clerk/ as a valuable gateway to a treasure trove of information.

Thanks to the Internet, voters also can get acquainted with each of the candidates through their individual websites, or find more objective sources including where each candidate is getting his or her funding.

Early voting begins Tuesday, Oct. 23.

The polls will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23- Friday, Oct. 26 and from Monday, Oct. 29 to Friday. Nov. 2. On those dates registered Summit County voters may go to any of the following locations: