For the second morning in the past three weeks, while sitting in my office listening to KPCW, I heard Sally Elliott use my name to illustrate a "hotshot businessman" who she feels does not have the requisite "government experience" to be the county manager. Despite her appalling lack of discretion in calling out a local business owner like that, I don't want to ignore her just because everyone else does. I am old-fashioned; I like to know people a little better before they take a swipe at me in public.

In fact I was really starting to like Sally. I laughed when she poked fun at herself in the April Fools edition of The Park Record, where she listed a bunch of County Council accomplishments such as building a golf course at Canyons and getting new and better health insurance for her and the other members of the Council at significant expense to the local taxpayers. She also quipped that the working relationship with Park City was the best it had ever been, even despite the County forgetting to tax Empire Pass as Park City property, then refusing to give Mayor Williams the $2.2 million to cover the mistake.

The April Fools edition is a classic, and I am sure everyone in the County got a big laugh out of her comments about ending the "Water Wars." The same Water Wars that this Council started, got creamed in court, and cost the taxpayers a small fortune. Good news is the Mountain Regional customers are already used to paying more for water, so what's a few more bucks to settle the Council's vendetta. She also poked fun at the "finest legal minds" who advised her and the rest of the Council to initiate countless suits that ended the same way. I am a big fan of wry humor, but why pick on the lawyers.

There were a few things that I think she forgot to joke about, but she might not be able to laugh about those yet. Hard to laugh about how the Council overspent the budget by $3.8 million in the past two years. At least they didn't do anything tacky like send a letter to the voters that said that no one opposed using rainy-day funds to make up for their reckless spending. Ooops. I forgot. The Coalville Library, and the $900,000 plan to refurbish a building she claimed "would get torn down over her dead body." Just because we are at $1.4 million and counting should not bother her that much. It isn't her money.

C'mon Sally, have a sense of humor. What about the open space we issued $25 million in bonds to pay for, only to later learn that the LDS Church offered to give it to the County for free if we would allow them to build 750,000 square feet of office space. The Council brilliantly declined the offer, and gave 1.2 million square feet of office space to Boyer to build on the same spot. Hmmmm. I am starting to think you could use a businessman, but I still don't want the job.

That building at Kimball Junction looks great, really. It's a little out of place in a small ski town, but the Council's legacy of making Park City look like Las Vegas in the Mountains is almost complete. Just to put a cherry on top of that ice cream, they fought the developer of the movie studio in court and instead of finding a better location we got the movie studio at the other entry corridor. Slots, anyone?

Calling me a hotshot businessman was probably not meant as a compliment, but you might consider finding one to put the County Council back in touch.