A tradition triumphs

Miners Day felt a little more special than usual this year for me, as I’m sure it did for many others in our community. Our annual festival brought us all together as friends and neighbors to enjoy a beautiful Park City summer day, in a much-awaited gathering after our pandemic challenges of the last year.

It’s been 125 years since early silver miners started this tradition of Miners Day. The Park City Rotary Club is proud to continue that legacy, providing all of us a chance to celebrate our town’s heritage together.

It’s also a day that reminds me how much the citizens of our town care about each other. With your help, our Running of the Balls raised a record $50,000-plus that will go directly back to local causes and scholarships.

I want to thank everyone in Park City, along with Park City Municipal, our lead sponsors DW Healthcare Partners, the UPS Store, Bowman-Carter Law, Wasatch Brewery, Epic Promise and Deer Valley Resort, as well as our friends from Twilight Rotary and St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

Our Park City Rotary Club, which has been serving our community since 1980, takes great pride in providing both the opportunity to gather and celebrate, and the platform to help serve the needs of Park City.

We look forward to celebrating the 126th Miners Day next year on Sept. 5, 2022. See you there!

Ryan Dickey

Park City Rotary Club president

*****

Party on, Park City

I would like to thank the Park City Rotary Club and all the unnamed people who put on one of Park’s City’s best parties on Miners Day! From the free breakfast of St. Mary’s, to the Running of the Balls, the enthusiastic parade, the festival in the park and the old-fashioned kid’s games — it is one of my favorite days in Park City. And it was so good to party like it was 2019 once again! It is always a laid-back, good-humored celebration — and I think Rotary Club deserves the credit.

Karen Ballash

Summit County Republican Party vice chair

*****

Officials have community’s interests at heart

I respectfully take issue with Beverly Hurwitz’s comments in her recent letter to the editor (Aug. 28-31 edition). I suspect the City Council’s vote against the Gordo soil repository was based on their perception of overwhelming community opposition, not because they believed there were basic flaws in their well-researched plan. We all know how a vocal minority touting alarmist rhetoric can influence the unsuspecting and uninformed.

The opponents of the Gordo repository contended that the project would threaten public health and environmental safety. These were speculations, not facts based on relevant observations. Park City has been exposing contaminated soil in the Prospector area for years with roadwork along Kearns, the Kearns underpass and many building projects without so much as a peep from the Gordo opponents about the danger of lead contaminated dust. Did they check with the Health Department to see how many cases of lead poisoning in Park City had been reported in the past 10 years? The City Council was tasked with finding a solution for the contaminated soil dump currently at Gordo. A properly constructed, maintained and monitored capped repository would have provided much more environmental safety than what exists currently. The opponents offered no viable alternative.

Ms. Hurwitz makes negative comments about the allocation of city funds. Expenditures for affordable housing, transportation, open land and the arts and culture district are not mutually exclusive, and priority depends on multiple changing factors.

Ms. Hurwitz’s insinuation that our residents’ well-being may not be at the top of our City Council’s priority list is offensive and disrespectful. Our mayor and council members do their best to address the community’s needs and to represent our interests. They are not perfect, but neither are we!

H. R. Rinderknecht

Prospector