The effort to create geographic districts for the Summit County Council elections is underway.
It’s not a terrible idea. The way it was imposed by a secret bill, rushed through in the final minutes of the Legislature’s session, was a terrible process. It would have been nice to have time for local residents to weigh in, study it, get some population figures on the table to indicate what the equal population districts might look like.
Against the stated goal of getting geographic representation (which we have had for years without districts), there is the issue of voters being able to vote for only one council member every four years.
Now, with them all running at large, voters get to vote on at least two council members every other year, and on all five over the course of a four-year cycle.
Which is better representation? There’s not a clear answer to it. But shoving something through the Legislature just as the lights were turning off is bad representation.
The district boundaries will be drawn by a committee comprised of the mayors of all the incorporated towns in the county, which contain a relatively small portion of the population, and one person chosen to represent the majority of the population who live in the unincorporated areas — mostly Snyderville, but also the smaller informal towns like Woodland, Wanship, Hoytsville, Peoa, and so on.
The incorporated towns are Park City, Coalville, Kamas, Francis, Oakley, Henefer and, much to everybody’s surprise, Hideout.
Yes, Hideout, that town birthed in another of those legislative moves in the dark of night to circumvent Wasatch County’s zoning, will be participating. Hideout annexed a chunk of Richardson Flat in Summit County, so it is technically a Summit County municipality.
There are no residents at Richardson Flat. Yet. I’m sure that someday there will be strip malls and fast-food places and actual people there. But for now, it’s potgut habitat. And so, under the thoroughly thought out and considered process established three minutes before the Legislature closed up for the year, the potguts at Hideout will have more representation on the districting committee, per capita, than 25,000 people living in Snyderville.
Often, an absurd process brings about an absurd result. I suppose potguts deserve representation, too.
The story about President Trump accepting, actually soliciting, the “gift” of the Qatari potentate’s old jet was a big deal that has gone quiet. Trump apparently doesn’t like the existing Air Force One jet. It’s 35 years old, so they are digging parts out of the wrecking yard. It probably has Biden cooties in it.
Boeing has been building a new Air Force One for many years now, but can’t seem to deliver. They can’t get the doors to fall out yet. So they are still using what they have, which is from the first George Bush years, and getting a lot of miles on it.
The Qatari jet was known as the flying palace, and has opulent finishes inside and a better paint job. It’s 13 years old and has been on the market for several years because the Qatari guys want to get rid of it. They hadn’t found any takers.
But Trump was smitten, and had to have it. According to The New York Times, Trump said, “We are the United Stated of America. I believe that we should have the most impressive plane.”
Which, for some reason, turns out to be a 13-year-old plane the Qatari emir has been trying to dump for several years.
Not one to let a little technicality like the Constitution get in the way, they decided it would be a “gift” to the Department of Defense, a favorite charity, and at the end of Trump’s term, the Defense Department will donate it to his presidential library. That doesn’t exist yet, so in the meantime, the library will lend it to Trump to continue to fly around.
So what’s a $400 million “gift” among friends, right? The Air Force has it parked someplace, ripping it apart to find out what kind of spy gear was inserted in it, bringing the security up to snuff, installing a lot of communications capacity so that state secrets aren’t communicated on Truth Social or Signal, like that would ever happen. It’s unlikely it will be completed before the end of his term.
The whole thing is embarrassing. The country is so broke that we have the president flying around in some used luxury jet that he got from “Crazy Akmed’s Used Jet Lot” on the wrong side of the tracks. “It was only flown by a little old Middle Eastern despot to beheadings.”
It’s going to need a little work. Tires, brakes, and close to a billion dollars of work to get it up to the security standard needed. But it sure looks nice parked on the tarmac, and apparently that’s what matters.
It’s puzzling to me because Trump doesn’t seem like a guy who would be content to have a used car instead of a new one. There’s just something tacky about him flying around in a used jet, sending the message that the United States can’t afford a new one. Which, sadly, we apparently cannot.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.
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