Bob Richer stands out for knowing his stuff during his terms on the Park City Council, the then-Summit County Commission, the Snyderville Basin Water Reclamation Board and a range of nonprofits.“Well, he’s an inspiration,” said Jan Wilking, who has served with Richer on several boards, including now on the Water Reclamation Board. “He comes so prepared and asks such great questions, and really understands the mission of the organization and helps the organizations fulfill them.”Myles Rademan, freshly retired from the Park City Leadership program he founded, has known Richer for decades, too.“Nobody is more prepared than Bob Richer,” he said. “I served with hundreds and hundreds of city council members in 55 years. Nobody was better prepared than that.”  Katie Wilking, Jan’s daughter who serves on the Mountainlands Community Housing Trust Board with Richer, agreed.“He has all of them, all of his pages, color coordinated for different boards in his different notebooks,” she observed as an example. “He never has to wonder if it’s this agenda or this agenda.”So naturally, Richer came very well prepared to the surprise party in his honor at Snow Park on Wednesday night.Mountainlands decided to give the occasional Bob Wells Award to Richer, a longtime advocate of affordable housing who in recent years as board chair helped the organization through a bumpy transition between two-decade-long Executive Director Scott Loomis eventually to today’s director, Jason Glidden, and a bright future for the non-profit organization that has produced 900 affordable homes so far, and counting.Prepared, sure, but it’s possible this had more to do with Richer’s networking since arriving in Park City in the early ’80s.That and/or, sigh, a few of his friends have grown just old enough now to maybe forget this was supposed to be a surprise party and sent their regrets that they wouldn’t be able to make it directly to him.In any case, Richer, more used to giving accolades than receiving them, plainly was ready in his turn to speak.  He has long overseen the Park City Rotary committee that decides the club’s annual community award winner and perhaps might be excused for sounding as if Scott Loomis and Bob Wells, who died in 2015, were the recipients this year, recounting in some detail the difference each made in community housing as well as generally.Patti Wells, Bob’s wife, was emotional in giving Richer the award, and Richer became emotional talking about how housing that ordinary residents can afford is the key to Park City remaining a community instead of a wealthy enclave for primarily older people.“It’s so important that affordable housing remains a part of our community discussion,” he said. “Because when it doesn’t, and when no one cares about it anymore, well, we won’t have a community anymore.”The icon the award is named after, Bob Wells, famously was a man of few words, as several speakers and friends who came to the event said. Wells was part of a Murderers’ Row (Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig …) who set the course for the modern Park City while on the City Council with Tina Lewis and Helen Alveraz in the 1980s.Richer, never at a loss even when “surprised,” recounted a modern history of Park City’s dance with affordable housing through the decades, including the astonishing story in The Park Record in the later ’80s of the city’s first listing of a million dollar house.“I thought it was overpriced,” Richer quipped.A number of the long-timers at the event recounted moving to town in the early ’70s and paying rents of $100, even a comparatively exorbitant $200 a month for a newer place.“So this is a great award. I’m honored,” Richer said at the end of his acceptance speech. “I’m honored to be (associated) with the name of Bob Wells. And, um, Bob and I weren’t exactly alike because he was a man of few words.”The joke landed as Richer finished up and the crowd, largely in reunion mode, reminisced before slowly breaking away for home.The post Mountainlands honors a savior and longtime affordable housing proponent at ‘surprise’ party appeared first on Park Record.