The skiing has been surprisingly good, given the lack of snow. That’s a pretty substantial given, but what’s open is fun. Coverage is fine, and I’m not ready to jump into Portuguese Gap just yet anyway.  Deer Valley has a lot more variety open so I’ve been skiing there for the most part, with a few days at Park City and one at Canyons.The other day at Deer Valley there were patrollers all over the mountain training and simulating rescues. There was another group who appeared to have driven a snowmobile up a tree, trying to figure out how to get it down. With the patrollers so evident, the conversation on the lift turned to the Park City Mountain ski patrol union and their stalemated wage negotiations with Vail Resorts. One of my friends is a retired airline pilot with a long history in the pilots’ union. The idea of a strike set him off, and I was glad the lift kept moving so we could get skiing.It was kind of surreal discussing a $23/hour wage for ski patrollers while we were skiing down runs lined with $12 or $15 million houses. Some of them are owned by people pulling in a million or more a month.  A house in Deer Crest recently sold for close to $60 million. Somebody in the pet food business, I’m told. I hope my dogs appreciate what they have accomplished. The houses were all empty, but probably leak $23/hour just sitting there when you add up taxes, insurance, maintenance, annual kitchen replacement, HOA and the utilities to keep them from freezing the Rembrandts.I live pretty well on about what some of them pay for roof deicing.I was skiing with a fairly big group, so each lift ride was a different combination of people. All of us are solidly in between the $23/hour group and the $1 million a month folks, much closer to the lower end. I would have a rough time living like I do on $23/hour, and don’t think I could find ways to spend $1 million a month even if I just set it on fire. Twenty-three bucks an hour hit me as pretty insulting, but it turns out that’s the aspirational rate. The raise the union is asking for, and Vail Resorts is rejecting, would get them up to $23/hour. The current starting wage is $21, which is about a buck an hour over the dishwashers.  When you consider the training, skills, risks and critical importance of their work to the operation of the resort, $30 seemed more like it. I can wash dishes with the best of them, but you don’t want me stabilizing your neck injury. I hope a patroller who has been working for several years and knows the ropes is making considerably more than the rookies.My friend started channeling his inner Wobblie, and thought a strike during the Christmas holiday would be a great idea. It would be a calamity. I don’t know how much of the resort they can open with supervisors, but not much. They might cover the medical side of it, but if they had to rope people off a broken lift, or deal with avalanche control after a heavy snow fall (we should be so lucky), large parts of the mountain would have to close.  The damage to visitors’ long-planned vacations would be terrible, and it’s certainly not their decision what people get paid. The whole town would be affected. We need to avoid that. But $23/hour to juggle bombs in the dark on top of an unstable cornice?  Really?We spent that evening texting each other job postings for somewhat similar jobs.  EMTs were in the $20 to $25 range. One post for an entry level firefighter/EMT at the Park City Fire District was under $14, nose rings need not apply. I can’t tell if that’s current or not, but nobody should be asked to rescue a cat from a tree, let alone run into a burning building, for that. The guys climbing the power poles are around $40/hour to start. There are a whole lot of absolutely essential jobs around town that are clustered in that $20 to $25 range. It is impossible to run the town without them, and equally impossible to live in town on that. The mix of low wages and the high cost of building here — land cost, generations-long approval processes, demanding codes, NIMBY neighbors — and it becomes pretty clear that even rent-controlled or deed restricted housing is mostly beyond reach.  Raising wages enough to make living here possible makes everything more expensive. There are limits to what customers will pay. Well, we do have that $1,874 cheeseburger, but that’s different.So things are really broken, not just on the ski hill but everywhere. People doing the essential work that keeps society functioning aren’t paid enough to fully participate in that society.  In the background of a possible strike, we have the assurance that the incoming president is going to start mass deportations on his first day. So when you check into your luxury hotel room for Presidents’ Day week, the desk clerk will present you with a lovely basket of cleaning supplies and laundry detergent so you can wash the sheets.I’ve heard it said that when the revolution begins, it will ignite in a resort town.  Somehow, it feels closer than ever before. 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.The post More Dogs on Main: A tale of two cities appeared first on Park Record.