Twelve months have sped by as if three months. I recall showing up in January at the Statehouse for the Utah League of Cities and Towns work sessions. Walking into that room was intimidating. The legislative session went by fast, but not as fast as I was driving back up to Park City after Police Chief Wade Carpenter was honored by both chambers of the Statehouse.  My excuse? I was on the phone with the chair of the Summit County Council, trying to figure out how to work with the county. Lesson learned.  In May I joined the City Tour trip and wrestled with the strangeness of having been on the other side of that trip one year prior as a member of Leadership Class 29. It is a miracle Councilman Parigian, Planning Commissioner Johnson and Transportation Director Tim Sanderson didn’t conspire to tie me to a gondola cabin in Telluride after hundreds of questions about transportation and planning.Earlier this year, the council voted to not destroy the Mine Bench up in Ontario Canyon with a workforce housing dorm. I didn’t support it, not because I felt we don’t need more workforce housing, but rather because I felt this was absolutely the wrong place.  I can’t help but remember one of the city’s most strident supporters and critics state “not all open space is equal” in his impassioned plea to keep the natural connectivity across the mine road at the bench. I was glad to hear that sentiment, and I was glad to hear my colleagues state how committed they were to workforce housing. I am too. It just needs to be in the right place and it shouldn’t make our existing problems worse. Done right, it should serve as a catalyst that forces us to address issues in a transformative way. July brought a great (self planned and funded) trip to Switzerland and France, where as you might have guessed I devoted eight days to understanding how transportation really is the key to shaping our built environment in a way that all but the most ardent history revisionist could appreciate.The 2034 Olympics. Seems like people are sorting into three categories here. Those that are ambivalent — understandably so. Nine-and-half years is a long way in the future and there are plenty of pressing issues to consider. There are those who embrace the games and see them as an opportunity to evolve, transform and reflect on what we do well so we can share it with pride. We should also reflect on what could be done better so that we can seize the pending games as a catalyst to make those adjustments and to innovate for a better future. Then there are those who can’t see a silver lining even if they were Holly Golightly in a vault at Tiffany’s. You know who these people are. They are the ones when you reminisce about the 2023-24 ski season remind you that it wasn’t as good as the 2022-23 ski season.  Park City Councilor Bill Ciraco.We need these people. They give those of us who see a brighter future a sense of purpose, a reason for being. They inspire us to get up each day and make that to-do list.  And they ask the questions that many are afraid to ask and even more are afraid to confront. These are the people who have ushered in a new wave of dog whistle words and phrases.  You know, like “luxury homes” or “million dollar restaurants,” or even simply the “Olympics” — ominous tone included.  They decry homes they can see but don’t own, but rarely ever their own. It feels like the criticism is less about architecture and more about how dare you flaunt your wealth. I find that an interesting juxtaposition in a town with 120 nonprofits whose status is so influential it made for the entire storyline of a “Follies” show not too long ago. And if you really want to understand flaunt, spend some time in Aspen.Whether your house is insulated with copies of The Park Record from 1898 or blown in insulation circa 2020, we all live in glass houses. It is worth considering putting the stones down. We all love PC in our own way.  The mining history in Park City was a defining time that when it was said and done, barely left this place a reason to live on. I cherish that history. Yet the core of that existence is exactly what is at the core of our current existence, a different gold rush.  Don’t think for a minute that if economics had sustained mining here for another 50 years that this town would not have been an uninhabitable super fund site. What appreciation would we have for that history?We shouldn’t judge history in a vacuum, as is fashionable. We all see the damage the mining industry wrought on the landscape, but can also appreciate how it helped our country flourish through the industrial age. I choose to look at tourism, the ski business, the Olympics and “luxury” homes the same way. Not all bad, not all good, but it is what we are. Bemoaning it or reminiscing for the golden age of polluted air, waterways and soils is not how I choose to see it.I encourage all of you to engage, listen, share and look forward for common goals or ideals and resolve to work towards them. We have an amazing patchwork quilt of older buildings on Main Street whose architecture is mostly of a time long since passed. We work hard to protect and preserve it. Does that mean we are immune from the passage of time. No, we are not. Life at its core is evolutionary, and we cannot escape that. We have and will make mistakes, but the forward-looking orientation is what allows us to correct and put them behind us. Yes, we are talking about some revitalization efforts for the core Main Street area. No, that will not result in us losing that historic charm any more than the Jewish Quarter in Rome has lost it as the city has grown around it for 2,000 years.Park City is as much a ski town today as it was a mining town 100 years ago. Let’s stop pretending that it isn’t. Then we can focus on addressing the parts that don’t serve residents or visitors as well as they should. Simply admitting that some things should be better is not an indictment of those that came before us. We are not clairvoyant. If we were Park City might never have been a mining town to begin with.Bill Ciraco is a first-term Park City councilor.The post Respectful of past, we must look ahead appeared first on Park Record.