2025 will be one of Park City’s more pivotal years, the latest in a line of ’em.Last summer, the Olympics were secured for 2034. In 2023, Deer Valley acquired East Village and announced it would more than double its terrain. Each year brings successes, setbacks, surprises. Next up, whether Sundance stays past 2026; whether the city acts on ideas to improve Main Street or will leave it to inertia; whether Snow Park wins key approvals to revamp; whether Park City Mountain tries again to redevelop Mountain Village or to upgrade the lifts that sorely need upgrading; whether a thing happens at last with the 5-acre wasteland in the center of town, that monument to indecision, fair to say or not.The countdown to the Olympics applies deadline pressure on all sorts of projects, including transit and housing for workers, if they are to be completed in time.2025 also looks like a year for the school district to regain its footing with a new board majority better focused on the kids and community values. The highest of the new board’s priorities will be selecting the right candidate for superintendent. I’d advocate for accessible, transparent, plain speaking (blunt is OK) — a communicator — along with that full heart and mind devoted to education. And certainly, the right skills and temperament to lead this district at this time.These strike me as the largest of the immediate issues with answers that will reveal themselves in the near term, this new year.The more stubborn ones that all ski towns face will continue, of course: development pressure, traffic, the cost of housing, where the workers will come from, a resort community’s Faustian bargain with tourism. These will not go away easily and indeed are signs of success, or at least wild popularity. “Normal” towns across the country would kill for problems like ours. I know from living in some.Otherwise, the snow will blow where it will, north of us, south of us, maybe right on top of us as it more or less did these past two winters. So far this season, the 30-year-low snowfall and then 4-foot-plus holiday treat have exacerbated Park City Mountain’s mess between the elements and the ski patrol union strike. Meantime, Deer Valley Resort is cruising with its surfeit of open groomers by comparison, spinning up new lifts as the expansion begins. The tale of two mountains right now is stark.Ikon or Epic, Alterra or Vail Resorts, here is where the big, bad corporations go head to head in the same town. Deer Valley will close the skiable acreage gap soon enough, and with it gain the headaches of a larger labor force. But that’s not a lesson for this year with all eyes now on Park City Mountain.There may be something instructive in the wake of the strike in terms of public sentiment toward Vail Resorts. Further stock price hits and measurable vacation adjustments in the future can’t be dismissed, for instance.The cost in local respect alone may prove more expensive than any dollar savings from taking a hard line at a patrol pay scale that even with the requested raise would run below neighboring Deer Valley’s. Vail Resorts’ tenure in Park City already has been wracked with episodic turmoil, often enough self-inflicted.  After all, the company needs the community’s support to accomplish needed upgrades to key lifts and the base village in the city. This isn’t something that oblivious skiers from out of town filling the resort to the brim can provide. Certainly not with the clock ticking on the next Olympics. The strike will pass, one way or another, soon enough. Lingering strategic damage, if any, will play out in a longer term. Not that Deer Valley’s comparatively shinier rep has helped it much so far through the twists and turns in winning municipal tax financing and other approvals for a new Snow Park Village. So maybe I’m overthinking here. The lone new lift out of 16 in the expansion that needed the city’s OK was quite the ordeal by itself. Whew.If Sundance sticks with Utah, passing over Boulder and Cincinnati, it still will shift largely out of Park City and Main Street in favor of Salt Lake City. In a sense, then, that blow’s already been struck.So Park City’s pivotal year ahead rests almost entirely on Park City itself. Remember, fortune favors the bold. Wish us luck.Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.The post Journalism Matters: Problems we’ll solve and what we won’t in 2025 appeared first on Park Record.