The Live PC Give PC event is always interesting. The community donated over $6.1 million to around 150 organizations providing a variety of services to the community.  There were over 7,600 individual donors, and many made contributions to multiple organizations.  That impressive total doesn ’t include donations made directly to the organizations rather than through the centralized portal run by the Park City Community Foundation. Some of us do it the old-fashioned way and write checks directly to the organizations.  The patterns say a lot about the community. The perennial top organizations are Mountain Trails Foundation and Summit Land Conservancy. Those are two very worthy groups (not just because I helped launch both of them way back when), and are a good reflection of the community values. Nuzzles Co., the pet rescue organization, also did well.  So we love our open space, trails, and dogs. No surprises there. Recycle Utah also did well. That one is kind of poignant with the passing of long-time Executive Director Insa Ripen. Insa grew the organization from a row of dumpsters into a conservation education powerhouse.  Others in the top tier of contributions were a different focus — on people in need. Park City Christian Center and Peace House were among the top recipients.  The food bank serving the east side of Summit County closed up shop this week.  They ran out of money to keep it going and had to close the whole operation. PC Christian Center is trying to expand to meet the need, but had plenty of need on their plate already. If you can, send them some cash so they can buy the food needed to pick up the extra load. Summit County is trying to fill some of the gap. It’s troubling that in a state where things appear to be constantly booming, the demand for food bank services is also booming. A whole lot of people are getting by, but a kid’s broken arm or an unexpected car repair can start a cascade of problems.   Last year, the state Legislature was very proud of the fact that they cut income taxes.  The much ballyhooed cut saved the average taxpayer about $20, not quite the price of a sandwich on Main Street. Nobody cared.  There are about 1.5 million income tax returns filed in Utah. If the Legislature had kept the tax rate unchanged, they would have the cash equivalent of about 1.5 million Main Street sandwiches, around $30 million.  Put some of that cash into a food bank buying staples at wholesale and it adds up to a whole lot of peanut butter, canned veggies, rice, beans or whatever. In other words, the state could have easily funded the food bank operations and nobody would have missed the difference. But the Legislature doesn’t think that way, so we continue to pass the collection plate to meet basic human needs.  That need is met by non-profits that are scraping by and have to spend a lot of their money on fund-raising.  Utah Food Bank, based in Salt Lake, serves a lot of communities. The closed operation from Utah County served several others, and the PC Christian Center met our local need in Park City and Heber. If you haven’t made donations, please consider helping your neighbors out by giving to these organizations.  On other fronts, I’ve been adopted by a huge Great Pyrenees sheep dog. These dogs are raised as sheep guard dogs and live with the sheep. They are a bit weird and seem to identify as a sheep instead of dogs. This one apparently wouldn’t get in the trailer when the sheep herds moved off the summer ranges, and got left behind. Nobody will claim him.  He hung around houses in the neighborhood and decided that mine was OK. He’s a beautiful dog who loves to play with the other neighborhood dogs, hangs with me on walks, and seems like the sweetest pet you could ever have. Except that he’s feral as a coyote. In three weeks, I’ve barely been able to touch him. He won’t go into barns or other buildings. He won’t go through gates, preferring instead to crawl under the fence.  He stands in the middle of the highway, drags home pieces of carcasses, and is completely ungovernable. We called a Pyrenees rescue group.  They came out and sweetly cooed at him for a few hours. He wasn’t buying it.  They came out again and fed him some kind of tranquilizer hidden in bologna. Now we had a drunk, feral, polar bear-sized dog on our hands.  Their plan was to put him in the back of a $200,000 Sprinter van camper. I wondered what happened when he sobered up and began to rip the thing apart, but they never got close enough to him to find out. Animal Control set a cage trap, and that caught him. But the officer who came out to get the trap couldn’t lift it. The dog was bigger than she was. She tried to slip a leash on him, but when she cracked the door open, he bolted like a rocket. He won’t go within 50 feet of the tramp now.  Nobody seems to have any ideas, but he has worn out his welcome.    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: Support the food banks appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less