A new law that will ban flavored electronic cigarettes, which supporters say are getting kids hooked on nicotine, will be devastating to Utah’s nearly 200 vape shops, according to a representative of the industry, who intends to challenge the law in court.

The sponsor of that law, pediatrician and Salt Lake Democratic Sen. Jen Plumb, said she has seen kids in the emergency room going through withdrawal because they can’t vape in the hospital and friends whose children are anxious about going without their nicotine on long flights.

Previous efforts to prevent teens from getting e-cigarettes had failed, she said, so she set her sights on eliminating the fruity, sweet-flavored vapes that national data shows 90% of underage users start out using.

“Rather than continuing to kind of fiddle around with little bits and pieces — it’s not doing it. Kids are still getting access,” she said in an interview. “And if kids become hooked on nicotine, they are nicotine users the rest of their lives. Period. That’s just what it is.”

Plumb’s bill, signed into law last month by Gov. Spencer Cox, goes further than just banning flavors — aside from tobacco or menthol. It also bans the sale of any vape product with a nicotine concentration above 4%. And it only allows the sale of products that have either been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or have submitted an application for approval prior to September 2020.

Nobody knows how many products will have to be removed from shelves. To date, there are only 17 FDA-approved products from three manufacturers that meet the criteria, and an FDA spokeswoman said they don’t know how many pre-2020 applications are still pending.

According to Beau Maxon, vice president of the Utah Vapor Business Association and owner of Park City Vapor Company, one thing is certain: It will be a death sentence for many vape shop owners.

“There’s no question about it,” Maxon said in an interview, “it is going to put the retail tobacco specialty industry in jeopardy and you’re going to see a lot of them not able to stay open.”

That’s because in a vape shop like his, Maxon said, 99.9% of the products they sell are flavored — not because they’re targeting kids, but because it’s what his adult customers want.

Indeed, walk into any vape shop and the shelves are lined with flavors like bubblegum, lemon drop, mango, lime, fruit punch — all of which will be outlawed when the law takes effect on Jan. 1, 2025.

While that will threaten Utah businesses like his, Maxon contends it won’t keep products out of the hands of minors. That’s because, according to records the association has gathered from nine of the state’s 13 local health departments, the tobacco shops typically do slightly better than other retailers like gas stations and convenience stores on compliance checks.

Between 2019 and 2023, the general retailers failed compliance checks 8.3% of the time while the tobacco stores and vape shops failed 7.5%, the data shows.

Vape shops, Maxon said, have more to lose if they are hit with violations. If a convenience store makes an underage sale, they pay a $1,000 fine. A vape shop that sells to a minor gets a $5,000 fine and can’t sell any products for 30 days. If there is a second violation in a two-year period, the shop is shut down permanently.

The practical effect of the bill, Maxon contends, is that Utah shop owners will be shut down and customers will be driven to gas stations and convenience stores that mostly sell products manufactured by the massive tobacco companies like Altria, which owns a portion of Juul, and R.J. Reynolds, the maker of the Vuse line of e-cigarettes. Those two brands reportedly control two-thirds of the market.

“This bill is going to put honest business owners out of business. … Retailers will get their cut and Big Tobacco will get their cut,” he said. “This is a monopoly bill for Big Tobacco.”

Plumb has heard that criticism before and said it couldn’t be further from the truth.

“I don’t even know who Big Tobacco is, honestly,” she said. “I’ve never talked with any of them. There have never been any conversations about that. … The impression that some community members have is that the only reason legislation is ever run is so that someone gets some sort of gain. And for me, the gain is protecting these kiddos.”

According to the Utah Student Health and Risk Prevention survey conducted every other year by Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services, the rate of teen vaping is actually declining.

Up until last year, the survey didn’t distinguish between vaping nicotine or marijuana but the number of students in grades six through 12 who reported ever trying either drug fell from 19% in 2019 to 12% in 2023.

When just nicotine vaping was broken out in 2023, an average of 11% of those surveyed had used the e-cigarettes in their lifetime, while 5% said they’d used a vape within the previous 30 days.

Nationally, states that have banned flavored e-cigarettes have seen some reduction in usage, among both adults and youth. One preprint by researchers at three universities found that after Washington, New Jersey and New York eliminated flavored e-cigarettes, 8% of adults quit using them. In a 2022 study focusing on young adults, a team of university researchers found similar results.

A survey of more than 1,400 youth between the ages of 14 and 17 conducted by the Center for Tobacco Research at The Ohio State University reported that 39% said they would quit using e-cigarettes if the only flavor options were tobacco or menthol.

Plumb recognizes that the new law banning products will be disruptive for some vape shop owners, but it was “not my intent to put anyone out of business.”

“I understand that this feels very targeting to them and I don’t love the way that must feel for them. I don’t want people to think that we were flippant about that, because we weren’t,” Plumb said. “But ultimately business models will have to shift and they’ll have to adapt, either with different products or different strategies. … If the product that was a big chunk of their income generator was a product that’s really problematic, then that’s the way it goes.”

The backlash to her bill — which passed both the Utah House and Senate with overwhelming, bipartisan support — has been vitriolic, and Plumb said she has received hate mail and threats because of it. During the legislative session, she often had a Utah Highway Patrol trooper following her.

“You commie Democrat. Your job is not to dictate morality,” read one of the emails she received. “Stop messing with American freedoms, you commie. I will go back to smoking cigarettes and blow cigarette smoke in all your faces and laugh when you get lung cancer from secondhand smoke.”

The vape industry pushed for an alternative to the bill that would have beefed up enforcement, required video surveillance at stores and better identification scanners, as well as tracking tags on products so, if a minor is found with an e-cigarette, it can be tracked back to the shop that sold it.

Those proposals failed.

Without other options, shop owners will challenge the law in court over the businesses that will be forced to close, the creation of a monopoly for convenience stores and Big Tobacco products, and potentially other grounds.

“There’s no question about it,” Maxon said. “We will be litigating it.”

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

It’s been interesting seeing all these moderate Republicans suddenly come to the light and write letters in amazement at the antics of our favorite would-be dictator, desperately trying to pump the brakes on their out-of-control party.

However, I have one question.

Who did they vote for in 2016?

I think where we are now, desperately trying to hold onto democracy from a crazed reality star, was fairly predictable eight years ago.

But America wasn’t as important back then, making sure their team won was.

Jessica Berri, Cedar City

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In the middle of the last century, as the United States and Russia rapidly amassed thousands of nuclear weapons, China stayed out of the arms race, focusing its energy on growing its economy and broadening its regional influence.

Beijing did build hundreds of nuclear weapons during those years, but the nation’s leaders insisted their modest arsenal was merely for self-defense. Since China’s first nuclear weapons test, in 1964, the country has pledged loudly to never go first in a nuclear conflict — no matter what. That stance, coupled with a stated strategy of “minimum” deterrence, didn’t demand the level of American fear, loathing and attention that the Russian threat did.

Now there is increasing unease in Washington about China’s nuclear ambitions. The Pentagon says Beijing is on track to double the number of its nuclear warheads by the decade’s end, to 1,000 from 500 — a development that senior U.S. officials have publicly called “unprecedented” and “breathtaking.” China has drastically expanded its nuclear testing facility and continued work on three new missile fields in the country’s north, where more than 300 intercontinental ballistic missile silos have recently been constructed.

China’s transformation from a small nuclear power into an exponentially larger one is a historic shift, upending the delicate two-peer balance of the world’s nuclear weapons for the entirety of the atomic age. The Russian and American arsenals — their growth, reduction and containment — have defined this era; maintaining an uneasy peace between the two countries hinged on open communication channels, agreement on nuclear norms and diplomacy.

Little of that nuclear scaffolding exists with China. In Washington, how exactly to interpret Beijing’s sharp nuclear buildup is still a matter of debate. At best, American officials say, their Chinese counterparts are trying to catch up with the United States and Russia, which still each have roughly a 10-to-1 nuclear advantage over China with their stockpiles. At worst, they say, this is Beijing’s boldfaced attempt to deter the United States from defending Taiwan against a Chinese invasion, the most likely flashpoint for an armed conflict between the competing superpowers.

In truth, no one knows what China is planning. President Xi Jinping’s government, as with much of its domestic policy, releases vanishingly little information about its nuclear intentions, strategies or goals, and it has been equally unwilling to engage on arms control.

That is, until now.

In February, in a rare offer for nuclear diplomacy, China openly invited the United States and other nuclear powers to negotiate a treaty in which all sides would pledge never to use nuclear weapons first against one another. “The policy is highly stable, consistent and predictable,” said Sun Xiaobo, director general of the Chinese foreign ministry’s Department of Arms Control, in Geneva on Feb. 26. “It is, in itself, an important contribution to the international disarmament process.”

The invitation came as a surprise. While Beijing has long claimed moral superiority over other nuclear powers on this issue — China and India are the only nuclear-armed nations to declare a no-first-use policy — opening the possibility for talks in such a public way is something China hasn’t done in years.

It may seem like a no-brainer to take China up on the offer — wouldn’t it be better if everyone agreed not to be the first to use their nuclear weapons? — but it has been met with public silence from Washington. For American policymakers, committing to no-first-use is deeply divisive. The United States, the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in conflict, when it dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, has never ruled out being first to use them again, nor has it detailed the circumstances under which it would consider doing so. This approach of calculated ambiguity is intended to prevent adversaries from taking military action against the United States — and the more than 30 allies it is bound by treaties to defend — out of fear for what could come their way in response.

It’s also a personal issue for President Biden. He supported a no-first-use policy as vice president amid deliberations inside the Obama administration, and as a presidential candidate on the campaign trail he said the “sole purpose” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be aimed at deterring or retaliating against an adversary’s nuclear attack. But when it came time for his own administration to adopt a declaratory nuclear policy, he decided not to break with America’s longstanding nuclear dogma and retained the first-use option.

Mr. Biden’s about-face was a sign of the times, a result of both internal deliberations and consultations with allies in Europe and Asia. According to current and former administration officials, these nations’ leaders feared a U.S. policy reversal would undermine confidence in America’s commitment to come to their defense and would potentially embolden China, Russia and North Korea.

The uneasiness surrounding a potential change to America’s first-use policy almost certainly played a role in China’s unusually public invitation to negotiate. China may simply be trying to stoke anxieties among American allies and partners — and particularly Taiwan, South Korea and Japan — by floating a public offer outside of private diplomatic channels.

It’s not the first time it has gone down this road. During the Cold War, China made offers for a mutual no-first-use pledge at the United Nations in 1971 and 1982, and presented a draft treaty in 1994 to the other nuclear weapons states. Four years later, China tried to persuade President Bill Clinton to change American nuclear policy when he visited Beijing, but Mr. Clinton decided against it, choosing instead to share a pledge to stop targeting each other with their nuclear weapons.

Such overtures have all but halted under the leadership of Mr. Xi, who has pursued a far more aggressive foreign policy. He has overseen a sweeping modernization of China’s military, including developing and fielding new nuclear-capable missiles, submarines and bombers. Meanwhile, the stockpile of warheads steadily climbs.

The White House believes that China’s recent offer is a distraction from its broader unwillingness to engage diplomatically on the nuclear portfolio, including its own aggressive buildup. The Biden administration is wrestling with how it can deter both China and Russia without touching off a destabilizing three-way arms race. Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, publicly invited the two nations last summer to hold nuclear arms control deliberations without preconditions. Russia dismissed the offer outright, while China agreed to preliminary talks. At a follow-on meeting in November, the United States proposed possible measures to manage nuclear risks, such as an agreement to notify one another when their militaries test-launch ballistic missiles.

“The P.R.C. has yet to respond or show interest in engaging substantively on these proposals,” a National Security Council spokeswoman, using the abbreviation for the country’s formal name, the People’s Republic of China, said in a written response to questions about Beijing’s recent offer. “This P.R.C. behavior calls into question the aims behinds the P.R.C.’s call for discussions of a no-first-use treaty.”

Some argue the Biden administration should take Beijing’s offer at face value. “China genuinely believes that any serious nuclear arms control discussion needs to start with no-first-use,” said Tong Zhao, a nuclear expert focused on China at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “From Beijing’s view, that’s the most effective way to reduce the role of nuclear weapons.”

Even if it is a strategic gambit, engaging with China and other nuclear nations on first-use talks could be a crucial step in establishing critical guardrails for the new nuclear era. It would be a major breakthrough for Washington to get China to the table for arms control talks. It could also help jolt the stalled relations between the United States and Russia, which together control nearly 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads.

“U.S. administrations have not responded with great alacrity or interest to Chinese outreach on the question of no-first-use,” said Steve Andreasen, who served as Mr. Clinton’s director for defense policy and arms control on the National Security Council. “But as we look forward into … the increasing U.S. national interest in engaging China in all things nuclear, we’re going to have to cross the Rubicon on this issue.”

It’s true that it’s not an easy time for trust-building exercises; the current level of mistrust between Chinese and American military intentions is deep. Speaking to Congress in March, Gen. Anthony Cotton, commander of all U.S. nuclear forces, suggested that China’s rapid nuclear expansion indicated its no-first-use policy was no longer credible. The Pentagon wrote in an October report that, despite China’s rhetoric, Beijing might consider using nuclear weapons first anyway during a crisis if it came down to the survival of Mr. Xi’s regime, such as defeat in a war with Taiwan. It also remains unclear how exactly China would respond if its nuclear forces were hit during a conflict. Would that trigger Beijing’s nuclear use? “Unknown,” the Pentagon said in the report.

Talking through these points of contention may help Beijing and Washington understand and appreciate the factors that go into formulating the finer points of each other’s nuclear policy. The very process of dialogue and diplomacy can help the Chinese hear American concerns, and vice versa. Given the widening gulf of fear and suspicion between the two nations around Taiwan, there is no better moment for them to sit down and discuss what constitutes a credible no-first-use commitment.

It may be that an unequivocal no-first-use pledge ends up being impossible. The talks may not result in a deal anyone can agree upon, and even if a deal were to be reached, it would be impossible to verify, meaning it would be more symbolic than substantive. But that doesn’t mean Washington shouldn’t take up Beijing’s invitation. In the increasingly endangered world of nuclear diplomacy, discussions on one treaty can still set the table for another. New START, the only remaining major arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, was built on the foundation of the original START I, which was signed two decades earlier.

Under Mr. Xi, China appears to have left its policy of minimum deterrence behind. If the Biden administration is serious about arms control, it’s time to look for common ground with Beijing to build new agreements for a safer future.

This Times Opinion series is funded through philanthropic grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Outrider Foundation and the Prospect Hill Foundation. Funders have no control over the selection or focus of articles or the editing process and do not review articles before publication. The Times retains full editorial control.

W.J. Hennigan writes about national security, foreign policy and conflict for the Opinion section of The New York Times. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Phil Lyman, a Utah Republican lawmaker and candidate for governor, is blaming the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key bridge on the culture wars surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

Finally, a politician who thinks outside the box. Go get ‘em, Phil, and while you’re at it, we need to blame the brine shrimp for shrinking the Great Salt Lake. We need to blame our drought on those who don’t pray. We need to clean our air by building more coal-fired power plants. We need to protect our precious lands by drilling into them. We need better legislation in Utah by outlawing common sense. You are the obvious choice to lead this effort.

Mike Dunn, Draper

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Few conversations are as fraught as those among family members who disagree about ideas they hold dear, and none more so than religion.

Such exchanges can be especially painful for believers in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a faith that can be all encompassing with strong teachings about here and the hereafter, especially about family relationships, and practices that reflect those teachings.

So what happens in families when some hold firm to the faith and others walk away? How do parents, children and siblings respond to those who have chosen a different path? Can they still love one another or does judgment make that impossible? Do they talk about it or do they slink away in silent agony?

Utah Valley University’s Kimberly Abunuwara, director of the humanities program, came up with an unusual way to explore these questions. She enlisted a group of students to interview various families about how their attachment to — or distance from — Mormonism affected their connections and communications.

The team then staged a performance, titled “In Good Faith,” in which student actors used those firsthand accounts from members and former members to reveal these wrenching experiences.

In a special “Mormon Land” episode, recorded live at Orem’s UVU, Abunuwara and two of the student performers — Brielle Szendre and Caleb Voss — discuss what they discovered, how the experience affected them and what others can learn from this effort.

Listen to the podcast:

Ronna McDaniel, former head of the Republican National Committee, has openly acknowledged that as party head “you kind of take one for the team”; in other words, you sacrifice truth and integrity to maintain power.

She is openly acknowledging that she and the rest of the Republican MAGA-Force not only openly lied about a “stolen election,” but actively promoted it as reality as well.

I can understand why every NBC behind-desk-broadcaster had nothing good to say about that hire and that NBC quickly dropped her; as should happen to any promoter of the false-stolen-election claim.

News flash — truth matters!

In the book, “The Four Agreements,” by Don Miguel Ruiz, the 1st Agreement is, “be impeccable with your word.” Honesty and truth mean nothing without personal integrity.

Democracy does not work without integrity — period. We have reason to believe there is absolute integrity in our elections; there has been no credible evidence of fraud or otherwise — none.

“Taking one for the team” is not exhibiting the integrity that is required for democracy to survive.

Not speaking out and rejecting these patently false claims — maintaining one’s silence — is not exhibiting the integrity required to hold office in this country’s government.

Where is the required integrity in telling and promoting those lies, to create just enough perceived election-result-confusion-and-doubt, so that our esteemed constitutional expert — Sen. Mike just-tell-me-what-to-say Lee — could find and promote a hazy constitutional path to overthrow a legal and fair election?

Creating false doubt erodes integrity and is not supporting democracy. Nor is it supporting our republic and its Constitution. It is just plain repugnant.

And to support and not speak out against it is as well.

Peter A. Orum, Salt Lake City

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There’s great news and good news for BYU, even in the most unlikely event that it just made a horrible mistake in hiring Kevin Young as its new basketball coach.

Mark this moment down as a transformative one for the Cougars.

They swung for the fences and, rather surprisingly — no, rather shockingly — got good wood on a heater launched out of the yard and into the deep-darkest-shade-of-royal-blue night. Let’s see, how to best illustrate this. BYU landing Young is like Freddie Patek, the old Kansas City Royals shortstop, all 5-foot-4 and 140 pounds of him, drilling a walk-off grand slam back in the day, something he never did, not once, over a long MLB career.

It’s like … what? … it’s like … BYU winning an NCAA Tournament game.

Yeah, it’s that outrageous.

While former coach Mark Pope was off to Kentucky, sweet-talking the folks back in Lexington, doing what he could to win every press conference, to win over a mighty fan base divided by his hire, BYU was busy gathering in money, using the influence of two of the school’s best-known alums — Ryan Smith and Danny Ainge — to reel in Young. Without those two, this hire doesn’t happen. And maybe it was the other way around, Smith and Ainge talking BYU into allowing them to use their cash and influence to make the deal.

Either way, it takes that kind of firepower to lure to Provo a coach who was one of the NBA’s highest-paid assistants, a guy who was a candidate for multiple head coaching jobs in the NBA, and if you buy into one report already had turned down an NBA head coaching offer. Let’s say it like it is: Being a coach in the NBA has its competitive challenges, and the demands are heavy, but from a lifestyle standpoint, it’s easier than college coaching, where the span of responsibility is both plentiful and diverse. Walking away from the former for the latter requires incentive in the form of something special, usually high stacks of cash.

Young was making $2 million a year as Phoenix’s top assistant, and dialing in on making a whole lot more as an NBA top dog. Doing so, becoming that, was a mere matter of time for the highly respected, 42-year-old Young.

So what does he do instead? Takes the BYU job.

And because the Cougars were able to get him, they’ve hired a better basketball mind than the one they’re replacing. Pope has considerably more experience in the college game, being familiar with the ins and outs of recruiting, of NIL, of managing the transfer portal, of being the CEO of a program, but Young was considered a brilliant basketball mind, even among stiff competition in the greatest basketball league on the planet. So, he’s got that going for him, which is nice. The rest of it, he’ll have to grow accustomed to in a hurry. He’ll have to hire seasoned assistants — Chris Burgess, hello — to help him get along.

But because of what’s next to discuss here, getting quality assistants, whoever they end up being, shouldn’t be a problem.

BYU will never voluntarily reveal what it pays its coaches. In the past, that’s been as much because it’s embarrassed to admit the paltry numbers in its contracts as much as because it’s a private school that isn’t required to ‘fess up.

But a report by CBSSports’ Matt Norlander now says Young will be paid $30 million over seven years for his deal. You read that right … $30 million. That’s not news at a lot of big-eyed basketball and football schools around the country, but at BYU, that’s mind blowing. Somewhere, LaVell Edwards and Stan Watts are rolling over, doing bear crawls in a mix of amazement and jealousy.

The only way that’s possible is by way of contributions from Smith and maybe a couple other boosters. Heretofore, BYU has attempted to run major programs on middling budgets. To quote Inspector Clouseau, “Nooot anymooore.”

What the school is doing with Young is next level. Even though boosters have been willing to — and, in fact, have — chipped in some with helping raise salaries of certain coaches, the school, owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been reluctant to approve handing out big-money contracts. Ironic, considering the church is estimated to be worth upwards of $300 billion.

The money, apparently, is now flowing more freely. Smith has to be a big part of that. The man owns the Jazz, he owns part of Real Salt Lake, he’s about to own an NHL team, and he wants his alma mater to thrive in a sport he regularly plays on the court he’s built into his house in Alpine. His truck, along with his buddy, Ainge, is significant at BYU.

What all of this signals is a new level of commitment to sports at the school.

It’s been a long time coming.

And it’s easy to conclude that Young wouldn’t have turned his back on other prime basketball opportunities without assurance that more money will be available to address proper resource needs of other kinds.

A video of athletic director Tom Holmoe was released recently of him saying, “BYU is different.” It is different in a lot of strange ways, but its path to winning is not different. It requires what is required wherever winning is prioritized — with the financial backing, one way or another, for quality head and assistant coaching, to build and maintain facilities, to haul in necessary recruits, to fund ample NIL distributions, to pay the price for victory. That price ain’t cheap.

How good a coach will Young be? As mentioned, he knows the game, but there have been coaches before him who had memorized every X and every O, but who failed nonetheless. He has much to learn, and that’s why drawing in expert assistants, those who know the college game, will be huge for him. Throw money at Burgess and those who are close to the Utah assistant say he, too, would join the Cougar cause. We’ll see.

BYU has issues that need immediate attention — such as players in the transfer portal that closes soon, the team already having suffered losses of formerly committed players. If Young stays with the Suns through the playoffs, how will the ship be guided in the meantime? Good question.

The new coach has a background that runs from associate head coach with the Suns and assistant coach with the Philadelphia 76ers to head coach of the Shamrock Rovers Hoops in Ireland to top jobs at three different G League teams. Along the way, he coached at Utah Valley and Oxford College. He once was a guard on a team at a Division II school.

Bottom line, this is an improbable and downright wild hire for BYU, one that proves the school is, in this case at least and perhaps others to come, closing the door on its reputation as a laughable little outfit that took sports seriously only to the extent it fit into its limited, cloistered, confining box. All as its fan base forever took sports deathly serious.

Other issues remain, such as overcoming an emphasis on a single religion and a peculiar honor code, but it could be that a language spoken by darn near everyone — money — and a willingness to use it, to allow it to be used, is the thing that finally bridges that expansive gap.

They are called “forever chemicals,” and they are as stubborn as they are ubiquitous. As of Wednesday, though, the Environmental Protection Agency intends to put a lid on the toxic compounds.

Officially known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances but collectively referred to as PFAS, the human-made chemicals are used in everything from firefighting foam and nonstick pans to dental floss and rubber duckies. Part of their charm from a commercial standpoint is they are stubbornly resilient to degradation. Researchers estimate it takes up to a thousand years for them to disappear from the earth and between 7-14 years for them to reduce by half in the human body.

[Related: Ski wax contaminated Park City’s aquifers]

And yes, they are in your body.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 97% of Americans have PFAS in their blood. The EPA has linked high levels of PFAS to birth defects, cancers, infertility and thyroid problems, among other medical issues. Recently, a government study indicated almost half of the nation’s tap water contained at least one type of PFAS.

Previously, the EPA had limited PFAS to 70 parts per trillion in public drinking water. Last week, it minced that standard. Signaling a new understanding of the toxicity of the “forever chemicals” even in small amounts, it set the limit for PFOA and PFOS chemicals — which together make up the PFAS class — at four parts per trillion. For perspective, that’s the equivalent of four drops of water in the Rose Bowl or slightly more than two drops in Rice Eccles Stadium.

Park City and Salt Lake City both have found PFAS in their groundwater at levels higher than the EPA’s new limit. According to one report, 26 of 85 water systems statewide have discovered at least trace amounts of PFAS.

“Given the impacts and national attention associated with exposure to these forever chemicals, we take this rule seriously,” Michelle De Haan, Park City’s water quality and treatment manager, said in an email. “Our highest priority is our community’s trust in the reliability and quality of the drinking water supply.”

Park City started proactively testing for toxic chemical compounds in its water supplies almost four years ago. It found PFAS in three of its ground wells, which are connected to a common aquifer that sits under a golf and cross-country ski course. The wells, which are tapped only on peak water-use days, contained PFAS concentrations of up to eight parts per trillion — nearly twice the EPA’s new limits. Officials later linked those compounds to fluorinated ski wax, which the city banned in 2023.

Since the fluorowax ban, which the city enacts mostly via education and a take-back program, preliminary reports show PFAS levels have remained mostly unchanged in the wells. Still, the “forever chemicals” already there won’t be going anywhere soon.

De Haan said most of Park City’s water comes from uncontaminated surface sources. When demand rises, however, she said the city blends that water with water from PFAS-contaminated sources to dilute the concentration of chemicals.

If the city wants to continue to do that to meet the new EPA standards, it will need permission from both the EPA and Utah Division of Drinking Water. If that option is denied, De Haan said the next best avenue is investing in something like a massive Brita filter. The chemicals would be absorbed into a giant carbon block that would need to be incinerated and replaced annually.

She estimated the filter would cost between $7 million and $14 million to build. Replacing the carbon block would add an additional cost of about $250,000-$550,000 per year. Plus, the EPA acknowledges incineration of PFAS could create smaller PFAS products “which may not have been researched and thus could be a potential chemical of concern.”

The city hopes it can rely less on its groundwater wells once its 3Kings water treatment plant becomes operational this summer. That plant specializes in removing contaminants from former mining operations in water flowing through the Judge and Spiro mine tunnels.

The Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities also found PFAS in levels surpassing the EPA’s new regulations in two of its wells.

One of the wells sits near a superfund site and has not been used in years, according to public utilities director Laura Briefer. The other, located at 4th Avenue near Memory Grove, is more of a mystery. The department has been investigating the source of the chemicals in that water, which mostly feeds through City Creek. It was recently replaced, and Briefer surmised that the chemicals could have seeped in from the tape holding the pipes together.

The levels of PFAS found in that well are nearly twice the EPA’s limit. The city tested for the chemicals in October in anticipation of the EPA’s order. The well, which is typically only used on summer peak-use days, was already offline. It will remain that way, Briefer said, until her team can find the cause of the contamination and address it.

Briefer said no other PFAS have been found in the city’s drinking, most of which comes from surface water.

Municipalities will have until 2027 to comply with the EPA’s new regulations.

Many of us realize climate change is a threat to our well being. But what we have not yet grasped is that the devastation wreaked by climate change is often just as much about headline-grabbing catastrophes as it is about the subtler accumulation of innumerable slow and unequal burns that are already underway — the nearly invisible costs that may not raise the same alarm but that, in their pervasiveness and inequality, may be much more harmful than commonly realized. Recognizing these hidden costs will be essential as we prepare ourselves for the warming that we have ahead of us.

Responsibility for mitigating climate change on the local level lies in part with public institutions — not only in encouraging emissions reductions, but also in facilitating adaptation. Public discourse around climate change too often misses the central role that local institutions play in this latter function, how much of the realized pain locally depends not simply on the physical phenomena of climate change per se but also how they interact with human systems — economic, educational, legal and political.

Let’s start with heat, which is killing more people than most other natural disasters combined. Research shows that record-breaking heat waves are only part of the story. Instead, it may be the far more numerous unremarkably hot days that cause the bulk of societal destruction, including through their complex and often unnoticed effects on human health and productivity. In the United States, even moderately elevated temperatures — days in the 80s or 90s — are responsible for just as many excess deaths as the record triple-digit heat waves, if not more, according to my calculations based on a recent analysis of Medicare records.

In some highly exposed and physically demanding industries, like mining, a day in the 90s can increase injury risk by over 65 percent relative to a day in the 60s. While some of these incidents involve clear cases of heat illness, my colleagues and I have found that a vast majority appear to come from ostensibly unrelated accidents, like a construction worker falling off a ladder, or a manufacturing worker mishandling hazardous machinery. In California, our research shows that heat may have routinely caused 20,000 workplace injuries per year, only a tiny fraction of which were officially recorded as heat-related.

A growing body of literature links temperature to cognitive performance and decision-making. Research shows that hotter days lead to more mistakes, including among professional athletes; more local crime; and more violence in prisons, according to working papers. They also correspond with more use of profanity on social media, suggesting that even an incrementally hotter world is likely to be a nontrivially more irritable, error-prone and conflictual one.

Children are not immune. In research using over four million student test scores from New York City, I found that, from 1999 to 2011, students who took their high school Regents exams on a 90-degree day were 10 percent less likely to pass their subjects relative to a day in the 60s. In other research, my colleagues Joshua Goodman, Michael Hurwitz, Jonathan Smith and I found that across the country, hotter school years led to slower gains on standardized exams like the Preliminary SAT exams. It may not seem a huge effect on average: roughly 1 percent of learning lost per one-degree-hotter school year temperatures. Probably hardly noticeable in any given year. But because these learning effects are cumulative, they may have significant consequences.

And that’s just heat. Researchers are bringing to light the more subtle yet cumulatively damaging effects of increased wildfires and other natural disasters. The hidden consequences of wildfire smoke may cut even deeper than the more visible death and destruction caused by the flames. Tallying the downstream economic and health costs of smoke exposure, researchers have estimated in a not-yet-published paper that increased wildfire smoke due to climate change may cause more than 20,000 additional deaths per year nationwide by 2050. Very few of these will be officially categorized as having been caused by wildfires, because they will have been the result of the cumulative influence of worsened air quality and weakened health over the course of many weeks and months. Research now suggests that wildfire smoke can adversely affect fetal health, student learning and workers’ earnings as well.

Since even “noncatastrophic” climate change may be more subtly damaging and inequality amplifying than we used to think, local interventions are essential to help us prepare for the warming that is to come.

At present, our social and economic systems are not well prepared to adjust to the accumulating damage wreaked by climate change, even though much of what determines whether climate change hurts us depends on the choices we make as individuals and as a society. Whether a hot day leads to mild discomfort or widespread mortality comes down to human decisions — individual decisions such as whether to install and operate air-conditioning, and collective decisions around the pricing and availability of insurance, the allocation of hospital beds, or the procedures and norms governing how and when workers work.

Recent research indicates that how temperature affects human health depends greatly on the adaptations that happen to be at play locally. For instance, a day above 85 degrees in the coldest U.S. ZIP codes has nearly 10 times the effect on elderly mortality relative to in the warmest ZIP codes. In other words, a string of such days in a place like Seattle will lead to a much higher increase in the mortality rate than in a place like Houston, even though both places have similar income levels. In rural India, institutional factors like access to banking may affect how many lives are ultimately lost due to heat; heat can reduce crop yields, leaving subsistence farmers dependent on financing sources to keep them afloat.

In our research of heat and learning, we find that the adverse effects of a one-degree-hotter school year are two to three times larger for Black and Hispanic students, who are less likely to have working air-conditioning at school or at home even within a given city, and are virtually nonexistent in schools and neighborhoods with high levels of home and school air-conditioning. We estimate that hotter temperatures may already be responsible for 5 percent of racial academic achievement gaps. Without remedial investments, climate change is likely to widen these gaps further. With a shift in focus to these subtler social costs, we can devise and carry out more effective strategies. But right now, adaptation efforts remain highly fragmented and are often focused on more visibly salient climate hazards, like storm surges.

And, of course, an empirically nuanced understanding of climate damages makes it even clearer that reducing emissions aggressively makes cost-benefit sense, not only because we want to insure against total ecological breakdown (cue “extinction rebellion” and “tipping points”), but also because the economic costs of even “noncatastrophic” warming may be considerable. Recent Environmental Protection Agency estimates that incorporate just some of these cumulative impacts suggest that a single ton of carbon dioxide sets in motion $190 worth of future social costs, which means that technologies that can reduce such emissions at a lower per-ton cost are most likely worth pursuing.

Climate change is a complex phenomenon whose ultimate costs will depend not only on how quickly we transition away from fossil fuels but also on how well we adapt our social and economic systems to the warming we have in store. A proactive stance toward adaptation and resilience may be useful from the standpoint of safeguarding one’s own physical and financial security, whether as a homeowner or the head of a Fortune 500 company. It may be vital for ensuring that the ladders of economic opportunity are not fraying for those attempting to climb its lower rungs.

R. Jisung Park is an environmental and labor economist and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

That dowdy and concrete-flavored area of Salt Lake City west of the historic Rio Grande Depot has reached another moment where it might shine.

As a new population surge pushes development westward, the city is readying new and ambitious plans it hopes will entice developers into helping to build a green, densely stacked and more car-free neighborhood on that edge of downtown, around the Utah Transit Authority’s intermodal hub.

On Tuesday, the city’s Redevelopment Agency released its long-awaited and latest grand vision and implementation plan for those 11 disused acres by an Interstate 15 ramp, once known as Station Center and now to be renamed the Rio Grande District after the storied depot.

This new blueprint for private and city-owned land bounded by 500 West and 600 West between 200 South and 400 South calls for what amounts to an open-space-infused, high-rise extension of downtown into the gritty Granary District.

The plan would also give an environmentally friendly lift to part of an emerging 5.5-mile west-side Green Loop running along 500 West, intersecting with a new festival street and arts campus on 300 South. Those, in turn, are part of wider, more sustainable and pedestrian-centered approaches throughout to transit, roads, bike paths, parking and housing.

But no sooner was this newly incarnated framework with dazzling renderings unwrapped than City Council members, in their role as RDA overseers, began finding major holes and heartburn.

They tilted at one point toward delaying its public release, tapping the brakes over worries they might surrender future authority over how the renewal project unfolds. With delicate portions later ordered deleted from the RDA’s 78-page draft document, they approved its publication, pending more review and jawboning at later meetings.

RDA Board Chair Alejandro Puy, who earlier raised some of the council’s hottest objections, said in a statement he was “thrilled to support this transit-oriented development that lays the groundwork for an accessible and bustling area in our city.”

‘Strategic launchpad’ for a new neighborhood

City Hall sees that area as a chance to work with UTA and state officials on creating a model for building an innovation-focused area near the transit agency’s expanding hub, which includes links to TRAX, FrontRunner and many of the region’s rapid bus networks.

Instead of being known, as it is today, for hosting a government-sanctioned temporary camp for the unsheltered amid its aging buildings and dusty lots, the envisioned overhaul under Mayor Erin Mendenhall calls for a housing-heavy neighborhood focused on transit, west-side equity, open areas and health care.

In the same RDA statement, the mayor called the new plan “a strategic launchpad” for the area’s redevelopment and said it “identifies and explores functional designs for spaces and buildings that will advance creativity, community wellness, economic growth and opportunities for all.”

The city’s main priorities for developing the Rio Grande District, the RDA added, were climate-positive design; affordable housing for those at a variety of incomes and ages; similarly affordable commercial spaces for locally owned businesses; and creating new employment and educational opportunities for residents.

Mendenhall also said the plan, developed with consultants at the architecture firm Perkins & Will, also dovetails with the city’s initiatives to grow its life sciences sector, with new incubator, laboratory and office spaces.

To spur the development, the RDA plans to upgrade utility capacity in the district to support higher density and create several new midblock connections to better tie into transit lines.

Worries over city authority

Puy first raised concerns during Tuesday’s pitch over suggestions on how the Rio Grande District might draw other property owners — including the University of Utah — into a mutual plan to oversee the area’s development.

As recently as 2021, published plans for the Rio Grande area included a sizable U. presence, centered on technology and business innovation in connection with the 1.9 acres it owns in the district adjacent to 400 South. The city had contemplated selling the U. some of its acreage as part of its expansion.

Yet that element of the vision is now all but vanished, save for a mention among other stakeholders for the U.’s interest in a downtown presence and access to state funding and research programming.

An RDA spokesperson said last week the U. had since “gone a different direction” with leadership changes on campus. A top official overseeing the the school’s real estate portfolio did not respond to a request for comment.

The issue of what the city and RDA call “governance” over land use in the district has been a delicate topic among council members in the intervening months. Though not mentioning the U. in Tuesday’s debate, control issues raised in previous discussions clearly remain.

Despite assurances from RDA Director Danny Walz that nothing in the new plan for Rio Grande deviated from seeking developer interest and launching the redevelopment under full RDA control, the council ordered a section on governance deleted pending further debate.

“I don’t understand many pieces of this,” Puy told RDA staffers, asking for more time “to make sure this lines up with our values and where we are right now.”

Echoing comments from residents, council member Dan Dugan also complained the vision doesn’t adequately embrace alternative transit options, including a grassroots proposal dubbed the Rio Grande Plan that calls for removing many rail crossings and redoing train service across the area

Council colleague Victoria Petro took issue with the substantial boost to that segment of the Green Loop, suggesting the Rio Grande vision cut ahead of other park improvement priorities across the city funded by a recent $85 million bond.

“It does feel like we are backing ourselves into policy decisions here,” she said as she joined Dugan in also wanting to preserve options for eliminating rail crossings in the district.

Other members countered that the city’s plans for the area have already languished for too long and that minor objections shouldn’t interfere with gauging interest from developers in long-term ground leases with the city to develop the land.

Council member Darin Mano pointed to support for the plan’s overall approach — taller buildings, open spaces and strategies for more active street life and cultural hubs. He urged the city to proceed with requesting proposals from the private sector despite other concerns.

“We’ve had this land for years,” Mano said, “and I don’t want to delay this any longer.”

The proposed Bureau of Land Management oil and gas rule will support the recreation economy in Utah by eliminating recreation landscapes from potential leases, increasing bonding rates and limiting speculative leasing, all of which will save Utah taxpayers money.

As a longtime Moab business owner and a current elected official, I have a lot of experience with the ups and downs of the recreation economy. When mountain bikers first arrived in Moab, the locals used to say, “They come to town with one pair of shorts and a $20 bill, and they don’t change either one all week.” Back then, this wasn’t too far from the truth, so it is easy to understand why elected officials were more interested in resource extraction. Yet while some people were hoping for another potash plant or more oil and gas development, revenue from outdoor recreation grew, and continues to grow, steadily.

Today, people of all types want to get outside, even if they never ever plan on wearing spandex shorts. We have all learned that nature is essential for human health and happiness. With more and more people finding that they can work from almost anywhere they want, they are choosing to move to places with access to the great outdoors. As we all know, Mother Nature played favorites with Utah: Everywhere you look there is just so much beauty and awesome outdoor recreation.

We all know that outdoor adventurers and visitors of all types are important to the Utah economy, but we don’t always acknowledge that our natural attributes also play a big role in attracting business investment. To date this is most obvious on the Wasatch Front. Where we are attracting serious talent and investment precisely because of the natural environment and its recreation opportunities.

However, we need to spread the wealth to the rural parts of Utah, especially those places that have long been dependent on the oil and gas industry. The outdated oil and gas leasing system is poised to leave many of these communities in the lurch, just when energy markets have begun to transition away from fossil fuels.

This rule would eliminate leasing proposals on recreation-rich landscapes that are the lifeblood of communities like Moab — remember when the BLM proposed leasing on the Slickrock Trail? Under the new rule, those leases would be off the table. Plus, the update in bonding rates will mean that rural communities won’t be left with uncapped wells. Unremediated well-pads harm air and water quality and leave scars on the landscape. For rural communities to move beyond oil and gas to future uses of public lands, oil and gas operators must be held accountable for the cost of the clean-up.

This rule will also save Utah taxpayers money. A 2023 analysis conducted by Taxpayers for Common Sense found that taxpayers in Utah are facing a potential reclamation liability of $191 million for cleaning up wells in Utah. This means that when big out-of-state developers sell declining wells to local Utah operators, they simply will not have the funds to properly cap and remediate the well sites when the oil runs out. The new BLM Oil and Gas Rule will address this problem by raising the decades-old bonding rates.

Oil and gas advocacy groups will protest these reforms, but with this year’s record oil and gas profits taxpayers aren’t having it, and 91% of voters in Utah support requiring oil and gas companies to pay the full cost of clean-up.

Without reforms, the current system also allows for speculative leasing on low potential lands. Utah voters are pretty smart on this issue as well with 67% of voters agreeing that oil and gas developers should only lease lands in areas with a high likelihood of actually producing oil and gas.

Speculative leasing has indirect costs, if BLM staff are stuck running auctions for a single bidder on lands with low potential, that means they are not available to build and maintain trails. Plus, large tracts of leased lands can discourage investment in much needed recreation assets. Tying up land in unproductive leases leaves communities without recreation assets and a very small chance of ever seeing any oil revenues.

These are just a few of the important updates included in the new BLM Oil and Gas Rule. And while it is normal for our elected officials to want to protect existing industries, energy markets are changing and trying to turn back the clock just isn’t a viable strategy. To bring prosperity and business investment to all the cities and towns in our amazing state, our leaders need to face market realities and support the BLM Oil and Gas Rule.

Jacques Hadler was the long time general manager of Moab Cyclery. He was elected to the Grand County Commission in 2020 and is running for reelection.

The Salt Lake Tribune is committed to creating a space where Utahns can share ideas, perspectives and solutions that move our state forward. We rely on your insight to do this. Find out how to share your opinion here, and email us at voices@sltrib.com.

Lauri Markkanen stands alone in a Utah Jazz uniform.

The 26-year-old Finn has been, by far, his team’s best player over the last two seasons. He started in last year’s All-Star game, received All-NBA votes, and kept up that same level of play this season. One of the NBA’s best contracts, he made just $17 million this year, and will make $18 million next year. Literally every team in the NBA would love to have Markkanen on their roster, and especially at that price.

Yet ... he’s never played in a playoff game.

Early in his career, he simply hadn’t developed enough to be a difference-maker. Now in his prime, his teammates simply don’t have the quality to support his ambitions. Even if the Jazz had just one more player like Markkanen, they’d likely be in the playoffs.

So there’s an obvious question: What does Markkanen want the team’s front office to do this summer?

“I want to win basketball games and get to the playoffs,” Markkanen said. “Hopefully, at the end, get all the way to the ultimate goal. And they know that.”

Jazz general manager Justin Zanik agreed with Markkanen’s goal, but said the franchise can’t change its timeline to make Markkanen’s — and, it must be said, Jazz fans’ — playoff dreams come true sooner rather than later.

“Lauri’s a hugely important piece for us now and going forward,” Zanik said. “I don’t want to waste any years of that, but you also have to do it within the timeline.

“We’re not trying to say, ‘Hey, Lauri, we’ll make you happy because you’ve never made the playoffs, so we’re going to burn all our picks and get some marginal improvement from an overpaid player so that maybe we’ll be a seven seed,’” Zanik continued. “Our goal is to make the playoffs and then grow from there. So what are those moves that can do that? As Lauri grows and continues to get better, then we’re adding so they can grow with him.”

Jazz CEO Danny Ainge, meanwhile, says the front office is “ready to go big game hunting” if the right opportunity presents itself.

Zanik and Ainge likely won’t hear a demand to go all-in now from the typically reserved Markkanen. Using his leverage as the Jazz’s best player to force the Jazz to act would be out of character for Markkanen, even though other NBA stars likely would with just one year left on his contract.

Instead, Markkanen publicly says that he wants to put pressure on that timeline not through his words, but through his game.

“I look at this whole situation just as a way for myself to get better. One way to affect (the timeline) is to get so much better and work on your game, that it speeds things up. The better I’m playing, the better our team is playing,” he said. “That’s my part of the job, to fast forward this.

“I know how the business works and they had to make those tough decisions and obviously they want to win a championship as well,” Markkanen continued. “So they’re doing the best they can towards that and I think we have a lot of good people in this organization that have shown that they can do the job. So I have trust for those guys.”

The 7-footer noted that he hadn’t met with the team’s front office as of Thursday. But he acknowledged that he would likely be offered an extension from the Jazz this summer, though he feels that his choice on whether to sign it might be determined more by timing than by who the Jazz select as his teammates.

Like many impending free agents, Markkanen will likely have the choice of taking a still-massive-but-smaller extension, or betting on himself and trying to get a max deal in 2025. A renegotiated contract this summer could see Markkanen make around $200 million over the course of five years, while a free agent contract signed next summer could mean $250 million or so in a five-year deal.

“I don’t want to be the guy ...,” Markkanen said and paused. “Like, I’ve seen NBA people turning down extensions, or signing them too early.

“I’ve got to sit down and think about it.”

Attendance:

Present:

Tom Godfrey - Chair

John Kirkham - Vice Chair

Patricia Comarell - Secretary

Donald Milne - Chair of Engineering Committee

Joan Degiorgio - Chair of Environmental Committee

Cindy Cromer

Absences:

John Mabey Jr. - Chair of Management Advisory Committee (Excused)

Approve 2025 fiscal year budget

All of the available funds will be used by the water district. There were over $100 million  available, with most of it going towards the funding of capital projects. The availability of funds is nearly twice as much as in the past five years. More funds are available because the district is gaining nearly twice as much from previous years from property taxes. There will be a public meeting in June regarding property taxes, where community members can share their thoughts on the property tax rate. The district is projecting to make over $25 million from water sales to member cities next year. The money that is made will be used for capital projects and maintenance. Capital projects include the Salt Lake Aqueduct project, which is a 42-mile-long pipe going from Deer Creek Reservoir down to a storage reservoir in the Salt Lake Valley. This motion was passed unanimously

Approve a proxy for the Provo River water meeting.

John Mabey, the chair of the management committee, usually attends the Provo River Water Users Association meetings but is unable to attend the upcoming meeting on April 25th. The executive committee recommended that Wayne Winsor, the assistant general manager of the water district, attend the meeting in his place. The water district owns 61,900 shares of the Provo Water Users Association, making the district a “class A” voting group. This means that they get to elect directors, where they hold six out of the eleven directors in the voting group.

Approve easement agreement with AJ Rock

Ammon Allen, the engineering manager of the water district, explained that this easement has been around for 10 months. Allen explained that AJ Rock will be building apartments and hotels that neighbor the Salt Lake Aqueduct at 6695 South Wasatch Boulevard. The water district is working with AJ Rock to find the best way to cover the aqueduct. The easement agreement includes public and private roads and associated utilities to support the Salt Lake Aqueduct. The reason there needs to be a new agreement is because the district clarified the size of the aqueduct and the developer is relocating some of their blow-off pipes. Joan DeGiorgio decided to abstain from voting since she was not present at the meeting where this agreement was discussed.

Postponed Vote on Terminating Agreement with Pleasant Grove City

The water district has had a contract with Pleasant Grove City for monitoring water and the dumping of excess flows into Grove and Battle Creek. The water district will be looking into ending the contract “without cause”. When ending the contract in this way, they need to give Pleasant Grove City 15 years notice. This measure was on the board packet but it was postponed, It was not mentioned at all in the meeting, so it is unclear why it was postponed.

Additional Notes

Water levels are especially high right now. Utah Lake is at 100% capacity, so water is being sent down the Jordan River. The Deer Creek and Jordanelle reservoirs are both at over 80 percent capacity. Reservoirs are a lot fuller at this moment this year compared to last year.

What Passed

• Consider adoption of FY 2025 tentative budget (Tab 1)
• Consider acceptance of financial reports (Tab 1)
• Consider approval of Resolution 1933 for proxy for Provo River Water Users Association annual meeting (Tab 2)
• Consider approval of easement agreement with AJ Rock development (Tab 3)
• Consider approval of Board Meeting minutes dated March 25, 2024 (Tab 4)
• Close session for pending or reasonably imminent litigation

Everything passed unanimously.

Water Documenters is a collaboration between The Salt Lake Tribune and City Bureau and funded through grants from the Great Salt Lake Collaborative and the Rita Allen Foundation. College student journalists from all over Utah are hired to attend and take notes at public water meetings in Utah. These notes are then published for anyone to read or use. The project is aimed at providing better public access to meetings where major decisions are made about a limited Utah resource. For more meeting notes, click here. For more information, click here.

Like a crushed crouton, Sugar House’s monument to a bygone era of steaks and salad bars on one of Salt Lake City’s most scenic corners has returned to dust.

Crews leveled the old Sizzler restaurant at 2111 S. 1300 East this week, clearing the plot at the northwest corner of Sugar House Park. City officials issued the demolition permit April 8.

The site has been the focus of neighborhood anxiety about what could take the place of the long-vacated and now-demolished chain restaurant.

A squabble over a proposal to build a Kum & Go gas station at the corner led the city’s planning commission to veto the plans a year ago.

The commission voted 9-1 to nix the Iowa-based chain’s application for a conditional use permit, citing traffic and environmental concerns, including potential impacts on the park, air quality and secondary water supplies in Parleys Creek.

Uproar over the Kum & Go proposal spurred city officials to revisit rules pertaining to how far new gas stations must be from water sources. The planning commission approved new rules last week and is set to send them to the City Council for a final OK.

Kum & Go was bought last year by FJ Management, the parent company of Salt Lake City-based convenience store chain Maverik.

FJ Management could not immediately be reached for comment on its plans for the site.

Cushman & Wakefield broker Kip Paul said his firm is working to help the company sublet the property to a group that wants to build a hotel. Such a project would require a zoning change.

The organizers of the Sundance Film Festival, which has called Park City home for more than 40 years, are taking a hard look at the independent film event’s future — including whether it will stay in Utah or move elsewhere.

The Sundance Institute, the nonprofit that has presented the Sundance Film Festival since 1985, announced Wednesday it is starting a process to “explore viable locations in the United States to host” the festival, beginning in 2027.

Eugene Hernandez, director of the festival and head of the institute’s public programming, said the move was prompted by the fact that the festival’s contract with Park City is up for renewal. The institute is obligated to inform Park City by October whether it will start negotiating a new contract.

“This hasn’t happened in over a decade,” Hernandez said, “so in really trying to think about how to be the most responsible to our festival, … we created this [Request for Information] and [Request for Proposals] process that can help us really develop the right process to evaluate and consider about how we build the future of the festival.”

In a statement Wednesday, Park City Mayor Nann Worel said the city “will work collaboratively with all our state and local partners on next steps.”

Worel said, “we appreciate our partnership with Sundance, and we want the festival to remain here for another 40 years. We will not be alone in the effort to ensure that Utah remains host to diverse new voices from around the globe.”

Erin Mendenhall, the mayor of Salt Lake City, said in a statement Wednesday that Sundance’s announcement “will kick off conversations and proposals to ensure independent filmmaking and the Sundance Film Festival continue to be celebrated sources of connection and inspiration for our communities here locally and globally. … We look forward to being part of the Institute’s exploration of building an even greater Sundance Film Festival. The potential to create a more accessible, inspiring, and uplifting event is endless.”

Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, in a statement Wednesday, said the county “is committed to partnering with Sundance, other governments and the broader community to ensure that the festival remains an asset in Utah for decades to come.”

Virginia Pearce, director of the Utah Film Commission, said Wednesday in a statement that “we see this as an opportunity to reimagine what the future of the festival looks like in Utah. With over 40 years of demonstrated success as the home of the Sundance Film Festival, we are well-positioned to continue this partnership.”

How the process will work

The process, according to a release from the institute, begins Wednesday with a Request For Information (RFI) phase, which will run for two weeks and close on May 1. Interested parties can submit proposals to proposal@sundance.org.

The festival, the release said, “will employ the RFI process to identify new opportunities to elevate artists while providing a space that reflects the festival’s values of inclusion, racial equity, accessibility and belonging at every level for artists, audiences, staff and volunteers.”

On May 7, a Request for Proposals (RFP) phase will open. In this phase of the process, “specific details will be assessed,” the release said. The RFP process will close on June 21.

A final decision on the festival’s location for 2027 and beyond will be announced in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2025.

Hernandez didn’t share specifics about the criteria the institute is looking for from cities or proposals, except that it is all “about continuing the vital work of the Sundance festival.”

He added, “we really want and hope Utah will go along on this journey with us, and we feel like we’re really well-suited to have this conversation with our friends in Utah, because of the long history and legacy of this festival that we share together.”

Hernandez noted that the 2025 and 2026 festivals will be held in Park City — and that he’s already started watching early films for next year’s festival, which the institute announced in March will happen in Park City and Salt Lake City from Jan. 23 to Feb. 2, 2025.

A long shared history

“We are committed to our audience, because the audience has been committed to Sundance for all of these decades,” he said. “This is a festival for people who live there in Utah, and also for people who travel. … So for 2027 and beyond that, we’re going do what’s best for artists and [the] audience. But there’s no need to panic.”

The institute’s release noted the decades that Sundance has been in Utah. “Sundance Institute’s connection to Utah is profound, reflecting decades of shared cultural achievements that have shaped the festival into what it is today,” the release said.

The festival’s connection to Utah predates the institute’s existence. The first Utah/US Film Festival was held September 1978 in Salt Lake City, and moved to Park City in January 1981 — a few months before actor-director-activist Robert Redford founded the Sundance Institute as a laboratory for independent filmmakers. In 1985, the institute took over operations of what was then called the United States Film Festival; the name was changed to Sundance in 1991.

When Sundance came to Park City, Mayor Worel said in her statement, “it was buoyed by a tight-knit and passionate group of individuals who worked together to provide a voice for independent storytellers that became impactful beyond anyone’s imagination.”

At the same time, Worel said, Park City was “just starting to realize what this place could become. As Sundance grew, so did we — into a world-class mountain town that welcomes the world year-round.”

Over the years, festival visitors from time to time have complained about trudging through the snow during Sundance — but Redford has long argued that the difficulty of navigating the festival was the point.

“The snow and the inconvenience — I love it,” Redford told The Tribune in 1996. “This is sort of what the idea was: Make it in the winter, move into Park City, make it a little rougher atmosphere to suit the image of what independent film is.”

Redford, 87, retired from acting in 2018 (his last on-screen role was in 2019′s “Avengers: Endgame”), and as founder is on the institute’s board of trustees. His daughter, Amy, also a filmmaker, is also a board member — and will be on the task force looking through the RFI and RFP submissions.

The film community reacts

Reaction from people with an interest in the festival, either as attendees or filmmakers, was sharp.

“Oh no!” wrote Whit Stillman, the director of the 1991 comedy “Metropolitan,” one of the festival’s early successes, in a Wednesday email to The Tribune.

“I love Park City, and the Egyptian was a magical spot to debut a first film — cinema karma is key (the film played poorly at the [Prospector Square] conference center),” Stillman wrote. “I hope this is just a hostage ploy to get ransom money for the festival’s budget — but it’s true that Park City has gotten pricey for an indie film fest.”

Katie Rife, a freelance film writer, responded on X (formerly Twitter) by suggesting that a new location “somewhere where all the trans filmmakers attending Sundance can use the bathroom would be nice.”

Tomris Laffly, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, wrote on X about her experiences covering Redford’s opening-day news conferences. Redford, Laffly wrote, “always talked about film as an agent of change & how crucial embracing change is to the fest.” She added that Sundance “welcoming this change feels so in synch [with] the festival’s history [and] founding principles.”

The New Yorker’s Richard Brody, also on X, said his suggestion for a Sundance location “is the same as everyone’s and therefore different from everyone’s: ‘around the corner from me.’”

Wednesday’s announcement comes at a turbulent time for the festival and the institute — weeks after the sudden departure of the institute’s CEO, Joana Vicente, who had held the job for just 2½ years. Amanda Kelso, a member of the institute’s board, has been named acting CEO.

This year’s festival, Hernandez’s first as director, saw an increase in single-ticket prices. Two of the festival’s largest Park City venues, the Eccles Theatre and the Prospector Square Theatre, housed movie screenings only during the festival’s first half. Two other venues, the MARC and the Temple Theatre, have not been used since 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced Sundance to go completely online in 2021 and 2022.

IndieWire, the online trade publication Hernandez co-founded, reported in March that Metropolitan Theaters Corporation, which operates two of Sundance’s Park City venues — the Redstone 8 and Holiday Village Cinemas 4 multiplexes — filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in February. Park City radio station KPCW later reported that the Holiday Village has closed its doors.

On the upside, according to the trade paper Variety, the festival’s inaugural gala fundraiser — which toasted actor Kristen Stewart and directors Christopher Nolan and Celine Song — raked in $1.5 million for the nonprofit. And, The New York Times reported, distribution deals for festival films were robust after a slow start.

According to its most recent 990 forms — the tax forms nonprofits file with the Internal Revenue Service — in 2021, Sundance Institute took in $24 million more in revenue than in 2020, and ended the year with $78.1 million in net assets and a net revenue of $13 million.

The festival continued to attract independent filmmakers and fans from around the world. The 2024 festival drew 17,345 submissions from 153 countries — the most in its history.

On a podcast in January, reported by KPCW, Vicente spoke about the challenges the festival faced being held in Park City, including accessibility and cost. She also expressed excitement about what the festival is doing in its Salt Lake City venues, “really getting to a more diverse, younger audience.”

Hernandez, who has been attending the festival for 30 years, said the event has continued to “evolve right in front of everyone’s eyes.”

What brings success to the festival, Hernandez said, is “so inherent in what you can see at the Sundance Film Festival over these 40-plus years. … It’s that openness of the audience. It’s that careful curation.”

This is a developing story.

Tribune culture & business editor Sean P. Means and business reporter Shannon Sollitt contributed to this report.

The Sundance Institute is starting a process to “explore viable locations in the United States to host the Sundance Film Festival, beginning in 2027,” the nonprofit arts organization said Wednesday.

Those locations could be in Utah — where the festival has been held since 1978, before the institute existed — or elsewhere.

Officials at the institute did not divulge many details Wednesday about what criteria they would use to judge the cities that might apply to host the festival. What they did share is a timeline for how the process would be conducted.

Here are the important dates:

April 17-May 1, 2024 • A two-week period in which Sundance Institute takes requests for information (RFI) about the potential location for the Sundance Film Festival, starting in 2027.

May 7-June 21, 2024 • The period for cities applying to host the festival to respond to Sundance’s request for proposals (RFP).

Second half of 2024 • Sundance Institute officials are expected to review applications from cities vying to be the festival’s host. Details of how the search will be conducted have yet to be announced.

Late 2024 or early 2025 • The Sundance Institute is expected to announce the host location for the Sundance Film Festival from 2027 onward.

January 23-February 2, 2025 • The 2025 Sundance Film Festival is scheduled to take place, primarily in Park City and at venues in Salt Lake City. The dates for the 2025 festival were announced on March 19.

January 2026 • The 2026 Sundance Film Festival is scheduled to take place, primarily in Park City and at venues in Salt Lake City. Dates are expected to be announced sometime in 2025. After the 2026 festival, the Sundance Institute’s current contract with the city of Park City expires.

January 2027 • The 2027 Sundance Film Festival is scheduled to take place. Dates and location still to be determined.

The guy who put Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand together was also the matchmaker for Park City and the Sundance Film Festival.

The annual celebration had launched as the Utah/US Film Festival in Salt Lake City in September 1978, and organizers were soliciting advice from some of Redford’s Hollywood friends about what to do in the event’s third year.

Lory Smith, one of those early organizers, wrote in his 1999 memoir “Party in a Box” that he and his colleagues talked to director Sydney Pollack — an old friend of Redford’s, who had directed the star in such 1970s classics as “The Way We Were” (with Streisand), “Jeremiah Johnson” and “Three Days of the Condor.” (Pollack later cast Redford in his Oscar-winning 1985 epic “Out of Africa.”)

“You know what you ought to do?” Smith recalled Pollack saying. “You ought to move the festival to Park City and set it in the wintertime. You’d be the only film festival in the world set in a ski resort during ski season, and Hollywood would beat down the door to attend.”

The next January, in 1981, the Utah/US Film Festival relaunched in Park City. Later that year, Redford founded the nonprofit Sundance Institute at his ski resort in Provo Canyon, naming it for his star-making role in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and aiming to foster independent filmmaking.

The Sundance Institute announced Wednesday it is starting a process to consider where — in Park City or elsewhere, in or out of Utah — to locate the festival from 2027 forward. With that in mind, here’s a timeline of how Sundance and Park City grew up together.

1985 • Sundance Institute took over operations of the United States Film Festival, to create a showcase for the independent films the institute’s labs were developing. All screenings were in two locations: The Egyptian and the Holiday Village Cinemas. The big movie that year was the first film by Joel and Ethan Coen, the noir thriller “Blood Simple.”

1987 • A third theater was added, at Prospector Square.

1991 • The event officially changed its name to the Sundance Film Festival.

1995 • The renovated Jim Santy Auditorium at Park City Library Center became the festival’s fourth venue. The first Slamdance Film Festival, founded by filmmakers who were rejected by Sundance, launched in the Yarrow Hotel (now the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Park City).

1997 • Sundance opened its fifth Park City theater, in the Yarrow Hotel. Slamdance moved to the top of Main Street, to the Treasure Mountain Inn. Copycat festivals — with names like Slamdunk, X-Dance and Lapdance — inundated Main Street for the next few years, until Park City’s government tightened its event permit process.

1998 • Park City’s largest venue, the 1,300-seat Eccles Center Theatre, showed festival movies for the first time, starting with the Gwyneth Paltrow film “Sliding Doors.”

2002 • The festival ran a week earlier than usual, to give Park City room to prepare for another event: The 2002 Winter Olympics. Sundance was considered a pre-Olympic practice run for such additions as the Main Street transit hub.

2004 • The festival’s opening-night gala, for years a Salt Lake City event, moved to Park City — with a screening of the surfing documentary “Riding Giants.”

2005 • Sundance opened another large venue: The converted Park City Racquet Club, which seats 600. Because of its proximity to a residential neighborhood, no midnight movies are scheduled there.

2007 • Sundance added the Redstone Cinemas in Kimball Junction to its venues.

2009 • Sundance converted Temple Bar Shalom, Park City’s synagogue, to a theater venue, called the Temple Theatre.

2010 • The elusive British street artist Banksy debuted his first movie, the documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” at Sundance. He tagged an outbuilding near Park City’s McPolin Barn and painted three of his trademark stencils in the Main Street area. The Main Street art has been preserved, making Park City a global art-tourist destination.

2012 • After an extensive renovation, the old Racquet Club returned as the Park City Municipal Area Recreation Center — or The MARC, for short.

2017 • Park City saw its biggest traffic jam ever, caused by some 8,000 protesters taking part in the March for Women rally during the festival, the day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated.

2018 • Sundance opened a new theater, The Ray (named for the late movie executive Bingham Ray), in a converted sporting goods store.

2020 • The festival drew an estimated 116,800 attendees to screenings and events in Park City, Salt Lake City and at the Sundance Resort. Utahns and visitors from other states spent an estimated $150 million, according to Salt Lake City research firm Y2 Analytics.

2021 • For the first time in four decades, the festival was not held in Park City — forced online by the COVID-19 pandemic and onto screens in 20 other cities (mostly outdoor venues in Sun Belt states). The family drama “CODA” won four awards at the festival, and went on to become the first Sundance Film Festival premiere to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

2022 • Hopes of the festival’s return to Park City were thwarted by a surge in COVID-19 cases brought on by the omicron variant. The festival played online for the second year in a row.

2023 • The Sundance Film Festival returned to in-person screenings in Park City, though a modified online format remained available. The festival had a smaller footprint in Park City, with two longtime venues — the MARC and the Temple Theatre not in use. Slamdance also returned to the Treasure Mountain Inn after a two-year break.

2024 • The festival celebrated its 40th edition under the Sundance Institute’s operation. Slamdance returned to its original home, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Park City. After the festival, the Metropolitan Theatres chain filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, and in March closed the Holiday Village Cinemas — one of the festival’s original venues.

2025-2026 • Sundance Institute and the city of Park City have a contract to hold the Sundance Film Festival in the Utah ski town for the next two years.

Ogden City lost millions of taxpayer dollars operating the Ogden-Hinckley Airport at a deficit for over a decade, a new legislative audit found.

The performance audit, published by the Utah Office of the Legislative Auditor General on Wednesday, found Ogden-Hinckley Airport was operating at a loss every year from 2006 to 2022, with a total financial loss of $15 million. The largest annual loss of around $1.7 million happened in 2008, with its smallest annual loss was around $200,000 in 2014.

The city subsidized those losses through its general fund and money collected from the Business Depot Ogden industrial park. The audit also found that the airport was “not a priority to city governance for many years,” and found that a lack of planning contributed to the airport losing money.

The audit outlined how the Ogden airport received $10 million in state funds in 2020 for upgrades to the airport. At the time, Ogden City claimed the funding would bring 3,000 new jobs and around $250 million in new earnings. However, despite most of the upgrades being made to the airport, the new jobs and new earnings have not materialized, the audit says.

Legislative auditors also found a little over half of the airport’s 244 aircraft hangers have no building or code inspection on record. The audit goes on to say, “22 hangars have no functioning aircraft and for 43 more hangars there is no aircraft information.”

In 2021, hangar owners sued the city, alleging they were wrongfully evicted from their hangars after the city began changing its policies on how hangar leases were being renewed. A federal judge sided with the city in 2022, according to the Standard-Examiner, but the case was later appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Auditors noted the ongoing lawsuit between Ogden City and hangar owners but made it clear they would not offer an opinion on the ongoing litigation.

Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski — who was elected in November, after the years studied in the audit — did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the audit.

In a response attached to the audit, Nadolski wrote that the city has recently contracted with a consulting firm to make changes at the airport, adding “It is anticipated that this will lead to the creation of best practices and procedures, and decision making utilizing the management cycle to guide policy and governance of OGD.”

In recent years, Ogden-Hinckley has seen its commercial flight offerings coming and go. In February, Breeze Airways began offering flights from Ogden to the John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California.

Read the full report here:

Ogden Hinkley Airport Audit 2024 by Jeff Parrott on Scribd

Rapper NBA YoungBoy was booked into Cache County jail on suspicion of fraud, forgery, weapons and drug offenses Tuesday after federal agents executed a search warrant at a home he owns in Weber County.

Kentrell DeSean Gaulden, also known professionally as “YoungBoy Never Broke Again” or just “YoungBoy,” was taken into custody on Tuesday after the search warrant was executed as part of “an ongoing investigation into criminal conduct,” the Cache County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Wednesday.

Jail records show Gaulden is being investigated for forgery, identity fraud and a pattern of unlawful activity, all third-degree felonies. He is also suspected of possessing a weapon as a restricted person, a second-degree felony, and misdemeanor drug possession.

A spokesperson said Cache County investigators assisted federal agents in the Weber County search because the allegations originate from Cache County.

“Due to the complexity of the investigation we will not be releasing any additional details concerning the investigation,” the release states.

Gaulden has been under house arrest in Utah since October 2021 as he awaits trial on federal firearms charges originating out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Agents with the FBI, Homeland Security and the Secret Service participated in the Tuesday search, as well as the Weber County Sheriff’s Office, Ogden police, Layton SWAT and drug task forces from Box Elder and Cache/Rich counties, according to the release.

Cache County authorities did not specify the location of Gaulden’s Weber County property where the search warrant was executed, but his 8,800-square-foot home in Millcreek, where he has spent much of his pretrial release, was recently listed on the market for $5.5 million.

The rapper’s Louisiana charges stem from 2020 allegations that he brandished weapons while filming a music video in Baton Rouge.

In 2016, as a 17-year-old, Gaulden was accused of jumping out of a car and opening fire at a group of people in Baton Rouge. Initially charged with attempted murder, he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of aggravated assault and was sentenced to three years of probation, according to court records.

Two years later, he was charged with violating his probation after prosecutors say he exchanged gunfire with someone in a passing vehicle outside the Trump International Beach Resort in Miami. Gaulden’s girlfriend was wounded and a bystander was killed in the shooting.

A judge in that case sentenced Gaulden to 90 days jail and banned him from performing in public for 14 months, ordering him to remain under house arrest until the end of his probation.

Gaulden told Billboard magazine in early 2023 that he was planning to be baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after his ankle monitor is removed. In December, a federal judge approved a request to modify the conditions of his house arrest, allowing him to participate in mental health and social services programs as well as the medical appointments, court appearances, and employment-related activities for which he was already allowed to leave his home.

But he had otherwise remained on house arrest until his Tuesday arrest. More information on the investigation leading to the Tuesday search warrant was not immediately available.

Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith may have broken his own news when speaking at World Congress of Sports event Wednesday.

Smith was asked a question about the swirling rumors that an NHL team is on its way to the Beehive State. Not only did he answer the question, but he said the now-hardly-quiet part out loud.

“There’s no secret on what’s out there online,” Smith was quoted as saying by Sports Business Journal reporter Alex M. Silverman. “Normally, not everything on the internet is true, but in this case, it’s pretty true.”

NEW: @UtahJazz owner Ryan Smith, on the @NHL to SLC reports: "There's no secret on what's out there online. Normally, not everything on the internet is true, but in this case, it's pretty true." #WCOS2024 https://t.co/npS7klKICU

— Alex M. Silverman🏒⚽️ (@AlexMSilverman) April 17, 2024

It’s been rumored for about two weeks that the Arizona Coyotes will relocate to Salt Lake City after a years-long struggle to find a home arena. Multiple reports have stated the Coyotes players are expecting the move, that a vote by the NHL Board of Governors is imminent, and that an official announcement can be expected by the end of this week.

Smith also voiced confidence in the local fan base and teased facility developments for the future.

“I have incredible faith in the people of Utah,” Smith said, per a post on X by journalist Arash Markazi. “We show up. It’ll be backed. I’m excited about that and showing that. There’s so much work to do from the practice facility down to everything else but we’ll get it done.”

Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith on the NHL in Salt Lake City: “I have incredible faith in the people of Utah. We show up. It’ll be packed. I’m excited about that and showing that. There’s so much work to do from the practice facility on down to everything else but we’ll get it done.”

— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) April 17, 2024

A separate report from Arizona sports radio host John Gambadoro said a news conference regarding the Coyotes’ sale to Smith is “still expected for Friday.” He added that the deal isn’t done yet, but it’s “getting closer” to finalization.

Press Conference for the Arizona Coyotes sale to Ryan Smith and Salt Lake City still expected for Friday. Deal not finalized as of now but getting closer.

— John Gambadoro (@Gambo987) April 17, 2024

And earlier Wednesday, NHL insider Chris Johnson appeared on SportsCenter and said an official announcement should be coming from the league either Thursday or Friday.

NHL insider Chris Johnston says we should expect to see an official announcement from the NHL on Thursday or Friday.#NHLtoUtah #Yotes pic.twitter.com/x3xFCL0vVW

— Kaden G (NHL/MLB to Utah) (@theogrovezee) April 17, 2024

A couple in their 80s were found dead in their American Fork home in January. Three months later, investigators still aren’t sure how they died — but they are closing the case, police announced Wednesday.

Sally and Duane Francom, both 84, were last seen around mid-November 2023. Officers later discovered the couple dead in their home on Jan. 3 during a welfare check, police said.

The two appeared to have been dead for some time, and seemed to have died around the same time. They were each found in different rooms, though the room Sally was found in showed “possible signs of a struggle,” police said in a news release.

Based on that evidence, as well as the positioning of her body, Sally may have been “killed in a physical altercation,” authorities surmised in a search warrant document warrant obtained by FOX 13.

Relatives also told investigators that Duane was “emotionally and physically abusive,” leading authorities to write in the document that it was “reasonable” to suspect Duane may have strangled Sally before dying of a heart attack “due to the physical stress of strangling someone,” FOX 13 reported.

Police didn’t find any weapons at the scene that may have been used in the deaths. Investigators also didn’t find any “observable indications” of traumatic injury to either of Francoms, according to the release.

The state medical examiner’s office eventually took custody of the Francoms’ remains to conduct autopsies. This week, the office officially ruled their causes of death as “undetermined,” citing the “degree of decomposition.”

“No trauma was found on either body, and no significant amount of carbon monoxide was detected ruling out carbon monoxide poisoning,” police said in a news release, noting the American Fork Police Department has closed the case.

“Both Duane and Sally were found to have heart disease, and toxicology showed nothing suspicious in their blood,” the release continued.

Police said investigators have “no reason to believe” a third party may have been involved in their deaths, as there were no signs of forced entry into their home. It’s why investigators concluded the circumstances surrounding their deaths were “isolated to inside of the home.”

Neither Sally nor Duane Francom appeared to have personal obituaries published after their deaths.

Video of middle schoolers walking out of a Nebo School District school in Payson on Wednesday quickly spread in conservative social media circles, with posts claiming the students were protesting because the district was allowing student “furries” to “terrorize” other students.

Conservative radio host Adam Bartholomew, who shared video of the walkout to X, wrote in a post that the student who organized the protest told him student “furries” were biting, scratching and spraying “human repellent” at other students, “and when a student retaliates they are the one who gets suspended.”

Nebo School District spokesperson Seth Sorenson said that claim was false. He also said students at the middle school are not wearing full-body animal costumes to class, as “furries” — part of a subculture of people who sometimes dress up like animal characters but act like humans — are known to do.

But by about 4 p.m. Wednesday, Bartholomew’s video and claims had been picked up and spread by Libs of TikTok, an account on X that shares anti-LGBTQ posts and other clips geared at generating right-wing outrage. Bartholomew is married to Cari Bartholomew, who is running as a far-right candidate for the Utah State Board of Education in District 13.

“Students claim that the furries bite them, bark at them, and pounce on them without repercussion,” the Libs of TikTok post read. “However, if they defend themselves in any way, they get in trouble.”

Dismissing those claims, Sorenson said the Wednesday protest seemed to be organized after a message the school sent to families last week was misinterpreted.

School’s message encouraged ‘respect,’ official said

The message was sent after a group of students had been targeting another group of students, saying things “that were overheard by others that the administration felt were inappropriate and shouldn’t be said,” Sorenson said.

The group of students being targeted, he added, were students who sometimes come to school wearing headbands “that may have ears on them.” He said doesn’t think the targeted students necessarily refer to themselves as “furries.”

“These are pretty young kids,” he said. “You’ll have students that show up with headbands and giant bows; you’ll have students that show up dressed as their favorite basketball player, or baseball player. That’s just what kids this age do.”

In one specific instance, the targeted students “were sitting in a corner of the lunchroom, eating as a group of friends” when others began calling them names and throwing food at them “because they were dressed differently,” Sorenson told The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday, providing more details about the situation.

After word of the altercation spread, the school sent an initial message to families last Friday, stating, “We expect ALL students to be respectful towards each other while we are here at school.”

“We hope you will treat others how you would like to be treated,” the message stated. “Outstanding behavior might demonstrate curiosity, understanding, patience and tolerance.”

The note continued, “One of our goals is to ensure that you are able to come to school, each day to learn the academic curriculum and appropriate citizenship. As responsible citizens, we hope you will look out for each other, take care of each other and treat each other with kindness.”

The message reiterated both the school’s dress code policy, as well as the school’s policy against written, verbal, or physical acts that stand to threaten, humiliate or abuse others.

But Sorenson said he thinks some parents misinterpreted the note, incorrectly taking it as a message that the school was “taking the side of a single group, saying, ‘We want you to be kind to this group, but they don’t have to be kind to anyone else.’”

“Nobody was taking the side of one group or another,” he said. “What we were saying is everyone needs to treat everyone else with respect.”

Sorenson said some upset parents took to social media instead of discussing the issue with the school district. On Sunday, a Change.org petition was created, titled “Students for Humans at School, not animals aka furries,” demanding that the district enforce its dress code. The online petition had garnered more than 1,500 signatures as of Thursday afternoon.

School sends second message to clarify ‘misunderstandings’

On Tuesday, the school sent another message to parents, trying to clarify its original note.

“We have had several parents reach out to us over the past few days, regarding rumors that are being spread about behaviors of a small group of students at our school,” the message read. “We hoped our efforts to clarify misconceptions would be sufficient, but it seems we still have some misunderstandings.”

The note went on to quote the Friday message, and concluded with an acknowledgement of rumored plans of a walkout protest Wednesday.

“While students may exercise their freedom of expression, disruptions to the school day will be handled as needed,” the message read, citing district policy.

The student protest ultimately came together Wednesday after some parents pulled their children from school, Sorenson said.

Moving forward, Sorenson said the district plans “to stay the course,” aiming to “foster a respectful school community.”

“We hope that rather than parents just reaching out on social media and posting, that they’ll actually reach out to the school and have conversations,” Sorenson said, adding that the district “would love nothing more than to engage in those conversations and find solutions that will make everybody happy.”

To steal a line from Hamlet: (ii)(b) or not (ii)(b)?

That was the question — and the answer almost banned nearly all of the electronic cigarettes sold in Utah.

The intended goal seemed simple enough: In an effort to reduce the number of kids vaping nicotine, lawmakers this past session overwhelmingly approved a new law banning the sale of the fruity and sweet flavored vapes that data shows young people are drawn to.

But nothing is ever simple, and in the last days of the legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill that, due to a typo, is far more sweeping than intended.

Electronic Cigarette Amendments, or SB61, bans the sale of all flavored vapes other than tobacco or menthol. Additionally, it meant to prohibit the sale of electronic cigarettes that have not been approved by the FDA or did not apply for FDA approval before September 2020.

But as the bill saw five major revisions in the closing week of the session, a reference to section (B)(ii) got switched to (ii)(b) and the result was that products that had applied for and were awaiting review by the FDA were also banned.

What difference did it make?

To date, the FDA has approved the sale of 23 e-cigarette products from three manufacturers — six of which would not be legal for sale in Utah because another provision of the law also prohibits products with more than 4% nicotine.

So as it is written, on Jan. 1, 2025, thousands upon thousands of e-cigarette products sold in gas stations and vape shops across the state would be outlawed, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services confirmed in response to questions from The Salt Lake Tribune.

There is, however, a way to fix the mistake.

The sponsor of the legislation, Sen. Jen Plumb, D-Salt Lake City, said legislative attorneys are allowed to correct typos without a special session when the intent of the Legislature is clear.

What is unclear, though, is how many vape products will be eligible for sale once the law takes effect. The state health department doesn’t know how many manufacturers had applications pending prior to 2020.

A spokeswoman for the FDA said that through the end of 2023, the agency had processed applications for 99% of the 26 million tobacco products — including things like cigars and cigarettes, in addition to e-cigarettes — that had been submitted.

So it is likely that even after the typo in the law is fixed, the range of e-cigarette products available for sale in Utah next year will be drastically reduced. That has owners of the state’s nearly 200 vape shops worried about their survival and threatening to sue the state.

The whole episode could also serve as an example of what Gov. Spencer Cox, who signed it into law last month, warned is what happens when legislators rush to pass so many bills.

“While I suppose there is nothing inherently wrong with more bills, I truly believe it makes it more difficult to focus on the quality of the legislation,” Cox wrote in a letter to legislative leaders last month. Lawmakers passed a record 591 bills in the most recent 45-day session.

Tempe, Ariz. • The fans came early to the funeral.

With three hours left before the opening faceoff of the Arizona Coyotes’ last game in the state it has called home for 27 years, fans started to arrive outside the gates of the small, 5,000-seat stadium on the campus of Arizona State University.

This funeral at Mullett Arena had a bounce castle, beer pong tables, and even a booth set up to shave mullet haircuts into the scalps of the truly dedicated — but these inanities mostly went unused.

Instead, people grieved. Some stood outside their cars in the arena’s parking garage, tailgating for the game. Some gathered at the point closest to the arena’s entrance they were allowed. Many cried. But they all told stories, sharing with others who had this passion in their lives: NHL hockey.

This week, that passion was taken away by team owner Alex Meruelo’s decision to end this Coyotes’ chapter in Arizona. The NHL has “deactivated” the Coyotes and transferred all of its players and hockey assets to Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith, who will move the team to Utah in time for next October’s season opener.

Utah’s gain is Arizona’s pain. And while our state looks to welcome NHL hockey to our area — for which Utahns are understandably thrilled — it’s worth understanding the toll it will take elsewhere.

Anger among the grieving

To be sure, the primary emotion for many Coyotes fans was anger.

“It was a big blow to a fan base who’s been super mistreated,” said Luke Warren, of the Coyotes Corner podcast. “For years, I mean, just league-wide we’ve been at the end of so many jokes, with the arena instability and our ownership. It’s just been a mess.”

Fans felt betrayed by Meruelo’s lack of transparency about the process. As recently as April 4, the team released new renderings of its proposed Phoenix-area stadium plans, leading fans to grow hope that they might have a permanent home in Arizona. Instead, just six days later, reports surfaced that the team being moved to Salt Lake City was the likely option.

That anger could be seen in signs around the arena — one, for example, said that Meruelo was “losing his religion” by moving the team. Others were befuddled that Meruelo’s stadium plan on the Phoenix and Scottsdale border wasn’t as solid as Meruelo and the franchise made it seem. When the national anthem was sung, a substantial number of fans yelled to echo “Still there!” upon the words’ recitation.

But that anger was also targeted toward Salt Lake City, the Coyotes’ new home. “Salt Lake Sucks” might have been the night’s second-most common chant behind only “Let’s Go Coyotes.” I overheard one fan complaining about peeling numbers on his jersey; he jokingly said it must be “Salt Lake City manufacturing” causing the defect.

The players, though, disagreed with the Salt Lake City-oriented negativity.

“Among the group, obviously, there’s no hate towards Salt Lake City,” winger Josh Doan said. “Because they’re welcoming us with open arms. ... The people there had nothing to do with it.”

Will Arizona’s youth hockey suffer? Will Utah’s boom?

Hockey fans in Arizona have repeated one catchphrase over and over again over the last two weeks, as their franchise’s future has been in increasing doubt: “Hockey belongs in the desert.”

It’s meant to be a knowing wink to the haters: The icy sport is obviously an awkward contrast to the blistering heat here, at least on paper. But after over a generation in Arizona, the Coyotes have built a passionate fanbase that has made hockey a cultural presence in the state.

Perhaps the shining jewel of Arizona hockey: its burgeoning youth program. Auston Matthews, the 2016 No. 1 pick by the Toronto Maple Leafs stunned observers this NHL season by scoring 69 goals — the most by any NHL player in 28 seasons. The 26-year-old is a product of the Arizona Coyotes’ presence. “I lived about five minutes from the practice rink the Coyotes used, so there were lots of options, a lot of different programs. I just picked one and got into it,” Matthews told SportsNet.

On Wednesday, the state of youth hockey was a major worry at Mullett Arena. Of the 5,000 in attendance, a significant portion were youth hockey players who wanted to see their favorite players for the last time in person, many brought signs to that effect. “I love hockey — and I’m a youth goalie” read one.

The pipeline might be the lasting legacy of the Coyotes in Arizona. If, as rumored, Meruelo retains an option to return a separate expansion franchise to Arizona, he may be able to continue that legacy in the decades to come.

But the team’s players hope to see a similar positive impact on Utah’s youth hockey scene when the team moves up north. Currently, only one Utahn is in the NHL: 37-year-old Trevor Lewis on the Los Angeles Kings. After the game, every Coyotes player interviewed expressed an interest in helping to grow Utah’s youth hockey scene when the team moves.

A mutual appreciation

It was the fans’ show of appreciation for the Coyotes players throughout the night that was most moving.

First of all, the sacrifices people made to be in Tempe were remarkable. I spoke to fans from Ohio, Florida, Massachusetts, and even New York who bought airfare in the last week to make sure they were at the Coyotes’ last NHL game in Arizona.

The game tickets were probably more expensive than the flights. Checked just before game time, the cheapest tickets — not seats, but standing-room-only tickets — were available for $723. Some were season ticket holders, including those who had been supporting the team since they moved to the area in 1996. Some spoke of getting to watch Wayne Gretzky coach the team in the mid-00s.

As players participated in pre-game warmups, signs thanking the Coyotes lined the arena’s glass. Some hoped to talk to a favorite player, or get a game-used stick or puck. Others made collages of their own memories of the team, moments that they wanted to give back.

Online, fans did the same. One prominent outlet covering the team asked fans to submit their best photos or memories of the Coyotes on Twitter, and hundreds of fans responded. They’re worth looking through.

And throughout the night, the Coyotes answered the bell. Fans were actually allowed into the arena 15 minutes ahead of the typical time on the final night. For the final two minutes of game action, fans gave the team a standing ovation. After the game ended, it took hours for fans to be ushered out — the organization allowed the time to say goodbye.

The Coyotes’ players also showed a remarkable understanding of the moment. Before the game, they signed some memorabilia as they left the ice, but postgame is where they really shined. They’d autograph a stack of hats, throw them out to the crowd, then go back to staffers to get more to throw. Fans lined up to receive players’ game-worn jerseys; sticks were thrown over the boards to be collected. Most fans who stayed left with not just one piece of memorabilia, but multiple.

“The fans were really unbelievable,” All-Star winger Clayton Keller said. “They’ve supported us through ups and downs and all the noise. They always have our backs.”

These players have won over Coyotes fans’ hearts. A perennially losing franchise, the Coyotes finally are looking up with a number of intriguing youth players getting playing time in the season’s final throes. The team has led the NHL in goals since March.

It’s for that reason that some Coyotes fans say they’ll follow the team in Utah. Warren, the podcaster, says he’s among them. “We suffered to watch these guys,” he said. “It’d be crazy not to go support them wherever they are.” Perhaps the largest sign at Mullett Arena on Wednesday offered the same sentiment: “Stay or leave — we will follow.”

As Wednesday’s funeral showed, the Coyotes have lived out their life in Arizona.

Maybe Salt Lake City can be hockey heaven.

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

The peaks of the La Sal Mountains might not appear quite as alabaster-white as last April, but don’t let that mislead you: southeastern Utah is still exiting winter with plenty of snowpack to brag about.

As of April 1, the Moab region’s snow water equivalent clocked in at 141% of the 30-year median, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Utah Snow Survey report.

That’s lower than last year, when snow water equivalent reached a whopping 278%, but is still “outstanding” according to Jordan Clayton, the snow survey’s data collection officer who authors the report.

“And like last winter, the good news has been widespread and not limited to certain areas of the state,” wrote Clayton. “All of Utah’s major basins will peak at above-normal snowpack levels for the second year in a row.”

Indeed, statewide snow water equivalent on April 1 was 132% of the 30-year median. (Last year, the figure was 200%).

The numbers make 2023 and 2024 Utah’s snowiest consecutive years since 2005 and 2006 when measured by percents above normal.

Coming off the historic 2023 winter, a subsequent infusion of snow spells extra optimism for environmental factors such as soil moisture and waterbody refill, Clayton said.

What a double whammy means

The compounding benefit of consecutive wet years, Clayton said, means more replenishment in the region’s biggest reservoirs and waterbodies.

First, there’s often a “carryover” effect in soil moisture. If soils are moister during spring runoff, a higher percentage of snowpack flushes down waterways rather than getting soaked up on the way.

Clayton said Utah overall had higher soil moisture entering the 2024 winter than it did the prior year.

On April 1, soil moisture in southeastern Utah was at 46%, lower than last year’s 53%. Statewide, however, soil moisture is a little higher than last year, at 63%.

Perhaps more importantly, however, Utah’s reservoirs are still relatively full after last year’s swollen runoff. Excluding Lake Powell and Flaming Gorge Reservoir they’re 78% full — Ken’s Lake was 87% full — meaning water managers shouldn’t need to divert much water this spring, allowing it to flow into the largest impoundments.

“You’re just going to be able to move a lot more water downstream … to those larger water bodies that tend to be last in line when it comes to these handouts of water,” Clayton said. “The opportunity to recover just a little more in Lake Powell and Great Salt Lake and these others large ones is [what is] benefitted by having these back-to-back water years.”

Moab’s precipitation is above median — barely

Utah can thank another El Nino year for this year’s deep powder, according to Jeff Colton, the warning coordination meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Under El Nino, a global atmospheric cycle, the Southwest often sees recurring storm systems. Last year, that was bolstered by a series of “atmospheric rivers” that drenched California and the western U.S. Colton said a similar pattern existed this year, but an intruding high-pressure ridge diverted much of the rainfall away from Utah.

“We saw several big storms move into California,” Colton said. “Unfortunately, unlike last year we didn’t get quite on the direct storm path so we didn’t pick up quite as much precipitation.”

Still, he said western Colorado and eastern Utah “still did fairly good this year.”

Utah overall has seen 117% of median precipitation since the start of the water year on Oct. 1 Southeastern Utah was slightly lower at 103% of median.

March, however, drenched Moab and Utah with 188% and 156% of normal precipitation, respectively.

The deluge came just in time to bolster Utah’s snowpack, as early April marks the typical start of spring runoff as warming temperatures flush snow into waterways.

Over March, forecasters also increased the runoff predictions for April through July. In southeastern Utah, forecasts for the Colorado River, Green River, Mill Creek and Monticello’s South Creek range from 99% to 146% of normal.

While forecasters aren’t as concerned about flooding this year as last, Colton said what happens is ultimately highly weather-dependent. Ideally, temperatures won’t get high and stay high; instead, they’ll modulate between warm and cool. That’s what happened last year.

“It kind of behaved,” Colton said. “And yes, we had some flooding, but it could’ve been a lot worse … Even if you have below-normal snowpack, if it warms up really fast then you have big problems.”

He added that eastern Utah’s abnormally warm February — it was between the 10th and 20th warmest ever — decimated the region’s lower-elevation snowpack, which should somewhat temper runoff.

Still, Colton said the public should stay vigilant as melting picks up in the next few weeks.

“There’s still going to be runoff. Rivers are going to come up,” he said. “There’s definitely going to be some concern.”

This story was first published by The Times-Independent.

Danny Ainge’s season-ending news conference was an eventful one this week, with the Utah Jazz CEO answering every question coming from reporters for more than 40 minutes.

The headline news was his approach to the NBA’s trade market. Ainge says the Jazz are “ready to go big game hunting.”

But he also touched on a number of other topics, including his evaluation of last season, the growth of the team’s rookies, what he thinks of this draft, and more.

On this year’s team

To be sure, the Jazz were a disappointment this season, finishing with a 31-51 record. But there were bright spots, like a 15-4 stretch in December and January.

How did Ainge evaluate the stretch?

“It’s a positive experience. I thought that maybe the best win in two years might have been the Oklahoma City win here at home,” the CEO said. “In that stretch, we played a lot of games that the best player on the other team didn’t show, or the second best player on the team wasn’t there, or they were resting. I mean, that’s frustrating.”

But overall, Ainge simply didn’t think the team was good enough to compete in the Western Conference. Not before the trade deadline, and certainly not after it.

“We’re the 23rd-ranked team. Even though we had a better record than Houston, and we were right in the mix with the Lakers and Golden State at that time, I don’t think we’re as good as them — as any one of those three teams,” Ainge said.

In particular, the team’s 30th-ranked defense was “horrible,” Ainge said.

“I think that we all know that defensively we’re not good enough. No question about it. We need to get better personnel and more of an emphasis (on it),” Ainge said.

Does that need to improve in terms of scheme or personnel?

“We love our coach and the hard thing is that there’s so many things that we need to get better at. And you can’t just throw every bit of it on there, you’ve got to go in phases,” he continued. “So there are priorities during the season — ball movement, spacing, running was more of a priority than the defense. It’s hard to emphasize all of it. But yes, personnel wasn’t good enough. That’s on me.”

The rookies

Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks, and Brice Sensabaugh all had big roles at the end of the Jazz’s season, but struggled to turn production into wins. George was the best of the bunch, a likely second-team All-Rookie selection, but even his efficiency wasn’t up to par.

But Ainge liked that George faced adversity this season.

“He had some ups and downs, and I kind of liked that he had those ups and downs,” Ainge said. “I kind of liked the fact that the scouting report — the most important person to stop on our entire team many nights the second half of the year was him. So the best defender was guarding him, the team defensive schemes were to stop him, and so he had to face some of that.”

Ainge said he wasn’t sure if George was a point guard or off-ball guard moving forward.

“He’s way better (at point guard) now than he was to start the season. I’m still not sure he’s a franchise point guard. I think he can play point guard. But I think that he can play off the ball, too, and he’s probably more comfortable with that at this moment in time,” Ainge said. “But this experience of learning the point guard position was a big step for him and just provides a lot of versatility for our team going forward.”

Meanwhile, Hendricks “pretty much played the same role that he’ll play,” moving forward in the NBA — that of an off-ball power forward who hopes to be a difference-maker defensively.

“He’s just a little further behind than Keyonte. His shooting was getting better and better. He’s working a lot on his shooting. His arc of his shots has been a little bit flat. But he shot a pretty good percentage,” Ainge said. “That’s a big step for him, but he’s got to get a lot better defensively.”

For Sensabaugh, Ainge simply said, “Bryce has a good feel for the game. ... I think he’s a better shooter than his numbers would indicate this year, but he can pass, can shoot, he can score.”

Ainge said that he hopes all three players will play in summer league this year, along with Walker Kessler, Darius Bazley, Jason Preston, and Kenneth Lofton Jr.

The NBA draft

The NBA draft is coming up on June 26 and 27 this year — remember, the NBA has decided to televise the first and second rounds on separate days for the first time. With the NBA Combine less than a month away, what does Ainge think about this draft?

“It’s a unique draft. I think it’s harder to find franchise-altering players in this draft,” he said. “But I do believe that we’ll be able to find some good players in this draft.”

When asked about what he thinks about the talent of the draft at the No. 8 slot — where the Jazz currently stand before the lottery balls fall — Ainge said that “there are a few to a handful of players that I’ve really liked, but I have no idea if they’ll be there.”

Ainge also offered his opinion on drafting one-and-done rookies when compared to four-year college vets.

“Everybody’s unique and different,” Ainge said. “I’d say statistically, that the younger guys pan out better in the draft and there’s a reason why they’re one and done. Not always. But that doesn’t mean that we’re neglecting the 23-24 year old kids in the draft either. They all have a place.”

Jazz color commentator Ron Boone then asked what the team thinks of 7-foot-4 Purdue center Zach Edey, the senior center who is a two-time reigning collegiate player of the year.

“We have a lot of discussions internally about Edey, and there’s both sides of the fence. Personally, I’m a fan. Do I think he’s a franchise center we can build our whole franchise around? I don’t see that yet. But I do see him as an asset to the team,” Ainge said. “I’m a fan. There’s some people on our staff that aren’t, but I think he’s growing more fans upstairs.”

He then went on to compare Edey to Mark Eaton, the Jazz’s center who holds the NBA’s single-season record in blocks, before noting that Edey had a much stronger collegiate career than Eaton.

Avery Bradley’s hire

Former Celtic Avery Bradley was hired as the Jazz’s vice president of player development this week, a move that will see him work with both the Jazz’s front office and their coaching staff in pushing the Jazz’s young players forward.

“Avery is one of my favorites ever, but Avery was not my hire. However, I introduced Avery to Will (Hardy) and to Justin (Zanik) and told Avery: ‘You’ve got to prove to them that they need you,’” Ainge said.

Apparently, Bradley proved his worth.

“He’s a real pro. I think he has a calm demeanor, he can relate to people very well,” Ainge said. “I’m not sure he knows for sure if he wants to be in the world of coaching or in the world of a front office, but he’ll do a little bit of both.”

Ainge said he hopes that Bradley’s “intensity on the defensive end” can help the Jazz’s guards next year.

In late March, after two years of withering attacks on Ukraine, Russia knocked out half of Ukraine’s power supply. Up to that point, Russia’s missiles and kamikaze drones had mostly targeted the Ukrainian substations that push electricity from power plants to consumers. But this time they hit the plants themselves, severely damaging and destroying hydroelectric and fossil fuel stations — all of which are difficult to repair or replace.

When power stops, life grinds to a halt. Lights go out. Sewage treatment stops. Clean water stops. Electric cars, buses and trolleys stop. Elevators stop, trapping older and disabled people. For many, home heating, refrigeration, cooking and clothes washing stops, along with medical devices such as oxygen generators.

Even though the world’s dependence on electricity for all of this and more is growing, power grids are still legitimate military targets, according to both international law and our own military rule book. But there are small, promising signs that could be changing. Early last month, before Russia’s most damaging assaults, the International Criminal Court in The Hague concluded that the country’s pummeling of Ukraine’s power system had already crossed the line and issued arrest warrants for a pair of senior Russian commanders, Adm. Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov and Lt. Gen. Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash, whose units are accused of launching the missiles. (Russia has denied committing war crimes.)

It was the world’s first prosecution of combatants for attacks on a power grid and an important first step toward recognizing electricity’s growing centrality to modern life. But the global community must now draw bright lines for combatants in future conflicts — and strengthen the hand of future prosecutors — by codifying specific protections for power grids. The international community already attempts to do that for select infrastructure, including hospitals, dams and nuclear power plants, via the Geneva Conventions. It’s time to add power grids to that privileged roster.

For decades, armies have routinely attacked power grids during war. Germany targeted Britain’s grid from zeppelins in World War I, and NATO jets targeted power plants in Serbia in 1999. The civilian fallout from these attacks can be devastating: When the United States knocked out Baghdad’s electricity in 1991 in the Persian Gulf war, water and sewage treatment were disrupted, sparking typhoid and cholera epidemics.

International law is supposed to curb these kinds of attacks; the laws set out in the Geneva Conventions consider power grids “civilian objects,” to be protected in war. But in practice, thanks to myriad exceptions, militaries can justify nearly any attack where anticipated gains outweigh the projected civilian suffering.

Governments often point to electricity’s role in everything from political and military communications to arms manufacturing. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, the massive strikes last month were necessary because they disrupted enterprises making and repairing “weapons, equipment and ammunition.” But it would seem that the real goal was to terrorize and break the Ukrainian people. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said as much while explaining grid attacks in November 2022 that left 10 million people without power: “The unwillingness of the Ukrainian side to settle the problem, to start negotiations, its refusal to seek common ground, this is their consequence.”

In its Department of Defense Law of War Manual updated last year, the United States says that it views power plants as important enough to a state’s military functions “to qualify as military objectives during armed conflicts.” The Pentagon rule book dismisses civilian injuries and deaths caused by blackouts as too “remote” and “myriad” for field commanders to accurately calculate and encourages them to consider only the civilians affected “very soon after the attack,” such as those at a hospital directly connected to a power plant. But even in that case, the manual hews to the general rule for civilian infrastructure, advising American forces to stand down only where the harm of powering down life support will be “excessive” relative to the gains.

Unsurprisingly, even U.S. military experts on the law of armed conflict have taken divergent stands on Russia’s grid attacks in Ukraine, attacks it continued last week. “At least some” violated international law, wrote one. Another found it hard to “definitively” identify a criminal act.

The three-judge International Criminal Court panel said it had “reasonable grounds to believe” that the officers they seek to apprehend committed crimes against humanity. That charge applies to unlawful acts that are widespread or systematic, and Russia’s grid attacks keep intensifying.

Our military began scaling down its attacks on electrical grids over 20 years ago. Gregory Noone — a captain and former judge advocate in the U.S. Navy who has trained government officials in Rwanda, Afghanistan and Russia in the laws of war — told me he saw a shift in U.S. behavior between the Persian Gulf war and the Iraq war. “We, the U.S. military, took great pride in the fact that we turned all the lights off in Baghdad in the first gulf war. We wiped out their electric grid,” Dr. Noone said. But by the time of the Iraq war, “we realized that wasn’t such a good idea.”

Other countries would be wise to follow our lead and reject wholesale attacks on the grid. It would save lives and prevent needless destruction; it would also help build an unwritten (yet enforceable) body of international law constraining power grid attacks.

But the international community can and should go further. A strong grid protection protocol that explicitly limits power system destruction could be a game changer. It would ratchet up the threat of prosecution, potentially deterring bad actors who might otherwise be tempted to target power generators. The International Criminal Court said a desire to stop further attacks prompted it to unseal the warrants for General Kobylash and Admiral Sokolov. The hope is that field officers directing missiles and drones may think twice before they order these kinds of attacks in the future.

While Mr. Putin may never face consequences for plunging Ukraine into darkness, General Kobylash and Admiral Sokolov may never leave Russia, for fear of being picked up outside its borders to face trial. If they do, a reckoning could yet lie ahead for those who would thrust civilians into darkness. Prosecutors who pursue war criminals can keep hunting for decades.

Peter Fairley is a journalist who has covered power technology and policy for over 20 years. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Although Donald Trump has officially stated he believes abortion laws should be up to the states, he has previously supported a national abortion ban. Is this similar to when all three of his Supreme Court nominees testified in their confirmation hearings that Roe v. Wade was precedent, yet went on to vote to overturn it at their first opportunity?

Or, perhaps it is like the time Trump claimed his famous, “grab ’em by the p----” statement was merely “locker room talk,” and then a jury of his peers found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. A federal judge clarified that the abuse was tantamount to rape. I guess it was more than mere locker room talk.

In his recent statement, Trump claims he wants to defer to “the will of the people.” However, the majority of Americans support legal abortion and disapprove of the overturning of Roe.

There is no doubt that Trump would try to implement a national ban once in office. So please pay attention to his actions rather than his words. The life, liberty, and freedoms of women in Utah and across the country depend on it.

Charlotte Maloney, Millcreek

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My father was a long-haul truck driver. He piloted one of those eighteen-wheelers that had a horn that could raise the dead. As a kid I longed to join him on his journeys and discover something of the world beyond Huntsville, Ala., where we lived.

Despite his numerous promises, he never took me along. That failure, and the addictions of his that defined much of my childhood, gave me an education of a different sort. I learned that the world could be cruel and disappointing.

Now that I am a father, I struggle with how much of that hard world to reveal to my sons and daughters. I recognize the privilege in even considering this. Parents of children in Gaza and Ukraine do not have the luxury of deciding whether to tell their young ones of evils done and all the good left undone. Bombs descending from above indifferent to the innocence of youth have become their instructors.

I believe that we all have a moral duty not to turn away from such suffering. During dinner my family and I have talked and prayed about war, poverty, racism and injustice. My hope is that if we instill a sense of empathy in our children, they might create a better world than the one we have made.

It is not just the global upheaval that gives me pause. It is my own mistakes. Not one of us escapes those high-pressure early years of parenthood unscathed. There are always words that we wish that we could unsay, decisions made that we would reconsider if time ran backward. What unfulfilled promise will haunt my children? What will they have to forgive?

Childhood memories rush upon us awakened by a smell or a song or certain times of year. The scent of fried chicken takes me back to my grandmother’s house. I can almost hear the crunch it made when I took a bite. Every time I pass an eighteen-wheeler on the Interstate, I remember my father. Fall reminds me of the anxiety I felt when I knew that I had to go back to school without any new outfits or shoes, hoping I wouldn’t be mocked. I am 44 years old, and I still remember the hard thumps in my chest.

Parents cannot shield their children from the world’s cruelty or our failures, but we can try to counter those things. We can provide moments that may become positive recollections to sit alongside harsher ones.

I have never understood people who complain about poor families buying a nice TV or shoes or taking their children out to eat. Is it all to be drudgery? Are struggling families not allowed to have dessert? I remember my mother buying us candy at the gas station, having decided that since we were already broke, we might as well take the happiness when we could get it.

Since December, my family and I have been abroad while I am on a research sabbatical in England. My 9-year-old son, Peter, a huge soccer fan, dreamed of seeing a Premier League match. He was persistent in the way only elementary school children can be. He arrived in Britain a Manchester City fan, but I couldn’t get tickets. When I managed to secure two Tottenham Hotspur seats, he immediately switched allegiances.

Watching Peter’s eyes widen as he approached the stadium, joy emanating from his tiny frame, was like that first ray of light after a downpour.

Son Heung-min, who is also a standout on the South Korea national team, is the Spurs’ star and captain. Our seats seemed to be in the part of the stadium filled with Koreans. The red, blue, white and black South Korean flag and the national pride it represented rippled in the wind beside Hotspur flags. The team itself was gloriously international with players from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America all working together on the beautiful game. For a moment, sport had united us and my son got to see the world as friendly and good.

Between the chants and songs, the crowd was kind to the cute, curly-haired American kid, making us feel as welcome as if we had been fans all our lives. After falling behind 1-0, the Spurs came rushing back to score three goals in the final 15 minutes to seal the victory. One fan said to Peter, “Now you have to come back every week to make sure we keep winning.” If he could, he would. If I had the power to make every day like that one, no price would be too high.

It is hard to predict the impact of these experiences. Parents can only make deposits of joy. We cannot control when our children will make the withdrawals. Did my mother know that I would always remember that one time she took us all to the (now defunct) Opryland U.S.A. theme park in Nashville? I am not sure what the Hotspur game will mean to my youngest son two decades from now. But that day he was happy, and knowing that will have to be enough.

Parenting is always an exercise in hope, a gift given to a future we cannot see to the end. At some point, if God is merciful, our children will continue forward without us, left with the memory of love shared and received.

We are entrusted with the awesome responsibility of introducing our children to the world and the world to our children. We cannot and should not shield them from all difficulty. But it’s also necessary, periodically, to be a bit irresponsible, to spend a little too much on a soccer game so they remember that alongside the darkness, sometimes there is light. Come on you Spurs.

Esau McCaulley is a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times and the author of “How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South” and the children’s book “Andy Johnson and the March for Justice.” He is an associate professor of New Testament and public theology at Wheaton College. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Students filming others in the restroom. School fights being posted on Instagram.

These are just a couple examples Granite School District officials shared at a school board meeting last month, discussing whether or not the district should implement a universal policy banning cellphone use during school hours.

The restroom videos are sometimes filmed from above stalls. Others are filmed from below stalls and posted to “shoe accounts,” said Ben Horsley, the district’s chief of staff — social media pages that feature videos of classmates using the restroom, with their shoes visible and captioned with campus restroom locations and time stamps, meant to “intimidate and harass.”

“It’s very tragic actually, to see how much mental health challenges are cultivated as a result of these accounts and screen use,” Horsley said at the meeting last month. “But at the end of the day, this is having a larger, outsized impact on instruction.”

The roughly two-hour conversation came as state lawmakers since at least 2023 have increasingly debated student cellphone use and social media restrictions. It also comes after Gov. Spencer Cox in January penned a letter urging all Utah school districts and public charters to restrict student cellphone use during class.

A new Utah law also requires local school boards to provide students with nonelectric notifications about things like extracurricular activities, schedule changes and more, which could “significantly” diminish cellphone use, Horsley said.

“Unfortunately, our kids are not being monitored,” Horsley said during the March 19 meeting. “And it shouldn’t fall to a business, the school operations, the principals, the teachers to have to monitor that, on top of trying to provide quality instruction.”

Granite’s current cellphone policy

Granite students are not supposed to use cellphones in ways that harm other students. But no district-wide policy about whether or not students can access their phones during school currently exists.

Instead, cellphone access is decided at the school level, according to Doug Larson, the district’s general counsel.

At least two schools did decide about five years ago to ban cellphone use on campus: Evergreen Jr. High School and Olympus Jr. High School.

There, if a teacher catches a student with their phone out, the device is placed in an envelope and taken to the front office, where it can be picked up at the end of the day.

Students who need to contact their parents must to go to their school’s counseling center or an administrator to do so, said Eisenhower Jr. High principal Wes Cutler, who was the principal of Evergreen at the time the policies were implemented at each school. He later introduced a cellphone ban at Eisenhower.

Evergreen principal Ryan Shaw said the school made over 700 cellphone confiscations in the first year of its policy. As of the March school board meeting, a little more than 200 cellphone confiscations had been logged.

“It works very well at Evergreen,” Shaw said. “It isn’t a big deal anymore, with having to fight that battle with students and taking them away … because they know they can’t have them out at any time.”

Board leaders, administrators split

Cutler said he would like to see the district implement a universal cellphone policy, at least for grades K-8.

“As mobile as our student body is,” he said, having different policies per school can make things difficult.

“It is hard when students jump junior high to junior high, and [each] has new policies in every place,” Cutler said. “It would take that pressure off of the schools to try to deal with that.”

Board member Julie Jackson said in her precinct, five junior high schools have a no-cellphone policy. The students seem to be OK with it, and the parents seem to support it, she said.

But she noted that such support may be easier to cultivate when policies are created at the individual school level.

“Since this comes from the [School] Community Council, you really get community support,” she said.

Board member Karyn Winder said the teachers she’s spoken with feel a district-wide policy would be empowering, allowing them “and frankly, IT administrators, to basically say, ‘Look guys, it’s not our policy, this is coming from the district,’” she said.

School board leaders plan to discuss implementing such a policy again next week, gauging feedback collected since the March meeting.

Trey Thornton

School: Maple Mountain

Grade: Junior

Sport: Volleyball

Boys volleyball is a relatively new sport for Utah’s high schools.

That means most athletes haven’t been seasoning their skills for long.

But that’s not the case for Maple Mountain’s Trey Thornton. The junior has already collected 189 kills in 12 matches for the Eagles, who are 10-2 so far.

Thornton says he’s been playing for about six years. But it wasn’t with school-affiliated teams or with boys club volleyball squads.

So what gives?

“I’m kind of an anomaly. I grew up in Alabama and I moved here this year. In Alabama, there wasn’t any boys volleyball; there wasn’t even club,” said Thornton, who lived in the Birmingham suburb of Hoover. “I practiced with a club called Alabama Performance and it’s all girls. I was the only guy in the gym. I practiced with them three days a week, maybe four.”

Thornton scores a great deal of his points from the right-side hitting position, but the lefty also gets in his licks from strong-side attacks. At 6-foot-6, Thornton’s size is just one factor in his success.

The rest of the credit, he says, goes to the girls who taught him how to play.

“Playing with girls is definitely different than playing with guys, but learning the fundamentals from girls has really helped me in my volleyball game,” he said.

Provo • The Phoenix Suns’ initial reaction to Kevin Young becoming the head coach of the BYU men’s basketball team had nothing to do with hoops.

Instead, it was about his appearance. The beard their coach had grown for the last 13 years was suddenly gone. It is against the Honor Code at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints institution. It had to go.

“I walked into practice this morning — we had practice in Phoenix as we are getting ready for the playoffs — and all the guys were kind of looking at me,” Young said. “We had a good laugh about it. Funny enough, my wife wanted me to shave for the last 13 years. So ... she is happy about that.”

There will be many learning curves for the NBA assistant as he takes over BYU’s program. But perhaps there is nothing more sudden, nor as jarring, as the missing beard.

Young will officially start on the job whenever the Suns’ playoff run ends. Between now and then, he will start recruiting and hiring a staff.

Here are four notes on how Young sees the new job.

1. Young felt comfortable with BYU’s NIL funding

Young was in the mix for several NBA head coaching jobs over the last few years. Just last week, he was interviewing for the Brooklyn Nets position. The Charlotte Hornets were also interested.

The interest put him in a strong negotiating position with BYU. He wasn’t desperate to take any head coaching gig. He wanted a place he could win.

So when BYU called, one of his first — and main — questions was about BYU’s name, image and likeness infrastructure. It is the No. 1 factor in whether BYU can be competitive long-term in the Big 12.

He called his old friend, Saint Joe’s head coach Billy Lange, to see which questions he should ask BYU’s athletic director to see if the NIL support was sustainable.

“[Lange] was unbelievable in terms of peppering me with questions to ask all these guys to make sure I knew what I was getting into,” Young told The Salt Lake Tribune. “It gave me a ton of confidence with the answers they were giving me. This place wants to win and they have the backing to do it.”

2. Can the Cougars win a national title?

Speaking of that support, Young’s contract was nearly unprecedented for the school. With Jazz owner Ryan Smith footing part of the bill, the Cougars offered Young seven years and almost $30 million, according to CBS Sports.

It was a sign that BYU was finally willing to pay the money to compete at the highest level. Young saw that and set his aspirations equally high.

“The ultimate goal is to win a national championship,” Young said. “When you are in the Big 12, and have all the resources this place offers, that is the ultimate goal.”

BYU’s president, Shane Reese, introduced Young by saying he wanted to take BYU to the next level. The commitment is starting to mirror that.

3. Young needs college experience on staff

Young’s first task will be building out a coaching staff. He is prioritizing coaches who have navigated NIL and the transfer portal.

“I’m trying to find guys who have had success with that portion of it,” he said. “I’m making some headway with some guys there. It is such an integral part of success in today’s landscape. So definitely tapping into that, [coaches] who have done it at other programs.”

He deferred when asked if he saw any college programs he wanted to emulate in terms of roster management. But he did acknowledge the college game is new for him. And he will need college expertise around him.

“To be able to insulate myself with people who are elite at navigating the college landscape from a recruiting, NIL, academic standpoint. I’m well aware of the figurehead role that I’m in,” he said.

4. NBA is what BYU will be about on the recruiting trail

One change Young will make to BYU’s recruiting pitch is it will revolve around the NBA.

Young made it clear: He will sell recruits on trying to get to the NBA and using his experience in the pros.

He will employ some All-Stars, like Suns guard Devin Booker, in the recruiting pitch if he has to. He’s coached Booker for the last four years. Booker joked that BYU will now be known as “KYU.”

“That was a nice little play on words,” Young said.

But on a serious note, that will be a unique approach in Provo. No coach has gone all-in on the NBA in the past.

“I think it is a huge advantage. If guys have aspirations to play in the NBA, that is what this place is going to be about,” Young said. “I don’t know if you are going to find a better place in the country that is going to foster that. So we are going to lean into that. I wouldn’t be able to lean into those if I didn’t have good relationships with the guys I coached. Book’s been incredible. I love him.”

In the past week, I’ve been asked to do numerous interviews on local and national radio stations/networks and websites from Toronto, Ontario, to Orlando, Fla., from Vancouver, B.C., to New York, N.Y. And what do you suppose the most frequently asked questions have been in the ones I’ve done?

Mostly, they’ve asked about … you.

Will an NHL team thrive in Salt Lake City? What kind of hockey market is the Salt Lake area? What are you, the fans, like there? Can Salt Lake, can you, support multiple top professional teams?

The only question I struggled to answer was … Which team name do you prefer for the new hockey team? I stumbled around on that one, even though I’d written a column suggesting 50 candidate names. I like a lot of them, but maybe my favorites are the Utah Raptors — that is an actual dinosaur, right? — and the Salt Lake Black Diamonds and the Salt Lake Scorpions. Someone subsequently suggested the Screaming Eagles, as a nod to Utah Beach and the 101st Airborne’s part in the Normandy invasion. Golden Eagles, the preferred name by some of you, was too much like the Golden Knights in Vegas. The Skateful Dead, I figured, was a no go.

Ryan Smith doesn’t have an answer either. The team will simply have “Utah” on its jerseys next season while the new owners figure it out.

My answer on what the fans around here are like was and is … enthusiastic. The care factor is high here, as is your loyalty factor, as has been demonstrated by the support given to the Jazz for the better part of five decades, in spite of the fact that an NBA title has never been won, although most seasons have been winning ones. Even this past year, when the Jazz sent mixed signals to all y’all, one moment looking as though they wanted to win and the next giving every appearance that tanking was the preferred path, the Delta Center was full. We’ll see where that support hovers if the Jazz continue to lose.

And that’s the related answer to the other questions. When the team formerly known as the Coyotes gets here, will you support it? Is this a hockey town?

Well. It will be if said team establishes itself as an outfit that is run well, from top to bottom, coached well, and if the players work their tails for wins and make a decent effort to connect with the community. Winning would push the whole endeavor over the top, establishing a rapport with the fans in Utah for seasons to come.

Will Ryan Smith own and operate the Salt Lake (fill-in-the-blanks) in a manner that connects with you, the people, some of whom might not yet even know you/they are hockey fans? Beats me. His company — Qualtrics — made its name and its mark in conjuring ways to improve customer service, in improving the customer experience, so you could guess he’ll get that right. But the Jazz haven’t exactly flourished, not competitively, since he took over there, so that question is left unanswered. Will he find the right managers, the right coaches, the right players among the personnel already with the Coyotes and will he oversee the collection of greater talent moving forward? Um … He’ll have to.

I once took a survey of so-called experts in various professional sports regarding who on established clubs had the greatest influence on success — owners, general managers or coaches — and while each was said to play an important role in that pursuit, owners was the most common response. An owner who sets a positive tone, who helps create a winning culture, who is willing to hire the best people to fill the other roles, and pay for ample athlete talent, and who isn’t a jackass toward his or her team’s fans. That will be Smith’s task to complete, to satisfy you.

There are enough people, enough corporate sponsorship along the Wasatch Front and in other areas around Utah, with a whole lot more moving here, for multiple pro teams to draw fans in. That goes for the Jazz, for RSL, for the Royals, for the new NHL team and eventually for a Major League Baseball team. The underpinnings are here for that success.

As I mentioned in various interviews, Salt Lake City and the communities around it, are no longer a cluster of dusty, rustic villages, outposts out yonder in the West somewhere, nor can they be defined as a walled-off fortification of single-minded religious zealots seeking to isolate from the rest of the world.

That’s not you, most of you.

Yes, the politics can get more than a little goofy and down-right stupid at times, but the most important part of the communities here, you the people, have grown increasingly diverse, folks who want what most folks want — a safe, clean, peaceful, thriving environment whose teams kick the living hell out of teams from other cities, proving that we, whether we have any actual connection to the local teams other than an emotional one, are superior to those from other cities and states.

All good.

Beyond that, hockey is a fantastic sport, the version played at the NHL level, filled with great athletes with remarkable skill and dogged physicality. I grew up a Philadelphia Flyers fan, just as that team — famously known as the “Broad Street Bullies” — emerged as a real force in the NHL. They went on to win Stanley Cups, and as they did, many young people around Philly got hooked on hockey, not just watching Bobby Clarke and Bernie Parent, et al., do their thing, but also a lot of youngsters started playing hockey — on the ice, on the gym floor, on the street. As one of the youngest populations in the country, it’s a good guess that something similar would happen to some of you here in Utah. If you’re an investor looking for a new opportunity, it might be wise to utilize a few resources to invest in and build ice rinks because there will be an increased demand for those surfaces in the years ahead.

There already are hardcore hockey fans here and there will be more of you. Not everyone agrees with that assessment, but that’s my guess. Especially if Ryan Smith does what great owners do — create a team inside a team environment that earns your attention, loyalty, respect. And your entertainment dollars.

“Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you’re here?” That’s what Maximus Decimus Meridius so famously said in a certain movie. That reminds me of one other possible name I really like: Gladiators. Your Salt Lake or your Utah Gladiators.

What do you think?

For now, a South Salt Lake cafe is the only place in Utah making Japanese-style fluffy pancakes, and the treat has gotten so popular that the shop had to establish a reservation system to keep from getting overloaded.

Kumo Cafe, at 3432 S. State St., just south of Chinatown, is the “little sister” of Doki Doki, a Japanese dessert shop on 400 South in downtown Salt Lake City.

Irie Cao, who’s originally from Vietnam and whose husband is half-Japanese, is the owner of both businesses. She said she was inspired to open a Japanese bakery when she was living in Los Angeles in 2007. On her way to school was a Japanese bakery, and she said she would stop there to get a treat to enjoy on her journey.

Already in love with baking, she said, she became “obsessed” with the Japanese pastries, and how light and airy they were.

Cao opened Doki Doki (whose name refers to the sound of heartbeats in Japanese) in 2018, and originally had fluffy pancakes on the menu. But the treat — which is time-consuming to make and must be cooked to order — became so popular that she had to take them off the menu at the end of 2022.

In July 2023, Cao created a business, Kumo Cafe, centered around the fluffy pancakes. “Kumo” means “cloud” in Japanese.

Recently, the pancakes, with their signature wobble and decadent sauces, have been getting a lot of attention on social media, especially Instagram. The shop got so many customers and orders for pancakes on a recent Saturday in March that Kumo Cafe was “overwhelmed by love, strained by success,” wrote Cao in an Instagram post.

“It was our busiest day ever, and seeing so many customers interested in our fluffy pancakes filled us with joy,” wrote Cao, who went on to explain that pre-preparation of the pancakes is impossible, and each subsequent batch of pancakes after the first one takes an average of 13 minutes to cook.

That Saturday, from opening at 11 a.m. to about 12:30 p.m., the shop saw about 150 people, and some 120 orders for fluffy pancakes came in back to back, Cao wrote. Some people experienced a wait time for pancakes of two to three hours, and a few grew “hostile” with Cao and her staff, she said.

“We were simply overwhelmed by the high volume,” Cao wrote.

Since then, Kumo Cafe has implemented a reservation system that allows customers to reserve their spot in line and show up only when their pancakes are ready. Cao said the experience of ordering pancakes is “so much better now,” and people have been “so much nicer, so much more understanding.”

How to make (and eat) fluffy pancakes

When describing the fluffy pancakes, which each stand about an inch high, Cao uses the word “temperamental.” Meringue, made with whipped egg whites, is the ingredient that makes the pancakes so fluffy, and Cao and her team have to whip the meringue depending on the day’s weather. If it’s hot outside, they have to do a softer meringue, so that the extra moisture will support the pancakes as they rise. If it’s raining outside, they have to do a much stiffer meringue, so the pancakes don’t collapse. The cooking time also varies day to day.

Cao developed her pancake recipe from a Japanese formula, and then tweaked and adapted it for Utah’s climate and elevation, she said.

The meringue is folded into an egg yolk-based pancake batter (Cao said they go through “hundreds” of eggs every day), then the batter is placed on a pancake griddle in large scoops. A bit of water is added to the surface of the griddle, and then a cover is put over the top. The batter cooks all the way through with the help of heat and steam.

Once the pancakes are ready, a staffer stacks them three high on a plate with fresh fruit and dabs of whipped cream, and adds a scoop of ice cream from Cloud Ninth Creamery on the side. The pancakes are then enveloped in the customer’s choice of sauces; all of Kumo Cafe’s whipped cream, sauces and foams are made in-house.

After that, the pancakes arrive at the customer, who would be remiss to start eating without admiring the way the pancakes wiggle when the plate is gently shaken (and, of course, snapping a photo or two). Then, it’s time to dig in.

The pancakes are called fluffy pancakes for a reason, as they are as light and fluffy as marshmallows. Take time to savor the way these eggy souffles soak up the sauce and melted ice cream before gobbling them all down.

Recently, Kumo Cafe developed a gluten-free version of their fluffy pancakes. According to her own research, Cao said Kumo Cafe might be the only shop in the world making gluten-free fluffy pancakes.

And there’s good news for people craving fluffy pancakes in Utah County: In two or three weeks, Cao will be opening a large new Doki Doki location in Orem that will serve the special treat. Follow @dokidessert on Instagram for updates.

Kumo Cafe also sells slices of the crepe cakes that made Doki Doki famous, as well as burnt Basque cheesecake, adorable bunny-shaped panna cotta, teddy mochi cupcakes, hot and iced coffee, fruit sodas and ice cream. Visit KumoCafe.shop and DokiDessert.com to view the full menus.

The Mormon Land newsletter is The Salt Lake Tribune’s weekly highlight reel of news in and about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Join us on Patreon and receive the full newsletter, podcast transcripts and access to all of our religion content — for as little as $3 a month.

Africa rules

Good news keeps flowing out of Africa.

Once again, the continent led the way in church expansion, providing 11 of the top 13 nations with the fastest growth rates last year, topped by Mozambique (34.1%), Rwanda (33.2%), Tanzania (32.3%), Burundi (24.3%) and Angola (23.9%).

“The church continues to experience rapid, unprecedented growth in East Africa,” independent researcher Matt Martinich writes at ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com. “... In Mozambique [where a temple was announced in 2021], there was a net increase of 6,290 just in 2023 — a remarkable number, considering there were only 18,443 Latter-day Saints at the beginning of the year.”

In Central Africa, meanwhile, swift growth persisted. Membership in the Democratic Republic of Congo (with one existing temple and three more planned) jumped into six figures, at 115,027, according to the church’s latest nation-by-nation statistics.

Growth rates in West Africa, the center of robust increases a decade ago, however, have slowed.

“There were no countries in West Africa (with published membership statistics) that experienced an annual membership growth rate of 10% or more during 2023,” Martinich notes. “... Mission leaders in West Africa have generally reported an emphasis on improving the quality of prebaptismal teaching.….Missions such as the Liberia Monrovia Mission, have reported a renewed emphasis on quality over quantity for convert baptism goals, and this has resulted in a substantial decrease in the numbers of converts baptized.”

Africa’s overall Latter-day Saint membership was nearly 850,000 at year’s end.

U.S. rebounds

The United States, home to more than 6.8 million Latter-day Saints, saw a surprising spike in church growth, recording a net increase of 64,765 members, an eight-year high.

That number on the U.S. rolls also represents an annual growth rate of 0.95%, the highest it has been since 2015, and accounted for nearly 30% of the church’s global growth.

“It is unclear what has driven a [net] increase of more than 20,000 for 2023 compared to the annual average for the several previous years,” Martinich states. “Some possibilities include fewer deaths, larger numbers of convert baptisms, larger numbers of new children of record, higher rates of children of record being baptized at age 8, and fewer incidents of name removal or … loss of membership.”

The latest ‘Mormon Land’ podcast: Together forever?

What happens inside Latter-day Saint families when a loved one leaves the faith.

Listen to this special “Mormon Land” live recording from Utah Valley University.

In your dreams

It turns out that Latter-day Saint missions are the stuff dreams are made of — even into middle age.

In a Times and Seasons blog post, Stephen Cranney writes about former missionaries nodding off at night and being transported back to Mexico or Maine or Mozambique or wherever they served as a suit-wearing, scripture-packing 20-something.

This phenomenon is “so widespread I suspect the return-to-the-mission dream means something psychologically,” Cranney states, “but I don’t know what.”

So, sweet dreams Elder and Sister So-and-So.

Losing faith in Trump

In the swing state of Arizona, pockets of Latter-day Saint women, some of them lifelong Republicans, are rejecting Donald Trump, the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, NPR reports, in favor of reelecting Democratic President Joe Biden.

From The Tribune

• The governing First Presidency adjusts the temple recommend questions and an accompanying statement to emphasize that faithful members are to wear their garments “day and night” throughout their lives. The stricter language comes as little surprise to careful Tribune readers. We reported last month that such a move would be coming.

• Get ready for your next temple recommend interview by reviewing the full list of questions, including the new garment instructions.

• A Japanese Latter-day Saint economist says one simple — or not so simple — change would help attract and retain converts in his country: allowing members there to drink green tea.

• Challenging church orthodoxy, even at BYU, the faith’s flagship school, can help students build their faith, maintains Tribune guest columnist Natalie Brown.

• BYU men’s basketball coach trades in his Cougar blue for Wildcat blue in Kentucky’s hoops heaven. Meanwhile, an NBA assistant is leaving the Valley of the Sun(s) for the top coaching job in Happy Valley.

• Featuring a century-old Tiffany stained-glass window salvaged from a New York Presbyterian church, Utah’s twin-spired, three-story, 94,000-square-foot Layton Temple opens to public tours ahead of a June 16 dedication by apostle David Bednar.

This story is and excerpt from The Salt Lake Tribune Inno Lab Notes newsletter, which explores housing, transportation and energy solutions.

Could apartments for sale be the new starter home, the new ticket to the American Dream and retirement? Although the first condominium in America was built here, the more affordable form of homeownership is now rare in Utah.

“Condominiums can be one of the most affordable ways to get into homeownership,” Austin Taylor, member of the Congress for New Urbanism, told a crowded auditorium at the Salt Lake Public Library on Friday afternoon.

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“Condominiums are a critical piece of what we need to do in our state,” said Steve Waldrip, the governor’s senior advisor for housing strategy and innovation.

The governor is pushing for the construction of tens of thousands of new starter homes. Homeownership and the opportunity to buy and sell property is important for Utahns who someday want to retire, Waldrip said.

But Utah is now one of the most expensive markets in the country and the majority of renters in the state are now priced out of homeownership, explained Dejan Eskic, senior research fellow at Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

“Right now it is significantly more affordable to rent than it is to purchase,” Eskic said. But is that still the case for condos?

Yes, according to Eskic’s data. In Salt Lake County, the median two-bedroom condo is $2,073 (including homeowners association fees), while renting a two-bedroom would be about $1,604.

But the difference in cost is even worse for those looking to buy a single-family home. “We don’t really have any new condos in our market for sale,” Eskic said, “they’re in Park City because that market can absorb all those costs associated with the risk associated.”

Markets with a lot of wealth — think Miami, Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York — have more condos sold at higher price points that make the risks more appealing to developers.

Developer Derek Allen of LandForge explained that construction costs go up for condos because of a desire to personalize apartments and more expensive insurance requirements. Plus the risk of not selling units is significant. Capital gains taxes are also less favorable for developers selling apartments versus renting them, according to Allen.

Regulatory incentives like more flexibility on setbacks and ground floor activation might help, Allen said, however, “there is no one easy solution.”

Jarod Hall, architect-developer said cities are making it more difficult to build condos by requiring a minimum lot size to subdivide, although that’s not the case in Salt Lake City.

Cities could help by providing funding on for-sale projects or help for small HOAs, Hall said.

Do you live in a condo? Email sjeremias@sltrib.com to tell me about your experience.

At the northernmost tip of Salt Lake City sits the Guadalupe School — a public charter that primarily serves kids in grades K-6.

The school also serves adults, who regularly gather on campus for English language classes. And in a separate classroom, toddlers in its early learning program can often be found throwing balls and playing with toys as they learn to speak and socialize.

For decades, the Guadalupe School founded in an abandoned Catholic church has essentially operated as a community resource center, specifically catering to economically disadvantaged immigrant families. Nearly all of the children it enrolls — 98% — are minority students, said school administrator Erik Roan. About 80% of its students are English language learners.

But Guadalupe School leaders didn’t balk when Gov. Spencer Cox signed HB261 into law this January — the anti-diversity, equity and inclusion bill banning DEI efforts in government offices, public colleges, universities and K-12 schools.

“We have protections in place and practices here at the Guadalupe School that really are not going to be affected operationally by this bill,” said Roan, the assistant director of development.

That’s in part because, unlike other states, Cox has said Utah’s approach doesn’t outright ban or defund DEI programs, instead making resources available to all students.

That doesn’t mean the school and its nonprofit-managed programs aren’t worried for its students, though, as a network of outside DEI resources curated to specifically help marginalized communities stands to dismantle when the law goes into effect in July.

“Where our concerns lie,” Roan continued, “are with the futures of the demographics we serve.”

‘Leaving them out to dry’

Many of the Guadalupe School’s adult learners, for instance, were professionals in their home countries, working in finance, medicine and law, Roan said.

Though they come to the school to learn English, the school also directs them to outside support services that can help them regain certification or find better jobs and housing.

“As the state removes DEI services, we’re going to see those resources and support services dwindle away, putting additional strain and emphasis on programs like ours,” Roan argued.

He specifically pointed to the University of Utah’s Equity, Diversity & Inclusion office, which the Guadalupe School has directed adult students to before. That’s because higher education institutions like the U. help “bridge that gap,” Roan said.

“We’re leaving a population that needs assistance,” he said. “We’re leaving them out to dry.”

The university’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion did not respond to a request for comment from The Salt Lake Tribune. But Roan said the office has also helped with professional development that directly benefits Guadalupe School students.

Melanie Montelongo, for instance, has been working with the school as she pursues her master’s degree in social work at the university, where she received a tuition grant in Spanish interdisciplinary mental health training.

She’s also participated in lunch-and-learns and other supportive sessions held by the U.’s DEI office, the future of which remain uncertain.

“It allows me to dedicate more time to my practicum,” she said of the office’s training and support, “so I can help serve Guadalupe School better and be more prepared.”

Nonprofits shielded from law could take on more work

It remains unclear how exactly existing DEI services at the U. and other public institutions stand to change when the law goes into effect. But educators worry that the K-6 students who fill the Guadalupe School’s halls, along with other marginalized students, may face a less-supportive future.

Right now, nonprofits like Big Brothers Big Sisters of Utah also help bridge gaps. The organization specifically pairs kids with mentors who serve as role models, aimed at helping children realize their potential.

“Many of the kids we serve, they’ve never seen themselves as college-going kids,” said Nancy Winemiller-Basinger, its CEO and president.

As of December, about 72% of the children in its program were kids of color, with 86% coming from low-income families, Winemiller-Basinger said.

As they prepare to graduate and potentially start pursuing higher education, mentors work to connect them with colleges and universities “in ways that feel safe to them, and in ways that help them understand how to access the resources that are there.”

That often starts with DEI offices. Now, things are “going to look different,” she said.

“We really have to be more intentional about helping kids see [college] as an option for their future and know that it’s a place where they’re going to fit in and be welcomed,” Winemiller-Basinger said.

‘I think it lights a fire under organizations’

More responsibility may also fall on parents like Erica Arvizo, who said she already seeks outside support for her children.

But the Guadalupe School mother said other parents may not be as active, either because they can’t find the time in their busy work schedules or don’t yet possess the language skills to be.

The school’s executive director, Richard Pater, said the privately funded nonprofit that operates its adult and early learning programs is essentially shielded from the effects of the law.

To help better fill an emerging community need, the Guadalupe School may look at expanding the size of its programs or adding a middle school, he said. But once students leave, the law could still serve as a barrier to continued support.

“What I’m afraid of is that we’re going to see the families that we serve, and the students that we serve, are going to find it far more difficult to achieve their dreams,” Pater said.

Roan said that concern makes the school’s mission “that much more important.”

“I think it lights a fire under organizations like us to expand and provide additional support and services,” he said.

Congratulations to Tayler Allen, one of our City and Metropolitan planning master’s students at the U., for getting a thoughtful piece on an important issue, affordable housing, published in The Tribune. The op-ed is titled, “If The Point becomes Daybreak 2.0, we have failed.” I too have high hopes for The Point development on the former prison site in Draper. But I think Allen’s op-ed is a little hard on Daybreak, consistently one of the top selling master-planned communities in the U.S. It is obviously meeting the market test of financial success, appealing to a broad segment of the housing market.

Looking at Daybreak today, I would agree with Allen that the community is not helping with our critical shortage of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income households. I just wouldn’t declare this outstanding development a “failure.”

Most of the multifamily housing planned for Daybreak has not yet been built, and downtown Daybreak — with dense mixed-use development and affordable housing under SB84 (Housing and Transit Reinvestment Zone amendments of 2023) — is still in the planning and early development stage. Daybreak today isn’t equivalent to Daybreak at buildout.

Also, the downtown at least, with three TRAX stations and a walkable urban form, will allow residents to shed a car or two, adding to affordability. Affordability has to be judged in terms of both housing and transportation.

Third, housing affordability for low- and moderate-income households is critically important regionally, but it is not the only metric by which a master-planned community might be judged a success or, as Allen says of Daybreak, a failure.

My book published by the American Planning Association, “Best Development Practices: Doing the Right Thing and Making Money at the Same Time,” has 41 other measures of success or failure (43, including providing affordable low- and moderate-income housing).

Finally, if affordable housing is so important (which it is), why does state law in Utah ban inclusionary zoning, which could be used by cities to require a certain percentage of affordable units? Without incentives or regulations, bottom-line driven private developers cannot be expected to provide affordable units in master-planned communities. Allen should put her considerable talents into getting this provision of state law changed.

Reid Ewing, distinguished professor of City and Metropolitan Planning, University of Utah

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I enjoyed reading Matthew Weinstein’s opinion piece in The Tribune (“When anti-Zionism is — and is not — antisemitism”). I agree with his view that countries should not be subject to the death penalty, as he puts it, for their behavior. And, while I understand where he is coming from when he says that non-Jews aren’t entitled to an opinion about whether Jews should have a state or not, I don’t see or hear many making such an argument.

As for me, I am not a Jew, but I am a U.S. citizen who is tired of watching his hard-earned taxpayer dollars support continued ethnic cleansing in the West Bank to create Lebensraum for Israeli settlers who want to live in the occupied territories because land is cheaper there than in Israel proper.

I am tired of watching decade after decade slide by with no progress on a two-state solution. I know that Israel is not solely responsible for the failure to put this plan into action. However, if Israel intends to run out the clock on this agreement, as it appears, then I believe it’s time America stepped away from our unconditional support and let Israel proceed at its own risk and its own expense.

David Harris, Salt Lake City

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Spring runoff has arrived with rising temperatures and the Wasatch snowpack hitting its peak in many places.

After last year’s record winter, the reservoirs that help manage the Wasatch Front’s water supplies are full and the once-dry soils are saturated. With another above-average winter giving way to warmer temperatures, the snowmelt has to go somewhere.

Salt Lake County officials predict the Jordan River will run cold, high and fast through the summer as it delivers significant amounts of water to the Great Salt Lake. Utah Lake has reached a point that requires officials to open the spigot to the Jordan River to prevent lake levels from rising further.

Even if the river’s flows are higher than normal, the county’s flood control and watershed experts believe flooding risk will remain relatively low based on long-term weather forecasts and expected gradual melting.

“The biggest issue we’re seeing right now is the releases from Utah Lake to the Jordan River,” county flood control director Kade Moncur told the County Council on Tuesday. “Anywhere between 800 and 1,500 [cubic feet per second], and that’s double of what we saw last year, right? Already we’re seeing more water in the Jordan River than we did see last year.”

The amount of water locked in the Wasatch Range’s snowpack sits at 130% of normal.

The two high-elevation reservoirs in the Jordan River Basin, Jordanelle and Deer Creek, are already full from last year’s record-breaking season. Utah Lake, where the headwaters of the Jordan River are managed by pumps and gates, is at a level where it cannot store any more water.

Utah Lake’s gates are already open and letting water into the Jordan River, so as more snow melts, Moncur expects to see the river run higher and harder than it is now.

County officials predict peak flows on the river and its tributaries, like Emigration Creek and Mill Creek, will come earlier than usual. High water has already closed parts of the Jordan River Trail.

Officials hope that warm stretches of weather are punctuated by cooler temps so the snow doesn’t melt all at once. For now, forecasts are cooperating.

“We like the water. We want it to come down. We want it to come down in a managed fashion and all things are pointing to that at this moment,” said Bob Thompson, the county’s watershed manager. “But we do expect it, like always, to be high, fast and cold, so safety is always an issue.”

The worst-case scenario, Moncur, the flood control director, said, would be if the basin saw 10 days in a row with highs over 90 degrees in June. A stretch like that could lead to flooding but, for now, it’s looking unlikely.

Regardless, county officials say they’re better prepared than they were last year. They’ve cleared debris from creeks and dredged 10 detention basins countywide. At Parleys and Emigration creeks, flood control officials have deployed equipment to deal with any excess runoff.

County officials also warned residents to use caution and keep children and pets away from water when recreating near creeks and on the Jordan River Trail.

A series of fraud lawsuits filed in multiple states against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over tithing have now been moved to a single federal courtroom in the faith’s home state of Utah.

In the name of justice and legal efficiency, an esoteric panel of federal judges based in Washington, D.C., has ordered four would-be class-action complaints against the church — filed by former or disaffected Latter-day Saints in Illinois, Washington, Tennessee and California — transferred to the Salt Lake City court of U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby.

Gathering in a court blocks away from the faith’s world headquarters, the suits join a similar complaint already pending before Shelby. Three were moved Monday; a fourth is labeled a potential “tag-along” to follow later.

Church lawyers have called these suits “copycat” actions stemming from a separate legal battle brought by prominent Utahn and onetime church member James Huntsman, accusing top Latter-day Saints leaders of lying over how tithing donations from churchgoers were spent.

As church attorneys and legal supporters continue to fight Huntsman’s 2021 case before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, these other nearly identical actions have bubbled up across the country, making similar assertions of fraud and seeking the return of varying sums in donations.

The five-member Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation agreed in a recent ruling that the five cases share common legal facts. The panel called Utah “the logical center of gravity” for further court review of the disputes — as church headquarters and home to a host of relevant documents and witnesses.

Attorneys for the faith and its investment arm, Ensign Peak Advisors, which is also being sued in these suits, had both supported consolidating them in Utah.

Common facts

Plaintiffs in the five cases all allege that church leaders falsely claimed tithes paid by members were used only for charitable or humanitarian purposes, the D.C. panel wrote, “while instead allowing tithes to accumulate in investment accounts, hiding the extent of its wealth from church members, and spending tithing monies for commercial purposes.”

All also contend, according to the panel, that they were misled by church leaders’ statements that no tithing would be used to develop City Creek Center in downtown Salt Lake City and then learned via an IRS whistleblower that the church diverted $1.4 billion to the mall project.

The church has steadfastly denied that any tithing funds were used for City Creek Center, saying instead the money came through its for-profit companies and investment earnings on tithing amassed in its reserve funds.

Centralizing the tithing cases, the D.C. panel wrote, will avoid duplicative discovery of evidence as the cases roll forward and prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings, including ones on First Amendment issues, the admissibility of experts offering testimony and other issues.

The panel described Shelby, who is now the Utah court’s chief judge, as an experienced jurist “with the ability and willingness to manage the proceedings efficiently. We are confident that he will steer this matter on a prudent course.”

Shelby, who was appointed to the bench by then-President Barack Obama, made headlines in December 2013 when he struck down Amendment 3 of the Utah Constitution, effectively legalizing same-sex marriage in the state.

The Wisconsin native, who replaced Judge Tena Campbell, also previously presided over at least one fraud case against the church, brought in 2019 by former Latter-day Saint Laura Gaddy, a North Carolina resident.

That suit alleges mail and wire fraud, breach of fiduciary duties, fraudulent concealment and civil racketeering under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, also known as RICO.

It is currently pending before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Utah.

Status of Huntsman’s case

Huntsman, who resigned his church membership in 2020, sued the faith in March 2021.

His case — which is not seeking class-action status — cites the sworn testimony from whistleblower David Nielsen, a former portfolio manager with Ensign Peak, that church leaders knowingly misled members on how money was being spent.

A son of the late industrialist-philanthropist Jon Huntsman Sr. and brother to former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., James Huntsman seeks the return of $5 million in tithing, plus penalties and interest.

Huntsman’s lawsuit has been tossed out of federal court once, only to be reinstated on appeal and then vacated again as the matter now heads to new oral arguments before the 9th Circuit in September.

Church attorneys sounded legal alarms starting in February over the spate of tithing cases springing up after Huntsman’s case got revived, warning that it “would open the floodgates for ‘copycat’ suits endangering religious liberty and church autonomy.”

Five sets of plaintiffs

Last October, Daniel Chappell, a Virginia resident, and Masen Christensen and John Oaks, both from Utah, sued the church over a combined $350,000 they had donated to the church over the past decade.

Three more suits then were filed by former or disaffected Latter-day Saints within a week of one another in December, according to court dockets, in federal courts in Illinois, Washington and Tennessee.

Plaintiff and former church member Joel Long, a resident of Chesterfield, Mo., is seeking $60,000 he says he paid in tithing while living in Metropolis, Ill.

Kevin Risdon, who lives in Cashmere, Wash., says in court documents he was active in the church from 1989 to 2016 and his suit also seeks recovery of about $60,000 in tithing.

Brandall Brawner is based in Gallatin, Tenn., according to his legal challenge, and has filed suit over about $30,000 in tithing paid between 2003 and 2012.

The most recent of the suits emerged in February in U.S. District Court in California, seeking a refund of $40,000 on behalf of Gene and Michelle Judson, a couple living in San Leandro, near Oakland.

Similar and different

Court motions indicate all parties involved — including plaintiffs, the church and Ensign Peak — had sought for the suits to be centralized under one federal judge, though they differed on the destination.

In addition to asserting similar claims, the cases now grouped before Shelby also all seek to create a class of similarly situated plaintiffs who would join the case.

They also all refer to a February 2023 settlement between the church and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which found top church officials had authorized the creation of 13 shell companies partly to evade public reporting laws and obscure the size of the faith’s investment portfolio. The SEC fined Ensign Peak $4 million and the church $1 million.

The D.C. panel noted key differences between the cases, as well. Three suits call for a special trust to be created to hold tithing and investment proceeds that the church may have obtained inequitably.

The lawsuit filed by Chappell, in contrast, seeks the appointment of a special master, the panel said, “to monitor the collection, use, and disposition of tithing funds and the proceeds.”

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Affordable housing was a top budget priority for Utah’s state and local officials this year. This was reflected by the $17 million the Legislature earmarked for affordable housing in the 2024-2025 Budget and the nearly $20 million for affordable housing programs in Salt Lake City’s 2023-2024 Fiscal Year Budget.

Despite the steps local elected officials are taking toward remedying the affordable housing crisis, there is still a massive gap in affordable housing in Salt Lake. According to Housing SLC, over half of all renters in Salt Lake City are cost-burdened, meaning they spend over 30% of their income on housing costs. Additionally, housing prices in Salt Lake City have outgrown wages since 2005.

There’s one issue surrounding affordable housing that isn’t spoken about enough: A shortage of affordable housing limits people’s ability to make change in their community.

I commute to Salt Lake five days a week for school and work. I attend the University of Utah as a full-time graduate student. I’m very involved on campus, serving on the Public Affairs and Global Enterprise (PAGE) Executive Committee as the vice president of diversity and representing the student perspective as a member of the JEDI Advisory Council. Additionally, I work in a position at a local nonprofit that serves historically marginalized and underserved communities in the Salt Lake area. I am passionate about influencing positive change regarding policy that affects me and the people around me. I am proud to consider myself a part of the Salt Lake community. However, due to a lack of affordable housing, I still live in my parents’ basement in West Point.

I am limited in my ability to create change in my community because I cannot afford housing here. I worry that my voice matters less to elected officials because I’m not a constituent, and I lose credibility with community leaders because I am not a resident. Despite being a part of the community, I’m not allowed to vote in Salt Lake elections or run for local office. This isn’t a flaw with our democratic system; the founders intentionally institutionalized local government as a system that served those who lived in the local community. I am not trying to entirely dismantle the status quo for representative democracy. However, it feels unfair that I am limited in my ability to affect change in my community because I can’t afford housing here.

My experience is not unique; many people live outside of Salt Lake and commute daily to work. According to U.S. Census data, more than half of workers in Salt Lake County commuted from another county.

While state and local officials have taken significant steps to address the affordable housing crisis, a glaring gap remains between the supply and demand for affordable housing in Salt Lake City. The allocation of funds towards affordable housing initiatives is a step in the right direction. Yet, the stark reality is that many individuals, like myself, continue to face housing insecurity, hindering our ability to fully engage and effect change within the communities we are deeply connected to.

This phenomenon not only exacerbates economic disparities, but also limits the ability of individuals to actively participate in shaping the policies and decisions that impact their lives. This issue extends beyond mere inconvenience; it is a systemic barrier that undermines the principles of democracy and community engagement.

Therefore, it is incumbent upon policymakers, community leaders and residents alike to prioritize affordable housing as a fundamental aspect of community development. This means increasing funding for existing affordable housing programs and implementing comprehensive policies that promote equitable access to housing for all.

Furthermore, we should consider changes to local electoral systems that ensure fair representation for all residents, regardless of their housing status. This could include expanding voting rights to include residents who contribute to the fabric of a community, even if they do not own property within its boundaries.

Ultimately, addressing the shortage of affordable housing is not just a matter of economic policy; it is a moral imperative that speaks to the very essence of democracy. We must recognize the broader implications of the affordable housing crisis beyond its economic impact. It is about equity, social justice and the fundamental right of every individual to have a voice in shaping the future of their community, regardless of their housing situation.

Alex Yoder has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Weber State University and is studying for a master’s degree in public administration at the University of Utah. He is also working toward an urban planning graduate certificate.

The Salt Lake Tribune is committed to creating a space where Utahns can share ideas, perspectives and solutions that move our state forward. We rely on your insight to do this. Find out how to share your opinion here, and email us at voices@sltrib.com.

This article is excerpted from the Utah Eats newsletter, compiled by Kolbie Peterson, The Salt Lake Tribune’s food and drink reporter. To get the full newsletter in your inbox every Wednesday, become a subscriber by going to sltrib.com/newsletters.

Hello, Eaters!

I love pizza. Once, I had a dream that I was tucked into a bed with a giant piece of pizza for a blanket, and I nibbled on the edge of it as I drifted off to sleep.

I like to think that giant piece of pizza came from Villaggio Pizzeria, at 3144 S. State St. in South Salt Lake.

Villaggio bills itself as an authentic Italian NYC pizzeria, and it’s a relatively recent addition to the Salt Lake City area’s pizza landscape. An Eater named Alex recommended I check out Villaggio (thanks, Alex!), and I’m glad I did.

Usually when I want pizza, I go to Piehole (344 S. State St., Salt Lake City) or Este (locations in Sugar House, downtown SLC and Park City). I know people get particular about pizza, but these are both solid picks in my book, with large, foldable slices and thin crust. Now, I’m happy I can add Villaggio to my rotation.

On the Saturday evening I went, I didn’t get anything fancy, just two slices (more on that below) and a San Pellegrino. With ‘80s hits playing on the radio and the smells of good pizza filling the air, I was right at home.

Live deliciously,

Kolbie

Food News

• Ritual Chocolate has released a new chocolate bar that gin lovers should be happy about: the Alpine Gin Juniper Lavender Chocolate Bar.

“Our high-quality cacao, paired with the unique flavor profile of Alpine Distilling’s gin, offers a refreshing, elevated chocolate experience,” said Ritual Chocolate co-founder Anna Seear in a statement.

According to a news release, the limited-edition dark chocolate bar is made from Ritual Chocolate’s Mid Mountain Blend of cacao, juniper berries, lavender and gin from Alpine Distilling. The ingredients were aged together for six months in a gin barrel, the release said, resulting in a flavor profile featuring juniper, lavender, cardamom and orange peel.

• I started an ambitious project in January called the Redwood Road Challenge, which involves me attempting to eat at every local restaurant on Redwood Road in Salt Lake County in 2024. For the first story in that series, I’m showcasing five Mexican restaurants that are worth dining at, including Chunga’s, Tacos Lopez and others. To follow this project, check out my Instagram: @kolbie.peterson.

Openings:

• Tita’s Restaurant, 2716 W. 5400 South, Taylorsville. This family-owned restaurant serves Mexican food, ranging from ceviche curtido en limón to mole and tacos, according to a news release from Taylorsville City.

Dish of the Week

Two slices of pizza and a San Pellegrino. It’s the perfect lunch or, in this case, dinner. I got one slice of pepperoni, and one slice of sausage and basil. The sausage and basil was my favorite; I’m such a sucker for fresh basil, and I loved that I could clearly see fennel seed in the sausage. It was all just a dreamy combination of flavors.

And that crust! Don’t even get me started. This was an authentic Calabria-style crust, according to Villaggio’s website: Thin, chewy and crunchy on the edges, with big air bubbles. It was the perfect vehicle for all these toppings.

Just take one of these slices and tuck me in.

Authorities are investigating the Wednesday death of a man who was being held at the Cache County jail in Logan.

On Wednesday at about 2:45 pm, deputies found the man “unresponsive” in his cell, according to the Cache County Sheriff’s Office. The man was unconscious and not breathing.

Jail staffers and Logan paramedics attempted life-saving measures, but they were unable to revive him. He was pronounced dead at the jail.

His name was not immediately released, pending notification of his death to family members.

According to the sheriff’s office, an outside agency will investigate the death, citing “Utah Critical Incident Investigative Team” protocol.

Sheriff’s office investigators are also conducting an internal investigation.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints revised its temple recommend questions late last week to remove ambiguity about when and how endowed members are supposed to wear their temple garments.

The change took effect Wednesday.

In sum, the language about wearing the garment “day and night” is back. From 1976 until 2019, the temple recommend interview asked members if they were wearing their garments “night and day as instructed in the endowment.” But from 2019 until this week, the language was changed to, “Do you keep the covenants that you made in the temple, including wearing the temple garment as instructed in the endowment?”

Now, the language has been changed once again, this time to, “Do you honor your sacred privilege to wear the garment as instructed in the initiatory ordinances?” That will be followed by an explanation that the garment should be worn “day and night throughout your life.”

So we’re largely back where we were in early 2019, with a stated requirement that the garment is supposed to be worn basically 24/7 except for a few unspecified activities that “cannot reasonably be done while wearing the garment.”

Our first inkling that this was coming was in March, when The Salt Lake Tribune reported that general authority Seventy Kevin Hamilton had warned of the coming change at a stake conference in California:

“Hamilton, who is on a committee studying possible redesign of garments, told the assembled lay leaders that too many younger women wear them mostly on Sundays and when attending the temple, recalled conferencegoer Colleen Speer, rather than every day.”

Hamilton apparently singled out young women who avoid wearing garments in favor of “yoga pants.” Darn those wanton women and their yoga pants. It seems they are the reason the rest of us can’t have nice things. We gave them an inch, and they streeeeeetched it by a spandex mile. Oh, yes, we’ve got trouble, right here in Provo City.

Or so goes the theory: Young women are the culprits.

What happens if the theory doesn’t turn out to be true?

In the Next Mormons Survey project, we are now analyzing the results of our 2022 and 2023 U.S. data collections. One of the graduate assistants associated with the project was curious about how gender might correlate with garment wearing, so he began analyzing the data accordingly, zeroing in on one question in particular. We asked those people who had been through the temple and were therefore supposed to wear temple garments whether they were wearing them at the time of the survey — and if not, when they had last done so.

“Thinking about church temple garments, when was the last time that you wore them?

• I am wearing them currently.

• Yesterday, but not today.

• Within the last week.

• Within the last month.

• Within the last six months, but not the last month.

• Between six months and a year ago.

• Between one and five years ago.

• More than five years ago.”

Three general takeaways become clear as we explore the responses to this question.

The first is that a majority of people who are supposed to be wearing their garments said they were wearing them on the day they took the survey. In all, 54.5% said they were sporting temple garments at that moment.

The second point was that women were slightly more compliant than men in terms of who was wearing garments at the time of the survey, at 56% and 53%, respectively. That’s a small difference, but it points to the idea that gender is not the main driving factor in terms of who is wearing garments 24/7 and who is not. The gendered “yoga pants” theory does not hold up under scrutiny.

What does hold up is the criticism that younger members — both women and men — aren’t as tractable and obedient about garment wearing as Latter-day Saint leaders would like them to be. And by “younger members” we mean anyone born after the mid-1960s, basically. The third takeaway is that generation is far more important a factor than gender in who is wearing garments on the daily.

More than 8 in 10 baby boomers and older (born before 1965) said they were wearing their garments on the day of the survey (84%). That compares with — wait for it — just 42% of Generation X, 36% of millennials and 41% of Generation Z. As a reminder, these percentages don’t include people of any generation who hadn’t been anointed and endowed in the first place — only those who had participated in temple rituals and were therefore expected to wear garments. They also don’t include any former Latter-day Saints, or people who no longer self-identify as Mormon. These respondents all say they still affiliate with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Garment compliance among younger members appears to be very low, especially for millennials. It’s likely understandable, if the church’s own research is producing similar figures, that it wants those members to fall in line and is using the temple recommend interview as a vehicle to encourage that.

But in the Next Mormons data, at least, there’s no reason to single out women as the main instigators. I know we, as Latter-day Saints, have a long history of projecting our cultural anxieties onto women’s bodies. I mean, I don’t want to brag, but we’ve gotten good at such scapegoating through the years and have largely perfected the strategy. When in doubt, our instinct is to blame young jezebels.

In this case, though, policing women’s bodies isn’t going to be enough to solve the problem. No amount of yoga-pant-shaming will change the fact that a majority of middle-aged and young adult members seem unenthusiastic about garments — men as well as women.

(The views expressed in this opinion piece do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Rapper and Utah resident NBA YoungBoy is suspected of being behind a prescription drug ring that worked to fraudulently obtain narcotics from pharmacies in 11 different cities throughout the state, court records show.

Kentrell DeSean Gaulden, also known professionally as “YoungBoy Never Broke Again” or just “YoungBoy,” was arrested Tuesday after federal agents investigating the case executed a search warrant at a property he owns northeast of Huntsville in Weber County.

A probable cause statement explaining Gaulden’s arrest states the drug ring he is suspected of running primarily worked to fraudulently obtain codeine (a narcotic painkiller) and promethazine (an antihistamine, antipsychotic and sedative).

Under the ruse, fraudulent prescriptions were called in to various pharmacies using an “actual, valid DEA number, NPI number and other identification” for a physician, then picked up by Gaulden’s “associates,” the document states. Gaulden has been under house arrest in Utah since October 2021 as he awaits trial on federal firearms charges originating out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Gaulden is under investigation for 63 crimes in connection with the Utah case, including 20 counts of identity fraud, 20 counts of forgery and 20 counts of illegally procuring or attempting to procure prescription drugs. He is also suspected of marijuana possession; possession of a gun by a restricted person; and a “pattern of unlawful activity.”

Formal charges had not been filed against Gaulden as of Thursday morning, court records indicated.

Investigators suspect Gaulden or his associates fraudulently used the identities of two doctors in Provo to call in the fake prescriptions to pharmacies in Cottonwood Heights, Farmington, Hyrum, Lehi, Logan, Midvale, North Logan, Riverton, Roy, Smithfield and Tremonton.

Two women identified as Gaulden’s associates were also arrested when investigators say they tried to pick up a fraudulent prescription at a Smithfield pharmacy while driving a Chevy Tahoe registered to Gaulden. The probable cause statement notes the same vehicle seemed to be featured in one of Gaulden’s music videos, as it was the same color and had a matching dent and matching rims.

The document states Gaulden “is consistently rapping about shooting and killing people, using drugs and having a strong dislike for law enforcement.” He can be seen with guns and “smoking what appears to be marijuana rolled cigarettes” in many of his videos, “even recent videos as of the beginning of 2024″ — made while he was under house arrest.

The rapper’s Louisiana charges stem from 2020 allegations that he brandished weapons while filming a music video in Baton Rouge.

Agents with the FBI, Homeland Security and the Secret Service participated in the Tuesday search, as well as the Weber County Sheriff’s Office, Cache County Sheriff’s Office, Ogden police, Layton SWAT and drug task forces from Box Elder and Cache/Rich counties, according to a news release.

As of Thursday, Gaulden remained held without the option of bail in Cache County jail, where he was booked after his Tuesday arrest.

Utah is now home to a National Hockey League franchise.

The NHL on Thursday announced that the Arizona Coyotes will effectively relocate to Salt Lake City starting in the 2024-25 season.

Smith Entertainment Group — led by Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith and his wife, Ashley — reportedly paid between $1.2 and $1.3 billion for the franchise.

“As everyone knows, Utah is a vibrant and thriving state, and we are thrilled to be a part of it,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a news release. “We are also delighted to welcome Ashley and Ryan Smith to the NHL family and know they will be great stewards of the game in Utah. We thank them for working so collaboratively with the League to resolve a complex situation in this unprecedented and beneficial way.”

The Coyotes’ franchise will become inactive, with all of its hockey assets, players and draft picks, moving to a new franchise in Utah. Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo will have the opportunity to reactivate the franchise if he secures a new arena for the team within five years.

Ryan Smith told the official NHL website that the team will have Utah in the name, not Salt Lake City. He added that determining the new team’s nickname, though, will be a process that could take a while.

“So, we’ll start with ‘Utah’ on the jersey, and we’ll figure out the logo and everything else and what it is that we are. But that’s a one-way door,” he said. “You get to do it once. And with this timeline, I think both the league feels better and we feel better to just run the process, and then we’ll drop it when we drop it.”

Ryan and Ashley Smith said in a statement that their intent was always to bring an NHL team to Utah through expansion. But that changed when Bettman approached them with the situation in Arizona and a need to remedy it.

“When he approached us and asked us for help resolving this situation, we made the bold decision to introduce a new franchise in Utah, fully understanding that we are stepping up to do something in a time frame and way that has never been done before in professional sports under these circumstances,” they said. “We are committed to building a Stanley Cup contending team and are thrilled to welcome incredible players, coaches, staff, and their families to Utah. Today is a great day for Utah, for hockey, and for building a legacy that will have a lasting impact for generations to come.”

Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall released a statement voicing her approval of the new team.

“This announcement is about more than bringing an NHL team to Salt Lake City — it’s a defining moment in our trajectory, becoming a catalyst for a positive vision that integrates community, connection, and more possibilities for families, residents, and visitors to experience our capital city,” Mendenhall said. “I’m thankful for the close partnership with Ryan and Ashley Smith, and the entire SEG team. This is the beginning of a new era that will generate exciting opportunities for our communities, amplify pride and unlock new potential in our downtown core.”

The move has been rumored for weeks, and one that has Utah sports fans buzzing.

Braden Clark, of Cache County, reacted with a healthy level of skepticism when the notion of an NHL team coming to Utah was first floated.

“That’s never going to happen,” Clark thought, remembering that the league had recently expanded to 32 teams with the Seattle Kraken.

But now that the Beehive State is getting the Arizona Coyotes via relocation, Clark could barely contain his joy.

“I’m ecstatic about the fact that Utah is getting its own team,” Clark said. “I’m extremely excited to embark on this new chapter of Utah sports and to see all the new things that are going to come with it.”

Since the rumors first started circulating, fans like Clark have been abuzz and waiting for the official announcement. They’ve flooded social media channels with ideas for a team name and color scheme. They made plans to watch the final Coyotes game, which occurred Wednesday night against the Edmond Oilers.

Steven Cundick is one of the fans who watched Arizona’s final game. He did so on an antenna that he used to watch Jazz games this season, he said. And the conversation between him and a group of his close friends has already surrounded how to afford season tickets for the new team in Utah.

“It’ll totally depend on the price point,” Cundick said. “If we do do it, we’ll be sharing it amongst probably six to eight guys and probably buy two or four tickets to that group of people and then we’ll just divide up the games. I think if all we can afford to do is nosebleeds, which is what I kind of suspect based on what I think the pricing will be, I think we still will likely move forward with it.”

Cundick considers himself a new hockey fan. He already closely follows local teams like the Jazz, Utah football and basketball, and Real Salt Lake. He’s kept up with the branding ideas others have proposed online, although he described his excitement as “tempered” because he hasn’t exactly been thrilled with how Smith rebranded the Jazz.

“I think Ryan Smith is kind of 0-for-1 on that part,” Cundick said.

Of all the names that have been bandied about alone, Cundick said his favorite is the Cutthroat.

“I would be all in on that because it’s unique to Utah, there’s no other major league team with that name, and I think it kind of sounds tough,” Cundick said. “It’s a double meeting between the trout but also kind of the sound of cutthroat just sounds kind of tough.”

Clark, meanwhile, is partial to naming the Utah NHL team the Blizzard.

“It keeps with the double Z mantra that we’ve had here in the state for a very long time with obviously the Jazz, the Buzz, the Grizzlies, those kinds of teams,” Clark said.

The new team will play at the Delta Center. The state legislature passed a bill that would fund a new sports and entertainment district around the arena with $1 billion of taxpayer money, and Smith earlier this month applied to work with SLC on a proposal to revitalize that part of downtown.

Living in Cache Valley means Clark won’t make it out to many NHL games. But he said he is planning to attend the first one because it will be “historic,” and having a team in the state means he’ll make it out to SLC a little more.

Clark also said once he knows what the team name and other branding is, he’ll buy merchandise for his family to wear.

“The things that excite me the most is just kind of embracing the new brand — whatever it is — getting to know the players on the team, the coaching staff, and then smaller things like listening to the podcasts that the people that cover the team [will do] and getting to know those people as they come to Utah,” Clark said.

Greg Leeb, former Grizzlies assistant coach and current hockey development director for player development with the Junior Grizzlies, said he most wants to see “the enthusiasm and the support” from the community for the new Utah team. He also said that in the Junior Grizzlies playing youth programs from Las Vegas and Arizona, he’s seen the number of young hockey players grow over the years. He thinks Utah getting an NHL could make a similar impact at the youth level.

“We’ve seen it,” Leeb said. “We play against them and we’ve seen how those programs improve as well. So it would definitely probably have a positive impact around here as well.”

Now that Utah has an NHL team to call its own, what will it be called? The Blizzard? Yetis? Will it evoke the past with the Golden Eagles? And will the name include Utah or Salt Lake City?

Fans have been asking that question online ever since rumors started getting serious about an NHL team in the Beehive State. Some social media users have even proposed names that poke fun at some of the more uniquely cultural aspects of Utah — like making references to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

On Thursday, after the official announcement that the Arizona Coyotes would disband and relocate to Utah, owner Ryan Smith answered the question that’s been on fans’ minds.

Kind of.

“It will 100 percent be ‘Utah,’ and then it will be ‘Utah Something,’ obviously,” Smith told NHL.com. “I don’t think given this timeline that we’re going to have time — or nor should we rush with everything else that’s going on — to go force what that is in the next three months.”

Smith said the NHL hired an independent creative studio, Doubleday & Cartwright, to help figure out the new Utah team’s mascot and colors. He described the company, which has worked with sports teams and global companies like Adidas and Nike, as “the best on the planet” when it comes to brand identity.

Smith didn’t give a specific timeline for when the team’s nickname will be chosen or announced. But he did say he didn’t want it take a full two years.

“Look, I don’t think it’s a 24-month process,” Smith said. “It’s a placeholder, but it’s kind of not a placeholder, because we’re going to be ‘Utah’ either way, right? We have the first part of the name. We don’t have the last.”

Smith has gotten some criticism for how the Utah Jazz recently handled its rebrand. It appears Smith understands how much coming up with a new brand for Utah’s NHL team will matter.

“So, we’ll start with ‘Utah’ on the jersey, and we’ll figure out the logo and everything else and what it is that we are,” Smith said. “But that’s a one-way door. You get to do it once. And with this timeline, I think both the League feels better and we feel better to just run the process, and then we’ll drop it when we drop it.