On June 12, Provo City sold Timp Kiwanis Bounous Park to the Provo School District, over the opposition of neighborhood residents.
While I opposed the sale of the park for several reasons, as a professor of political science, I am particularly concerned with the political process used to sell the park. The political process is often more important than the actual choice made because the process generates the choices one can make. Sometimes this is called agenda control.
In politics, the most important steps of a process are the first step and the last step. (In business, these are called the first-mover advantage and the last-mover advantage.) Unfortunately, there was no transparency and no public involvement in either of these steps when Bounous Park was sold.
The first step in selling Bounous Park was when Provo City School District approached Provo City to buy undeveloped city land northwest of Timpview High School in the Edgemont neighborhood. In response, the city told the school district that they were not interested in selling the undeveloped land. Instead, the city said that they were interested in selling Bounous Park—a 50-year old legacy park it had promised to keep a city park “in perpetuity.”
This was not a transparent part of the process, as this information was not publicly available at the time. There was no public input in this part of the process, which was the most important step.
In the middle of the process, the Provo City Council heard public comments, as required by the Land and Water Conservation Fund regulations of the federal government. In multiple city council meetings, the Provo City Council repeatedly assured the neighborhood citizens that the last steps of the process were far away, and that there would be time to comment during these last steps:
If the federal government approved the sale of the park;
The school district and city would come to a final, legal agreement concerning future use of the park, which would be presented to the City Council;
the public could make their comments on the agreement;
and the city council would vote whether to sell the park.
The timing of federal government approval was important because it would establish when the other steps would take place. However, when Provo City received federal government approval to sell Bounous Park, Provo City staff told only those that supported selling the park. They did not tell the Edgemont neighborhood, that is, the Provo citizens, or anyone sympathetic to those citizens. The citizens, and some city council members, only found out when the agenda item of the sale was posted a couple of days before the meeting.
In addition, the last steps of the process were reversed with little notice:
On June 4, the city council voted to sell the park before an agreement was made with the school district on future use of the park.
On June 12, the agreement — which is “not a contract nor is it intended to be legally binding — was presented.
The agreement became the last step. There was no public input on the agreement. The agreement came out after the City Council vote.
Withholding information, giving little notice, changing the process at the last moment: These are excellent methods of demobilizing opposition. These are great ways for bureaucrats to get what they want. However, these are not acts of transparency. They are not acts of integrity. This is why people say, “You can’t fight City Hall.”
As a citizen of Provo, I am expected to vote and be involved in my community even though it is not legally required because it is the right thing to do. Likewise, I expect more of Provo City than to do just what is legal. I expect the Provo City Council and Provo City staff to do what is right. The process of selling Bounous Park was not right.
I hope that Provo City government and other state and local governments will make the most important parts of their process more open and transparent, and bring more integrity to the system.
Jay Goodliffe, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University, is a resident of the Edgemont Neighborhood in Provo. His views are his own.
