November 15 2021 Update

I hope you had a great weekend.  Sunday was my birthday, which led to some interesting events.  While on the phone with my daughter and her kids, she told her 6 1/2 year old son that "Bapa is exactly 10 times as old as you."  She laughed but I didn't.  😣  But we did have some fun times with family and some excellent devil's food cake with vanilla buttercream frosting (the only "true" birthday cake).  My kids went together and gave me Apple Air Pods -  I guess I will be checking out another new (to me)  technology advance this week!

And this was my office this morning - balloons from the team and fresh sourdough bread from Dixon Holmes!  

UPCOMING CITY EVENTS

A Night of Bluegrass with The Fabled Folks I November 15 7:00 pm

Learn It: Medicare 101 I November 16 7:00 pm

Learn It: Gluten Free Cookies I November 17 7:00 pm

Barlow Ballet presents The Nutcracker I November 17 - November 20

Teen Dungeons & Dragons Club I November 18 6:30 pm

Utah Valley Youth Symphony Orchestra presents European Adventure I November 22 7:30 pm

Joshua Creek Christmas I November 29 7:00 pm

Ryan Shupe Christmas I November 30 7:30 pm

Learn It: Zentangle Holidays I December 1 7:00 pm

A Christmas Carol | December 02 - December 20

Light Up Christmas! I December 3 - December 4

Utah Valley Handbell Ringers I December 6 6:00 pm

Learn It: Holiday Menu and Meal Planning I December 7 7:00 pm

Teen Writer's Group I December 9 7:00 pm

Holiday Recipe Swap I December 11 1:00 pm

The Alibis I February 7:30 pm

YOUR VOICE

We have loved hearing from you! Keep them coming!!

UPLOAD PICTURES HERE!

NEWS YOU CAN USE

• Today is Monday and National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day to be ready for the holidays.
• It's also National Philanthropy Day - don't miss the Utah Philanthropy Awards tonight on ABC 4 from 6-7 pm.
• Home Depot in Park City was on fire this morning. The Park City Fire District says they first responded to the structure fire around 4:30 a.m.
• Ho, ho, heck: Early holiday shoppers ran into 2 billion out-of-stock messages in October, with more to come. Be sure to get your shopping done early!
• General Electric Co. will split into three public companies. ‘The end of the GE we knew’: It's breakup turns a page in modern business history.
• U.S. consumer prices accelerated in October as Americans paid more for gasoline and food, leading to the biggest annual gain in 31 years, more signs that inflation could stay uncomfortably high well into 2022 amid snarled global supply chains.

PROVO SOCIAL MEDIA

HOT-BUTTON ITEMS IN PROVO

So, recently the City leaders have been the recipients of an email campaign to encourage us to select a city engineer who will prioritize "safety over speed" on our city streets.  Certainly a laudable goal, but decisions about how streets are designed are not the city engineer's exclusive purview and it is not even a role that occupies a significant part of the city engineer's time.  Like so many other local government issues, it is not as simple as it appears.

Today I had an opportunity to do a recorded interview with the BYU student about my career and advice I would offer to students today.  She asked me about one of my biggest challenges, and my response was that so many of us try to extrapolate our lived experience and our ability to "google" information into the "real world."  From public health to education and from appliance repair to interior design, we tend to discount the earned expertise of others and assume we can quickly and easily apply our experience and Internet searches to how the real world works.  Now, I'm not at all discounting the opinions of those who are not professionals; there is much to be learned there, and I almost always find value in the comments of others.  It is the "death of expertise" that I lament.  But, one of the good things about this phenomenon is that we in the public sector have to get much better at education and transparency.

So, last week, I took a run at a draft document that tries to answer the question, "what does a city engineer do?"  I could probably write something like that for most of our jobs - because the back story is far deeper than the front story appears on the surface.  If we decide to post the article somewhere, I will let you know and post the link here.  

At the end of the day, this kind of issue is why I love our Provology program so much.  It helps "pull back the curtain" and help our residents see what it is we do, why we do it, and how it impacts the life of all of our residents every day.  And in the "demystifying" of what we do, we build trust with our residents.  

FUN STUFF

Speaking of Apple stuff, I have my moments with Siri.  Sometimes my "accent" can be hard to understand - not that I HAVE an accent - just everyone else does.  :)  So, this new IOS operating system might solve this problem - at least for folks from the Midwest!

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Thanks for reading.  Tomorrow is a very full City Council day with a wide variety of important topics.  I'll try to give you a summary of the agenda items tomorrow.  Have a great rest of your day.

Wayne