Park City council weighs Little Kate pathway, water rates, recycling lease

Park City residents faced a set of decisions that could change water bills, daily routes and where recycling is handled for years to come. The council’s April 30 meeting at City Hall Council Chambers put the Little Kate Road pathway, water rates, impact fees and Recycle Utah’s future space on the same agenda.

The sharpest neighborhood fight centered on Little Kate Road in Park Meadows, where city staff backed replacing a bike lane with a 12-foot mixed-use pathway between McPolin Elementary School and the PC MARC. The project is largely funded by a $2.2 million Federal Transit Administration grant secured in 2023, but residents worried that putting pedestrians and bicyclists into one corridor would make the route less safe. City data cited by staff showed peak use at 39 people per hour, well below the city’s cited comfort threshold of 150 people per hour for a path that size. After more than an hour of public comment, the council sent the project back to the design phase, pushing construction off this summer and leaving the corridor unresolved for now.

The most direct hit to household budgets came from water. City Manager Adam Lenhard said the July 2025 reduction in single-family water rates cut water-fund revenue by about $2.4 million, and the city was considering 4% rate increases for fiscal year 2027 and 3% for fiscal year 2028 to recover part of that loss. Park City also said it had not updated water impact fees since 2014 and was proposing a nearly 60% increase, a change meant to push more of the cost of growth onto new development. Under the FY2026 rate structure, the single-family base rate is $75 and includes the first 2,000 gallons, while multi-family and commercial accounts rose 4.5%.

Recycle Utah’s lease was the other decision with immediate day-to-day consequences. The city said it would consider authorizing a 4.18-acre parcel in Summit County for a regional recycling facility and could extend Recycle Utah’s Bonanza Park lease until March 2027 to give the organization time to shift operations to Silver Summit. For residents who rely on the drop-off center, the issue is not abstract. It determines whether recycling service stays stable while the city and county sort out a permanent home for the operation.

A smaller but related item on the agenda was the Snow Creek Tunnel under Kearns Boulevard, which the city said was closed for summer work to repair a non-functioning snowmelt system. Park City has said the tunnel project dates back to 2007, a reminder that the city’s growth debate now sits on top of older infrastructure that still shapes how people walk, bike and move through town.