The View from Up on the Hill

Springdale looks a little different depending on where you live.

Apparently, making a left turn onto Zion Park Boulevard is a major inconvenience.

At least that’s one of the complaints we keep hearing from members of the Springdale Town Council when they discuss the possibility of relocating our post office.

For some of us who live in downtown Springdale, it’s a rather disconnected complaint.

We live on the south side of ZPB. Every time we leave our neighborhood, we face similar left turn issues that some council members find so troublesome. Not once or twice a week when we stop to pick up the mail but every time we drive.

Some days it’s easy. Other days we wait a minute or two for an opening. Occasionally, during the busiest periods, we might wait 3 minutes. Somehow, life goes on.

And we’re hardly alone. Consider the Bumbleberry Inn, one of Springdale’s most established lodging properties. Guests and employees there contend with a particularly difficult left turn onto Zion Park Boulevard. So do countless residents, employees, and visitors at properties throughout town.

It’s Springdale. We have traffic.

So why does something so ordinary seem to trouble our elected officials?

Perhaps it has something to do with where they live.

Springdale has five Town Council members. Three live in Anasazi Plateau, another lives in the foothills outside the downtown area, and the fifth lives in town but doesn’t drive.

That means every council member who drives, lives up in the hills, away from the congestion and activity that define everyday life in the center of Springdale.

There’s nothing wrong with living on a mesa or in the foothills. Those neighborhoods and residents are part of our community.

But there are differences between living in downtown Springdale and living in one of its more removed neighborhoods.

For those of us downtown, there are some wonderful advantages. We can walk to restaurants, shops, and markets. We can enjoy many of the conveniences of city living while residing in a small rural town. It’s a pretty cool combination, and one of the reasons we choose to live here.

Of course, there are tradeoffs. We deal with tourist traffic, pedestrians, busy sidewalks, and the occasional frustrating wait to turn onto Zion Park Boulevard.

That’s just the deal.

People living up on the mesas and in the foothills have made a different choice. They generally enjoy quieter surroundings, less traffic around their homes, and convenient access to the road leading out of town. On the other hand, most errands require getting into a car and driving somewhere. Walking to dinner or picking up a few things at the market isn’t quite so simple.

Neither lifestyle is inherently better. They just offer different conveniences and inconveniences.

The trouble comes when someone who enjoys the benefits of living away from downtown starts treating the inconveniences of downtown as problems the town needs to solve.

From up on the hill, you can drive into town, conduct your business, encounter some congestion, complain about the traffic, and head back to your quieter neighborhood.

For those of us who live downtown, that congestion is simply part of our daily routine. We don’t have the option of avoiding it, but we also don’t necessarily consider it a problem that needs fixing.

And that’s where the difference in perspective becomes relevant to the Town Council.

Take the post office. We already have one, certainly isn’t perfect, but it is conveniently located in the middle of town. Yet considerable attention has been devoted to the possibility of moving it to municipal property. And among the complaints raised about its current location is the dreaded left turn.

It’s hard not to wonder if council members lived downtown, would they view that inconvenience in the same way?

Of course, the council represents the entire community, not just downtown residents. And nobody should have to live on or near Zion Park Boulevard to understand the challenges faced by those who do.

But understanding requires listening. It requires recognizing that your personal experience isn’t necessarily representative of everyone else’s.

It also requires some perspective about which problems deserve the town’s time, money, and attention.

Springdale has plenty of problems worth solving. Housing affordability, infrastructure, traffic safety, and the pressures of tourism aren’t going away. These are complicated issues that affect the long-term future of our community.

An inconvenient left turn out of the post office parking lot seems a rather peculiar thing to get worked up about.

Neither group should expect the town to eliminate every inconvenience that comes with their choice of where to live. And when the people making decisions for Springdale all happen to drive home to the hills, perhaps they should be especially careful not to confuse their occasional frustrations with the priorities of the people who live downtown.

Sometimes a difficult left turn is just that and nothing more.