Bill Ciraco

City Councilor - Park City, UT - Believe. Husband, dad. Seeking to leave the world better than I found it. All views are my own, this is a personal account

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@BrandonFugal @20th_Centurygal Break It Down Again is most underrated Tears for Fears Song!

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@bdfagan Drop the elevation of Salt Lake City so it is 1,000 lower than Denver.

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@ChaseThomason Precisely why we must do more with Wildlife crossings in our area. Had to drive down to SLC this morning. Three dead mule deer between Canyons and Parleys pass.

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@SpencerJCox

A lot of wisdom in this speech.

[Dan Proft @DanProft]

Life is like a guitar. @ericchurch offers a brillianct commencement address (and guitar lesson) at his alma mater, UNC, that belongs in the pantheon of addresses of this sort with those of Steve Jobs (Stanford) and David Foster Wallace (Kenyon College).

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@baldassarreted Just bought this Breitling in Zug from the owner of the company.

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@801Athlete @KaiSchwemmer 😂😂😂answered it earnestly.

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@DJJazzyJody Yeah, this didn't age well for the Jazz haters...

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@MarkO0031883658 @phil_lyman No ski resorts won’t discount your lift tickets? Why? Because of math… sales and use taxes generated by the ski industry equaled $342mm in state and local taxes, supporting 32,000 jobs. So no discounted lift tickets for you.

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@marygilbertwx So through what mechanism does weather exercise its choice to “defy” forecasts???

“The CSU experts last predicted a slightly below-average season in their initial forecast in 2023. But tropical activity that year, fueled by record warm oceans, ended up above-normal, defying almost all early forecasts.”

Are you sure “defying” is the right language here? Remember words have meaning.

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@UrbanCourtyard Found it last night - noticed the church in your picture and searched churches. Given our delegation is from Utah there may be some interest in seeing Zion Church!

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@UrbanCourtyard I am traveling to Berlin in 10 days with a delegation of folks from Utah - including some who want to juice housing supply.

Where exactly is the neighborhood?

[Damian Chávez - Artist @DamianChavezArt]

Postwar U.S. architecture didn’t shift 2 modernism by accident. It was driven by ideologues who actively despised classical architecture + *usefully idiotic* bureaucrats/politicians who bought the sales pitch about efficiency, progress, & democracy.

Guys like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (who reshaped U.S. architecture schools at Harvard and IIT Chicago) taught that the decorative was “decadent,” classical design was a pre-war relic, & trad forms had 2 be purged for a hygienic future.

Le Corbusier & *CIAM* pushed tabula-rasa “Radiant City” towers that erased old streetscapes.

These ideas weren’t neutral preferences. They were ideological warfare against the Western past - “dust traps,” “bourgeois relics,” "fascist" enemies against "social progress". By the 1950s, modernist dogma dominated architectural schools & the entire field.

Enter the *structural* machinery that amplified & entreched this ideology after 1945:

A. Housing Act 1949 (Title I Slum Clearance + Title III Public Housing): 1,000,000,000s for federal grants for eminent domain “blight” clearance. Older/Classical/Beaux arts/Art Deco areas were bulldozed. Subsidies explicitly favored “new designs, materials, techniques” & "reduced costs" - just perfect for standardized modernist superblocks & high-rises for plazas.

B. The Housing Act 1954 expanded it as full “urban renewal,” enabling more commercial clearance. For NYC, Robert Moses was a key player.

C. Federal Property & Administrative Services Act 1949 created the GSA (General Services Admin). It centralized federal building design with outsourcing 2 private architects under efficiency mandates. Postwar industrial materials (glass, steel, cement) fit modernism like a glove.

D. Federal-Aid Highway Act 1956: 90% federal funding tore expressways through old neighborhoods, clearing land for yet more modernist redevelopment. Indirectly against older styles but still devastating.

E. NYC 1961: New policies like FAR for public plazas rewarded freestanding glass/steel tower forms (i.e.,Seagram Building). Classical buildings couldn’t compete for extra floor area.

F. The culprit: 1962 Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture (drafted by Daniel Patrick Moynihan for JFK). Key line: 'Design must flow from the architects 2 the Government rather than vice versa'. When modernists proclaim that architecure is free without “official style", organic,etc its just subversive stage magic. It seems like democratic pluralism & anti-authoritarian freedom (vs. Soviet/Fascist), but the field was already ideologically captured by the avant-garde. Present day,etc = modernism exclusively.
Peer-review panels & GSA boards filtered out classical/deco proposals as regressive & anti-progressive.

Result: Brutalist HUD HQ, Mies’s Chicago Federal Center, + hundreds more.

This was instituted authoritarian modernist entrustment at work. Ideologues provided the anti-classical worldview & literally redefined 'excellence', but useful idiots - Fair Deal political leaders chasing quick housing wins, GSA bureaucrats preoccupied by cost, Cold War liberals with short man issues wanting 2 look "modern" & "democratic" supplied the funding, eminent domain, & policy power.

They bought the framing: modernism = efficiency + progress + democracy.

Beauty? Classical/Art Deco = regressive + old + costly + fascism.

The result: American cities & federal buildings got a de facto modernist status quo for 80 years. Classical & trad styles were marginalized by a handful little policy shifts & cultural capture by leftist ideologues, enabled by incentives that made more decorative styles uncompetitive.

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@StockDaddy6597 @ChrisBarnardDL Exactly, it takes years and years of edumication to understand that:

Snow is always precipitation

But

Precipitation is not always snow.

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

You had me till you told the whole word that you don’t understand the concept of ratios.

You said: “ But one thing is for sure: more snow = higher SWE”

Two piles of 10 feet of snow can have different SWE. If you take from the lower SWE pile and add it to the higher SWE pile you are not increasing SWE you are DILUTING IT.

@eastdakota

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@wattystrick @eastdakota @RainmakerCorp @Deer_Valley Very difficult to understand:

Snow is always precipitation
Precipitation is not always snow

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@DuncCarlson @eastdakota @RainmakerCorp @Deer_Valley Snow is always precipitation
Precipitation is not always snow

Not a complex concept.

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@SLeasca you might want to look this over and take a look at https://t.co/dVjs8Fda0X

https://t.co/TBU12blDmo

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@TheSkiMonster

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

@bikelakecity https://t.co/gCp6IHWgYp

[Aaron Lubeck @aaron_lubeck]

Walkable mixed use developments are possible, and people are building them. But those people have to fight:

the politicians
the planners
the engineers
the fire marshall
the bankers
the appraisers and
the neighbors

[Bill Ciraco @BCforPC]

You are confusing this with a philosophical or ideological debate. It is just simply about best practices bolstering trust in the system. Voting, while it is a right, is probably the greatest privilege we have in this country. Showing you idea to vote (with reasonable confidentiality safeguards) should be the least controversial item we discuss.