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Show Warmth, energy keynote Parkites' All-America speech . Editor's note; , ; The following is d first-hand account ac-count of the All-America Cities presentation that was given by a delegation of Park City residents to . a panel of judges last weekend in Cincinnati '"'' 'v: v'l -V'' i-l Cv ' ft was written by Teri Gomes,, whe' i ' helped to write theipeccrjtVBt ta? Sunday before the Citizens Forum , on Self-Government of the National Municipal League. For the past 35 years, the forum has given the All-America Cities award to a handful of cities annually. annual-ly. Park City is among 20 finalists pared from nearly 100 applicants for this year's award. by TERI GOMES Record contributing writer Parkites are an intensely competitive com-petitive lot, so I hesitate to say this. But, it almost doesn't matter if we don't win the award for one of the best All-America Cities. Don't get me wrong. I think we have a tremendous shot at bringing home the gold on this. But even if we don't, we have reinforced for hundreds hun-dreds of people something we can sometimes get rather smug about. Park City is an unusual blend of hard-working, sensitive, creative and energetic people who pull together on every conceivable front to improve their quality of life. As one of the delegates who went to Cincinnati, Ohio, for the presentation presenta-tion and booth show, I was able to witness a group of dedicated people pulling together as a unique team. It didn't matter if we were putting pictures up in the booth or rehearsing rehears-ing the speech or practicing test questions the judges might ask: Everyone contributed, all the time; It probably comes as little sur-' sur-' prise, but our style and flair during the conference on self-government was entirely different from that of ' any other town. First,' the facts. We were the tmaHest ;4owrr 7 represented the;; smallest by nearly 12,000 people. The next-smallest was Grant's Pass, Ore., with a population of more than 15,000. The largest finalist was Cleveland, Ohio, which listed its population at more than 575,000. Our delegation size of 13 turned out to be on the low-to-average side. The smallest delegation was Milanli Town, Hawaii, which sent one person. per-son. The largest delegation was Jackson, Mich., which had a formal delegation of 14 but they bussed in another 47 people who just wanted to hear their city's presentation. In terms of booths, keep in mind , this was not meant to be a glossy trade show, but a representation in some graphic way of the projects each town was nominated for. Our rough-hewn, timbered booth, built in Lincoln-log style and driven to Cincinnati Cin-cinnati by city employee Mike Moore to be rebuilt inside the hotel, was clearly the most unusual booth. It drew the most comments, like, "How did you ever get all that . lumber here?" To which talented booth designer Jack Turner replied, "We had to buy a whole extra seat for it on the plane." On the walls of our booth hung color col-or anri black-and-white photographs depicting the International Winter Special Olympics Games, the voted Cities to A9 Cqpratinmnmeall ffiromm . . . Cities from A1 leeway for the schools and the cleanup clean-up effort at Prospector Square, In addition, there were a few old mine shots, some pictures of Brent. Bloomenthal the 5-year-old cancer victim helped by Parkites and a few photos of children and balloons. It was extremely simple and ex- tremely effective. We gave out copies of the special tabloid section of the Park Record and we distributed U.S. Ski Team pins, which had been donated. Inside the booth we wore city-issue turtlenecks with the town's logo. That is in direct contrast with, say, Jackson, which had helium balloons to pass out and chocolates and cheesecake and grape juice. Lynchburg, Va., had silk-screened bags and apples and onions. Buena Park, Calif., had big plastic shopping shopp-ing sacks and Knotts Berry Farm jams. At least two communities had videotapes made especially for their booths and in some cases the mayor and entire city councils showed up for their communities. But it was our understanding that wasn't what this competition was all about it was about citizens working with government to solve their own i problems. On Saturday afternoon, the judges were introduced and a number of us who weren't manning the booth went in to watch other presenters. We noticed right away the style of the other cities was very academic and, in some cases, downright slick with multimedia presentations. In sonie cases, just one presenter would speak for the 10-minute period. In other cases, as many as six speakers shared the time. I We were impressed and, in fact, ' somewhat intimidated at first, by the scope of problems presented. Ur- . ban renewal, race relations and serious drug and alcohol problems were addressed by communities of 50,000 and up. And in the case of Cleveland, the town even survived bankruptcy. We listened intently to the questions ques-tions asked of the presenters by the judges tough questions that revolved revolv-ed around, not just their 10-minute speech, but the information presented in the application. We went back to our large room and briefed everyone again and again and again. We tossed sample questions ques-tions at all members of the delegation delega-tion and we took turns thinking of the toughest questions we could. When the time finally came Sunday Sun-day afternoon for our speech, we were ready. Presenters Al Horrigan, Jim Santy and Joan Peets had taken seriously their roles in representing our town. They knew their stuff, The slide show was simple and small, just two dozen slides in 10 minutes to give the judges a little flavor of the topics. The judges were captivated in the first few seconds and chuckled at the Mark Twain reference we threw in. From then on, they did something we had not witnessed during any other presentation: They listened, instead of reading along with their copies of the speech. When our presenters finished, the head judge made the only personal comment we heard him make to any city's delegation. "Thank you," he said. "We're not used to hearing such heartrending speeches." ,f : , At that moment, Joan Peets introduced in-troduced city manager Arlene Lo-ble, Lo-ble, who was to field the judges' questions to other members of the group. But all the questions were directed to her. Two questions dealt with employee housing and how we kept workers living in the town. Two questions dealt with our battle with the Environmental Protection Agen-1 cy and the citizen group involved, ; and one question was about economic development. Loble answered all the questions accurately accurate-ly and with style. S-fi We won't know until spring if the judges thought our presentation was as warm and sincere as it truly was and if our projects and problems are worthy of their award. But we do know it helped to reinforce our own sense of pride in our town. - Members of the jury of the All-America All-America Cities award will travel unannounced to Park City, in December or January. Final selec-tion selec-tion of the three to seven winners will be announced in the spring. |