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Show f Saturday, October 3, 1998 The Pa Record A-7 Eye on the Games .i it' :r if.. Y a.. - t(. b ; I-.! Dj. if I! i; r t L by Frank Bell The Olympic Budget - shaking hands with an octopus i Last week the long awaited Olympic Budget Bud-get was released by the Organizing Commit- ; tee. Much like Christmas when there is no more Santa Claus, the anticipation of great ; things soon gave way to a sad rendition of "Is That All There Is?" Now that is riot intended .. to be overly critical, rather, we find ourselves in the middle of one of our frequently dis- . cussed expectations problems. We had hoped for lots of answers to local questions, and ; instead heard generic, but slickly presented . answers to more global questions. Instead of learning about how much money was earmarked ear-marked for municipal services and impacts, we heard how much money would be spent , building venues. .., Before going on, it is important to give credit where due. The Organizing Committee has put together a com-, com-, prehensive and complex budget consisting con-sisting of many volumes of information informa-tion outlining every conceivable Olympic function and service totaling nearly 1.5 billion dollars. They have also been very open in sharing revenue rev-enue and expenditure totals for broad based Olympic revenues (sponsors, 1 broadcasting, ticket sales etc.) and expenditures expendi-tures (transportation, venue design, arts and ; culture etc.). They have also discussed the 10 month process the organization went through to arrive at the figures. They have included our elected and appointed officials in small group meetings designed to explain the budget, bud-get, and they have answered questions to the extent they feel appropriate since, at this point, the budget has yet to be approved by the Board of Trustees. At least SLOC can now operate from their budget framework rather than the past practice of putting issues off until the budget is completed. That said, here is what is missing. First, local government had been assured since April that SLOC's budget consultants, Bech-tel Bech-tel Corp., would consult (isn't that what con sultants do?) with local governments during the budget process. That never happened. Bechtel consulted with Salt Lake City because of the Host City relationship, but to my knowledge, no other local governments were consulted. What does that mean? In short, SLOC does not know what we charge for use of city personnel, equipment, or public pub-lic facilities that are frequently provided to special events. When SLOC says they will pay for what they ask for "inside the fence", they do not know what that figure might be. More importantly for Park City, SLOC has not been receptive to learning about our vision of our participation in the Games as a unique Olympic environment. Much like Christmas when there is no more Santa Claus, the anticipation of great things soon gave way to a sad rendition of "Is That All There Is?" Frank Bell Second, despite SLOC's sharing of program pro-gram budget figures, we have not been provided, pro-vided, and probably will not be provided, specific spe-cific line items. Their reasoning, justifiable to a point, is that the budget is so comprehensive comprehen-sive that revealing specific line items could compromise the hundreds of public and private pri-vate contracts that have yet to be negotiated. In short, this is a budget of a private, nonprofit non-profit corporation that is soon to be involved in sensitive negotiations, thus many of the specifics of their budget are proprietary. For example, if they are going to negotiate service ser-vice agreements with venue cities like us, or contract with us for public facilities, why would they want to show us their intended expenditures for such purposes before we discuss dis-cuss the contracts? I guess they have a point, but I though we were all in this together. Neither of those two caveats are unexpected, unexpect-ed, just a little disappointing. Because of their restraint, SLOC is likely to take some criticism criti-cism from the media, interest groups, and public entities involved in the Games. However, How-ever, to their credit, they seem willing to entertain strategies designed to bring out budget information that might be publicly beneficial while protecting issues which are legitimately private or contractual. We will just have to see how that sorts out over the next few weeks and months. Beyond all this political wrestling, the budget bud-get summary as presented by SLOC is interesting. inter-esting. In upcoming columns we will see how the organization intends to spend 1.45 billion dollars, and perhaps, better yet, where they intend to raise the money. True to their word, they have presented a balanced, ground up budget that does not include an infusion of tax money -unless of course 140 million in federal fed-eral dollars for Olympic related transportation, 20 -25 million for federal security and public safety, and other federal contributions for arts and culture as well as the 59 million dollar state contribution (to be paid back) for the Winter Sports Park isn't tax money. It's all in the language, lan-guage, and I'll give you another language lesson les-son (see insideoutside the fence debates) in our OSL program - that's Olympics as a Second Sec-ond Language - next week. Former Park City Police Chief Frank Bell now serves as the city's Director of Olympic Planning and Special Events. The Park Record welcomes your questions about the city's role in the 2002 Winter Games. Please send questions to Eve on the Games, do The Park Record, P.O. Box 3688, Park City, Utah 84060 or e-mail: ncnoak-ermedianewsgroup.com. Relax with Silver Mountain Spa 5alt QLovJ anl Massage ' for Silver Mountain Spa at Prospector Athletic Club 2080 Gold Dust Lane 655-8484 SLOC hires Busser David Busser has been named Managing Director of Information Systems by the Salt Lake Organizing Organiz-ing Committee for the Olympic Winter Games of 2002 (SLOC), Philippe Verveer will join SLOC as a consultant in information technology. tech-nology. Busser, who will start on Oct. 12, will be responsible for the Informa-: Informa-: tion Systems that will time, score and, C3lcjjlate results of the athletic competition at the 2002 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Information will be distributed to the media and Olympic Family through the "Info 2002" system. SLOC is working with the International Interna-tional Olympic Committee and the International Federations to develop devel-op the Olympic Results and Information Infor-mation Service (ORIS). Information Systems requires multiple vendors, systems management manage-ment and integration, software application, hardware and Internet services along with timing and scoring scor-ing services which will be provided by Seiko. Data support systems are also part of SLOG's programs in finance, ticketing, accreditation, accommodations and transportation. transporta-tion. "The Organizing Committee has tremendous confidence in the skills of these individuals because of their vast experience in deliver ing effective information systems," said David R. Johnson, SLOC Senior Vice President of Games. "Providing real time results for the world news agencies and commentators commen-tators is a critical service of the Games. It will require working with multiple vendors to form a consortium that will meet the needs of the Games." Busser and Verveer will join the SLOC Information Systems team which already includes Elmdr Ben-it Ben-it es as Director of Games "Management "Manage-ment Systems, Alice Mahmood as Director of Timing and Results Systems, Frederic Wojciechowski as the Project Manager for Results, Mike Morris as Project Manager for Timing, and Roxanne Mash-burn Mash-burn as Systems Manager for Facility Facil-ity Management. "The International Olympic Committee is reviewing two proposals pro-posals for a systems integrator," Johnson said "The selection should be confirmed in the month of October. Octo-ber. Integration testing will begin during the 1999-2000 winter season and continue through the Games. The testing will ensure that the applications are linked successfully to all relevant functional areas." 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