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Show WASATCH MOUNTAIN OLYMPICS Winter Games By Stephen C. Pace ' Utabns for a Debt Free Olympics Ithough we're already waist deep, this spring Utahns risk being drowned in the hoopla leading up to the award of the 2002 Games in Budapest next June. It may be a good time to reflect on just what the award of the games will likely do to you as a resident of the Wasatch Front. What the Olympics will do to your lifestyle If you’re one of us who uses the mountains for recreation, or who just likes to sneak an occasional peek at them when the smog lifts — you ought to be pretty nervous. Open space is already fast disappearing. The Olympics will put development into overdrive and the complete build-out/pave-over of the Wasatch will be at hand. The easy access to powder snow, we're so proud of that we make everybody advertise it on their license plates, will even more rapidly become a thing of the past. The environmental promises that the tree-huggers got out of the Bid Committee in the 1980s now seem to ting a bit hollow. Yeah, they promised not to jam 50,000 ski race fans into the Cottonwood Canyons — two of the snowiest, most avalanche-prone, least reliably accessed canyons in the world — but — What - No! Will They then they were never going to stage events there, in the first place. What they didn’t promise was not to pave Guardsman’s Pass to make Brighton/Solitude into a suburb of Park City. They didn’t promise anything about trailheads, or habitat preservations, Or open spaces, or picnic areas — the kind of mountain amenities people actually use. They didn’t say a word about the whole east side of the range. Will you get any recreational benefits? Well, if your idea of fun is sliding down a taxpayer guaranteed $40 plus million-to-build and $2 plus million-per-year-to-operate luge track, then you can only shout “hallelujah!” Ditto if you’re one of those few Utahns who is unable to stifle the urge to ski jump. Oh, and you'll also inherit one of those built-toOlympic-specifications, too-low-forsnow-cover Nordic ski tracks in Parleys Canyon. To be fair though, there’ll-also be a few new ice rinks in the valley that might not have been built anyway. What the Games will do to your sensibilities The Olympic boosters assured you that the Games will mote world peace, brotherhood, the dignity of the human spirit. all, the Olympians are amateur letes, aren’t they? The “youths” be inspired not to TIMES take drugs, Do 2002 versions and You? of Tonya and Nancy? Stephen C. Pace by the Bid/Organizing Committee, then if history is any guide, you'll clean up — taxpayer guaranteed (The Atlanta Olympics president drags down $631,000 a year — not to shabby!) But if you're just some poor walking-around schmuck, you'll have to just keep paying the Olympic levy and keep your fingers crossed that everything goes just right, in which case your Olympic goodie is that you won't lose anything and — get this for a bonus — you won't have to pay any new taxes to subsidize those lugers. What can you do? To your pocketbook If you’re peddling ski resort or Summit County real estate, then it’s hard to see how having your product schlepped have proand After athwill to we'll all be so swelled up with pride about lil’ ol’ Salt Lake, that we're like to bust our buttons. With the warm fuzzies, though, come some cold pricklies. Unless you’ve got $600 for a ticket or some tug with the IOC, your games will be mostly a TV show. (You might be able to afford standing room at Kilometer 18 of the crosscountry race, however.) On the bright side, if you enjoyed the spectacle of world-class fanny kissing for international visitors put on by our local leading citizens over the past few years, then you've got lots more treats in store. Freeway lanes will be dedicated, oops, designated for Olympic traffic, so in the interest of trans-global friendship, you'll be expected to get out of the way of the limousines that are late for Deer Valley cocktail parties. Who knows what will be the on a billion TV screens around the world could possibly hurt, especially if you’ve got those sappy taxpayers on the hook, if, as has happened every time in the past, Winter Olympics’ finances head south and the public sector gets left holding the bag. If you’re close to, or employed the If you think Utah taxpayers need Olympics like turkeys need Thanksgiving, Everybody For A Debt then should Free send a message. sign the Olympics Utahns petition, calling for a vote on prohibiting taxpayer underwriting of the Games on the 1996 ballot. If you live in Park City or Salt Lake City, sign our initia- tive for an up or down vote on the Olympic support in this fall’s municipal election. @ name, eS: Goof gre ab piace! Toni Bloomberg Park City local and all around fun person finds Fuggles tabulous! 363-7ooo PAGE |
