The Newspaper from Park City, Utah • 1

C3 The FTDs were flying Saturday as White Pine unveiled a new handicap system. Story by Nan Chalat. BltoB8 If you missed the U.S. Film and Video Festival, take a vicarious look through the eyes of Rick Brough and Jeff Howrey. Newspaper I Vol.

VIII, No. 19 Thursday, January 27, 1983 Protest films wie top laoiniors at festival li if. by Rick Brough "Purple Haze," a drama on the tumultous summer of 1968, and "Dark Circle," a documentary indictment of atomic power, won top honors at the 1983 U.S. Film and Video Festival. The awards were announced at a ceremony last Saturday night which climaxed the seven-day festival in Park City.

"Purple Haze," directed by David Burton Morris, deals with two confused students trying to deal with the era of student protest. It took first prize in the dramatic category of the independent film competition, beating out 11 other films. Jury Prizes were also awarded to "Chan is Missing," directed by Wayne Wang, and "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez," directed by Robert Young, Honorable mentions also went to the films "Dream directed by Ed Harker, and "Mission Directed by Robert Jones. "Dark Circle" was the independent documentary winner among 14 films. Four runner-ups were also named.

Two films were named in a social documentary category: Josh Hannig's "Coming of Age" about the interpersonal confrontations of a melting-pot group of teens at a summer camp; and "Fire on the Water," Robert Hillman's film on the tense competition in the Gulf Coast areas between immigrant Vietnamese fishermen and native Texans. In a performance documentary slot, awards went to George Nierenberg's "Say Amen, Somebody," about gospel singing; and "Moses Pendleton Presents Moses Pendleton," a portrait by Robert Elstrom of the noted American choreographer. (Pendleton himself closed the ceremony at the Egyptian Theatre, by performing a "ski dance" with colleague Jamie Hamilton.) The 1983 Festival Medallion went to the late Verna Fields, a production executive, film editor and advisor to the Utah festival. The festival included appearances by such prominent names as director Sydney Pollack; TV actress Katherine Helmond; and independent film direc- 250 Three Sections, 32 Pages is being called, would link Park City, Brighton, Solitude, Alta and Snowbird with a series of towers and an overhead cable. Individual 30-passenger vehicles, each powered by a conventional gasoline engine and run by a trained operator, would shuttle back and forth along the cable.

According to Theobald, each vehicle would travel about 15 to 20 miles per hour, and could cover the route between Park City and Snowbird in about 40 minutes. In contrast to conventional trams, Skytram cars can change direction, switch onto sidings, and travel at variable speeds, he said. "Imagine it as a railroad in the sky." Before concrete plans for the Utah Connection are developed, Theobald said, studies must be done to determine the physical impact and the potential ridership. "I think those are two very important questions For a system to pay for itself, he said, it would need to attract at least 250,000 passengers a year (assuming a $15 round-trip ticket from Park City to Snowbird). Theobald stressed that the Skytram system would not compete with, but rather complement ski resort facilities.

Once a Skytram rider arrived at his destination, he would still need to buy a conventional lift ticket. He also pointed out one major difference between the Skytram plan and the much-publicized Utah Interconnect concept, which involves linking the major Wasatch ski resorts using chairlifts. Skytram would be a year-round tourist attraction, he said, not just a seasonal service for skiers. Under the best possible circumstances, Theobald said, the first phase of the Skytram system could be built in as little as 18 months. "If everyone agreed to it at the same time, the entire system could be built in three years.

Realistically, I'm looking at three to five years for the system to be in operation." terminal as it might look on Park Avenue next to a replica of the Coalition Building. mountain tram proposed tor Robert Young. (See profiles below.) Festival official Dick Good said preliminary estimations indicated that the event was very successful financially. "In overall dollars, we brought in about what we did last year." This year's festival was planned to wind up in the black. It should generate no new debts.

Goode said that 1983 revenues should enable the festival to make substantial payments on old bills. "I doubt that it was enough to pay off 100 percent of them. Barring surprises, we should have a final accounting by this time next week," he said. Goode is a member of the festival's board of directors, and chairman of its finance committee. Rogert Ebert, the newspaper and television critic, served as emcee for the awards, besides being a judge for the dramatic films.

He told the audience that his co-jurist, "Deseret News" film critic Christopher Hicks, was not present that night because his wife had just given birth. The third dramatic-film judge was Lory Smith, the film coordinator and program director for the festival. The documentary awards were presented by jurist Glenn Silber, who called the competing films, "the single best collection of documentaries I've ever seen." Choosing a winner was difficult, he said. "It's like comparing apples and oranges." The healthy competition, he said proved that documentary films were alive and the commitment for them was strong. "At least two films here took a period over five years to do," he said.

Silber himself has won documentary awards two years in a row at past festivals for "War at Home" in 1981 and "El Salvador: Another Vietnam" in 1982. His fellow judge, he said, was a legend Willard Van Dyke, a pioneering documentary-maker in the 1930's. Responded Van Dyke, "I'm glad to be a legend, but I'm glad to be living too." Festival to A3 by point of sale but by population. And they've lobbied for a bill to make that happen. According to Mayor Jack Green, allocating the local option sales tax by population would reduce Park City's revenues from about $650,000 a year to about $38,000.

So he has resisted all efforts to change the formula. But he can also see the writing on the wall. Two years ago a bill to change the formula was passed by the Utah Legislature before being vetoed by Gov. Scott Matheson. And the issue shows no sign of going away.

HB 13, the current effort to resolve the sales tax debate, is designed to placate both sides. It calls for a gradual change in the formula, over a five-year period, so by 1988 the local option tax would be distributed 50 percent by population and 50 percent by point of sale. What appeals to Park City is the "hold harmless" provision in the bill which stipulates that no community will receive less sales tax revenue than it does now. So, while Park City would Compromise sales tax plain gets cool reception in committee Artist's rendering shows tram Unique You've heard of the schemes before. As the crow flies, Park City, Brighton, Solitude, Alta and Snowbird are all within seven or eight miles of each other.

So why not build a tram and join them all together in one huge system? By some estimates, these stories have been floating around for 30 years. One version surfaced in the late 1970s when a government-funded study looked at the feasibility of running a tram through Wasatch Mountain State Park. not gain from HB 13, it wouldn't lose either. But here's the catch: to pay for the hold harmless provision, HB 13 calls for the local option sales tax to be increased from 3A to one percent. According to Representative Glen Brown, that percent hike would take about $25 million a year out of the pockets of Utah residents and visitors.

"I have a lot of respect for the people who struck the compromise," Brown told the Park City Newspaper. "But I just question whether it was the right time to impose a sales tax increase on the people." On Jan. 19 HB 13 came up for discussion in the House Committee for Revenue and Taxation. It was endorsed by the League of Cities and Towns, but opposed by the Utah Taxpayers' Association and a coalition of mining interests. By a 9-8 vote, members voted not to report the bill out of committee.

One of the "no" votes came from Brown. Another came from Committee Chairman C. Hardy Redd. To date, the bottom line has remained the same: it's too expensive. But now, an Arizona entrepreneur is touting a system which he says could be built at a fraction of the cost of the others.

Where Sky Tram differs from its predecessors, says company founder Bud Brown, is in its method of propulsion. Conventional tram designs use a system of cars attached to a moving cable. The cable is driven by a huge engine, and requires a complex According to City Councilwoman Helen Alvarez, who witnessed the committee vote, Redd suggested that cities raise property taxes rather than ask for a sales tax increase, a suggestion that local officials reject. "We feel that the sales tax is a fairer tax in Park City than the property tax," she explained. 1 1 spite of last week's negative vote, HB 13 is not dead, Brown pointed out.

He said it is being amended and is scheduled for discussion by the committee again today. Should HB 13 be defeated, a greater evil, from Park City's perspective, waits in the wings. Republican Senator Paul Rogers of Orem is drafting a bill calling for redistribution by population without the hold harmless provision. However, Brown doubts that Rogers' bill would pass. "When it gets right down to raw numbers, the have nots (those calling for redistribution by population) have got the upper hand.

But I don't think they've got enough strength I don't think they're that organized yet." system of pulleys, gears and bull-wheels. In Skytram. by comparison, the only moving components are the cars themselves. Each car is equipped with its own engine and runs on a stationary cable, eliminating the need for a mass of moving parts. Last week, Brown and Park City resident Bob Theobald held a meeting with Salt Lake officials and ski area representatives to explain the system.

Theobald also met later with the Park City Newspaper. Theobald, a world-class freestyle skier in the early 1970s and a long-time Utah resident, is no stranger to the tram idea. "I've heard all the stories," he said. "When I first moved to Alta in 1966, this concept was being talked about." What made a believer out of Theobald were Brown's cost projections. He estimates that Skytram would run about $25 or $30 million, versus as much as $100 million for a conventional system Theobald said he knows of no other system in the world that uses self-propelled tram cars.

However, that's not to say that it's only a figment of Brown's fertile imagination. In the late 1960s, Theobald said, Brown built a tram using self-propelled cars near Custer, South Dakota. It ran for about three years, he said, before being purchased and dismantled by a private developer in Colorado who planned to use it at the 1976 Winter Olympics. However, the Olympics went to Innsbruck and the equipment was later destroyed in a fire. In the early 1970s, Theobald said, a second system was built and delivered to Sugar Mountain in Banner Elk, North Carolina.

However, the resort owner went bankrupt and the system was never installed. "The technology used 10 years ago, of course, will be incorporated into this (Utah system), but it will be much more sophisticated," he said. The Utah Connection, as the proposal by David Hampshire Park City officials see House Bill (HB) 13 as a way to avoid economic catastrophe. So they're lobbying for it. But State Representative Glen Brown sees HB 13 as a tax increase.

So he voted against it when it came up in committee last week. As proposed by G. LaMont Richards, a Republican legislator from Salt Lake City, HB 13 would resolve the annual debate in the Utah Legislature over the redistribution of the local option sales tax. Of the retail sales tax collected by the state, of one percent is now returned to those communities where the sales originated. Under this system, Park City picks up about $650,000 a year from the so-called local option sales tax.

While this arrangement suits Park City just fine, over the years it has brought howls of protest from communities which have large populations but no substantial retail sales districts. These areas maintain that the local option sales tax should be allocated not.