Alta's first, only mayor to quit Date: Sunday, August 21 @ 22:12:34 Topic Politics End of a era: The nine-term guardian kept most development out of the alpine community ALTA - Perched at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon, this community boasts a veritable gold mine. The fortune: tagging the hundreds - on good days, thousands - of daily visitors with an access fee. It would be easy, too. At the end of State Route 210, just before the asphalt gives way to dirt, Alta has a booth where town employees dole out information on trails, the environment and rules. But Bill Levitt won't let them collect any cash. For decades, Levitt's philosophy - that Alta and the Albion Basin are for the public and should be left open and free with no further development - has been this resort community's mantra. Come January, after 34 years as Alta's first and only mayor, Levitt won't be there to say no to fees and no to development. Levitt sent shock waves through Utah political circles last week when he opted not to seek a 10th term. "It's time," says the 88-year-old great-grandfather. "Maybe I should spend more time with my family. Maybe I can even go skiing." The end of Levitt's political run is a significant development to more than the 366 souls living 4,000 feet above the Salt Lake Valley. "It really is an end of an era," says Lisa Smith, executive director of Save Our Canyons. "In a lot a ways, Bill Levitt is Alta." Through the years, he has played a substantial role in politics, public safety, preservation, water quality - even where jetliners fly. "Think of it, the mayor of the smallest town in Salt Lake County is the most influential," says Tom Dolan, the 12-year mayor of Sandy, Utah's fourth-largest city. "You listen when he talks." Levitt isn't without critics. The Albion Basin policy has led the town into long court battles over development. Levitt's detractors call the policy hypocritical, pointing out that the mayor himself lives on a hillside along the dirt road to the basin. Political power: In the early 1970s, Ed Blaney, executive secretary of the Salt Lake County Council of Governments (COG), was stumped about why Levitt - this small-town mayor - was spending hours upon hours serving on inter-government groups like COG and the Utah League of Cities and Towns. Blaney says it took a couple of years before he realized Levitt didn't have an angle. "He just wanted to do public service." Levitt has led some of Utah's most influential bodies, including COG, the league and the Wasatch Front Regional Council. Despite his small-town constituency, he was an ally of big cities. "It's going to be a great loss to Salt Lake City," says LeRoy Hooton, the capital's public-utilities director. Levitt first set foot - actually it was a ski - in Alta during a Thanksgiving holiday trip in 1954. "I came here and learned to ski," he recalls. "We fell in love with it." Within two years, Levitt had given up the East Coast and moved his family from Manhattan to Alta. By 1959, he had purchased the then-20-year-old Alta Lodge. Since then, the lodge has expanded from 16 rooms to 50 and remains in his family's name. Alta incorporated in 1970, largely to gain additional federal dollars to build a sewer line linking the town to the Salt Lake Valley's water system. Levitt was appointed the town's president. "Mayor" replaced that moniker in 1972 when Levitt convinced then-Gov. Cal Rampton that he needed the new title so the marriages he had been performing would be legal. His salary: $1 a year. (The town has added a $75 per diem for attendance at Town Council meetings.) For 17 years, the town overlooked his paycheck until one day an employee handed him 17 checks for $1 each. Water war: Alta has changed - the population has grown from 60 residents to 366 - over Levitt's tenure. But the Albion Basin hasn't. That stagnation is the root of the anti-Levitt criticism. The land is zoned with three subdivisions, all created before Alta incorporated. Twenty-one cabins were built in the 1960s but nothing has come since. "We owe it to the people of this state to keep one place protected from mindless development," Levitt says. That has spawned lawsuits and prompted accusations that Levitt looks out for select property owners. The basin has 36 property owners, and some of them have wanted to build for decades. Little wonder why. One 0.65-acre parcel is worth $36,000; another is valued at $409,000. The difference? The latter has a cabin. In today's lofty resort real-estate market, land values could top $1 million for a basin lot. Water is stopping that construction. Salt Lake City, which controls the water in Alta, refuses to send a sewer and water lines to the basin in order to protect the watershed. But critics say septic tanks are leaking in the basin and out-of-use mines are contaminating the so-called pristine water supply. Water has allowed Levitt to "control rampant development that has come to every other ski resort," says Gale Dick, president of Save Our Canyons. "It's still a place for skiing, not a place for night life." The water fight has reached the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with Alta. But the battle isn't over. Landowners took to court a request to see every public record ever produced by the town - and won. Rather than scare off the longtime mayor, though, the water war kept him around. "It made me stay on longer," he says. "I don't walk away from a stupid fight." Until now. Done and done: Levitt, who has suffered three heart attacks, says he is stepping aside because he has accomplished what he set out to do. And he apparently has anointed a successor. The only candidate to file for mayor was Levitt ally Tom Pollard, a longtime Alta Town Council member. "His passion for the job and the community is something I would hope to match," Pollard says. Levitt hopes to do more skiing, golfing and relaxing at his second home in Moab. Will he vanish from Utah's public landscape? "I keep saying I will. But I know damn well I can't. That phone will ring." By Jacob Santini The Salt Lake Tribune http://www.sltrib.com/ci_2960210 This article comes from Infobytes.com http://www.infobytes.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.infobytes.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=40