Seems as though Utah County commissioners are bent on keeping the likes of Goshen, Santaquin, Elberta and Genola, which have reportedly been wooed by Juab County officials. Below are some annexation alternatives Juab County might want to consider:
TOP 10 POSSIBILITIES FOR ANNEXATION BY JUAB COUNTY:10. The Utah County side of Point of the Mountain - especially on snowy, foggy, windy or rainy days.
9. The airspace above Geneva.
8. All intersections along University Parkway.
7. The Brooklyn Bridge.
6. Seven Peaks ski area and all of its amenities.
5. Millard County.
4. The Heber Creeper.
3. Signetics - sometime after the end of the year.
2. Thistle.
1. Academy Square
GUEST LIST: Today's Top 10 guest list comes from Paul Richards, director of public communications at Brigham Young University. Richards is retiring next month after two decades of employment with BYU, including 13 years as BYU's top spokesman. Here's his Top 10 list - in notes-and-quotes form and in no real order of importance - of memorable events and issues during his tenure at BYU.
- Arts thefts, investigation and recovery: "It was very gratifying to see the administration take an aggressive stance and publicize information about that and recover as much as we could. As a result, BYU became recognized among law enforcement agencies as a leader in tracking stolen works of art. And contrary to what people said - that it would dampen people's desires to donate to BYU - just the opposite happened."
- 1984 NCAA football championship: "Prior to that, other people would be calling and wanting to know where BYU and Provo are. After that, I never had to do that again - people would say, `Oh, yeah, I know where BYU is.' "
- Building boom: "There was a feeling that Pres. (Ernest L.) Wilkinson had built the campus and now the attention would be turned to academics. While the university has advanced academically - as was President (Dallin H.) Oak's desire; he initiated that - it has not stopped growing physically."
Richards' list of on-campus construction quickly becomes comprehensive - the Tanner, Clyde, Harmon, Widtsoe, Crabtree, and Clark buildings; Kimball Tower; Marriott Center, Conference Center; Carillon Tower, Fine Arts and Bean museums and expansions or renovations of Cougar Stadium, Lee Library, Wilkinson Center and the Maeser, Grant and Brimhall buildings are the most prominent of the list.
- Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies: "When we received international publicity about the protest at the Wailing Wall against the center, I had the opportunity to go over there with Pres. (Jeffrey R.) Holland and work with the media in Israel and the international media stationed there. We felt good about the success there, filling an information vacuum . . . . the attitude changed dramatically, at least in the media, over the next four to five months."
- Centennial celebration: Some of the events that Richards remembers best - the dedication of the Centennial Carillon Tower and the academic march - complete with antique cars and banner-carrying college representatives - from the lower campus to the new campus.
- Women at the `Y': Richards cites changes in titles, progress with affirmative action and the abolishment of the Miss BYU contest. "As I look back in contrast, things have improved - I just hope they continue to improve."
- "Only at BYU": File these topics under "bizarre," which means they grabbed media attention across the nation - the announcement of cockroaches in the Cougareat cafeteria; the air-brushed shaving of Karl Maeser's beard for the cover of a student directory; a midnight pillow fight among dorm residents; the banned sales of Boy George albums and tapes in the BYU Bookstore; the student who circumvented the old policy of no slacks allowed in the testing center by removing her pants and wearing a long overcoat while taking a test; . . . and the list goes on and on.
"The thing that never ceases to amaze me is how little effort it takes to get national headlines (on such stories) and how hard it is to get national attention on things such as cancer research or rain-forest research - all those things that take a lot of work and get little attention," Richards said.
- Seventh East Press: After the early 1980s off-campus student newspaper published articles critical of the LDS Church, which sponsors BYU, university officials decided they would no longer allow it to be sold or distributed on campus. According to Richards, they decided the university "didn't need to be a forum for a medium that would be critical" of its sponsor and that the newspaper could be "truly free (from censorship) and with more credibility" if it was distributed off-campus.
- Admissions: BYU has gone from the days when Wilkinson would go out and recruit potential students to today's strict limitations on admissions. "We still recruit quality students, but we just don't have the spaces to admit everybody," Richards said, adding that the turning away of applicants means "we've created enemies all over the country."
- Attention to standards: Something considered a minor incident at another university - such as misdemeanor criminal acts involving an athlete - brings attention to BYU. "Because BYU is a church school, what its standards are and what is happening tend to be a magnet for attention."
(Scott Taylor, Provo, is a Deseret News assistant city editor and a former assistant bureau chief of the newspaper's Utah County Bureau. His columns for 1992 are based on Top 10 lists.)