Five members of the Salt Lake City Council plan to travel at taxpayers' expense to Budapest, Hungary, next June to see whether Utah wins the bid for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.
The tab for the nine-day trip may total as much as $27,500, or $5,500 per council member.Council members Sam Souvall and Stuart Reid have declined to go.
When asked to explain his decision not to travel to Budapest, Reid would only say that "with the number of council members who are planning to attend, that's adequate representation, and the cost of one more council member is probably not justified."
Souvall was equally succinct in his explanation.
"I think it's important there be a contingent there," Souvall said. But, "it (the Winter Games) is something I don't choose to actively support."
Other council members see it as their duty to represent Salt Lake City in Budapest.
"I think it's important for the legislative branch of government to be there representing Salt Lake City along with the administrative branch, which is the mayor," said council Chairman Alan Hardman. "To show official public support, that's where we need to be."
The city set aside $50,000 in its 1994-95 budget to cover the travel expenses. Spouses or others who travel with the council members must pay their own way.
Mayor Deedee Corradini said she will attend the bid announcement as a guest of the Salt Lake City bid committee, which will pick up her expenses. No one else from the administration or the mayor's office will accompany her.
A Salt Lake Olympic Bid Committee official said hundreds of copies of the invitation to be in Budapest for the announcement were mailed to elected officials and other bid supporters.
"We sent it to anyone who's had any involvement at all with the bid, inviting them to come," the bid committee's Craig Peterson said.
The invitation letter details the travel arrangements being made and requests a $1,000 deposit on the estimated total per-person cost of $5,500. The plans are expected to be finalized by the end of the year.
The bid committee hasn't heard from any invitees, despite an Oct. 17 response deadline included in the letters.
Peterson said he didn't expect the city's decision to have taxpayers pick up the cost to hurt the bid. "I don't think it impacts the bid one way or the other. We'd love to have them come," he said.
Salt Lake City's bid for the 2002 Winter Games, expected to cost more than $6 million, is funded entirely by private donations. About $400,000 more needs to be raised before Budapest, Peterson said.
He said the bid committee hasn't decided yet how much it can afford to help with travel costs, even for its own staff.
When Salt Lake City competed for the bid in 1991, former Mayor Palmer DePaulis traveled to Birmingham, England, with his chief of staff and two administrative aides. The trip cost $15,537. About half the expense was paid with public money; the rest came from donated funds.
All seven members of the City Council traveled to Birmingham in 1991. The trip cost $18,200.
Councilman Tom Godfrey, who went on the Birmingham junket, said the presence of the city's elected officials "seemed very important to our bid people." Bid committee members took every opportunity to introduce the council members to the voting delegates of the International Olympic Committee, Godfrey said.
Corradini thinks a show of support from natives of the bid city can be crucial in the final days leading to the announcement of the host for the Winter Games.
"There is no question that community support makes a difference and having people show up from the city," Corradini said.
In Birmingham, she said, "Every time you turned around there was someone from Nagano (Japan). I heard IOC members saying, `They're trying so hard - how can we not give it to them.' "