Hey! What's going on? What is it that we're supposed to have done that warrants the kind of hostility I'm reading about the planetarium? I saw the Rolly report in yesterday's paper, too. Rolly got his facts wrong. We had to discontinue giving SLAS free access to the planetarium long before we moved to Gateway. Part of the fallout of the Doug Short vs. Salt Lake County controversy in the late 90's was a decision by the Utah Supreme Court that is known as the "Short Rule." It forbids county agencies (such as the planetarium) from giving away goods or services to private groups (such as SLAS). We've had to discontinue allowing SLAS to use the planetarium for free in exactly the same way we've turned down other private groups who make similar requests. The only meeting space in the Clark Planetarium that can accommodate the membership of SLAS at its meetings is the Star Theater. Our one small classroom can only accommodate about 30 people comfortably. SLAS is welcome to meet in either space, but they'll have to pay the same rental rates for those spaces as anyone else. If I were SLAS, I'd object to paying those rental rates, too, but that doesn't mean the planetarium is being deliberately mean to SLAS. Yes, we are "more commercially oriented" now as the Clark Planetarium than we were as Hansen Planetarium, but that's because the only way our community gets to have a planetarium at all is for us to be entrepreneurial. Ask the County Council about their expectations for a financially self-sufficient planetarium if you doubt me. I'd love to see what areas of cooperation can be achieved with SLAS. We just have to work within the laws and county policies that govern the use of our facility. SLAS has goals and strategies for achieving it's goals that are, in general, the same as those of the planetarium. We both exist to encourage public awareness of the value of astronomy. I'd be more than happy to see how our respective organizations can be of service to each other. Seth Jarvis, Director Clark Planetarium sjarvis@slco.org