One option for complaints about voting or residency is for people to take their objections to court; Roberts said that he knows of no cases pending in Utah courts about Alta voting.

Many of Alta residents don't live there year-round, Levitt said, but that doesn't make them lesser participants in city government, and it certainly doesn't dampen Levitt's enthusiasm for the place.

"Alta's different — it has a cachet that's hard to explain," Levitt said. He said it's beautiful, romantic, colorful and home to the world's best skiing. But, "it's an attitude, too. Alta is a part of Utah's history."

Levitt greets visitors at the Alta Lodge that his family owns and frequently suggests that visitors try other ski resorts before settling on Germania, Supreme and Sugarloaf.

"Find the place that suits you the best," he said. "If I don't try what's available, how do I know where I'll be? We want them to be comfortable — we've made so many friends that way. I'm hopeful from then on (that) this will always be your spiritual home."

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Levitt has lived in North Carolina, California and Michigan. He fell in love with Alta during a ski vacation in 1954, moved his family there two years later, and purchased the Alta Lodge for about $100,000. His family still owns the hotel, and several of Levitt's children have helped run it over the years.

As the town's president in the early 1970s, he watched road development, home construction, sewer and water pipe laying, and ski resort improvements. Alta ski resort and town have resisted strenuous development that other ski resorts have encouraged — there has been limited housing construction, no major condominium or apartment complexes and no frills at the resort. The resort and the town focus on the snow, and Levitt likes it that way.

"There's got to be some places where it doesn't develop," he said. Other ski resorts have become "a real estate thing and not a ski area, where skiing is an afterthought. This is not Alta. (Visitors) are so hungry for a place like this, with no traffic, with no hype, with no lines for food, with no condominium pitches. They say, 'I've been looking for this all my life.' We've got to have one small place like this in one small canyon. Can't they leave it alone?"

Retaining Alta's environment and image as a skiers-only haunt has always been Levitt's goal, said Toby Levitt, one of his sons.

"He didn't take it and use that love to make a fortune, which he could have," Toby Levitt said. "He spent his life trying to preserve that for other people. His life was never about money — it was about the joy of life, and that is so rare nowadays."

Respect for Bill Levitt's work is widespread among his peers — "the number of years he has served as mayor is just beyond belief," Murray Mayor Dan Snarr said — but it's taken a while to get back to him.

"You're the recipient of all the complaints, and you start feeling like, 'gee, does everybody hate me?' ' Levitt said. "Now that I'm not running, everyone says how much they liked me."

Tom Pollard ran unopposed and will take over the post in early January. He has started attending intergovernmental meetings and meeting Levitt's many contacts to prepare for the switch.

"I'm a little nervous about doing it all on my own and being the one that's the point man on the shots," Pollard said. "I'm still looking to Bill for advice. He's not going to go away."

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E-mail: kswinyard@desnews.com