Winning the World Leadership Award costs 3,000 pounds this year

As it clearly states on the entry form for 2006, if you get shortlisted then you have to pay a fee of 3,000 quid to cover the judges' expenses to come and pick between the three shortlisted cities. It also looks like the awards have a self-nomination process.

So two questions: first, did short-listed cities have to pay the fee last year when SLC won? second, if so, who paid it?

I don't want to mitigate Mayer Anderson's award too much, but I am skeptical of awards that (1) require a fee to win (2) use self-nomination. This sounds to me like the "join the Who's Who list" ads that one used to get coming out of High School. You pay a fee and get yourself listed in a book with other people who paid the fee. In this case, three cities pay the fee and one gets to be listed in the book.

Still, this is a non-trivial award in which the city of Salt Lake City (to use the IOC phrasing in honor of the Olympics this week) beat at least _2_ other cities to win, and maybe more cities applied, but the numbers aren't available.