SL County Scrambles to Plug Recreation Funding Gap

None by KCPW

(KCPW News) Salt Lake County officials are calling it a "perfect storm." Major construction projects are underway all around the valley, construction materials costs have more than doubled and labor is in extremely short supply. County officials say they couldn't predict those factors when they budgeted recreation projects two years ago:

"When we started to look at what some of the costs were going to look like, it became apparent that we had a serious problem," says Erin Litvach, director of Salt Lake County Community Services.

Litvack oversees the Zoo Arts and Parks fund which was supposed to pay for numerous recreation projects. Rising construction costs now mean those projects will tally about 19-million dollars more than expected. Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon says he doesn't want to scale back park designs or drop any project from the list. Rather, Litvack says there is an extra 20-million dollars in tourism tax money that was intended for a parking lot at the South Towne Expo Center:

"When the ReAL soccer funding issue was resolved at the Legislature proposed HB38 taking a chunk of the TRT tax, we were left that 20 million to work with," says Litvack.

The Salt Lake County Council has yet to agree to the plan and will spend 90 minutes this morning scrutinizing the funding gap.

Last Thursday, Litvack says the Salt Lake County Council of Governments - which includes mayors of each city in the county - voted unanimously to support using the 20-million dollars to keep the recreation projects on track.

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