Should taxpayers help fund a possible MLB stadium in Salt Lake City?
For what could be a billion-dollar project, the question of how public funds would be utilized to build a possible Major League Baseball stadium in Salt Lake City arises.
Utah government officials seem to disapprove of diverting taxpayer dollars directly to build a ballpark, but have acknowledged the possibility of other funding methods such as tax increment financing or a public-private partnership.
But how do Utahns feel about it? A new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll found Utahns almost evenly split on the idea, with 47% supporting the use of tax dollars and 50% opposing.
Supporters of bringing an MLB team to Salt Lake City point to Truist Park in Atlanta and the adjacent The Battery Atlanta, a mixed-use development and entertainment district, as the blueprint for what they envision in Utah.
In Atlanta, the sixth largest professional sports market in the country, public funding covered 45% of the initial cost for the Braves stadium that opened in 2017. Salt Lake City is the 29th largest market, per Nielsen television ratings.
Read more about a possible Major League Baseball stadium.
Utah's record-breaking snowpack from the past winter season has undoubtedly helped the drought-stricken state, most notably by raising the Great Salt Lake's water levels, but the wet winter will not necessarily protect against wildfires.
During a press conference on Monday featuring a presentation forecasting Utah’s wildfire season, Gov. Spencer Cox said that despite all the snowpack, rainstorms and water, May has been drier than average.
“All of this beautiful greenery that you see — it will be a fire danger before it’s not green,” Cox said.
“The bad part is … between the grass, the weeds and the brush, there is a lot of it,” he said. “Our big concern is … when we have wet winters, we sometimes can get very busy fire seasons, especially during the latter half of the fire season.”
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