Or maybe you've piloted a paper plane in Discovery Gateway's wind tunnel, spent a wintry evening watching "A Christmas Carol" at Hale Centre Theatre or sported your Sunday best to hear Beethoven's Ninth at a Utah Symphony concert.

Salt Lake County caters to hundreds of thousands of arts and entertainment lovers. And you help pay for it all. But you might not have an equal say in how those venues spend your tax dollars. That depends on where you live.

East of Interstate 15, your voice resonates. West of there, it whispers.

A Salt Lake Tribune examination of tax-supported cultural attractions revealed that only 13 board members out of 238 - barely 5 percent - live west of I-15. Even out-of-county residents, at almost 20 percent, are better represented while east-siders make up more than two-thirds of the appointments.

That gap drops the jaws - and raises the ire - of some county leaders.

"If there is an expectation that the west side pays," says Republican Michael Jensen, the only county councilman to live west of I-15, "the west side should have representation."

Clearly, it doesn't.

West-siders don't have a single voice on the Utah Symphony/Utah Opera board. Or on the Clark Planetarium board. Or on the Pioneer Theatre board. Or on the Discovery Gateway board. Or on the Wheeler Farm board.

Hogle Zoo's board has one west-sider and the Center for the Arts two.

While the arts community insists that - out of pure self-interest - it aggressively pursues programs and ticket sales throughout the county, critics say the absence of west-side leaders could leave some audiences underserved.

Who better knows what west-siders want, Jensen asks, than west-siders? And who better knows what west-siders need (in terms of services) than west-siders?

"We need to be way more proactive in trying to get more west-side members," Democratic County Councilman Randy Horiuchi says. "Their tax dollars are going to these institutions like everyone else's. This is what the Boston Tea Party was all about."

Money talks: But is it really a taxation-without-representa- tion argument? While gender, age and ethnic diversity may count for a lot, should nonprofit arts organizations also be accountable for where their board members live just because they receive public funding?

Unlike the county-owned Clark Planetarium, Wheeler Farm, Center for the Arts and Equestrian Center, nonprofit attractions such as the children's museum or Pioneer Theatre pick their own boards and manage their own budgets.

Folks win spots on these boards primarily for one reason: They can raise money.

Chris Lino, managing director of Pioneer Theatre, says nonprofits rely on board members for financial survival. Taxes aren't enough. They need people with contacts in the fundraising world; people with legal, financial and managerial expertise; and even people who have enough money to cut a check themselves if needed.

Many of these people, Lino says, hail from the traditionally more moneyed, more corporate east side.

"If the west side of the valley was the home for all of the county's corporations, you would see just the reverse: All of our board members would be from the west side," he says. "It is not our intent to be exclusionary."

But while nonprofits are quick to point to a socioeconomic defense for their geographic disparity, consider this: South Jordan had the highest median household income ($75,433) of any city in the county, according to the 2000 Census. Riverton, Herriman and West Jordan also exceeded the countywide median.

Yet the southwest corner has just six people on arts and entertainment boards - less than 3 percent of the total.

"I just don't buy that you can't find residents on the west side," Jensen says, "who have the financial capability and resources to sit on boards and make contributions to those boards."

Zoo reaches out: Utah's Hogle Zoo stretched across the interstate this year to fill a vacancy on its governing board. Its recruit: former Taylorsville Mayor Janice Auger.

The straight-talking politico and zoo-going grandma represents Hogle's newly hatched campaign to geographically diversify a board that, for decades, clustered in the county's northeast neighborhoods.

Board President James Hogle readily acknowledges he wasn't "ZIP code conscious" in years past. That changed last summer when Republican County Councilman David Wilde, a former board member, rebuked the zoo for its east-side tilt.

By February, the zoo had found Auger, who warned officials that she "wouldn't make a very good rubber stamp."

The board's lone west-sider is convinced the zoo is bent on broadening its leadership even further. "I don't think I was the fix," she says. "I was the step in the right direction."

While Hogle Zoo faces more fundraising pressure than ever - supporters are trying to muster $20 million in private donations and $65 million in public bonds for one of the largest renovations in park history - James Hogle remains an advocate of expanding the board's ranks.

"It is absolutely not mission accomplished," he says. "We are looking right now for recommendations of other [board members] in other areas of the county."

Government fix? While the west-side voice remains muted within the private nonprofit arts community, it's nearly as hushed in Salt Lake County government. The Tribune found just six west-siders - out of 50 - serving on advisory boards for the county-run planetarium, Wheeler Farm, Equestrian Center and Center for the Arts.

Geography matters, according to Democratic County Mayor Peter Corroon, but not as much as a person's background, expertise, reliability and interest in the organization.

"It is important to keep in mind where [people] are from," Corroon says. "But I don't see that as something that should be a necessity. It's something that should be considered."

Salt Lake County operates 101 volunteer boards, staffed by an estimated 1,200 people.

"The bottom line," Corroon adds, "is we want to get as diverse a group as possible. But when you're trying to fill 100 positions at any one time, sometimes we will take them where we can get them."

Even so, some council members are calling for change - the most emphatic being Wilde, who argues that the county should consider requiring publicly funded arts boards to have representatives from each of the council's political districts.

Nonsense, Democratic Councilman Jim Bradley says.

"These are independent nonprofit groups who are killing themselves to do what they need to do," he says. "Why would we want to come in and micromanage their boards?"

Maybe the east-side slant doesn't matter. Maybe it does. Either way, it's there.

jstettler@sltrib.com

Want to volunteer?

Salt Lake County oversees more than 100 advisory boards with spots for about 1,200 volunteers. A list of opportunities is available at www.mayor.slco.org by clicking on "Boards and Commissions."

On the Web

How did Salt Lake County's arts and entertainment community respond to The Tribune's request for the names and home ZIP codes of its board members? Find out at blogs.sltrib.com/vault