Balancing worries about affordability for taxpayers against the idea of eroding public confidence with more delays, Salt Lake City is readying another wave of bond money to improve its parks.
The City Council has put in motion borrowing and spending another $49.3 million this spring as a further installment from the $85 million park bond approved overwhelmingly by voters in 2022.
Council members could OK pulling a second wave of money by January, in time to pay for park work in April or May. Still a third layer of bond debt — for around $11 million — could follow in 2028 or 2029.
Earlier bond spending centered on design and preparations, but Mayor Erin Mendenhall says she is resolute the city is now poised for construction on an array of bond-funded projects after a robust round of planning and design fueled by the first allotment, for $24.7 million.
The latest list for the second allocation includes a crucial phase two at Glendale Regional Park, along with improvements at Fairmont, Sunnyside, Jefferson, Cottonwood, Warm Springs and associated park spaces. Add to those several high-profile stretches along the Jordan River.
“It’s exciting to me that we are saying yes on projects that immediately could improve our residents’ quality of life and security,” the mayor said in pressing for the council’s approval.
Not only are park spaces “activated and accessible to our residents when we do this,” Mendenhall said, “but they save us money on a crime prevention and enforcement side.”
Tentative approval for the second stash of cash also comes as the city continues to pour resources into improving park conditions as part of the first year of its stepped-up public safety plans addressing homelessness, illegal encampments and drug trafficking.
Besides sprucing up existing green spaces, the additional park spending — and its projected new burden of $26 a year on the median property tax bill — would also pay for substantial work to create multistory housing on the scraped Fleet Block in the Granary District, while building a $4 million contingency for park project budgets citywide.
The council gave a 6-1 thumbs-up last week to preparing the second wave of park money, with a budget-amending vote set for early next year.
Go slow, says one council member
Victoria Petro, council member for the west-side’s District 1, has called on her colleagues to tamp the brakes on adding more to homeowners’ bills by slowing down additional bond spending on parks. Hers was the lone no vote last week on proceeding.
Though enthusiastic about initial public support in 2022 for park upgrades in all seven council districts, she said her latest caution sought to recognize some of the emerging economic impacts on more impoverished west-siders.
“We have a not-insignificant number of people who the ‘need-to-have’ at this moment is the roof over their head and the food on their plate,” Petro told the council, urging a delay to tax hikes from to the second and third bond allotments. She has also raised questions about the city’s efforts to pay for a new Green Loop of open spaces around downtown.
Voters endorsed the $85 million park bond issuance by a 71% margin in 2022, but Petro said conditions have grown turbulent for many of her constituents, with the chilling effects of immigration raids and the prospect of key utility and government rate hikes.
The mayor and officials from the city’s Department of Public Lands countered that slowing projects that had already been set in motion could boost costs long term and cause future delays.
In some cases, officials warned, stalled funding might put other matching money in jeopardy, including $4.2 million pledged toward a portion of Sunnyside Park by the University of Utah.
At the same time, Petro, other council members, city leaders and some in the public have grown frustrated with the spasmodic unfolding of city-managed park upgrades under the bond so far, with few completed projects four years later.
“How do I tell my neighbors that you are shovel-ready?” council member Alejandro Puy asked at a hearing with the city’s public lands officials. “I’m embarrassed to say that and then not to be able to deliver anymore.”
On its finished list so far from the $85 million bond: phase one of the west side’s Glendale Regional Park, where Raging Waters was located, including a dozen new pickleball courts; and upgrades to 2-acre Backman Community Open Space, behind Backman Elementary School, 601 N. 1500 West.
That doesn’t count major work on irrigation, landscaping, playgrounds, walkways and lighting in at least eight other parks, including Donner Trail Park, Folsom Trail and Ida Cotten Park as well as aspects of Liberty, Madsen, Richmond, Steenblik and Taufer parks.
What the new money will pay for
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) People play on the new pickleball courts at the under-construction Glendale Regional Park in August.
The batch of money in the first round has been covered by retired bond debt from other city projects, so the full voter-approved impact on property owners — $54.80 a year on the median property value — has yet to show up on bills.
Under the plan approved last week, the second allocation would go almost entirely to construction changes on the ground and would start to add between $25 and $26 to the yearly property tax bill on a primary residence valued at $576,000.
This money would pay for $23.35 million to finish up a second phase of Glendale Regional Park, with a splash pad and boat ramp on the Jordan River, skating facilities, a sledding hill and a raft of soft-surface walking and hiking trails.
Nearly $5.95 million would go toward starting construction on Fairmont Park in 2027, including a reimagining of its tennis courts; improvements near the Boys & Girls Club, revitalizing the entrance along Sugarmont Drive; and several public access and safety improvements.
About $3.65 million would fund two years of construction on improvements at Allen Park, pending more design work there.
Another $3.375 million would be spent on improvements to Warm Springs and nearby North Gateway parks, along with improvements to Sunnyside and Jefferson Parks.
Some $2.4 million would go for upgrades along the Jordan River.