Salt Lake bracing for 5 rallies

The group is scheduled to march from the square to the federal building at State Street and 100 South from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Young-Otterstrom's group also has applied to hold a rally that evening at Pioneer Park from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Paul Holton, better known as Chief Wiggles, has applied for a permit for 500 people to hold a rally at Liberty Park from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Holton, who served in Iraq for 14 months, said his rally will be in support of military personnel.

"This is a peace rally around supporting the troops, just getting anybody, regardless of their political affiliation," Holton said. "This is a nonpartisan, non-political rally for people to join together in support of the troops."

James Evans, chairman of the Salt Lake County Republican Party, has applied for a permit for 400 people at Washington Square from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Aug. 30. And Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah, has applied to hold a rally and march with an estimated 450 people at Liberty Park about immigration issues from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., also on Aug. 30.

The Salt Lake City Police Department is planning to staff 100 officers for 12-hour shifts on Aug. 30, spokesman Joe Cyr said. Protests in Utah have traditionally been tame affairs, he added, with few people who cause trouble for police and other demonstrators.

The maximum it would cost the police department to pay those officers for Aug. 30 would be around $38,000, Cyr said. But that number may be less, depending on how many of the 100 officers dedicated to covering the rallies were scheduled for shifts that day anyway.

When groups apply for permits to hold rallies or protests, they are supposed to give the city as much notice as possible. Shawn McDonough, who issues the permits for both "free expression events," as she calls them, and commercial events, said that the more advance notice she gets from a group, the easier it is to coordinate all the city departments that must review the request.

McDonough did not know Tuesday how quickly groups could change the date of their gatherings if they wanted to coincide with Bush's convention speech.

But the city departments that usually review permits include police, fire, transportation, public services and the city attorney's office. Additionally, the Utah Department of Transportation must examine permits that use state roads such as State Street, and the Utah Transit Authority usually looks at the requests to determine impact on public transit, she said.

The city cannot deny permit requests based on the message of the rally and would try to accommodate as quickly as possible any permit requests made in the days before Bush's visit. The city does review the permit to make sure that the proposed rally does not conflict with one already planned and that essential services — fire, police and so forth — can operate unimpeded.

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E-mail: kswinyard@desnews.com