By the first council meetings in August, city councils in southern Davis County are expected to decide whether to have their residents vote on a sales-tax increase for the arts.

Centerville officials are heading up the push to get a RAP (for recreation, arts and parks) tax question on November's ballots because the city's redevelopment agency wants to build a regional performing-arts center on land it owns.

The center would include a 500-seat theater, which could be a new home for Rodgers Memorial Theatre, currently residing in a strip mall on Pages Lane. A 150- to 200-seat black-box theater, recital halls and recording space are also in the center's plans.

On Tuesday, Centerville Mayor Ron Russell and Bountiful Mayor Joe Johnson urged councils in North Salt Lake, Woods Cross and West Bountiful to put the RAP tax to a vote in November.

"If we band together to do some things, we can do them a lot better than if we do them individually," Russell said.

He pointed to the cooperation among the five South Davis cities that is necessary to run the South Davis Metro Fire Agency and the South Davis Recreation District.

A South Davis Performing Arts Center would further cement cooperation and increase the quality of life for residents, he said.

Johnson told the councils that it's getting harder to distinguish city borders, and that's evidence of how close the cities are growing.

"I think we need to be looking at projects like this," Russell told the city councils.

North Salt Lake, which could have made its decision Tuesday, opted to table the matter until August. The other four South Davis cities will likely decide on the ballot question in early August as well.

A RAP tax is an eight-year sales tax of .1 percent.

Centerville commissioned a feasibility study for the performing arts center, which showed a $14.2 million facility could be built if each South Davis city implements the tax and commits half of the revenue to the building's construction.

The other half of the revenue could go toward a regional outdoor sports complex, Russell said.

Centerville's redevelopment agency could contribute $6 million in land and infrastructure to the performing-arts center. But the facility would still need private donations and some money from a hotel-room tax collected by Davis County.

The study indicates the center would be able to stand on its own after two years, said Blaine Lutz, Centerville's finance director.

In 2004, Davis County voters turned down a county-wide RAP tax, by a vote of 59 percent to 41 percent. Twelve out of the county's 212 precincts were in favor of it, but by slim margins. The money raised from that tax proposal was intended for theaters in both the north and south ends of the county.

Russell attributes the failure of that tax increase to a poorly written and unclear ballot question.

---

E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com