Salt Lake is set to bill event organizers

Hosting events such as races or festivals in Salt Lake City may soon cost organizers thousands of dollars more than they've have had to pay in the past.

Beginning May 1, city officials will start enforcing a 16-year-old ordinance that allows Salt Lake to bill a special events applicant for services considered to be beyond "basic city services."

"Over the years, the number of special events that have been taking place in the city has grown and grown and grown," said Salt Lake City parks director Val Pope. "The city has become overloaded."

The application form for a special event in the city says extraordinary services will be provided, "only if the applicant has agreed to compensate the city."

For some special events, such as the Salt Lake Marathon, the Utah Arts Festival or Pioneer Day festivities, that could result in huge additional expenses to pay for set-up, clean-up and police services.

The city parks division might look to recover costs for landscaping and cleaning "over and above our basic level of service."

"This is not a revenue stream," Pope said. "We started talking about this a year and a half ago — before the economy really took a nosedive."

Some of the biggest expenses may come in the form of police services.

The Deseret News reviewed all of the special events for which Salt Lake City police were asked to provide security between April 1, 2008, and April 14, 2009. Each expense came in the form of overtime payment to officers. The records were obtained through the Government Records Access and Management Act.

Some of those expenses in 2008 included Salt Lake police paying $48,193 in overtime to officers working the Salt Lake Marathon. The St. Patrick's Day Parade cost the department $6,196 in overtime.

The biggest question that still remained Wednesday, just nine days before the change is to take effect, was which events would be billed.

"That's the question," said Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Burbank. "It's very gray."

Free-speech protests would not be billed. City police provided officers for about a dozen free-speech protests over the past year, according to documents.