Salt Lake County voters to weigh in on renewing tax for zoo, arts and parks program

For more than three decades, the Heart & Soul nonprofit has worked with local musicians to produce performances for people in places such as senior centers, hospitals, domestic abuse shelters and prisons.
The organization — primarily focused in Salt Lake County — has grown to support over 1,400 such shows each year, reaching an audience of 30,000 annually. The performers — all volunteers — cover the age spectrum with some as young as 15 and a few “seasoned performers” as old as 80.
“We bring music and performing arts to people who are isolated, including nursing homes, hospitals — anywhere people don’t have access to music in the community, we bring music in to them,” said Ainsley McLaughlin, the executive director of the nonprofit. “We all know music is universal, so it’s just a really nice way to brighten their day.”
Beyond providing cultural performances, McLaughlin said the organization gives musicians a chance to find an audience.
“Musicians get just as much out of it as our audiences do,” she said, “being able to give back and give them other performance opportunities. If you don’t want to play in a bar or these other nontraditional settings, it’s a good way to give these performers places with people to play for.”
Heart & Soul is supported by various foundations and grants, but receives a key portion of its funding through Salt Lake County’s ZAP (zoo, arts and parks) sales tax, which takes one-tenth of every 1% of each purchase in the county to put toward cultural organizations, recreation centers, parks and trails.
“ZAP is a huge part of our funding,” McLaughlin said, adding that Heart & Soul operates on a tight budget with only two staffers to support the hundreds of volunteers. “It’s incredibly important to be part of the ZAP program because it really does highlight that the rest of the county supports us and the residents who vote for ZAP, that legitimizes Heart & Soul and all the other cultural organizations that serve the community.”
First approved in 1996, the program is up for renewal every 10 years, meaning voters in the county will weigh in on extending the program for another decade during the Nov. 5 general election. Seventy-one percent of voters approved extending the ZAP sales tax in 2004 and 77% supported it in 2014.
While ZAP is known for supporting Utah’s Hogle Zoo, the Tracy Aviary and Ballet West, the program provides support to 232 smaller organizations, such as Heart & Soul, according to Daniel Stergios, the grant and communications coordinator for ZAP. He said most of those are entirely volunteer-run or have only one or two staff members.
“They’re super grateful and thankful for the program, because even though they’re only getting $3,000 of the funding, that’s still providing support for them to continue to do their programming,” he said.
Stergios noted that the program does more than just promote the arts — it helps support the economy in the county. A July analysis from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute found that 2022 saw over 11 million visitors to organizations, parks and recreational facilities supported by ZAP, and that recipients of the funds employed nearly 15,000 people that same year.
The report estimates that Salt Lake County residents directly paid between $8 and $12 in ZAP tax each year, but that the program’s revenue was roughly $30 per county resident in 2023.
“There’s a much larger picture that can be painted,” Stergios said of the impact, referring to the jobs created, along with a strong volunteer community that is fostered in part through ZAP grants. “That community benefit and community engagement is why we do it, right?”
In many cases, most voters would balk at any tax proposal on the ballot, but Brent Uberty, a small business owner who has worked with several ZAP recipients, said that’s not the case in Salt Lake County.
“A lot of people don’t like paying taxes, right? This is one of the few things that I do hear people talk about being willing to support for something coming out of their pocketbook every time they spend money, because a lot of people really value the arts in Salt Lake and in Utah in general,” he said. “This is a no-brainer for us. This is one of the few taxes that we are always happy to get behind, because it’s such a small impact on us as residents and taxpayers.”