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Final inning: $900M MLB bill passes Utah House as Legislature looks for ways to pay for stadium

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Final inning: 0M MLB bill passes Utah House as Legislature looks for ways to pay for stadium


Lawmakers ditch a statewide hotel tax to pay for the stadium amid rural opposition, but now they need to figure out a new funding stream.

(LHM Company) The Larry H. Miller Company released new renderings for its plans for the Power District development on Salt Lake City’s west side on Feb. 15, 2024. The 100-acre site along North Temple is where the Miller’s proposed Major League Baseball stadium would be built.

Yielding to rural Utah lawmakers resistant to see their tax dollars potentially pay for a Major League Baseball team in Salt Lake City, the Utah House on Tuesday passed a dramatically revised version of a bill to fund a new stadium and the surrounding entertainment district.

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While the bill still authorizes the state to issue up to $900 million in bonds to build the stadium, how the bonds would be repaid is now unclear.

Gone is the hotel tax that would have been charged statewide and poured an estimated $38.4 million a year into the project. A tax on rental cars remains, but won’t take effect until Utah gets a Major League Baseball franchise and, even then, would generate only about $6 million a year.

“More kids go to baseball with a ticket in their hand next to the ones that they love than any other sport in the world. It’s made for us. Utah is made for baseball,” said Ogden Republican Rep. Ryan Wilcox. “We have one shot here today. [If] we take it, we make ourselves prepared to keep ourselves on that short list if that opportunity presents itself. We can do that. Those memories will be ours with our grandkids, with our kids, into the future if we have the courage to make the hard choices.”

The newly created Utah Fairpark Area Investment and Restoration District along North Temple — where Gail Miller and the Larry H. Miller Co. are lobbying to locate a professional baseball team — would collect the state portion of new sales tax and property tax generated in the area and use it to subsidize the infrastructure and other amenities, like restaurants, hotels and bars in the area.

MLB is considering adding two teams and Utah and Nashville are reportedly frontrunners, but an announcement is not expected for a few years.

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Even without a team, Rep. Sandra Hollins, D-Salt Lake City, who represents the Fairpark area, said her community is excited about the investment in the neighborhoods. The Millers estimate that their investment in the district would be $3.5 billion.

“We know this is going to be a good thing,” she said. “This is going to have a major impact on an area that has been neglected. … It is beyond Major League Baseball, which we absolutely welcome. This is about the economic impact and what it’s going to mean for the people I represent.”

The bill passed 51-11 in the House and goes to the Senate for consideration. A Senate committee heard testimony on the bill Tuesday but took no action. A final vote on the bill could come as early as Wednesday.

“We anticipate that this development, which covers 200 acres of state-owned and a small amount of privately owned, to just lift the entire area and to be able to generate a lot of new economic activity and revenue from that,” Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, the Senate sponsor of the bill, said Tuesday. “And, you know, we’re going to be using largely that to be able to fund the development of that project.”

If a baseball team does come to Salt Lake City, Wilcox’s bill mandates that its team name include “Utah,” rather than just “Salt Lake City.”

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St. George Republican Rep. Walt Brooks, R-St. George said when the bill first was introduced he was a “hard no.”

“I could not vote for a bill that’s going to increase taxes statewide for this support this issue,” he said Tuesday. “However, I really appreciate the sponsor and our leadership team who took our concerns and went to work and worked hard to come to a solution that really gets it to a place that’s going to be a valuable asset to our community.”

A provision that would have earmarked part of the hotel tax increase to rural Utah emergency medical services and search and rescue operations — designed to win over rural legislators — was also removed from the version of the ballpark bill that passed the House Tuesday.

Representatives from southern Utah said House leaders had committed to readdressing that issue next year.

A separate bill to create a sports and entertainment district in downtown Salt Lake City and allocate roughly $1 billion in public financing to lure a National Hockey League team remained stalled in the Senate Tuesday.

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— Tribune reporter Emily Anderson Stern contributed to this report.



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Utah

22-year-old arrested in Utah in connection to Las Vegas double-homicide

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22-year-old arrested in Utah in connection to Las Vegas double-homicide


LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Officials have identified a 22-year-old man as the suspect in a Las Vegas homicide case that killed two people in a Southern Highlands neighborhood.

Detectives say 22-year-old Ziaire Ham was the suspect in the case. According to officials, Ham was located on Tuesday, March 3, by the Ogden City Police Department and the Utah Highway Patrol.

Ham was taken into custody and booked into the Weber County Jail. Las Vegas authorities said he will be charged with open murder with the use of a deadly weapon and will be extradited back to the valley.

MORE ON FOX5: LVMPD corrections officer arrested on multiple felony charges

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The shooting occurred Monday night at the 11000 block of Victoria Medici Street, near Starr Ave and Dean Martin Drive.

According to police, officers were conducting a vehicle stop in the area when they heard gunfire. After searching nearby neighborhoods they found a car with bullet impacts with a woman and a toddler inside suffering from gunshot wounds.

The pair were transported to hospital where they later died. The Clark County Coroner’s Office identified them as Danaijha Robinson, 20, and 1-year-old Nhalani Hiner.



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Utah nonprofit creates events, experiences for disadvantaged children

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Utah nonprofit creates events, experiences for disadvantaged children


A simple moment watching a child laugh changed everything for Ivan Gonzalez.

Eight years ago, Gonzalez was working at the Ronald McDonald House when he had an idea to throw a birthday carnival for the kids staying there.

“Let’s do a carnival, birthday carnival for the kids,” he said.

MORE | Pay It Forward

What happened during that event stuck with him.

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“There I was watching this kid play whack-a-mole, just having a blast, laughing,” Gonzalez said. “And then I see his mom kind of with happy tears because he’s enjoying himself.”

That moment led to something bigger.

Gonzalez realized the experience shouldn’t stop with just one event or just one group of kids.

“I said, wait, we can do this not just for kids in the hospital,” he said with excitement.

So he started a nonprofit called Best Seat in the House, which creates events and experiences for children who often face difficult circumstances.

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“We provide events and experiences for disadvantaged kids,” Gonzalez said.

The organization serves children battling cancer and other medical conditions, refugee children, kids living in poverty, those in foster care and children with special needs.

“These kids grow up too fast,” Gonzalez said.

For Gonzalez, the mission is deeply personal.

“I grew up very poor,” he said.

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He remembers the people who stepped in for his family when they needed it most.

“The local church, we weren’t even a part of it,” he described. “My parents couldn’t afford Christmas gifts and I still remember the gifts they gave me. They didn’t even know me.”

Today, he hopes to create that same feeling for other children through his nonprofit.

“Kids live in poverty and they don’t know where the next meal is coming from, let alone going to a play or to a game,” Gonzalez said.

But for Gonzalez, the reward isn’t the events themselves, it’s the joy they create.

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“You can give me a billion dollars, all the money in the world,” he says as tears roll down his face. “I won’t trade these opportunitieskids just enjoying life.”

Because of his work giving back, KUTV and Mountain America Credit Union surprised Gonzalez with a Pay it Forward gift to help him continue creating those moments for kids across Utah.

For more information on supporting Best Seat in the House, click here.

_____



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‘Don’t release him ever. Please.’ Family of slain Utah teen calls for justice at parole hearing

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‘Don’t release him ever. Please.’ Family of slain Utah teen calls for justice at parole hearing


SALT LAKE CITY — Francisco Daniel Aguilar says he’s sorry for shooting and killing his girlfriend, 16-year-old Jacqueline “Jacky” Nunez-Millan, a Piute High School sophomore, in 2023.

But just as he did when he was sentenced, he didn’t have much of an explanation on Tuesday as to why he shot her not once, but twice.

“It just kinda happened. I was mad. And I stepped out (of my truck) and started shooting,” he said. “When I saw her fall, I just kind of panicked, I just went and shot her again.”

But Jacky’s friends and family members say even before she was killed, Aguilar already had a history of violence, and they now want justice to be served.

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“You don’t accidentally take a gun, you don’t accidentally grab a knife … you don’t accidentally shoot someone, those are all choices,” a tearful Rosa Nunez, Jacky’s sister, said at Tuesday’s hearing. “Keep him where he needs to be.

“Don’t release him ever. Please.”

On Jan. 7, 2023, Aguilar, who was 17 at the time, got into a fight with his girlfriend, Jacky, shot her twice and left her body near a dirt road outside of Circleville, Piute County. He was convicted as an adult of aggravated murder and sentenced to a term of 25 years to up to life in prison.

Because of Aguilar’s age at the time of the offense, board member Greg Johnson explained Tuesday that the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole is required to hold a hearing much earlier than the 25-year mark, mainly to check on Aguilar and “see how things are going.” Aguilar, now 20, is currently being held in a juvenile secure care facility and will be transferred to the Utah State Prison when he turns 25 or earlier if he has discipline violations and is kicked out of the youth facility.

According to Aguilar’s sentencing guidelines, he will likely remain in custody until at least the year 2051.

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During Tuesday’s hearing, Aguilar told the board that he was feeling “stressed out” during his senior year of high school. He said he and Jacky would often have little arguments. But their bigger fight happened when he failed to get her a “promise ring” around Christmastime, he said.

On the night of the killing, the two were arguing about the promise ring and other items, Aguilar recalled. At one point, he grabbed a knife and then a gun because, he said, he wanted to “irritate” and “scare” Jacky. According to evidence presented in the preliminary hearing, Aguilar and his girlfriend had been “trying to make each other angry” when Aguilar took ammunition and a 9mm gun from his father’s room and then drove to the Black Hill area in his truck with Jacky.

Jacky’s friend, McKall Taylor, went looking for her that night and found her. But after Aguilar shot Jacky in the leg, he began shooting at Taylor, who had no choice but to run to her car to get away. Her car was hit multiple times by bullets. Aguilar then shot Jacky a second time as she lay on the ground and Taylor drove away.

On Tuesday, Taylor’s mother, Lori Taylor, read a statement to the board on her daughter’s behalf.

“My innocence and freedom was taken from me,” she said.

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McKall Taylor says the “horrifying events of that night will forever play in my head,” and the sounds of Jacky screaming and the gunshots as well as the sight of Jacky falling to the ground, will never go away.

“Francisco is a murderer who has zero remorse,” her letter states.

Likewise, Rosa Nunez told the board that for her and her family, “nothing in our world has felt safe since” that night as they all “continue to relive this horrific moment.”

After shooting Jacky and driving off, Aguilar says he called his father and “told him I was sorry for not being better, for not making good choices, I told him that I loved him. I was just planning on probably shooting myself, too.”

His father told him that although what he did wasn’t right, “he’d rather see me behind bars than in a casket,” and then told his son to “be a man about it. … This is where you have to change.”

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Aguilar was arrested after his tires were spiked by police.

“An apology won’t fix what I did. I’ll never be able to fix what I did. But I want to say I’m sorry,” he said Tuesday. “I don’t even know how to fix what I did. I’m hoping I’m on the right track now.”

Johnson noted that Aguilar has done well during his short time being incarcerated. But that doesn’t change the fact “the crime was horrific,” he said.

The full five-member board will now take a vote. The board could decide to schedule another parole hearing for sometime in the future or could order that Aguilar serve his entire life sentence. But even if that were to happen, Johnson says Aguilar could petition every so often for a redetermination hearing.

The board’s decision is expected in several weeks.

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.



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