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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Equating the enjoyment of target shooting with the symphony experience, Salt Lake County Councilman Randy Horiuchi proposed spending Zoo, Arts and Parks tax revenue on a gun range.
The plan envisions a 40-acre public range in Parleys Canyon that would include trap and skeet fields, indoor handgun lanes and room to fire long-distance rifles.
The $2 million Salt Lake County Sport Shooting Park would be an expansion of the sheriff's office training range near the canyon's mouth and west of Mountain Dell Golf Course.
Horiuchi's plan calls for $1.2 million in ZAP tax revenue and remained coming from donations.
"There are hundreds of recreational shooters in this valley," Horiuchi told the Zoo, Arts and Parks tax committee Wednesday. "They deserve ZAP money just as much as the folks from the symphony. It will be an exciting venue."
Horiuchi said the county could lease the park to the Holladay Gun Club, but collect most of the revenue from user fees.
Keith Biesinger, Holladay Gun Club president, said it was an ideal location. "You don't have encroachment from development. You don't have problems with noise," he said.
Biesinger's nonprofit club is threatened by an expanding adjacent gravel pit.
Trapshooting at the Salt Lake Gun Club in Magna also is threatened by planned development. Kennecott Land Co. does not intend to renew the club's lease.
The remaining public shooting facilities would be the Lee Kay Gun Range just operated by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources just off Utah 201 (the 21st South freeway) on the west side of the valley and two indoor ranges.
Lisa Smith, executive director of Save Our Canyons, is concerned about the potential environmental effect of the proposed Parleys Canyon range.
"When you bring in a much-larger group of people, it's always going to have an effect on the local wildlife," she said.
She wants assurances the range will not violate the county's Foothill and Canyons Overlay Zone and that the public gets a chance to weigh in on the project.
County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson has similar worries and said the narrow road snaking up the north side of Parleys would have to be widened. She also said the range is near a sand-and-gravel operation.
"Given the topography, I have concerns about a major expansion up there," she said.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
