Misinformation about CARE tax use in Orem

It has come to my attention that someone is claiming that the tax will benefit 2% of the population. A cursory analysis of the data suggests that this is pure hogwash. If you are going to use numbers people then at least make sure they make sense.

2% of Orem's population is 1,700. City Councilman Les Campbell points out in the Daily Herald that he has been to SCERA events with more than 1,700 people in one place at one time. He also mentions that the golf course had 1,400 golfers on one day over Labor Day weekend. Finally, SCERA reported seeing 125,213 in 2004. If we assume that all of those people were Orem residents (which they weren't, but we will get to that in a minute) then to get less than 2% of the population in the SCERA we would have to have seen 1,699 people go to the SCERA 73.7 times each during 2004. Not likely.

Now, suppose that only 1/3 of the people who go to SCERA are from Orem. Then we have two new issues. First, 2/3 of the people who visited SCERA are visiting from somewhere else. That's 82,640 people-visits to our fair city. Not bad for the local economy I should think. The remaining 1/3 is from Orem so that leaves 41,297 visits from Oremonians. To get less than 2% of the city participating in SCERA (which seems like kind of a moot point now that we got 82,640 other poeple to visit and hopefully leave money in Orem, but we will press on) we need each Orem visitor to go to SCERA 24.3 times. That's twice a month. Also doesn't seem likely, but maybe it is. If it is, then good for them and I am happy to support the arts at SCERA and I might even have to go myself and see why 1699 people are going twice a month all year.