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Tony Latimer takes pride in the state of his office. He knows every speck of soil and bed of blooms like he has planted each one himself.

From bright blossoms to keen koi fish, Latimer’s office spans some 50 acres. For 25 years, Latimer has been the go-to horticulturist at the Thanksgiving Point Institute, which facilitates one of Utah’s most well-known spring attractions: the annual Tulip Festival.

Latimer knows why one bed of tulips is growing slower than the other (it’s in the shade), why they added tulips to an area with roses (roses take longer to bloom) and which tulip blooms don’t last long (but give a bright pop of color).

This year’s festival, open until May 17, is Latimer’s largest challenge to date — with over 900,000 flowers adding pops of color to Lehi’s Ashton Gardens.

“The garden changes so much so quickly,” he says, walking through his office on a Monday in late April. “If you don’t get it watered when it needs to be watered, you can do a lot of damage fast. It’ll take months to recover.”

Over 400,000 of this year’s flowers are imported tulips, while the 550,000 others are various spring blooms like daffodils, hyacinths, poppies and more. There are 129 different varieties of tulips, each one blooming at a different time, so visitors get a different perspective of the event no matter when they come during the six weeks it’s open.

While the festival has become something of a spring destination — a place where families come to take photos, enjoy the outdoors after a lingering winter and learn about flowers — it wasn’t always that way, according to Latimer.

“In 2000 in the fall, we planted our first tulips, and then spring came in 2001 and we really didn’t get any uptake, or too many people who came out,” Latimer recalled. “We did that for a couple years, and then finally, somebody had the bright idea in 2004 to have a Tulip Festival.”

The event took off from there, going from three days to two weeks, then to three weeks and now six.

“We laugh at what we used to call the tulip festival, just because we would probably have about 250,000 tulips,” Latimer said. He estimates that it takes around 5,000 hours of prep and getting the plants in the ground to get the festival up and running.

They plant in late September or early October, and by the time the festival opens for the public, they already are planning for the next one.

While Latimer leads the planting push, the team consists of 16 gardeners, a mowing and landscape crew, and designer Esther Hendrickson, an expert in colors and textures who helps design the beds to make the garden the most visually appealing.

Every year, the festival layout changes, Latimer said.

“We’ll buy all brand new, that way we can totally redesign every single bed. You won’t see the same thing you saw last year,” he said.

Even as the landscape changes, Latimer knows every inch of the garden. He walks through it as often as he can, taking notes of things he notices or feedback he overhears from visitors.

His team takes that feedback into account: like changing an umbrella activation to paper lanterns in the trees, or adding a more Dutch-feel to the festival.

Hallie Gehring, from Pleasant Grove, has gone to the Tulip Festival with her family for 20 years. A trip to Ashton Gardens is a tradition in her family, particularly because her great grandmother loved going every year, and stopping at the Trellis Café for a treat.

“We still do it. We always think of her,” Gehring said. Now, at 22, Gehring takes her three-year-old brother every year.

Gehring said for her, attending the Tulip Festival is akin to stepping into “a new world.”

“I almost feel like I’m transported to a different place … of peace and tranquility and just absolute beauty,” she said. As she has grown older, Gehring has learned to appreciate the work that goes into creating that beauty, and the other elements that add to the garden, such as the architecture.

“The scale of it is impossible for me to comprehend,” Gehring said.

On a recent walk through, Latimer overheard a patron comment on how lucky the timing was for a crab apple tree to bloom at the same time as a patch of tulips underneath it — the bright magenta floral color reflected on top in the branches and in the bed of flowers beneath it.

That, of course, was all by design.

Latimer’s favorite part of his job is walking through his office and overhearing people’s reactions. Hearing a “wow” is his greatest joy.

“I do gardens at my house, and sometimes it looks good, but I’m really the only one that enjoys it, and so it’s nice to see other people enjoy it,” he said.

More than 400 university and college leaders across the country have signed onto a letter condemning the “unprecedented” attempts by President Donald Trump to control higher education.

Just one school president in Utah has added her name.

Westminster University President Beth Dobkin — who oversees the state’s smallest traditional higher education institution — is the only Utah signee speaking out to defend the autonomy of schools from federal overreach.

“The same core values that have guided Westminster for the past 150 years are the same values that are under attack today: authentic and inclusive affirmation of individual identities, and knowledge from openness, questioning, discernment and personal passion,” she said in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune.

It’s likely Dobkin, who took the helm of the Salt Lake City school in July 2018, is the only school leader in the state who could join the effort without facing repercussions — as a private university president.

Late in 2023, the state — with the backing of Gov. Spencer Cox — formally approved a policy prohibiting Utah’s public higher education leaders from taking any political stance. They must remain neutral “on political, social or unsettled issues that do not directly relate to the institution’s mission, role or pedagogical objectives.”

The Utah Board of Higher Education set that policy and could take action, as it has the authority to hire and fire presidents.

But where does the line fall when an issue does relate to education? So far, that boundary hasn’t been tested.

The letter to Trump, for instance, deals with the ability of schools to govern themselves, without federal interference or threats to funding. And it comes shortly after the Trump administration froze billions of federal funds earmarked for Harvard University. Harvard has since sued over the funding freeze, and its leader also signed onto the message.

Higher education has been repeatedly targeted by Trump since he took office in January. Universities have been facing significant cuts proposed for federal research funding, as well as project terminations because the work has been focused on diversity or inclusion.

The letter, released by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, reads, in part: “As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live and work on our campuses.”

Notably, several public schools in Utah are formal members of the association, including the University of Utah, Utah State University, Utah Valley University, Weber State University, Salt Lake Community College and Snow College.

Trump has also pushed for his administration to revoke the visas of more than 1,000 international college students nationwide. In Utah, 50 have been affected. Most do not have criminal records and are unclear why they have been told to immediately self-deport.

Dobkin said she’s proud to stand with other school leaders. And she has been outspoken in Utah, defending diversity and inclusion efforts as vital.

“While we welcome a national conversation about the value of higher education, this particular attack is motivated by political gain,” she said.

Her comments in response to signing the letter also align with her annual spring address that she made to the campus last week. During that, she specifically called out the visa revocations.

“Our world is increasingly chaotic: whiplash from economic policies, deportations and canceled visas, federal programs and services cut, ideas banned, histories erased,” she said.

Even though Westminster is a small school, with about 1,200 students, the stakes are still high for Dobkin to speak out. The university has one of the highest percentages in Utah of students who rely on federal loans — 69% — to attend. Those are currently managed by the U.S. Department of Education, which Trump is pushing to dismantle.

“Our students, and our country, cannot afford to lose this support,” she said.

Westminster also uses federal funding, Dobkin said, to operate its tax clinic and McNair Scholars program, which supports underrepresented students going onto graduate studies.

Schools that have pushed back against Trump have seen their funding put at risk. Dobkin mentioned Harvard in her address.

“The current confrontation between Harvard and the federal government has the potential to affect all of higher education, despite the fact that Harvard is private, and possibly financially independent,” she said.

The letter, she said, is a plea from university leaders to protect academic freedom and the benefits that higher education provides to the country — economically and philosophically.

“These values are intertwined, and they are under attack — easy to ridicule and distort, and complicated to explain and defend,” she told The Tribune. “But if we give up on them, we give up on higher education, we give up on democracy and we give up on the future. I’m not ready to do that.”

Public policy can reward or penalize marriage, raising a natural question in the Beehive State, which considers itself to be family friendly: Do Utah policies create a marriage “penalty” or “bonus”?

The Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute recently dived into tax policies, as well as benefit and other programs, to see if Utah’s government policies create “marriage penalties” or “marriage bonuses.” It found a mixed bag.

“A marriage penalty arises when tax structures, welfare program eligibility rules or other government programs place a disproportionate burden on a married couple compared to two unmarried individuals, effectively providing a financial disincentive to marry,” said Maddy Oritt, senior public finance economist at the institute, in background material on the findings. “While some marriage penalties, both direct and implicit, exist in Utah’s tax structure and benefit programs, they are relatively few and limited in scope.”

A marriage bonus is created when a married couple receives a financial benefit greater than would be given to two unmarried individuals.

That has been a consistent topic among conservatives at the federal level that grew hotter during the election campaign, amid concerns that fewer people are marrying and some policies provide disincentives to do so.

The report finds there are not typically marriage penalties in the tax structure, though some of the targeted tax credits disadvantage couples who are married because of income levels at which the credits phase out.

However, there are marriage penalties in some of the state and federal benefit programs — many of which are designed by the federal government but run at state level. The penalties are most likely to occur when a program targets aid to single parents or doesn’t for married couples “exactly double the benefit or income threshold for a single person.” Those are most often provisions set up in federal programs administered in the states.

The report calls household composition a place where “implicit” penalty occurs, noting that means that “benefits scaled based on household size do not increase proportionally for each additional household member, nor does household income determine eligibility. This occurs with both married and cohabiting couples.”

Breaking down the penalties or bonuses

When the institute judged the presence of penalties based on if the benefit or income threshold for a married couple “exactly doubles” that of a single person, the report notes that in looking at single compared to married households, there is a direct, explicit marriage penalty in the:

• Social Security Tax Credit
• Earned Income Tax Credit
• Retirement Tax Credit
• Child Tax Credit

The institute did not find a similar marriage penalty in the:

• Taxpayer Tax Credit
• My529 Educational Savings Tax Credit
• Health Benefit Plan Credit
• Taxpayer Exemption
• Circuit Breaker

When it comes to household composition, the implicit marriage penalty is found only in the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Health Benefit Plan Credit, per the report.

Comparing head of household, which refers to a single person with a dependent, to married households, the report says that the head of household status confers a benefit greater than half of the married benefit in all of the above-mentioned tax provisions except the education savings credit, the health credit and Circuit Breaker.

The report points out, too, that many programs use income tax returns as the basis for determining eligibility. That means that if cohabiters file separate tax returns, the income of a domestic partner might not be part of the calculation, “so cohabitation may not result in a penalty while marriage could result in a penalty based on how household size and income factor into assessment.”

The report, however, doesn’t separate out the difference between marriage and cohabitation as it weighs the penalties related to policies that rely on household size itself.

Will people choose not to marry?

Per the institute, most studies find marriage penalties and bonuses, especially in tax structure, don’t greatly impact whether couples marry.

Marriage penalties are more apt to impact how much a spouse works or even if a spouse works. “A marriage bonus exists for couples with one spouse in the labor force and one outside, as the earning spouse pays taxes at a lower rate after marriage and may claim a larger standard deduction. The non-working spouse, however, now faces a higher tax rate on the next dollar of income earned (or marginal tax rate). Some studies find that this discourages the spouse outside the labor force from seeking employment,” the report said.

Utah policy specifics

The analysis finds marital status has no role in determining sales tax, gas tax or property tax. Within the income tax structure in Utah, though, marital status may make a difference. Many of the credits do not exactly double deductions or other numbers for married couples, compared to claiming one adult.

The report notes that both eligibility determination and benefits for many state and federal programs do have marriage or household composition penalties, “with Medicaid and college tuition benefit programs at certain Utah universities creating direct marriage penalties. Other programs, such as TANF (Temporary Aid for Needy Families) and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), introduce household composition penalties that may disincentivize marriage, including income eligibility limits that do not double in a two-person household with two earners or benefits that do not double if two individuals create a single household.”

According to the report’s authors, direct marriage penalties could be eliminated for married couples compared to single couples by changing the income caps and benefit levels so they are precisely that of single filers. Household composition’s implicit penalties could be eliminated by making the income thresholds exactly proportional for each additional member of the household.

States don’t have a lot of wiggle room to impact penalties or bonuses from marriage within programs designed by the federal government, but they could tackle those within state-level provisions, per the institute.

A national discussion

Marriage penalties are a national topic and have been for quite some time.

Back in 2015, Deseret News’ own American Family Survey, done in conjunction with Brigham Young University’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, found that 31% of Americans said they knew people who didn’t marry because they would lose a safety net benefit. Sutherland Institute recently reported that 10% of beneficiaries from such programs said they didn’t marry because they didn’t want to lose the help they were receiving.

As Vox reported in November, “A 2022 analysis from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that, without marriage penalties, 13.7% more low-income single mothers would marry each year, and 7.5% more would be married by age 35. The study suggests these women typically do marry, but penalties might delay tying the knot.”

Congress has considered a number of bills related to marriage penalties in the last couple of years, including a measure aimed at allowing disabled adults who receive Supplemental Security Income to marry without a penalty.

In October, Jamie Bryan Hall, director of data analysis at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in a letter to a House committee called marriage penalties “the greatest injustice in the federal income tax code.”

In November, the American Enterprise Institute brought together experts from Virginia’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; the Georgia Center for Opportunity; the Niskanen Center and the Sutherland Institute to look at marriage penalties in the tax code.

Just a week ago, Indiana’s Gov. Mike Braun signed an order that is designed to find marriage penalties in that state’s tax and benefit policies, so they can be eliminated, as reported by FOX59.com.

“Marriage is the fundamental cornerstone of strong families and strong communities, and we need to make sure Indiana’s tax and benefits systems aren’t penalizing Hoosiers for getting married,” Braun said in a news release. “This executive order will make sure Indiana’s policies are providing an incentive for Hoosiers to build strong families, rather than getting in the way.”

In an interview for Public Discourse, Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, among many other titles, including Deseret News contributor, decried what he called “statism — the modern states tendency to supplant many of the functions and much of the authority once held by the family to the detriment of marriage (including ‘marriage penalties’ that make marrying a bad financial deal for lower-income families).“

He added that he would “love for Congress and the states to minimize marriage penalties in means-tested programs like Medicaid,” among other actions.

Niskanen Center reported that some Republicans would like to eliminate the “head of household” filing status because they believe it creates a marriage penalty. That’s prompted the center to create a counterproposal to avoid disadvantaging single people with children by raising their taxes. Instead, the center argues, phasing out the head of household status while making adjustments to other tax credits like the child tax credit, to “offset any negative impacts on single parents.”

With Utah’s offseason just beginning, there will be time to heal, watch and learn from the current playoff teams, and game plan for the upcoming season.

Having already re-signed a significant number of players, Utah finds itself in a comfortable position: knowing who will be on its roster next season while still having the flexibility to target free agents thanks to a manageable cap situation.

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But just because the team can spend the money doesn’t mean it will.

“A lot of teams that you saw that ‘won the summer’ didn’t win the winter,” Bill Armstrong said. “Once the money’s gone, it’s usually locked in for a long term and next year, we’re talking about, ‘How do we get rid of some of that money?’ So, it’s really a tricky one, where you have to very, very cautiously spend your money.”

But still, one of the major questions facing Utah this offseason is how it will construct its second line.

Utah Hockey Club Enters First Off-Season With Big Decisions Ahead It’s been a week since the Utah Hockey Club’s inaugural season came to an end. Now that we’ve heard from everyone within the organization, the focus shifts to the offseason and how they plan to make the team better.

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One spot was consistently filled by a talented Utah player, whether it was Dylan Guenther, Nick Schmaltz, or even Logan Cooley when he returned from injury, to skate alongside the line’s anchor, Barrett Hayton, barring any injury.

Even when injuries hit, players like Alexander Kerfoot were more than ready to step in and fill the role.

But the thing about lines is that they’re made up of three players. And for Utah, that third spot on the second line never felt secured, as a revolving door of Matias Maccelli, Michael Carcone, and, most recently, Kailer Yamamoto cycled through the role.

Given that Utah already has five players to fill the first and second lines, it would make a lot of sense for Utah to target some talent in free agency to fill that sixth spot.

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Both Maccelli and Carcone played over 50 games for Utah, but by the end of the season, both had taken turns as healthy scratches. Neither saw regular starting time down the stretch, with Kailer Yamamoto being elevated to the active roster for the final 11 games of the season.

With Carcone making it clear in his exit interview that he’s looking for a change of pace with a new team, Utah’s depth at the position has already begun to thin.

Utah could opt to run it back with either Maccelli or Yamamoto, especially with Yamamoto looking decent in his final stretch of games, but given the team’s cap space and financial flexibility, it makes sense to look beyond simply re-signing Yamamoto or starting Maccelli.

“A couple years ago, we needed players no matter what,” Tourigny said. “If you’re a good player, we (were) happy to have you. Now, we’re looking for specific areas of our game to be better.”

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There’s also Utah’s recent push to bring over Russian prospect Danil But, a left winger, a position the team currently lacks depth in, showing Utah is looking to improve the roster this offseason. BROGAN LINK

So while Utah will probably want a new face for its second line, Utah likely won’t do anything if it doesn’t see it as a good fit.

After all, Utah already benefits from having a young core that continues to grow together, and Utah will keep leaning on that.

Utah HC’s Pending UFAs: Who Stays, Who Goes? Now that the Utah Hockey Club have officially entered off-season mode with exit interviews wrapped up, it’s time to take a closer look at what’s ahead.

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But adding another free agent who can strengthen one of the top two lines wouldn’t just give Utah a more stable unit, it could also give Barrett Hayton another top-tier talent to join him and Nick Schmaltz, assuming Utah’s first-line trio of Cooley, Guenther, and Clayton Keller is what coach André Tourigny sticks with next season.

This also assumes Utah decides to re-sign Jack McBain, who played well on the third line with Lawson Crouse and Josh Doan toward the end of the season.

Along with McBain, this assumes that Nick Bjugstad, who found strong chemistry with Alexander Kerfoot and Kevin Stenlund, is also signed.

With both guys resigned, that would leave the second line as the primary area to address.

Utah Reportedly Facing Issues With Trademark Office The Utah Hockey Club is having some serious trouble when it comes to picking a permanent team name.

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And while Doan played really well alongside Crouse and McBain, he also showed some chemistry with Hayton when he temporarily moved up to the second line before being bumped back down.

While it might seem like a strange idea to move Doan, given how well he played alongside Crouse and McBain, Utah could consider shuffling its lines if Doan continues to develop his offensive game.

But for now, Utah would likely prefer to keep Doan’s puck-stealing ability and physical presence right where he is: alongside two heavy hitters in Crouse and McBain.

And who knows, Yamamoto did bring some consistency during his 11-game stretch to close the season. Depending on how he performs with the Tucson Roadrunners, Utah could choose to keep him in the lineup if no free agent options feel like the right fit.

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But with free agency not opening until July 1, Utah will have plenty of time to strategize how it wants to address the spot.

Utah’s Logan Cooley To Play For Team USA At World Championships Utah Hockey Club’s Logan Cooley has confirmed that he will play for Team USA at the World Championships in May.

Utahn Jordan Maddocks was on a mission Monday — dressed as a banana.

Maddocks competed in the Boston Marathon and reclaimed his Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon run by someone dressed as fruit.

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“The world record for the fastest fruit is officially back in Utah. 2:33:19 (5:51 pace) at Boston. What a wild ride. I’ve never given out more high fives or felt more love from a crowd,” Maddocks wrote on Instagram.