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Ready. 00:00:10
OK, must be 6:00. 00:00:11
OK, so we're going to call the City of Holiday Council meeting to order on Thursday, August 15th. This is to accommodate a Truth 00:00:19
in Taxation hearing. And we'll begin with the pledge if everybody please rise. 00:00:25
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. 00:00:37
And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. 00:00:42
Thank you and welcome everybody. 00:00:54
So item 3 on the agenda is a Truth in Taxation public hearing, which I'll open in just a moment. That's the only public input we 00:00:57
have for tonight. It's just a two agenda item. It's to approve the certified tax rate and also the final budget associated with 00:01:04
that depending on how the Council goes on it. 00:01:10
But before we do that, I just want to make a couple of comments. 00:01:18
And for those that are here, that the City Council approved a budget in June. 00:01:23
That anticipated a 15% property tax increase, which raises, which raises approximately $1.2 million in additional revenue to the 00:01:32
city, which I'll talk about in in just a minute. 00:01:38
I don't have all the details in front of me but off the top of my head. 00:01:48
It increases the property tax on a average home and holiday, which is about 944,000, by $97.00 a year. 00:01:52
Part of what confuses people about it is I think when they hear 15%, they think it's raising my property taxes 15%. 00:02:06
Holiday's portion of your property tax bill is, I want to say, around. 00:02:14
14. 00:02:19
12% it will be more like 15% if this property tax increase goes through. So only about 12% of what you pay in your property tax. 00:02:21
Is the holiday city line item. So when you raise the property tax holiday 15%, the impact to your overall property tax rate is 00:02:30
somewhere around 2%. So I wish we could we had better ways of explaining that, but that's the reality of it. People get people get 00:02:37
holidays line item, line item mixed up with their overall property tax bill. So if approved, it would raise your property tax 00:02:44
somewhere in the vicinity of 2% over the course of the year. 00:02:51
This is the second time, and this will be the second time if it's approved that the city has raised property tax in 25 years since 00:03:00
the city incorporated. We had a property tax increase in 2021 to bond against that revenue to stabilize what was a failing Rd. 00:03:07
situation at the time, which which I'm pretty proud to say I think we have done. We've invested about $7,000,000 in our roads over 00:03:14
the last. 00:03:21
Three years. 00:03:28
On. 00:03:31
Roads that were getting ready to fail basically. So that's where a lot of that money went. 00:03:32
And is still going. 00:03:41
So this will be on this particular property tax increase we're considering tonight. This will be the second public hearing. The 00:03:44
first was during the budgeting process in June. 00:03:49
Where residents had an opportunity to comment. But the state requires that if you're going to raise property taxes, there must be 00:03:55
a truth in taxation hearing, which is the sole purpose of really why we're here tonight. 00:04:01
So why are we doing this? 00:04:09
There's a couple of reasons when we went through our tax increase in 2021. 00:04:13
Which was the first time we raised property taxes. 00:04:17
The Taxpayer Association, which which advocates for residents, actually endorsed that increase. They said we needed to do it, but 00:04:21
they but part of their input was also to say you should really be doing this every four or five years to capture inflationary 00:04:28
increases, not let it go for 20 years and have to go out for 50% increases in your property tax. So part of the reason we're doing 00:04:34
this is the inflationary pressures we've seen over the last say three or four years. 00:04:41
That's part of it, the biggest. 00:04:49
Issue that we've had to tackle over the last three years and specifically this year is pressures in public safety and police. 00:04:52
Umm, after the events that took place in 2020. 00:05:01
It created a kind of a wage war within the police community that that caused our police wages to rise that we had to absorb over 00:05:06
over a two or three-year period. 00:05:11
And then this year we were in a unique situation where the state legislature basically forced the separation of the county and the 00:05:17
County Sheriff from the unified police model, which is the shared model that Holiday participates in. 00:05:26
That force separation caused a loss of economies in our costing model that all of the members have had to absorb. So I think our 00:05:35
increase in the police line item this year was about $750,000. 00:05:43
That was a huge impact. We think it's a single impact. We're hoping that now it will stabilize to more of an inflationary increase 00:05:53
overtime, but it caused our police budget to go up from what is typically if. 00:06:00
Inflation runs at say 3%. Our police line item will typically run at four or five. It does run above the inflationary rate because 00:06:08
of of the pay structures within the police model. 00:06:13
But that had a big impact. If you look at the pie chart, you can see up there that of our overall budget, our police line item is 00:06:19
34.67 of our entire budget goes to police, the other 8 and 18% goes to fire, I think. 00:06:28
It went off my screen, so I can't see it, but so about 50 to 53% of our entire city budget. 00:06:37
Is right off the top, goes to police and fire but the unique situation we had to address this year. 00:06:44
With the force separation. 00:06:52
Had a had a dramatic impact on on the budget challenges this council had to. 00:06:55
Address and that really what caused us to have to again go back and ask for the property tax increase from our residents this 00:07:02
year. 00:07:06
So public safety. 00:07:11
Continued investments in our road infrastructure. 00:07:14
And I want to talk about that just a little bit, but, um. 00:07:19
When you see the expense pies, your property tax revenue is really fixed unless we go through this truth in taxation process. So 00:07:24
as inflation starts to creep into police and fire in these other areas, the the piece of the pie that is affected is, is the 00:07:31
capital piece, our road infrastructure, that's the easiest one to shrink. 00:07:39
And if we don't continue to invest in that? 00:07:47
Eventually we're going to end up in the same situation we did in 2021 where we are investing almost nothing in Rd. repairs, 00:07:52
literally at one year, 1/4 of $1,000,000, which is nothing in terms of maintaining our roads. So every four or five years our 00:07:59
councils should be going out to the public from a property tax standpoint and saying look, here have been the inflationary 00:08:06
pressures over the last four or five years, here's what we need to raise to capture those inflationary increases. 00:08:14
And do it every in shorter steps so that it doesn't kick the can down to the down the road to future councils to have to make 00:08:21
bigger jumps of twenty 2530% in property tax increases. So that's those are the three reasons we really got to this point were 00:08:31
just basic inflationary pressures, big increase in the police line item and the need for us to continue to invest in our roads. 00:08:40
Umm. 00:08:51
That's just, that's just kind of a basic overview of it. I was talking to Christian, who runs our finances in the city a little 00:08:54
bit earlier and, and with our City Council, we wish there were. 00:09:00
A better way to explain property taxes? 00:09:07
Because it can be, it can be really confusing to residents, but essentially the way property taxes are established through statute 00:09:11
in this state. 00:09:16
They refer to it as a revenue based system. I guess I don't know if that's accurate, Gina, but essentially what it is is your 00:09:22
property taxes can't go up. 00:09:26
Unless we go through a truth in taxation process. 00:09:31
So if generally your value goes up, your mill rate should drop to keep it level until we go through this process. The only problem 00:09:35
with that is it gets. 00:09:39
It's, it's a citywide revenue. So if, um. 00:09:44
I don't even know if I want to get into the weeds on this, but if. 00:09:48
If your value escalates. 00:09:55
At a higher rate than your neighbors neighbors, yours might go up a little bit there's but there would have to drop to keep the 00:09:58
revenue level if that makes any sense. 00:10:02
So that's the way it works. The other unique situation we found ourselves in in statewide. 00:10:07
Is that the residential rates have risen at a much faster rate than the commercial rate. So it is true that residential rates have 00:10:14
gone up a little bit more because the commercial rates haven't haven't raised as much. So to keep the revenue steady, the 00:10:21
residential rates went up a little bit a little at a little higher rate. 00:10:28
Umm, I know that can get pretty complicated, and I think I'll just leave it at that. 00:10:38
So. 00:10:45
That that's my little lead in, but I'm happy to if the council wants to make any comments or if we have any questions for Gina or 00:10:47
Gina, if you have any comments I want, I want those that are here to address the council, I assume to hear why we're doing this 00:10:54
and what we hope to raise through this increase and why we're doing it before we open up the public hearing for your comment. 00:11:02
Anybody I'll just say you did a fine job of describing a complicated, complex deal in there. And I appreciate that. You know, this 00:11:14
is my first term serving as a City Council member. And I think it's it's it's been eye opening to me. And I got to say, you know, 00:11:21
the whole at a city level, it's a nonpartisan kind of kind of a thing. And there's high spending Republicans, there's high 00:11:27
spending Democrats, There's, you know, there's, there's all, you know, there's, there's different. 00:11:34
As far as a propensity to spend at a government level is concerned that that that can, that can really vary. 00:11:42
I will say that. 00:11:47
Me personally, ideologically, I'm a, I'm a very, I like to see government's role as small as possible and to, to really take good 00:11:49
care and how public funds are spent. And coming into this not having had a political background or anything like that, I have to 00:11:57
say that I've been. 00:12:04
Extremely surprised at how leanly holiday runs and the care and concern that I've seen from all of my council members. It was, it 00:12:13
was not what I expected, quite honestly. And, and it's been one of the more rewarding things I would say that with of the things 00:12:20
that I've learned or the ways that my eyes were opened as I, as I came to serve in office. And so I guess I would, I would just 00:12:26
say that. 00:12:33
I personally see the. 00:12:40
The wisdom in what the Taxpayers Association recommended so that we don't have the sudden jumps. We've tried to be responsible and 00:12:42
good stewards of the, of the public trust in, in how we spend and how this budget was put together. And so I, I would just say 00:12:49
that I, I appreciate very much the way that you described it and, and, and. 00:12:56
And look, we always look forward to trying to explain it on a one-on-one basis if anybody has questions and things like that after 00:13:04
the fact. But but anyways, so that's all I have to say. 00:13:08
Yeah, property. It's a simple concept, but then when you start explaining and it becomes. 00:13:14
More complicated. I wish it was easier. 00:13:19
Anybody else, Gina, anything you want to add? Well, we're going to, we're going to open up the public hearing right now. 00:13:23
And this is maybe you'll be first. 00:13:31
So in terms of the public hearing, we like you to keep it to 3 minutes or less if possible. We just ask you to approach the 00:13:35
podium, give us your name and address, and the public hearing is open. So Sir, if you'd like to go first, just come on up, yeah. 00:13:44
Just give us your name and address. 00:13:54
Just wondering if now that you're saying that. 00:14:00
With this increase, it'll be somewhat we going through Rd. improvement. 00:14:03
OK, the road above Morningside Elementary is atrocious and. 00:14:08
They've done all the side roads around there. Just wondering if it's going to be taken care of next year. May I? I know we don't 00:14:15
usually. Yeah. Well, so. 00:14:21
Let me answer this and then I'm going to turn it over to you, Trey. 00:14:27
We won't, we don't get into a lot of back and forth of the residents. We just give this youth the opportunity to comment to the 00:14:32
council. But having said that, I'm going to let Drew respond to you and then we'll take it from there. I would like to respond 00:14:39
because this is a question that I have fielded quite a bit. The I know that rode well. I drive it at least once a day and the 00:14:46
reason that it is in the condition is that it's in and has not been repaired yet. 00:14:53
Is because it is on the list for Salt Lake Public Utilities to come in and rip up the whole road and put in a new water main. 00:15:01
And we have decided as a city, I have talked with Jared Bunch, our head engineer, a number of times, we are trying to patch it and 00:15:10
patch it and keep it serviceable until that water main is put in. Because we don't want to lay a whole new surface down and then 00:15:16
have Salt Lake Public Utilities come in and rip the whole thing up. And that is why it is the way it is. And I apologize. We we 00:15:23
keep. 00:15:30
Asking them when they're going to get to us and they won't give us a straight answer, but at least, well they said not this year. 00:15:38
So I don't know yet about next year, but I apologize. Like I say it's a terrible Rd. but that's why it's the way it is and hasn't 00:15:44
been repaired, OK. 00:15:50
Thank you. Thank you. 00:15:56
Who's next? 00:15:59
I see all these people out here. There's got to be somebody. 00:16:04
1932 Charleston Lane, did you give initially? Maybe I missed it when I came in some explanation where this increased funding was 00:16:07
going to go. We, we did and I'll, I'll just hit it real quick. 00:16:14
We're hoping to raise about $1.2 million in revenue primarily to absorb a big increase, about a 10.43% increase I think in our 00:16:23
police item line item because of the separation from the four, separation from the county and the Sheriff's Office. We think 00:16:30
that's a one time hit and hopefully it will normalize after that. That was the biggest piece. The other piece was a continued need 00:16:38
for us to invest in our road infrastructure and not let it let it dip down the way it. 00:16:45
Over the 1st 20 years in holiday and the third was just the inflationary pressures on all the other expenses inside the city. 00:16:53
I would just ask, I mean, you're aware that all your taxpayer 2 and you're dealing with inflation. And as we deal with every other 00:17:01
aspect in inflation in our lives, this is just another one that we don't look forward to every year when we get our tax notice. 00:17:07
When I see my taxes go up a grand this year and I see 30% of that or 25% of it seems to me like it looks like it's coming from 00:17:13
this holiday increase. I would just ask that you would look at it as a good steward as every household has to and how we have to 00:17:19
cut back. 00:17:25
Areas and would ask that you know that you'd be very scrutinizing in terms of how you pass these increases on because they are 00:17:31
noticed and they're I mean I've got kids that kids with five kids and they're going where am I going to get the next gallon of 00:17:38
milk? And so every dollar that you can save is appreciated by by the people that 10% increase is that do you demonstrate some 00:17:46
numbers to show why the increase? Is it because increasing administration or you have to pay for more manpower. 00:17:53
Stuff in the physical facility or in their cars or why does that, why does that go up with the police? 00:18:01
10%. 00:18:08
Well, let me take a shot there. Yeah, go ahead. Just the way UPD works on a shared services model. 00:18:10
We manage our own precinct. 00:18:19
And then we also share in the cost of shared resources with other municipalities and formerly with the county. 00:18:22
And the county was providing a big chunk of the UPD model and its budget. And when they separated themselves, we we lost a 00:18:31
significant element in basic economy of scale. So the the a lot of the fixed costs and those shared resources don't change. 00:18:40
But we have fewer people contributing to supporting that pool of shared resources. And so that's why our we lost some economy of 00:18:50
scale. So that's why we have this one time hit an increased percentage of budget to our for our police services. 00:18:57
And because that's the nature of the police element of it. But also you'll recall over the last couple of years we've had 00:19:06
significantly higher inflation than we have over the previous several years. And so that catches up to us. We're we kind of have a 00:19:12
lagging, it's a lagging cost. So we don't experience that same inflation in in the year you hear reported on the news, but in the 00:19:18
following. 00:19:24
One or two years is when we we kind of have to absorb those hits. So even though in inflation is coming down now. 00:19:31
The effect of the previous year's inflation is catching up with us. That's but, but we, we, we share your values with regard to 00:19:39
being, as Ty said, we're a lean, mean fighting machine here in holiday and we intend to stay that way. We're your neighbors, we're 00:19:44
not. 00:19:50
Street issues and thank you for that, Paul. I appreciate that. But when we look at it and see 15% and I hope is there anything 00:19:57
when it comes out like this and it's printed, is there ever any? 00:20:03
Possibility that it could ever be lowered from the. 00:20:09
From what it states on your. 00:20:12
Assessment when you receive it in the mail or is it basically coming here a futile exercise because it's already, I've never seen 00:20:15
it change once I've received something in the mail And you know, it shows what my proposed holiday taxes are for this year. So is 00:20:22
there anything that could be said here today that could ever have an influence on it anyway for this year? 00:20:28
Yeah, I mean, tonight's tonight, we vote on it. So yeah, it could. 00:20:35
I mean, what could be done? I mean, did you negotiate? Can you cut it to 12 or can you cut it to 9 or what do we expect next year 00:20:41
is the best we do to offer input that next year you folks are even more tighter with the pencil? 00:20:47
Yeah, not to drag this out too long, but we don't. And I think you might have missed this, but the Taxpayers Association 00:20:56
recommended us when we went through our tax increase. 00:21:01
Three years ago that we really should do this every four or five years because your property tax revenue unless you go through 00:21:07
trees and should stay level. 00:21:11
So. 00:21:16
This shouldn't be an every year thing. I would assume that this will probably, you probably won't see another truth in taxation in 00:21:18
the city for probably another four or five years. 00:21:23
So this was a 15% increase over last year and not setting up 5%, five percent, 5%, but we're just hitting 15 this because that's 00:21:29
what you feel you're, you're justifiable increased expense. Yeah, I mean you go out, you go through this every four or five years 00:21:36
and hopefully that revenue gets you by for that four or five years. And then you look at the effects, you know, the effects of 00:21:43
inflation over that period and then you go through another truth in taxation, but the holiday line item. 00:21:49
Theoretically should stay the same over that five year period. It just depends on how your properties value escalates or declines 00:21:58
in relationship to your neighbors, if that makes any sense. Well, I would just as a citizen of polity, I mean as you state that 00:22:04
you are, you're trying to be careful with the expenditures and that you're cognizant that it impacts people at their kitchen table 00:22:09
and. 00:22:15
If there's stuff that you we have to defer things, maybe Holiday City has to defer things, maybe not 20 years to get the roads 00:22:22
repaired, but to be to be considerate in the terms of passing on these tax increases. Thank you. 00:22:28
Thank you very much. 00:22:34
Mayor, can I have one other comment if just so that everybody is aware, this meeting is recorded and it's available on the city 00:22:37
website. And really the mayor did a great job, I think of giving a very clear, we've, we've had a lot of discussions about this as 00:22:43
a City Council. He did a very good job of spelling out and I would encourage you to go back and listen to that again. Or if you 00:22:49
have neighbors and others who might be interested, just hop on and look up today's meeting and just watch that kind of 00:22:54
introductory message that he delivered. 00:23:00
It was, I thought it was compelling and and it gives a good, a good overview, so. 00:23:06
I can see you're getting ready. 00:23:16
I'm Richard Hadlock. I live on. 00:23:25
1873 Lincoln Lane. 00:23:27
First of all, I read that the tax increase was 15.1% and then you referred to it 2%. I guess I missed something there. 00:23:36
OK, what I'll explain what I mean by that is that. 00:23:46
Holiday City is proposing a 15% property tax increase to their line item. 00:23:52
But if you look on your property tax notice, you'll see holidays property tax. 00:23:59
If you do the math, if you divide your holidays property tax into your overall tax rate. 00:24:07
The increase is probably going to equate to about two of 2% increase of your total of your total property tax. So granted school 00:24:13
district is, you know, public education is about half of property tax. 00:24:19
Well, here's here's a maybe this will be a clearer way to put it. If we had a, we use $944,000 because that's the average property 00:24:27
tax in the city, right? Assessed values, assessed value in the city. 00:24:34
So that's going to generate overall property tax once you add up all the entities. So the the, the proposed tax that we're we're 00:24:43
proposing, the 15% increase will result in a $97.00 increase in your overall property tax. If you divided that into your overall 00:24:52
property, current overall property tax, it's about a 2% increase I think. 00:25:00
Christian am I? 00:25:10
Right. So it's a 15% increase to your holiday line item. It'll be about don't, don't hold me to exactly about a 2% increase in 00:25:12
your overall property tax, OK. 00:25:18
Well. 00:25:26
If he's got a property tax notice, we could probably just figure it out. Would it be fair to say that the slice of the pie that 00:25:29
goes to holiday is about 12% right now? And so the our increase is a 15% increase of that 12%. It's not a 15% increase of your 00:25:37
entire property tax payment. OK, well, I'll look at my. 00:25:45
In order to get some clarity on that. 00:25:54
I don't know about all you guys. You guys all look like you're all employed. Imagine you are. I'm not retired, just have a fixed 00:25:57
income. I live off Social Security basically. 00:26:03
So when you talk about inflation and this tax increase to me is inflation. 00:26:10
I'm paying well, maybe my house has gone up in value too. Does how does that figure into it? Does that increase my property taxes 00:26:16
when my house value goes up? 00:26:21
Theoretically, no, unless we go through truth intact. Unless the entities go through truth in taxation like we're doing and 00:26:28
raising it. The answer is really, really no, unless you look on your property tax and other like Granite School District. If 00:26:36
they're raising theirs, yes, it will. But if nobody went through truth and taxation, no, your property taxes shouldn't go up. 00:26:44
But if you're, if you're, if yours goes up. 00:26:57
If yours goes up higher than your neighbor, your property tax would increase if it if it goes down. If it doesn't go up as at the 00:27:00
same rate as your neighbor, your property tax would actually drop. 00:27:05
And that's what gets confusing about it. I don't know the general principle though for getting your neighbors. 00:27:12
OK. Yeah. But but that according to the by statute. By statute as your value goes up, your mill rate or your tax rate goes down, 00:27:19
OK. So the city gets the same revenue year after year after year in total? 00:27:27
Unless we go for a truth and taxation hearing like we are doing today and ask for a 15% increase so over the years. 00:27:36
Your home value could have doubled in value. 00:27:44
But your property tax related to that change in value would have would have stayed the same. 00:27:48
In a holiday, but but to answer the reason yours keeps going up is all of these other entities overtime have gone in truth in 00:27:55
taxation because. 00:28:00
They, you know, they have the same inflationary pressures as everybody else has and so that but to do that they've had to go 00:28:05
through a truce in taxation process to raise it. If none of them had gone through a true syntax. Gina, if this is right and we're 00:28:11
dragging this out. But if ten years ago. 00:28:17
None of the entities have gone through truth in taxation process. 00:28:23
And your home went from a half $1,000,000 to $1,000,000. Your property tax should be the same. 00:28:28
If that makes any sense. Is that right? You're exactly right. And Miro is just going to offer, if anyone would like to talk to me 00:28:35
after the hearing, we can go through their own notices in more detail. We can do the math for you in terms of that 52% and 15%. 00:28:43
Yeah. Have you ever looked at cutting any of your departments budgets to make your budget neutral in order to facilitate these 00:28:52
increases? Like households have to do that to cut back and. 00:28:58
Yeah, that was my next point is cutting expenses. Yeah, good point. 00:29:04
Well, the bulk of our budget is police. 00:29:10
Roads and fire and so. 00:29:13
When you look at those, those are really difficult areas to find places to cut. 00:29:17
And you're talking about? 00:29:24
Understaffing. Having one less patrolman on the street. You're talking about a three person Firehouse instead of four. 00:29:27
Those have significant impacts. 00:29:36
And so it's not just buying a cheaper dozen of eggs. 00:29:39
Different problem. 00:29:46
But but we always have that principle in mind. We're not up here at all because we're your neighbors. We have to do the same 00:29:47
thing. We're not looking to, you know, we don't have a health department. We don't have a, you know. 00:29:55
Fund we're building to shelter the homeless we are a pretty lean municipality relative to everyone organizations within the county 00:30:04
so we we get where you're coming from we I'm an accountant by profession and I'm always looking to be when we talk about budgets 00:30:11
of not tolerating. 00:30:18
Fat in the budget? 00:30:26
We don't have it. 00:30:28
Well, I appreciate you're trying to be frugal, and I know you guys probably are. 00:30:31
Trying to be. 00:30:37
I look at it. 00:30:39
From my perspective, well, first of all, with respect to the police. 00:30:42
I've never experienced much crime. I've had two instances. 00:30:48
In my seven years in being in this neighborhood. 00:30:53
One where the police responded and was a favorable outcome. The other one was AI was victimized by white collar crime and the 00:30:57
police did absolutely nothing. 00:31:03
Just took my story down and that was the end of it. 00:31:10
So I was just disappointing to me. 00:31:13
Let's see. 00:31:20
What about? 00:31:25
One of you guys mentioned a one time hit. 00:31:29
Who made that statement about attack? This is this I can I can speak to that. Is this so expensive One time hit and thereafter 00:31:32
we're going to go down or it's not necessarily that we're going to go down. But as was mentioned that this is a shared services 00:31:40
model and so the county was removed as one of the contributors to overall budget of the unified police. 00:31:48
That was required by state law and that is a one time change that will happen. 00:31:57
And that's the biggest piece of this tax increase and we don't anticipate that that will happen again. 00:32:03
So. 00:32:11
Yeah, because it's already removed. So. So that's been done. That was not a decision that we made. I think that we would all agree 00:32:13
that that's not a decision we liked or that we appreciated. I think that everyone at Unified Police would say that that's not a 00:32:19
decision they liked or appreciated, but that was made by the state legislature. 00:32:25
So we are just trying to provide the same level of police support that we have always provided to keep our communities safe. 00:32:31
With fewer people paying in to that system, but with the county taken out. 00:32:44
OK. Well, that is pretty much all I have to say. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. 00:32:53
Mayor, could you restate on the police? It was 700. How much was the bump there, 700 and how many thousand? It's about 7:50. I 00:32:59
want to say don't hold me to exact number, but that's going to be close. And not to say that we wouldn't have an increase, but a 00:33:05
typical increase in the UPD budget would probably be depending on what the inflation rate is would be 4 or 5%, so. 00:33:12
Normally we would have had a maybe a $400,000 increase, but this one year because of that absorbed, having to absorb, not being 00:33:19
able to spread out those shared services cost, we had a one time hit that that impacted the budget. 00:33:26
That's what I meant by one time hit was it should stabilize at this point. 00:33:34
Any anybody else? 00:33:48
See people talking back there. I don't. I want to make sure you have an opportunity to address the council if you if you're here 00:33:56
and would like to. 00:33:59
It's beneficial. 00:34:05
We welcome it. 00:34:06
I mean typically in a public hearing. 00:34:09
We don't get into this kind of back and forth, but you know, I think when we're asking people to spend more money, we should stand 00:34:12
in front of you and justify it. And so we're happy to happy to have these conversations. We're happy after the fact to go through 00:34:19
your property tax notice and and show you what we're talking about in terms of the numbers. 00:34:26
Because I know it can get, I know it can get confusing. 00:34:34
I'll construe one more. 00:34:38
One thing I exercise I went through the first time we did this three years ago. 00:34:40
Um, because I haven't been in municipal government my whole career, I'm pretty short timer too. I mean, I'm longer now, but, but I 00:34:46
actually went back through all of my property tax bills going back to year 2000 when we incorporated. 00:34:53
And I saw that even though the value of my home changed dramatically over the course of those years, my holiday city line item, 00:35:01
the other line items fluctuated because they COVID user taxation by holiday had not in all those 20 years. And my my property tax 00:35:08
for holiday city was the same other than, you know, a few dollars up and down over the course of that 20 years, the only time it 00:35:15
went up. 00:35:22
In the course of that 20 years prior to the truth and Taxation hearing was the year that we did a major remodel and added about 00:35:29
25% footprint when we added on to our house. 00:35:35
And so that represented new growth essentially. So that was the only time I had property taxes went up because when I added to my 00:35:41
home from remodeling, but otherwise my property tax line item for holiday was. 00:35:47
Remodel. Boom. 00:35:55
And so that test held true with regard to even though the value of the home was, you know, going like this, the line item of 00:35:57
property tax was. 00:36:02
And not to not to belabor this too much, but. 00:36:07
Using your same example, if he were to look at your property tax notices overall. 00:36:12
You would see that they have gradually gone up overtime and it's because. 00:36:19
Granite School District and the Salt Lake County, which are going to be the two major property line items on your property tax. 00:36:25
Every two or three years are going through a truth in taxation because that's the that's their only source of revenue. I mean, for 00:36:31
the most part that's their only source of revenue. And because that the state fixes their revenue source, they and primarily their 00:36:37
expenses, wages and benefits. 00:36:43
Unless they never raise their wages and benefits, they have to go through a truth in taxation every two or three years just to 00:36:50
maintain a balanced budget, if that makes any sense at all. 00:36:55
This is a point that Doesn't the Utah State tax go entirely to public education? 00:37:01
Income tax, yes, Not property tax. Property tax is about half. 00:37:08
Property tax code set Public education. 00:37:13
But that goes to higher. There is divided between higher Ed and K through 12. 00:37:17
Yeah, I might not be exactly right on that, but I think the certainly the biggest line item if you look at your property, if you 00:37:31
look at Granite School District, I don't know what the percent is, but it'll probably be the biggest percent of your property tax 00:37:35
bill. 00:37:39
And they really have to kind of go out every couple of years for an increase to keep a balanced budget. 00:37:44
I don't know how much of their how much of their income is from the property tax or state. I think you're right about the income 00:37:53
tax. 00:37:56
But the way they get revenue is different than the blend that the city has available to us. 00:38:00
OK. 00:38:10
I don't want to talk anymore about that. I think I'll just confuse everybody more. 00:38:12
If there's nobody else, then going once, going twice. 00:38:18
Then I'm going to close the public hearing. 00:38:25
So there's two items, 4:00 and 5:00. 00:38:29
1st is to determine the tax rate, which in our budget is .001436, which anticipates the 15% increase that we approved in June, but 00:38:33
this is the actual meeting where we would approve that. 00:38:40
So any discussion on this before we take a motion? 00:38:49
And this. 00:38:56
This. 00:39:00
Vote would be on the same rate that we considered in June. There hasn't been a change. 00:39:02
Right, right. 00:39:08
Well, I know that the staff and this council put an heck of a lot of effort to come to that number, and there was a fair amount of 00:39:12
weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. As it always is every year as we assemble the budget, I'm comfortable with where we ended 00:39:16
up. 00:39:21
I'm comfortable with the time that our timing and. 00:39:27
And with the process we went through and I'm comfortable making with emotion when you're ready. 00:39:34
Anybody else? 00:39:48
I just Eck our thanks to this Gina and the rest of the city staff that worked on the budget. It was it's always a big job and this 00:39:49
year was I think particularly challenging with the UPD change. And so I just want to commend them for their hard work. 00:39:56
Well, and I want to thank people for showing up too. Honestly, we had. 00:40:04
Very little if any public input when we went through the budgeting process and it was very transparent that this is the direction 00:40:09
we're going and we were asking for. And so that's when we started getting stuff in the journal. We, we were like we. 00:40:16
We want people to know what we're doing and why we're doing it and where the money's going, and we were concerned that we weren't 00:40:23
getting any we expect to get. 00:40:27
Feedback and pushback and statements and concerns from our residents and we weren't getting any. So I appreciate everybody. 00:40:32
Taking time out of their busy schedules to show up, and we're certainly empathetic to the comments you've made. 00:40:39
And I would just add to that. 00:40:46
The suggestions that have been made tonight, those would be very helpful. When we do go through the budgeting process, it's been 00:40:50
referred to several times and that's when we. 00:40:56
Decide how much to spend on all the different items that the city has to spend money on. 00:41:02
And so if you are really concerned about your taxes and concerned about the way the city is spending its money, I would encourage 00:41:09
you in May, next May come to some of the City Council meetings where we have those discussions. 00:41:18
And. 00:41:26
Don't don't think we're only listening when we're trying to raise taxes. 00:41:29
The real critical time in my in my estimation is to come in May when we're putting together the budget and let us know then what 00:41:34
you think we should spend money on and what we think we should not spend money on. 00:41:41
Those meetings are, you might have to sit there for three or four hours, but those meetings are all open to the public. 00:41:50
And even the work sessions, you're welcome to come in, listen anything we have to say. 00:41:57
And it's over the course of several different meetings, but they'll break it out. And on the agenda it will say, tonight we're 00:42:02
going to be covering public works and police, you know, police and it'll break it out. So if there's a specific area that you're 00:42:07
most concerned about, you can kind of look at, look at the agenda and and plan to attend accordingly, right? 00:42:13
There's another. 00:42:20
Yeah, we have. 00:42:32
You contact. 00:42:34
Stephanie, we have an e-mail list that people have signed up on and you'll get notices about our meetings and the agendas. 00:42:37
Yep. OK, I'm happy to take a motion then. 00:42:43
Hey Mr. Mayor, I move approval of Ordinance 2024 Dash 13 determining the rate of tax for 2024 and 25 tax year. 00:42:48
On real and personal property within the city. 00:42:58
2nd. 00:43:01
OK, we have a motion and a second. We'll go to both Council member. 00:43:02
Gray yes. Councilmember Quinn yes, Councilmember Fotheringham, yes. Councilmember Durham, yes and Councilmember Brewer yes. Chair 00:43:07
votes yes and that certified tax rate is approved. Thank you, council. So the next is we just have to make a final adoption of the 00:43:13
budget with that certified tax rate inside of the budget. 00:43:20
Mr. Mayor, I move approval of Ordinance 2024-14, adopting the final budget for fiscal year beginning July 1st, 2024 through June 00:43:28
30, 2025. 00:43:33
Second motion is second Council Member Gray yes. Councilmember Quinn, yes, Councilmember Fotheringham, yes. Councilmember Durham 00:43:38
yes. Councilmember Brewer yes. And chair vote just that budgets approved. 00:43:44
And there's no further business. I'll take a motion to adjourn, move to adjourn. 00:43:51
Second, all in favor. Aye, aye. We're adjourned. Thank you. 00:43:56
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Ready. 00:00:10
OK, must be 6:00. 00:00:11
OK, so we're going to call the City of Holiday Council meeting to order on Thursday, August 15th. This is to accommodate a Truth 00:00:19
in Taxation hearing. And we'll begin with the pledge if everybody please rise. 00:00:25
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. 00:00:37
And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. 00:00:42
Thank you and welcome everybody. 00:00:54
So item 3 on the agenda is a Truth in Taxation public hearing, which I'll open in just a moment. That's the only public input we 00:00:57
have for tonight. It's just a two agenda item. It's to approve the certified tax rate and also the final budget associated with 00:01:04
that depending on how the Council goes on it. 00:01:10
But before we do that, I just want to make a couple of comments. 00:01:18
And for those that are here, that the City Council approved a budget in June. 00:01:23
That anticipated a 15% property tax increase, which raises, which raises approximately $1.2 million in additional revenue to the 00:01:32
city, which I'll talk about in in just a minute. 00:01:38
I don't have all the details in front of me but off the top of my head. 00:01:48
It increases the property tax on a average home and holiday, which is about 944,000, by $97.00 a year. 00:01:52
Part of what confuses people about it is I think when they hear 15%, they think it's raising my property taxes 15%. 00:02:06
Holiday's portion of your property tax bill is, I want to say, around. 00:02:14
14. 00:02:19
12% it will be more like 15% if this property tax increase goes through. So only about 12% of what you pay in your property tax. 00:02:21
Is the holiday city line item. So when you raise the property tax holiday 15%, the impact to your overall property tax rate is 00:02:30
somewhere around 2%. So I wish we could we had better ways of explaining that, but that's the reality of it. People get people get 00:02:37
holidays line item, line item mixed up with their overall property tax bill. So if approved, it would raise your property tax 00:02:44
somewhere in the vicinity of 2% over the course of the year. 00:02:51
This is the second time, and this will be the second time if it's approved that the city has raised property tax in 25 years since 00:03:00
the city incorporated. We had a property tax increase in 2021 to bond against that revenue to stabilize what was a failing Rd. 00:03:07
situation at the time, which which I'm pretty proud to say I think we have done. We've invested about $7,000,000 in our roads over 00:03:14
the last. 00:03:21
Three years. 00:03:28
On. 00:03:31
Roads that were getting ready to fail basically. So that's where a lot of that money went. 00:03:32
And is still going. 00:03:41
So this will be on this particular property tax increase we're considering tonight. This will be the second public hearing. The 00:03:44
first was during the budgeting process in June. 00:03:49
Where residents had an opportunity to comment. But the state requires that if you're going to raise property taxes, there must be 00:03:55
a truth in taxation hearing, which is the sole purpose of really why we're here tonight. 00:04:01
So why are we doing this? 00:04:09
There's a couple of reasons when we went through our tax increase in 2021. 00:04:13
Which was the first time we raised property taxes. 00:04:17
The Taxpayer Association, which which advocates for residents, actually endorsed that increase. They said we needed to do it, but 00:04:21
they but part of their input was also to say you should really be doing this every four or five years to capture inflationary 00:04:28
increases, not let it go for 20 years and have to go out for 50% increases in your property tax. So part of the reason we're doing 00:04:34
this is the inflationary pressures we've seen over the last say three or four years. 00:04:41
That's part of it, the biggest. 00:04:49
Issue that we've had to tackle over the last three years and specifically this year is pressures in public safety and police. 00:04:52
Umm, after the events that took place in 2020. 00:05:01
It created a kind of a wage war within the police community that that caused our police wages to rise that we had to absorb over 00:05:06
over a two or three-year period. 00:05:11
And then this year we were in a unique situation where the state legislature basically forced the separation of the county and the 00:05:17
County Sheriff from the unified police model, which is the shared model that Holiday participates in. 00:05:26
That force separation caused a loss of economies in our costing model that all of the members have had to absorb. So I think our 00:05:35
increase in the police line item this year was about $750,000. 00:05:43
That was a huge impact. We think it's a single impact. We're hoping that now it will stabilize to more of an inflationary increase 00:05:53
overtime, but it caused our police budget to go up from what is typically if. 00:06:00
Inflation runs at say 3%. Our police line item will typically run at four or five. It does run above the inflationary rate because 00:06:08
of of the pay structures within the police model. 00:06:13
But that had a big impact. If you look at the pie chart, you can see up there that of our overall budget, our police line item is 00:06:19
34.67 of our entire budget goes to police, the other 8 and 18% goes to fire, I think. 00:06:28
It went off my screen, so I can't see it, but so about 50 to 53% of our entire city budget. 00:06:37
Is right off the top, goes to police and fire but the unique situation we had to address this year. 00:06:44
With the force separation. 00:06:52
Had a had a dramatic impact on on the budget challenges this council had to. 00:06:55
Address and that really what caused us to have to again go back and ask for the property tax increase from our residents this 00:07:02
year. 00:07:06
So public safety. 00:07:11
Continued investments in our road infrastructure. 00:07:14
And I want to talk about that just a little bit, but, um. 00:07:19
When you see the expense pies, your property tax revenue is really fixed unless we go through this truth in taxation process. So 00:07:24
as inflation starts to creep into police and fire in these other areas, the the piece of the pie that is affected is, is the 00:07:31
capital piece, our road infrastructure, that's the easiest one to shrink. 00:07:39
And if we don't continue to invest in that? 00:07:47
Eventually we're going to end up in the same situation we did in 2021 where we are investing almost nothing in Rd. repairs, 00:07:52
literally at one year, 1/4 of $1,000,000, which is nothing in terms of maintaining our roads. So every four or five years our 00:07:59
councils should be going out to the public from a property tax standpoint and saying look, here have been the inflationary 00:08:06
pressures over the last four or five years, here's what we need to raise to capture those inflationary increases. 00:08:14
And do it every in shorter steps so that it doesn't kick the can down to the down the road to future councils to have to make 00:08:21
bigger jumps of twenty 2530% in property tax increases. So that's those are the three reasons we really got to this point were 00:08:31
just basic inflationary pressures, big increase in the police line item and the need for us to continue to invest in our roads. 00:08:40
Umm. 00:08:51
That's just, that's just kind of a basic overview of it. I was talking to Christian, who runs our finances in the city a little 00:08:54
bit earlier and, and with our City Council, we wish there were. 00:09:00
A better way to explain property taxes? 00:09:07
Because it can be, it can be really confusing to residents, but essentially the way property taxes are established through statute 00:09:11
in this state. 00:09:16
They refer to it as a revenue based system. I guess I don't know if that's accurate, Gina, but essentially what it is is your 00:09:22
property taxes can't go up. 00:09:26
Unless we go through a truth in taxation process. 00:09:31
So if generally your value goes up, your mill rate should drop to keep it level until we go through this process. The only problem 00:09:35
with that is it gets. 00:09:39
It's, it's a citywide revenue. So if, um. 00:09:44
I don't even know if I want to get into the weeds on this, but if. 00:09:48
If your value escalates. 00:09:55
At a higher rate than your neighbors neighbors, yours might go up a little bit there's but there would have to drop to keep the 00:09:58
revenue level if that makes any sense. 00:10:02
So that's the way it works. The other unique situation we found ourselves in in statewide. 00:10:07
Is that the residential rates have risen at a much faster rate than the commercial rate. So it is true that residential rates have 00:10:14
gone up a little bit more because the commercial rates haven't haven't raised as much. So to keep the revenue steady, the 00:10:21
residential rates went up a little bit a little at a little higher rate. 00:10:28
Umm, I know that can get pretty complicated, and I think I'll just leave it at that. 00:10:38
So. 00:10:45
That that's my little lead in, but I'm happy to if the council wants to make any comments or if we have any questions for Gina or 00:10:47
Gina, if you have any comments I want, I want those that are here to address the council, I assume to hear why we're doing this 00:10:54
and what we hope to raise through this increase and why we're doing it before we open up the public hearing for your comment. 00:11:02
Anybody I'll just say you did a fine job of describing a complicated, complex deal in there. And I appreciate that. You know, this 00:11:14
is my first term serving as a City Council member. And I think it's it's it's been eye opening to me. And I got to say, you know, 00:11:21
the whole at a city level, it's a nonpartisan kind of kind of a thing. And there's high spending Republicans, there's high 00:11:27
spending Democrats, There's, you know, there's, there's all, you know, there's, there's different. 00:11:34
As far as a propensity to spend at a government level is concerned that that that can, that can really vary. 00:11:42
I will say that. 00:11:47
Me personally, ideologically, I'm a, I'm a very, I like to see government's role as small as possible and to, to really take good 00:11:49
care and how public funds are spent. And coming into this not having had a political background or anything like that, I have to 00:11:57
say that I've been. 00:12:04
Extremely surprised at how leanly holiday runs and the care and concern that I've seen from all of my council members. It was, it 00:12:13
was not what I expected, quite honestly. And, and it's been one of the more rewarding things I would say that with of the things 00:12:20
that I've learned or the ways that my eyes were opened as I, as I came to serve in office. And so I guess I would, I would just 00:12:26
say that. 00:12:33
I personally see the. 00:12:40
The wisdom in what the Taxpayers Association recommended so that we don't have the sudden jumps. We've tried to be responsible and 00:12:42
good stewards of the, of the public trust in, in how we spend and how this budget was put together. And so I, I would just say 00:12:49
that I, I appreciate very much the way that you described it and, and, and. 00:12:56
And look, we always look forward to trying to explain it on a one-on-one basis if anybody has questions and things like that after 00:13:04
the fact. But but anyways, so that's all I have to say. 00:13:08
Yeah, property. It's a simple concept, but then when you start explaining and it becomes. 00:13:14
More complicated. I wish it was easier. 00:13:19
Anybody else, Gina, anything you want to add? Well, we're going to, we're going to open up the public hearing right now. 00:13:23
And this is maybe you'll be first. 00:13:31
So in terms of the public hearing, we like you to keep it to 3 minutes or less if possible. We just ask you to approach the 00:13:35
podium, give us your name and address, and the public hearing is open. So Sir, if you'd like to go first, just come on up, yeah. 00:13:44
Just give us your name and address. 00:13:54
Just wondering if now that you're saying that. 00:14:00
With this increase, it'll be somewhat we going through Rd. improvement. 00:14:03
OK, the road above Morningside Elementary is atrocious and. 00:14:08
They've done all the side roads around there. Just wondering if it's going to be taken care of next year. May I? I know we don't 00:14:15
usually. Yeah. Well, so. 00:14:21
Let me answer this and then I'm going to turn it over to you, Trey. 00:14:27
We won't, we don't get into a lot of back and forth of the residents. We just give this youth the opportunity to comment to the 00:14:32
council. But having said that, I'm going to let Drew respond to you and then we'll take it from there. I would like to respond 00:14:39
because this is a question that I have fielded quite a bit. The I know that rode well. I drive it at least once a day and the 00:14:46
reason that it is in the condition is that it's in and has not been repaired yet. 00:14:53
Is because it is on the list for Salt Lake Public Utilities to come in and rip up the whole road and put in a new water main. 00:15:01
And we have decided as a city, I have talked with Jared Bunch, our head engineer, a number of times, we are trying to patch it and 00:15:10
patch it and keep it serviceable until that water main is put in. Because we don't want to lay a whole new surface down and then 00:15:16
have Salt Lake Public Utilities come in and rip the whole thing up. And that is why it is the way it is. And I apologize. We we 00:15:23
keep. 00:15:30
Asking them when they're going to get to us and they won't give us a straight answer, but at least, well they said not this year. 00:15:38
So I don't know yet about next year, but I apologize. Like I say it's a terrible Rd. but that's why it's the way it is and hasn't 00:15:44
been repaired, OK. 00:15:50
Thank you. Thank you. 00:15:56
Who's next? 00:15:59
I see all these people out here. There's got to be somebody. 00:16:04
1932 Charleston Lane, did you give initially? Maybe I missed it when I came in some explanation where this increased funding was 00:16:07
going to go. We, we did and I'll, I'll just hit it real quick. 00:16:14
We're hoping to raise about $1.2 million in revenue primarily to absorb a big increase, about a 10.43% increase I think in our 00:16:23
police item line item because of the separation from the four, separation from the county and the Sheriff's Office. We think 00:16:30
that's a one time hit and hopefully it will normalize after that. That was the biggest piece. The other piece was a continued need 00:16:38
for us to invest in our road infrastructure and not let it let it dip down the way it. 00:16:45
Over the 1st 20 years in holiday and the third was just the inflationary pressures on all the other expenses inside the city. 00:16:53
I would just ask, I mean, you're aware that all your taxpayer 2 and you're dealing with inflation. And as we deal with every other 00:17:01
aspect in inflation in our lives, this is just another one that we don't look forward to every year when we get our tax notice. 00:17:07
When I see my taxes go up a grand this year and I see 30% of that or 25% of it seems to me like it looks like it's coming from 00:17:13
this holiday increase. I would just ask that you would look at it as a good steward as every household has to and how we have to 00:17:19
cut back. 00:17:25
Areas and would ask that you know that you'd be very scrutinizing in terms of how you pass these increases on because they are 00:17:31
noticed and they're I mean I've got kids that kids with five kids and they're going where am I going to get the next gallon of 00:17:38
milk? And so every dollar that you can save is appreciated by by the people that 10% increase is that do you demonstrate some 00:17:46
numbers to show why the increase? Is it because increasing administration or you have to pay for more manpower. 00:17:53
Stuff in the physical facility or in their cars or why does that, why does that go up with the police? 00:18:01
10%. 00:18:08
Well, let me take a shot there. Yeah, go ahead. Just the way UPD works on a shared services model. 00:18:10
We manage our own precinct. 00:18:19
And then we also share in the cost of shared resources with other municipalities and formerly with the county. 00:18:22
And the county was providing a big chunk of the UPD model and its budget. And when they separated themselves, we we lost a 00:18:31
significant element in basic economy of scale. So the the a lot of the fixed costs and those shared resources don't change. 00:18:40
But we have fewer people contributing to supporting that pool of shared resources. And so that's why our we lost some economy of 00:18:50
scale. So that's why we have this one time hit an increased percentage of budget to our for our police services. 00:18:57
And because that's the nature of the police element of it. But also you'll recall over the last couple of years we've had 00:19:06
significantly higher inflation than we have over the previous several years. And so that catches up to us. We're we kind of have a 00:19:12
lagging, it's a lagging cost. So we don't experience that same inflation in in the year you hear reported on the news, but in the 00:19:18
following. 00:19:24
One or two years is when we we kind of have to absorb those hits. So even though in inflation is coming down now. 00:19:31
The effect of the previous year's inflation is catching up with us. That's but, but we, we, we share your values with regard to 00:19:39
being, as Ty said, we're a lean, mean fighting machine here in holiday and we intend to stay that way. We're your neighbors, we're 00:19:44
not. 00:19:50
Street issues and thank you for that, Paul. I appreciate that. But when we look at it and see 15% and I hope is there anything 00:19:57
when it comes out like this and it's printed, is there ever any? 00:20:03
Possibility that it could ever be lowered from the. 00:20:09
From what it states on your. 00:20:12
Assessment when you receive it in the mail or is it basically coming here a futile exercise because it's already, I've never seen 00:20:15
it change once I've received something in the mail And you know, it shows what my proposed holiday taxes are for this year. So is 00:20:22
there anything that could be said here today that could ever have an influence on it anyway for this year? 00:20:28
Yeah, I mean, tonight's tonight, we vote on it. So yeah, it could. 00:20:35
I mean, what could be done? I mean, did you negotiate? Can you cut it to 12 or can you cut it to 9 or what do we expect next year 00:20:41
is the best we do to offer input that next year you folks are even more tighter with the pencil? 00:20:47
Yeah, not to drag this out too long, but we don't. And I think you might have missed this, but the Taxpayers Association 00:20:56
recommended us when we went through our tax increase. 00:21:01
Three years ago that we really should do this every four or five years because your property tax revenue unless you go through 00:21:07
trees and should stay level. 00:21:11
So. 00:21:16
This shouldn't be an every year thing. I would assume that this will probably, you probably won't see another truth in taxation in 00:21:18
the city for probably another four or five years. 00:21:23
So this was a 15% increase over last year and not setting up 5%, five percent, 5%, but we're just hitting 15 this because that's 00:21:29
what you feel you're, you're justifiable increased expense. Yeah, I mean you go out, you go through this every four or five years 00:21:36
and hopefully that revenue gets you by for that four or five years. And then you look at the effects, you know, the effects of 00:21:43
inflation over that period and then you go through another truth in taxation, but the holiday line item. 00:21:49
Theoretically should stay the same over that five year period. It just depends on how your properties value escalates or declines 00:21:58
in relationship to your neighbors, if that makes any sense. Well, I would just as a citizen of polity, I mean as you state that 00:22:04
you are, you're trying to be careful with the expenditures and that you're cognizant that it impacts people at their kitchen table 00:22:09
and. 00:22:15
If there's stuff that you we have to defer things, maybe Holiday City has to defer things, maybe not 20 years to get the roads 00:22:22
repaired, but to be to be considerate in the terms of passing on these tax increases. Thank you. 00:22:28
Thank you very much. 00:22:34
Mayor, can I have one other comment if just so that everybody is aware, this meeting is recorded and it's available on the city 00:22:37
website. And really the mayor did a great job, I think of giving a very clear, we've, we've had a lot of discussions about this as 00:22:43
a City Council. He did a very good job of spelling out and I would encourage you to go back and listen to that again. Or if you 00:22:49
have neighbors and others who might be interested, just hop on and look up today's meeting and just watch that kind of 00:22:54
introductory message that he delivered. 00:23:00
It was, I thought it was compelling and and it gives a good, a good overview, so. 00:23:06
I can see you're getting ready. 00:23:16
I'm Richard Hadlock. I live on. 00:23:25
1873 Lincoln Lane. 00:23:27
First of all, I read that the tax increase was 15.1% and then you referred to it 2%. I guess I missed something there. 00:23:36
OK, what I'll explain what I mean by that is that. 00:23:46
Holiday City is proposing a 15% property tax increase to their line item. 00:23:52
But if you look on your property tax notice, you'll see holidays property tax. 00:23:59
If you do the math, if you divide your holidays property tax into your overall tax rate. 00:24:07
The increase is probably going to equate to about two of 2% increase of your total of your total property tax. So granted school 00:24:13
district is, you know, public education is about half of property tax. 00:24:19
Well, here's here's a maybe this will be a clearer way to put it. If we had a, we use $944,000 because that's the average property 00:24:27
tax in the city, right? Assessed values, assessed value in the city. 00:24:34
So that's going to generate overall property tax once you add up all the entities. So the the, the proposed tax that we're we're 00:24:43
proposing, the 15% increase will result in a $97.00 increase in your overall property tax. If you divided that into your overall 00:24:52
property, current overall property tax, it's about a 2% increase I think. 00:25:00
Christian am I? 00:25:10
Right. So it's a 15% increase to your holiday line item. It'll be about don't, don't hold me to exactly about a 2% increase in 00:25:12
your overall property tax, OK. 00:25:18
Well. 00:25:26
If he's got a property tax notice, we could probably just figure it out. Would it be fair to say that the slice of the pie that 00:25:29
goes to holiday is about 12% right now? And so the our increase is a 15% increase of that 12%. It's not a 15% increase of your 00:25:37
entire property tax payment. OK, well, I'll look at my. 00:25:45
In order to get some clarity on that. 00:25:54
I don't know about all you guys. You guys all look like you're all employed. Imagine you are. I'm not retired, just have a fixed 00:25:57
income. I live off Social Security basically. 00:26:03
So when you talk about inflation and this tax increase to me is inflation. 00:26:10
I'm paying well, maybe my house has gone up in value too. Does how does that figure into it? Does that increase my property taxes 00:26:16
when my house value goes up? 00:26:21
Theoretically, no, unless we go through truth intact. Unless the entities go through truth in taxation like we're doing and 00:26:28
raising it. The answer is really, really no, unless you look on your property tax and other like Granite School District. If 00:26:36
they're raising theirs, yes, it will. But if nobody went through truth and taxation, no, your property taxes shouldn't go up. 00:26:44
But if you're, if you're, if yours goes up. 00:26:57
If yours goes up higher than your neighbor, your property tax would increase if it if it goes down. If it doesn't go up as at the 00:27:00
same rate as your neighbor, your property tax would actually drop. 00:27:05
And that's what gets confusing about it. I don't know the general principle though for getting your neighbors. 00:27:12
OK. Yeah. But but that according to the by statute. By statute as your value goes up, your mill rate or your tax rate goes down, 00:27:19
OK. So the city gets the same revenue year after year after year in total? 00:27:27
Unless we go for a truth and taxation hearing like we are doing today and ask for a 15% increase so over the years. 00:27:36
Your home value could have doubled in value. 00:27:44
But your property tax related to that change in value would have would have stayed the same. 00:27:48
In a holiday, but but to answer the reason yours keeps going up is all of these other entities overtime have gone in truth in 00:27:55
taxation because. 00:28:00
They, you know, they have the same inflationary pressures as everybody else has and so that but to do that they've had to go 00:28:05
through a truce in taxation process to raise it. If none of them had gone through a true syntax. Gina, if this is right and we're 00:28:11
dragging this out. But if ten years ago. 00:28:17
None of the entities have gone through truth in taxation process. 00:28:23
And your home went from a half $1,000,000 to $1,000,000. Your property tax should be the same. 00:28:28
If that makes any sense. Is that right? You're exactly right. And Miro is just going to offer, if anyone would like to talk to me 00:28:35
after the hearing, we can go through their own notices in more detail. We can do the math for you in terms of that 52% and 15%. 00:28:43
Yeah. Have you ever looked at cutting any of your departments budgets to make your budget neutral in order to facilitate these 00:28:52
increases? Like households have to do that to cut back and. 00:28:58
Yeah, that was my next point is cutting expenses. Yeah, good point. 00:29:04
Well, the bulk of our budget is police. 00:29:10
Roads and fire and so. 00:29:13
When you look at those, those are really difficult areas to find places to cut. 00:29:17
And you're talking about? 00:29:24
Understaffing. Having one less patrolman on the street. You're talking about a three person Firehouse instead of four. 00:29:27
Those have significant impacts. 00:29:36
And so it's not just buying a cheaper dozen of eggs. 00:29:39
Different problem. 00:29:46
But but we always have that principle in mind. We're not up here at all because we're your neighbors. We have to do the same 00:29:47
thing. We're not looking to, you know, we don't have a health department. We don't have a, you know. 00:29:55
Fund we're building to shelter the homeless we are a pretty lean municipality relative to everyone organizations within the county 00:30:04
so we we get where you're coming from we I'm an accountant by profession and I'm always looking to be when we talk about budgets 00:30:11
of not tolerating. 00:30:18
Fat in the budget? 00:30:26
We don't have it. 00:30:28
Well, I appreciate you're trying to be frugal, and I know you guys probably are. 00:30:31
Trying to be. 00:30:37
I look at it. 00:30:39
From my perspective, well, first of all, with respect to the police. 00:30:42
I've never experienced much crime. I've had two instances. 00:30:48
In my seven years in being in this neighborhood. 00:30:53
One where the police responded and was a favorable outcome. The other one was AI was victimized by white collar crime and the 00:30:57
police did absolutely nothing. 00:31:03
Just took my story down and that was the end of it. 00:31:10
So I was just disappointing to me. 00:31:13
Let's see. 00:31:20
What about? 00:31:25
One of you guys mentioned a one time hit. 00:31:29
Who made that statement about attack? This is this I can I can speak to that. Is this so expensive One time hit and thereafter 00:31:32
we're going to go down or it's not necessarily that we're going to go down. But as was mentioned that this is a shared services 00:31:40
model and so the county was removed as one of the contributors to overall budget of the unified police. 00:31:48
That was required by state law and that is a one time change that will happen. 00:31:57
And that's the biggest piece of this tax increase and we don't anticipate that that will happen again. 00:32:03
So. 00:32:11
Yeah, because it's already removed. So. So that's been done. That was not a decision that we made. I think that we would all agree 00:32:13
that that's not a decision we liked or that we appreciated. I think that everyone at Unified Police would say that that's not a 00:32:19
decision they liked or appreciated, but that was made by the state legislature. 00:32:25
So we are just trying to provide the same level of police support that we have always provided to keep our communities safe. 00:32:31
With fewer people paying in to that system, but with the county taken out. 00:32:44
OK. Well, that is pretty much all I have to say. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. 00:32:53
Mayor, could you restate on the police? It was 700. How much was the bump there, 700 and how many thousand? It's about 7:50. I 00:32:59
want to say don't hold me to exact number, but that's going to be close. And not to say that we wouldn't have an increase, but a 00:33:05
typical increase in the UPD budget would probably be depending on what the inflation rate is would be 4 or 5%, so. 00:33:12
Normally we would have had a maybe a $400,000 increase, but this one year because of that absorbed, having to absorb, not being 00:33:19
able to spread out those shared services cost, we had a one time hit that that impacted the budget. 00:33:26
That's what I meant by one time hit was it should stabilize at this point. 00:33:34
Any anybody else? 00:33:48
See people talking back there. I don't. I want to make sure you have an opportunity to address the council if you if you're here 00:33:56
and would like to. 00:33:59
It's beneficial. 00:34:05
We welcome it. 00:34:06
I mean typically in a public hearing. 00:34:09
We don't get into this kind of back and forth, but you know, I think when we're asking people to spend more money, we should stand 00:34:12
in front of you and justify it. And so we're happy to happy to have these conversations. We're happy after the fact to go through 00:34:19
your property tax notice and and show you what we're talking about in terms of the numbers. 00:34:26
Because I know it can get, I know it can get confusing. 00:34:34
I'll construe one more. 00:34:38
One thing I exercise I went through the first time we did this three years ago. 00:34:40
Um, because I haven't been in municipal government my whole career, I'm pretty short timer too. I mean, I'm longer now, but, but I 00:34:46
actually went back through all of my property tax bills going back to year 2000 when we incorporated. 00:34:53
And I saw that even though the value of my home changed dramatically over the course of those years, my holiday city line item, 00:35:01
the other line items fluctuated because they COVID user taxation by holiday had not in all those 20 years. And my my property tax 00:35:08
for holiday city was the same other than, you know, a few dollars up and down over the course of that 20 years, the only time it 00:35:15
went up. 00:35:22
In the course of that 20 years prior to the truth and Taxation hearing was the year that we did a major remodel and added about 00:35:29
25% footprint when we added on to our house. 00:35:35
And so that represented new growth essentially. So that was the only time I had property taxes went up because when I added to my 00:35:41
home from remodeling, but otherwise my property tax line item for holiday was. 00:35:47
Remodel. Boom. 00:35:55
And so that test held true with regard to even though the value of the home was, you know, going like this, the line item of 00:35:57
property tax was. 00:36:02
And not to not to belabor this too much, but. 00:36:07
Using your same example, if he were to look at your property tax notices overall. 00:36:12
You would see that they have gradually gone up overtime and it's because. 00:36:19
Granite School District and the Salt Lake County, which are going to be the two major property line items on your property tax. 00:36:25
Every two or three years are going through a truth in taxation because that's the that's their only source of revenue. I mean, for 00:36:31
the most part that's their only source of revenue. And because that the state fixes their revenue source, they and primarily their 00:36:37
expenses, wages and benefits. 00:36:43
Unless they never raise their wages and benefits, they have to go through a truth in taxation every two or three years just to 00:36:50
maintain a balanced budget, if that makes any sense at all. 00:36:55
This is a point that Doesn't the Utah State tax go entirely to public education? 00:37:01
Income tax, yes, Not property tax. Property tax is about half. 00:37:08
Property tax code set Public education. 00:37:13
But that goes to higher. There is divided between higher Ed and K through 12. 00:37:17
Yeah, I might not be exactly right on that, but I think the certainly the biggest line item if you look at your property, if you 00:37:31
look at Granite School District, I don't know what the percent is, but it'll probably be the biggest percent of your property tax 00:37:35
bill. 00:37:39
And they really have to kind of go out every couple of years for an increase to keep a balanced budget. 00:37:44
I don't know how much of their how much of their income is from the property tax or state. I think you're right about the income 00:37:53
tax. 00:37:56
But the way they get revenue is different than the blend that the city has available to us. 00:38:00
OK. 00:38:10
I don't want to talk anymore about that. I think I'll just confuse everybody more. 00:38:12
If there's nobody else, then going once, going twice. 00:38:18
Then I'm going to close the public hearing. 00:38:25
So there's two items, 4:00 and 5:00. 00:38:29
1st is to determine the tax rate, which in our budget is .001436, which anticipates the 15% increase that we approved in June, but 00:38:33
this is the actual meeting where we would approve that. 00:38:40
So any discussion on this before we take a motion? 00:38:49
And this. 00:38:56
This. 00:39:00
Vote would be on the same rate that we considered in June. There hasn't been a change. 00:39:02
Right, right. 00:39:08
Well, I know that the staff and this council put an heck of a lot of effort to come to that number, and there was a fair amount of 00:39:12
weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. As it always is every year as we assemble the budget, I'm comfortable with where we ended 00:39:16
up. 00:39:21
I'm comfortable with the time that our timing and. 00:39:27
And with the process we went through and I'm comfortable making with emotion when you're ready. 00:39:34
Anybody else? 00:39:48
I just Eck our thanks to this Gina and the rest of the city staff that worked on the budget. It was it's always a big job and this 00:39:49
year was I think particularly challenging with the UPD change. And so I just want to commend them for their hard work. 00:39:56
Well, and I want to thank people for showing up too. Honestly, we had. 00:40:04
Very little if any public input when we went through the budgeting process and it was very transparent that this is the direction 00:40:09
we're going and we were asking for. And so that's when we started getting stuff in the journal. We, we were like we. 00:40:16
We want people to know what we're doing and why we're doing it and where the money's going, and we were concerned that we weren't 00:40:23
getting any we expect to get. 00:40:27
Feedback and pushback and statements and concerns from our residents and we weren't getting any. So I appreciate everybody. 00:40:32
Taking time out of their busy schedules to show up, and we're certainly empathetic to the comments you've made. 00:40:39
And I would just add to that. 00:40:46
The suggestions that have been made tonight, those would be very helpful. When we do go through the budgeting process, it's been 00:40:50
referred to several times and that's when we. 00:40:56
Decide how much to spend on all the different items that the city has to spend money on. 00:41:02
And so if you are really concerned about your taxes and concerned about the way the city is spending its money, I would encourage 00:41:09
you in May, next May come to some of the City Council meetings where we have those discussions. 00:41:18
And. 00:41:26
Don't don't think we're only listening when we're trying to raise taxes. 00:41:29
The real critical time in my in my estimation is to come in May when we're putting together the budget and let us know then what 00:41:34
you think we should spend money on and what we think we should not spend money on. 00:41:41
Those meetings are, you might have to sit there for three or four hours, but those meetings are all open to the public. 00:41:50
And even the work sessions, you're welcome to come in, listen anything we have to say. 00:41:57
And it's over the course of several different meetings, but they'll break it out. And on the agenda it will say, tonight we're 00:42:02
going to be covering public works and police, you know, police and it'll break it out. So if there's a specific area that you're 00:42:07
most concerned about, you can kind of look at, look at the agenda and and plan to attend accordingly, right? 00:42:13
There's another. 00:42:20
Yeah, we have. 00:42:32
You contact. 00:42:34
Stephanie, we have an e-mail list that people have signed up on and you'll get notices about our meetings and the agendas. 00:42:37
Yep. OK, I'm happy to take a motion then. 00:42:43
Hey Mr. Mayor, I move approval of Ordinance 2024 Dash 13 determining the rate of tax for 2024 and 25 tax year. 00:42:48
On real and personal property within the city. 00:42:58
2nd. 00:43:01
OK, we have a motion and a second. We'll go to both Council member. 00:43:02
Gray yes. Councilmember Quinn yes, Councilmember Fotheringham, yes. Councilmember Durham, yes and Councilmember Brewer yes. Chair 00:43:07
votes yes and that certified tax rate is approved. Thank you, council. So the next is we just have to make a final adoption of the 00:43:13
budget with that certified tax rate inside of the budget. 00:43:20
Mr. Mayor, I move approval of Ordinance 2024-14, adopting the final budget for fiscal year beginning July 1st, 2024 through June 00:43:28
30, 2025. 00:43:33
Second motion is second Council Member Gray yes. Councilmember Quinn, yes, Councilmember Fotheringham, yes. Councilmember Durham 00:43:38
yes. Councilmember Brewer yes. And chair vote just that budgets approved. 00:43:44
And there's no further business. I'll take a motion to adjourn, move to adjourn. 00:43:51
Second, all in favor. Aye, aye. We're adjourned. Thank you. 00:43:56
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