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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 |