The Salt Lake City Council approved a one-time property tax hike on Tuesday, in response to lower-than-expected revenue, and allocated more than $40 million for street and park projects. Residents in attendance welcomed the funding for neighborhood improvements, while others were critical of the additional tax levy on property owners.
Home Values
Salt Lake City property owners will see a one-time increase of 0.0011% in their taxes, which the city described as equivalent to $4.08 on a $675,000 home.
The state’s Truth in Taxation laws require that property levies be “revenue neutral,” with the tax rate adjusting downward as property values rise. But city residents who successfully petitioned for property value reassessments during the past year created a deficit in the city’s expected revenue, triggering the one-time increase across all properties to make up the difference. The 0.0011% property tax increase will only apply to the current year.
Resident Alicia Scotter said the change does nothing to tackle the issue of outdated property assessments, which can benefit long-term homeowners with a lower tax burden. She said she recently purchased a home and found that the sale triggered an assessment of value three times higher than her neighbors.
“It just seems to me that it isn’t really fair for people moving in to be paying property taxes that are that significantly higher than the surrounding homes, just because they’re based on the recent purchase price,” Scotter said. “I believe that they need to address this issue and make sure homes in neighborhoods are all paying relatively equal to the property tax.”
For others, like Dean Melot, the budget gap from lower-than-expected tax revenue could be better filled by re-prioritizing auxiliary city funding.
“There’s ways to go about reducing this increase in property taxes,” Melot said. “Capital improvements—60-some-million dollar budget towards projects? Let’s reduce some of that.”
Councilmember Alejandro Puy explained the difference between Salt Lake City, which tackles the budgetary gaps from expected property tax revenue, and Salt Lake County, which handles the assessments of individual property values.
“There are multiple entities and it’s hard to understand how it works,” Puy said. “I’ve been working in government for 15 years. I’m still learning pieces of it.”
Pedestrian Safety
After a summer filled with public comment, the Council approved funding for 32 Capital Improvement Program (CIP) projects. CIP projects are government agency- or constituent-led applications aimed at repairing or expanding city infrastructure.
One constituent-requested project will install a HAWK crossing signal at the intersection of Richmond Street and Zenith Avenue. Sugar House residents appeared before the Council several times over the course of the application period to advocate for the pedestrian safety device, following several close misses and car crashes at the five-lane crossing.
“The pedestrian yield signs are often barely visible, the lights are quite short. Many, many times my family and our neighbors have had scary encounters with drivers not stopping for pedestrians,” Avery Edenfield said at an earlier meeting on June 3. “A driver raced southbound and rear-ended a stopped bus recently. We’ve had cars go through our fence, we’ve seen cars take down a street light. These are the kinds of accidents that happen over and over.”
More than $12 million will go toward maintenance and improvements at public parks. CIP applications initiated by the city’s Public Lands Department will also dredge the lake in Liberty Park, upgrade public bathrooms in Fairmont, Riverside and Jordan Parks, and bring several city parks into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (AD).
The Council voted to provide full or partial funding for just over half of the 62 CIP applications that were under consideration, allocating $44 million from the city’s General Fund, impact fees and sales taxes.
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