As costs rise, Salt Lake City is doing the same thing as Americans nationwide: taking a look at its budget and making hard choices. Its latest idea to make up ground is a proposed 12.5% bump to the city’s portion of property tax and a city utility rate increase.
Both received a lukewarm reception from a dozen residents who shared their thoughts at the first of two public hearings in front of the Salt Lake City Council.
“I want to be clear, I'm not opposed to paying my fair share,” resident Jennifer Henninger told officials at the May 19 hearing at city hall. “I've accepted the property tax adjustments because they've been reasonable, but the utility rate increases are far beyond what most households can sustain.”
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said the decision to raise rates was not taken lightly.
“We exhausted every other option before proposing increases to property taxes and fees,” she told the city council in her initial budget presentation on May 5. “What remains after this are choices none of us want to make.”
Before considering a tax increase, Mendenhall said the city already cut $13.2 million from its operating budget. That left the choice between a tax increase or “laying off dozens of city employees, cutting services Salt Lakers depend upon, or delaying infrastructure that we need for the next 20 years.”
Salt Lake City has not been immune to the recent rising prices and economic uncertainty experienced across the country. According to the city, prices for essential goods and services have risen sharply. Asphalt has gone up by $20 per ton to $64 since 2020, and the cost of replacing traffic signals at an intersection more than doubled to over $500,000 in that same time frame.
So far, the discourse around Salt Lake City’s proposed tax hikes has not elicited the same reaction as in other parts of the state. Residents in Roy were “shocked” to see their city property tax climb by 55%. Last year, Salt Lake County raised its portion of the property tax by 14.6%. Soon after, a group of residents petitioned for a referendum to block the tax hike.
Still, some at the hearing took issue with big-money items like a proposed $142 million police department budget, which is more than $7 million higher than last year’s. They suggested that the revenue gap should be covered by cutting funds from the Salt Lake City Police Department.
“I've heard it's a rough budget year,” Nomad Alliance founder Kseniya Kniazeva told the council. “I've heard you have to increase property taxes, and yet you're increasing the police budget by over 5%, and that to me doesn't make any sense.”
Kinazeva pointed to the city’s police budget rising by 64% since Mendenhall took office in 2020 and urged councilors to consider reallocating some of the department’s budget elsewhere.
“There's easy ways to not increase property taxes while also taking care of people,” she said.
The nearly $499 million proposed budget is a modest 1.57% increase over last year, but comes with the property tax bump.
While it might look like a big number, Mendenhall was careful to clarify that the city is just one of several entities that collect property taxes from residents. Counties, school districts and special service districts have their own levies as well.
“To be clear, this does not mean a 12.5% increase to a resident's entire property tax bill,” she said.
For a home valued at $624,000, the property tax would increase by about $9.87 per month, according to the city. The exact number everyone pays will vary. If the city council approves the new rate, it would bring in $13.5 million in revenue.
Under the budget proposal, residents could also see their public utility, waste and recycling costs go up. Those increases would go toward water treatment and other aging infrastructure. Combined, Mendenhall said a typical single-family home with low water use would see an increase of a little more than $32 a month.
For residents like Henninger, such a steep increase is not tenable, especially as households brace for higher costs as transportation and energy continue to become more expensive. She told officials that it would best serve the city to adopt a more “balanced approach” to the rate increases.
“Before placing more financial burden on households, I urge you to exhaust alternative funding options, reprioritizing existing budgets, phasing projects more gradually, or pursuing state and federal infrastructure grants,” she said. “A modest increase aligned with residents' income growth would be understandable, but increases of this magnitude are not.”
Salt Lake City’s budgeting process is far from over. An additional public hearing will take place June 2. The city council must adopt a new budget before July 1, the start of the next fiscal year.
