City Council - Regular Meeting

all right ladies and gentlemen welcome this evening to our truth and taxation hearing we are going to i'm going to call this meeting to order i'm going to note that we are past the stated time at 6 12 but as i said before we were having a little bit of difficulty with our recording system but it is now up you have council members present as you can see council member johnson is calling in from where she is council member green is in a place where he has no service to call in. So you've got these three council members and council member Johnson will be online with us shortly. So this is the only agenda items for this meeting are two public hearings. The first public hearing is a proposed property tax rate increase for the Salt Lake County portion of our community. The hearing is an opportunity for residents living in Draper City, Salt Lake County, to provide public comment on the proposed tax rate increase. No action will be taken on that public hearing. The item number 2B, which is next, is a public hearing with proposed property tax rate increase for the Utah County portion of our community. We are one of the unique cities that sits in two counties. The hearing is, again, the opportunity for residents living in Draper City, Utah, and the Utah County side of our community to make a public comment on the proposed property tax increase. We are not taking action tonight on this item. We will pass our... our budget next meeting on the 18th of August. So this meeting is completely and solely for the purpose of listening to citizen input on our proposed tax increase. It has no other item on the agenda. We also allow in this meeting, which is unique, participation via electronic means, and comment via electronic means. So the Draper State Truth and Taxation Hearing is on Zoom, and there's a link on our website that is available for those that want to join us by Zoom. Typically, we do not take public comment on Zoom in a normal public or city council meeting. But in this particular hearing for a property tax truth and taxation hearing, we will allow virtual comment for people that are on the Zoom link. People on the Zoom link are also able to make chat comments that we will record as part of the meeting. If you see chat comments, we're not going to read the chat comments. We'll let people talk. We're not going to do two talk, but we'll record all of that as well. So if you're attending this meeting virtually, we're going to do all of the people in the room first, and then we will go to those online that want to make comment. And so I'll read how we get to that when we get to the online comment portion. All right, so... John, were you going to get up first? What we would like to do, I'm going to have our finance director, Mr. John Veik, come up, and he will make a presentation to you about this budget, which includes this property tax increase. When Mr. Veik is done, we will take all public comment. I have a bunch of cards. that some of you have filled out. And I'll let everyone that wants to speak, speak. So you don't have to have filled out a card, but you'll get the opportunity. Our meeting rules, just let me go over them for you if I can, as we hold to them. The comments are limited in time to three minutes. There's a clock to my right, your left. We enforce the time limit strictly on everyone. So if you get to the end of three minutes, it'll beep, it's obnoxious, but your time will be over and it'll be time for the next person to go. When you come up to the dais, we'd like you to state your name and address. That will start the timer. and then make your comment from the podium into the microphone as best you can. Comments should be made, of course, to the entire council. It's not a question and answer session from the council, but it's an opportunity for them to listen to your comments and then consider them. We don't generally respond over the dais. I don't engage people in conversation. We just are here to listen to you today. We don't allow public displays, outbursts, clapping, or any of those things. We want to keep our meeting in a good order, and we are fair, and we keep it that way at every meeting. So we don't allow cards or displays or any of that kind of thing. We allow comment. So, Mr. Veit, go ahead, sir.

So as stated, we are here for our Truth in Taxation hearing today. We will start with our hearing for Salt Lake County. So I'm going to go through a set of slides. These will be fairly duplicative when we get to the Utah County side. There are a couple of slides that will be different, and I can point those out as we go through the first slide. According to state law, we are now required to do a property tax impact statement. And so we have done that. We proposed this prior to receiving a certified tax rate. And so we set this and did that based on what we, the rate that had been adopted for 2025, which was .000936. An increase of 25% took us to .001170. With the certified tax rate, the tax rate that would be adopted if there was no tax impact would have dropped from .000936 to .000902. The associated increase with that then raises the rate from .000902 to .00128. That will generate approximately $2,696,000 of additional ad valorem tax revenue that will be used to cover increases associated with operational and compensation costs. The proposed tax rate increase again is a 25% increase. And the city is continuing to do the process that is required there. The current property tax within Salt Lake County will generate $10,186,000 of tax revenue. The additional piece will bring that total to $12,882,000. And that for Salt Lake County, the primary residential value from the county auditor was $941,000, which would result in a $9.75 increase to a primary resident on a monthly basis, $116.97. on an annual basis, and again, 25%. The estimated increase to a business at the same value of $941,000 would be $17.72 on a monthly basis and $212.67 on an annual basis. The property tax... Along with the impact statement, we are also required to create a property impact schedule. And what this does is it details where those taxes will be spent. Currently within Draper, we are planning to spend a portion of fund balance. Fund balance is the rainy day fund that the city has. Our current budget, without the property tax increase, will have our property... we'll have the fund balance at $16,519,000. With the budget, with the proposed increase, that balance would be $18,980,000. So what that says is that with the property tax increase, Draper will reduce its reliance on fund balance to meet the ongoing operational needs of the city. There were two other areas where we have noted changes that would be affected by the property tax increase. Within our fire department, we currently have We currently are budgeting $250,000 in overtime to meet minimum staffing requirements. We are proposing within the budget to add three additional firefighters to meet that minimum with a change of a decrease in overtime but an increase in personnel costs. And the difference is $165,000. Impact statement is the city will fund three new firefighter positions, reducing the reliance on overtime to meet staffing levels and reducing firefighter fatigue. The last area where we have proposed a change associated with the property tax increase is within our parks and recs. We currently have a budget of $130,000 for playground maintenance. As those costs have gone up, we have seen a need to increase that budget to a total of $200,000 or a change of $70,000. If there's no property tax increase, we will remain at the $130,000, but will not be able to provide as many updates as are needed to continue to be compliant with risk and insurance mandates. The impact, again, as I sort of stated, is the City will have the necessary funding to continue annual playground replacements at the recommended level in order to maintain compliance with risk and insurance mandates. Within Salt Lake County, Draper City General Operations will receive additional property tax revenue each year as a result of the proposed property tax rate increase. The additional property tax revenue would be recognized as follows. From Salt Lake County, $2,455,712. From Utah County, $122,224 for a total of $2,696,000. Additional tax revenue will be used to offset increased operational and compensation costs within the city budget. Following this public hearing tonight, the City will hold an additional public hearing and adopt a final budget on August 18th at 7 o'clock p.m. at Draper City Hall in the City Council meeting. This is a copy of the advertisement that we are required to show and that we were required to post in the newspaper for two consecutive weeks, which was done. It is also posted on the City's website. We are also required to post and have available in the meeting tonight, which is on the podium in the back, a list of the tax increases for all of Salt Lake County. So this is that list. And again, it is available in the back. I know this is a little bit small, but we are required to post this up here. And so we are complying with the requirements of the law. Just a couple of notes. The current property tax rate for 2025 is, as I mentioned earlier, .000936. As you look across the Salt Lake Valley, you can see in the chart in the upper left corner how Draper City in the red compares to the rest of the state. the cities within Salt Lake County. There is one city that is currently lower, which is Bluffdale City, and one that is near us, which is Sandy City. Now the proposed rate for 2026, which represents our change rate, but not any changes for other municipalities, moves us to .00128. And you can see at that point, we become the third lowest within the Salt Lake County. General fund revenue associated with the city's budget for fiscal year 27 shows $54,133,400 of total revenue. In the graph on the far right, you can see the revenue that comes from taxes. You can see sales tax brings in $22,000,000. And property tax brings in $10,900,000. The new property tax is the orange slice that is listed here of $2.6 million, almost $2.7. And that currently is set aside in a restricted account within the city's budget and will not be available until the property tax rate is adopted and certified by Salt Lake County. This is just a slide that shows general fund by expense type, so meaning by personal services or by operational expenses. Again, a balanced budget showing $54,133,000. And then this slide shows that same budget broken down by each of the departments within the city. The process that we have gone through, on May 19th, the city adopted a tentative budget and set a date for a formal public hearing, which happened on June 2nd. On June 2nd, we had a public hearing during the city council meeting for the budget, for the tentative budget. On June 9th, the council then adopted from the tentative budget an interim budget And the property tax from the proposed increase was set aside in a restricted account so that we can hold this truth in taxation hearing. Tonight, we are in our truth in taxation hearing. All parties will be allowed to speak about the proposed tax rate change. And then next week on Tuesday evening at the city council meeting, we will adopt a final budget with a public hearing to be held in conjunction with the final budget. Questions?

I'm just wondering if these slides, this information's on the website information. I found this very helpful. Or is this just for tonight?

These slides are not on the website.

Any other questions for John?

I just have one question. Excuse me, John. If we do not have this tax increase, how much will we be pulling from the fund balance?

So we are currently... We're already going to be pulling... Even within... I'm going to get to the revenue slide here, hopefully. Okay. So currently you can see that we are currently appropriating three point two million dollars almost three point three million dollars of fund balance to balance this budget if we do not Pass the property tax increase that number will increase by the two million four sixty one that was listed in this property tax impact slide that would bring the total I gave that total to the mayor and

Yeah, $5,756,700. And what that will do is we currently have a 35% fund balance, and that will take us from 35% to 25% if we do all of it.

If we just do the amount, the 3.2, almost 3.3, then that takes us to 29 million. I mean 29%, not 29 million. Any other questions?

Just to clarify, the 2.4 is the Salt Lake County portion.

No, that's the entire portion.

Okay. I thought it was 2.696.

The 2.696 is the entire portion of the rate of the increase. 2.4 million would come from fund balance and then 165,000 from fire department and 70,000 from the parks department for those other changes, those two other changes.

Any other questions? Bryn, question?

I guess one question that I would have that might just be helpful for clarification is, you know, if we go from 35% of a fund balance to 25% of a fund balance, you know, we have had some expenses, you know, like the 100-year rainstorm. We have some water infrastructure things that we need to do. So what is the risk? if we have a big ticket item that we need to handle like an emergency from having 35 versus 25%.

The risk is that we would have less money to draw on. Those really are the rainy day funds. The state does cap municipalities at 35%. We are not sure what the state's going to do with that. There was talk of lowering that percent. That's one of the reasons we have come in the current budget and reduced fund balance down to the 29%. Taking it to 25% means that we have less money for those large events that could take place and puts us in the position where we would end up funding those through different means.

But that is something that we've had happen in the past where we've had to do major repairs

You know infrastructure repairs typically in every budget year we will come to the Council with budget amendments and those amendments will draw down even on the fund balance that we have. that we have set aside based on sometimes emergency things or just different things that have come up during the year. So it is a risk. I think that if we went to 25%, we would probably be fine for a year, but at some point, we can't continue to draw down fund balance. We need to have something there and we need to have a long-term financial plan. And as we went through the budget, that was really what we tried to do was look at this from a long-term perspective, instead of how do we balance the budget in this single year? How do we make sure that we can balance the budget for Draper long-term to be able to provide those services that the residents need and want? Thank you.

Can I ask one more quick question? Can you go back to the slide that shows Draper as compared to other Salt Lake County cities? Thanks. So this is the tax rate. I have been looking over the last couple of days. The Utah Taxpayers Association put out a report that compares cities and ranks cities, and it shows Draper much lower. like this shows us pretty positively, right? We have a low tax rate compared to other cities and it shows us higher. It's doing a revenue from taxes and fees per capita. Can you sort of explain why that would make us look less fiscally responsible? Or does that...

I'm trying to understand your question and what the information that you had.

Yeah, if we're looking at spending per capita, I guess it would mean if one place had more kids or more people not.

So spending per capita would mean how much is our current revenue? How much are we spending each and every year versus what we're, I'm guessing, bringing in or what the residents are making? But I'm not sure where they're pulling that number. I can do some research and get you answers.

I'll get you this report, and I'd love just to understand that better. Thank you.

Any other questions?

I do think it's important to clarify on this proposed tax rate is showing what our tax rate would be if we pass this, but it's comparing to these other cities, their 2025 tax rate. Correct. Where some of those are also going to be adjusted.

Yes. Some of the corresponding municipalities as listed in This document have also proposed tax increases, so their rates will go up. Other municipalities may see theirs go down. The natural trend for property tax rate is a declining as the value of the homes goes up because cities are not allowed to collect additional tax revenue, even if property values increase. So as property values increase, the property tax rate decreases. So I did not update the slide, but I do know that Bluffdale and Sandy did not do property tax increases, and their rates are slightly lower than is listed in this current slide as proposed for next fiscal year. But other municipalities have also proposed increases, and theirs would be higher than is shown in this slide.

Bring up the pie chart pie charts that you had that showed the revenue sources Okay, I just want to call out this gray section here on the far right that shows the sales tax revenue I think it's really remarkable that we're bringing in that much funding through sales tax revenue if we were not able to do that We would be looking at having to charge a much higher property tax rate. Is that correct?

Or reduced services. I mean, those are really the two options. We did look at ways to increase revenues throughout the city. We've seen sales tax be very positive year over year until recently, and now it's becoming a little more volatile and really... we're projecting lower, we're still projecting additional revenues over what we got this year, but not to the degree that we had been in prior years. And so as that continues to slow down, the funding source, that funding source is no longer available, and we need to look at other ways to be able to fund the things that are listed really on these next slides, which are how we provide the services that are required within Draper City.

Can I ask another question kind of going along with what Tasha said about the sales tax? As we've seen in inflation, you know, over the last few years, you know, even before the big jump, was the increase of the sales tax revenue every year able to compensate for the inflation up until a certain point?

Yes, I mean, earlier, you know, five or ten years ago, we were seeing almost double-digit increases in sales tax as more and more businesses came online within Draper City. We are not seeing as much new growth in businesses, and so that... that really has become more of a stable revenue source as opposed to a growing revenue source. And that's really the difference that we're seeing is that as Draper has built out and there's not as much opportunity to see additional businesses coming into the city, we're not seeing the growth that we had been seeing in the 2010s and early 2020s.

And then along with my other point about the fund balance and the rainy day fund, we could also dip into sales tax as needed when we were seeing those big increases, which we're not seeing anymore.

Correct.

Any other questions? All right, thank you, Mr. Veik. All right, folks, this is an opportunity for a public hearing. Like I said before, I have a number of cards. I'll call through them since you took the time to fill them out. But I'll let anybody speak that wants to. We have a number of folks online. So we're going to do the folks, everybody that's here present in the room first, and then we'll go to the online folks. So I'm going to start out, and there's no particular order, but the cards that I have them in, so that's why I'm calling them. Alberto Torre. Come on up. Give us your name and address, if you would, sir.

Hi, it's Alberto De La Torre. I'm at 13889 Standing Oak Drive. Oh, man, so many points to touch on here. But in all of this, I have not heard the one thing that I have to do every week, every month, and that is to cut costs. The politicians here seem that it's a given that whenever they want to spend money, they just reach into the taxpayer pocket and take more out of our pocket. There are people living in this city that are living on a fixed income, and you're kicking it up 25%. How'd you pull that number out of thin air? I'd say, you know, I offer my services. I can cut 10% off of anybody's budget in this city, and the city will still go on operating well. The other thing that hasn't been addressed here is business growth may not have been very big in this city, but in the last five years, we have added a ton of residences here, and that's additional revenue from there. That's not shown or talked about anywhere. I just don't understand why politicians can't live within the budget and it always has to continually be raised at the expense of the taxpayers. I would urge all of you to vote against this. Go back to the... drawing board and work out a way to reduce your budget. What we have here is not a revenue shortfall. What we have is overspending like every aspect of government from this local one on up to the federal ones do. You should not be comparing yourself against other cities whose politicians are doing the same. You should be trying to reduce property taxes even if only by a small amount, to demonstrate that you can run a city more efficiently than any of those others that were up there on the chart. I throw up my hands because I feel it's a done deal, but me and probably the majority of people who don't make it here because they're busy trying to make ends meet and feed their families don't have the opportunity and time to come here and express their displeasure with how this is rolling out. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, I have Thomas Aramayo. Come on up. What's that? All right. Thank you, sir. All right. The next card I have is Michelle Polish. Did I get that right? Come on up.

Hi, guys. It's Michelle Polish at 555 East Tilden Park Lane. And many of my questions were also answered, except for, like, in the spreadsheet that was provided. Is that, at some point, if someone could make that available online, maybe send that to us? Because I would love to see the detailed breakdown and be able to, you know, we can digest some of that. Also... If revenues were to improve in the future, would you guys ever consider a future tax reduction? That's another question I have out there. What measurable outcomes will the taxpayers receive? I hear with the firefighter fatigue, I hadn't thought about that, so I appreciate that. We just kind of don't see that. But is there response time improvements? Have the firefighters or fire station and police officers seen a rise in their services that warrant response time? Is there any reporting that us as a public can also see, kind of get a view of how that works? And then do you guys, can you provide an alternate solution or alternate solutions that you discussed beforehand? I'm sure as you come to the table and you look at all this and there's a lot of stuff, you know, we're kind of left off the drawing table, which that's why you're elected, right? But it's good to know the behind the scenes, if any of that can be provided is my time. Oh, there it is right there. And... Are any of these, we know that there was an increase for the fire station and the police as far as safety. I'm having a real hard time with the playground things. I don't know, maybe because I'm a Gen Xer and I played on things that should not have been played on, right? They're like the safety issues. I heard over and over again the insurance requirements and stuff. Are there different alternatives to playgrounds? I mean, can't we put things in that can last a long time that don't have all these interests? I mean, are we going to look every couple years, right, at, you know, thousands of dollars? And I know it's death by a thousand cuts because I know sometimes it's like, okay, it's only 7,000 here or 5,000 here, but it adds up. Could that be something that you guys could look at, perhaps? And then, obviously, it's so easy to judge. You know, I don't want to judge on salary. We have some really big salaries that I believe in success, and I'm not here to, like, judge anybody that has higher or lower, but could we look at that? I hate to ask, but are you guys, any of, is the city council or anyone here also interested Asking for a raise. Are they getting a raise as we see those tick up? You know, we would like to know if that's part of it. That's all. Thank you.

Thank you. Next card I have is, I think, Quinn Horrocks. I'm saying that right?

So Quinn Horrocks, 875 East, 138 South. Can I have a little... problem with truth and taxation title as generally i've never seen an average house get what they say the tax is going to be it's usually higher than what they state it's even higher than what you guys stated in your draper paper you said eight bucks you said it'd be 16 for you that'll be this year if it's 10 this year it'll be 12 next year it'll be 14 it'll continue to go up like everything else does um Like it was stated, I have a budget. I have to live within my budget. No matter if my car insurance goes up, my house insurance goes up, I have to find a way to make it work. I don't remember noticing anything on the flood tax that we pay that wasn't there. I don't know how long we've paid it. I was here when it came in 20, 25 years ago. You're probably bringing in $350,000 a month on that. Is that not right? I could be wrong, but I think it's pretty close to that. That's not counting the businesses. That's the residents. I didn't see it on there. That's a good chunk of change that's coming in every month. New houses was brought up. They pay taxes every month. There's several new houses that are always being developed, new businesses. I mean, you guys have endless amount of money coming in steadily. You're not going down. You're going up. Whereas the average person... does not have that in their home. Once you retire, you will not have that. The average person does not have that. But the cost of everything continues to go up. So there is ways that you guys should be looking to cut. And I'm going to give a couple of quick examples. And I'm not trying to be derogative to anybody. I live on 138. When we get a light drizzle in the winter, they're running the snow plows up there on dry pavement or wet pavement, throwing sparks, throwing salt. That doesn't need to be done. If you go down to Whedon Park, Salt Lake County will mow part of it. Draper will mow part. I don't know why there's not cooperation there. Salt Lake County will go down there to aerate with two $80,000 tractors and two trucks that are probably 80,000 apiece, plus trailers, plus their man. There's ways to cut. You guys have to look for it. Nobody's going to come up and volunteer and say, hey, we can reduce this. That's kind of what we've elected you guys for, is to manage our money. And I don't know how things got messed up, but as a whole, as a community, we should say, here's how much money we can give. you guys manage the money, but it's turned the other way around. Not only here, every other city. That you guys get on the asking end, and we could double the money and you would still spend it. If we doubled it to 50, two years from now you'd probably be asking for more money. So that's not the answer, is not going in and trying to get more tax money. At some point it's got to end. You know, I spend more money on taxes living in my own house than other than food and the necessities. I don't get to enjoy basically $400 a month on myself. But I do get to enjoy paying $400 tax a month to live in my house. And somewhere it's got to change. You know, I don't expect anything to happen. you know, through the country in a big revolt, but somewhere it's got to, people got to be financial responsibility into it. So that's about all I got to say. So thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Ashley Kohler. Mr. Mayor, can we take a brief pause for a second? Apparently the Zoom users cannot hear our audio at the moment. All right. Ashley, hold that thought.

We'll come right back to you.

Just wondering if those on Zoom can hear us now. Wren, I don't know if you're on and you can let us know if you can hear us or not. All right, let's do this.

Welcome to Zoom. Enter your meeting ID followed by pound. Enter your participant ID followed by pound. Otherwise, just press pound to continue. You are in the meeting now. There are 17 participants In the meeting, this meeting is being recorded.

Is it working yet?

Okay. Can you hear us now, Brynn?

Yes.

Perfect. Thank you. All right. Ashley, come on up.

Hello, I just learned about this meeting today, and I prepared a quick statement.

Name and address, please.

Yes, I'm Ashley Collier. I've lived at 14094 South Pine Mesa Drive since Valentine's Day 2014. I love and serve my community as a realtor, mortgage broker, and contractor. I help residents buy, sell, build, and finance homes, the properties that are the topic we are discussing here today. I oppose the proposed property tax rate increase. My reasoning starts broad before getting specific. Draper residents and citizens at large are angry about the rising cost of living, also known as the hidden tax. Since 2020, the federal government has expanded the money supply by nearly $8 trillion, and in that time alone, our dollar has lost purchasing power and is now worth roughly 77 cents. With the national debt crossing the $40 trillion mark this month, we can reasonably expect our government's continued reliance on inflation-induced debt destruction. Many of our Draper residents live on fixed incomes. For example purposes, my property taxes have increased by $304.27 since 2014. For someone living on a fixed income, that extra $304 feels like $433. Inflation has already hurt them, and now you propose to charge them more for a home that has not increased in size or functionality. Furthermore, as an industry professional, I regularly talk with Draper residents who tell me that they could not afford to buy their own home at today's price. Even if they downsized by $200,000 to $300,000, their payment wouldn't go down because of much higher mortgage rates. They are effectively trapped in their home, and property taxes and insurance premiums keep climbing. Most of us are working to pay off a mortgage, and a lucky minority have achieved that, only to realize that the government still owns a claim on their home through property taxes. And no American dreams of paying property taxes to the grave. Now to local spending. Draper taxpayers are funding without public consent a flock safety system of at least 14 license plate cameras paid. through our police department budget. The exact cost is not disclosed, but industry estimates range from about $35,000 to $49,000 per year, roughly equivalent to the property tax that would be paid by about 360 or more average Draper homes under the proposed increase. I know this is a drop in the overall bucket, but it also represents only one area where money is being misspent, and there is never only one cockroach. Additionally, this type of surveillance is the slippery slope that George Orwell warned about in his book 1984. Surveillance is always introduced for safety. Once accepted, it expands, and those who control it abuse the power. We are already seeing that. A Washington Post investigation published on August 2nd of this year.

Thank you. Our next card I have is Julie Walton. Julie Walton.

Wrong glasses.

That's what happens when you get old, I guess.

Okay, Julian Walton. I live at 13496 South 300 East. I also did something a little more prepared. I was here two years ago for the last tax increase, and I learned a lot. And I mostly learned that you have already decided. This is a mere formality to follow the state's truth in taxation requirements. Once this is finalized, you will have increased our taxes 45% in the last three years. You missed a little one last year by a clerical error that you tried. You have touted you operate very lean, but 45% in three years is not screaming lean. The city population has grown 800% in the last 30 years. I've lived here 51 years. Every home or business built is a permit. Every new parcel is another property tax. Every new business is an annual license to renew. Goods and services are all more expensive. Therefore, the sales tax we pay on said goods and services by proxy generates more revenue. It appears there's nothing more than greed to increase our tax when the built-in calculation is already designed to increase with growth and inflation. If you want to increase taxes, you need to have town halls. You need to have one-on-ones. You need to open your books and give us the details. Behaving as if you know better and eliminating us from conversation reflects your lack of representation of us citizens. You have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. We all have to reach in our coffers. You have a lovely savings account. I'm sure everybody here has had to dip into it from time to time while we adjust our budget. We all have to do more with less. We must require the same of you. A citizen owning real estate in Draper has two choices. Pay the tax increase or become delinquent and eventually lose our biggest asset. What kind of a choice is that? It doesn't matter if the increase is $8 a month or $800 a month. It is the principle of the matter and the idea that you will run roughshod over your citizens. As Draper citizens, we need to stop voting for familiar names and nice people. It is not nice to be ignored, and it is not nice to be governed into poverty. We need to stop re-electing people who do not represent us, and that's what seems to be coming up more and more. So that's all. Thank you.

Thank you. Scott Brown is next.

My name is Scott Brown, 1797 Aintree Avenue. I don't know how this decision process works, but if you all are making a decision based on the presentation we saw tonight, I would say you're making a decision in a really uninformed position. There was no information in that that explained why there needed to be a tax increase. You know, my property taxes go up every year without a rate increase. And this model that was presented tonight is a static model. It appears to be a static model because I didn't see the dynamics in it. But there's growth in property tax every year. Without an increase. Because my value goes up, which is another point. Property tax is a really regressive tax. It ought to be a last resort. Because you're in the position of booting people out of their houses if they can't pay their taxes. That's a serious, serious matter. So you need to seriously look at other sources of revenue, and like so many of the others tonight have spoken about, figure out how about reducing costs, because there are always ways to reduce costs without reducing services if you look a little bit harder. That's really it. Thanks.

Thank you. Next is Jeff Hansen.

All right, thank you for your time. Jeff Hansen. I live at 12057 South 300 East. I'd ask you all to please respect the time that we spent here tonight and not just make this a formality. Please listen to what the community is saying about this tax increase. My wife and I have lived here for 16 years. We have six kids here. Inflation has just been killing us over the last especially six years, and we thought it was going to slow down, but apparently not. There's a barrage of tax increases from the county, the school district, and now the city. I think it's fascinating to see that each of them is a similar amount from each. Yeah, a 10% property tax increase in a single year. I mean, I don't know the last time I got a 10% raise, and most people don't get a 10% raise usually. Similar point to what was brought up before, but yeah, the budget, that slide that was shown, I think, says a thousand words. It's just kind of like a slush fund. It's interesting that the budget is the same whether or not the property tax increase goes through or not. I feel like that's a little audacious. I feel like we should be a little bit more intentional in how we're going to spend that money before we just give the city a whole bunch more money. I mean, a lot of money. About the police and fire, most of the budget is, well, a lot of the budget is for police and fire. If you look up a couple sources, Journal of Urban Economics and Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, crime is much higher in commercial areas, and so that's where most of the money should be spent on police and fire. So I'm saying why don't we try to tax those areas, commercial, um more than we're we're just uh taxing the residents the citizens that live here and lastly this was brought up but my wife brought up this point too we have a lot more homes and property taxes coming in from all those homes so why do we have to even do this that's that's what i'd like you to answer thank you thank you i'm out of cards i'm going to the folks in the room who would like to speak next come on up give us your name and address please

Hi, my name is Shauna Fuller. I live 13843 Ranch Circle. I'm sorry I'm not super organized. I didn't plan on speaking, but I just had a few questions I know aren't going to be answered publicly, but maybe just as thought-provoking. I'm wondering if our community would be willing to volunteer in places where they can. cleaning up, taking care of the parks, et cetera, like that. I think there's a lot of people here in Draper that would be willing to help cut costs by helping out where possible. Another thing is, this just might be ignorance on my part, but I didn't even know about this meeting except that a friend texted me. And so with the truth and transparency, I'm wondering, if we can have a little bit more campaigns to let people know that we have had all these meetings this summer. And I think that also we shouldn't presume that because there's less than 20 people here that there's apathy in Draper. I think they don't understand that there's a meeting tonight. I'm on a neighborhood app, and I posted to people that this meeting was going on, and now I'm getting all sorts of questions. And so I gave them the Zoom link and things, but I think they would like to know, and I don't know really how better to get the word out about that, but that could probably help, to help the businesses to... be able to have more taxes to put into the city. Maybe we could have some campaigns to shop local. I know Amazon is probably getting a lot of our taxes, and we'd like to keep that here. Another thought I had is the elderly paying taxes... versus eating dog food isn't a joke anymore. I know that this is a big issue. I've gone to a lot of meetings up at the state capitol, and this is happening all over the state. Let's see. I was also wondering how the citizens are being notified. So maybe that could be put in the Draper paper. Maybe a lot of people just toss that, but maybe that many more also read it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Who would like to be next? Anyone else in the room?

Going once, twice.

Okay, do we have some online commenters lined up? We do. We have one, Mr. Mayor. All right. Let me get things set up really quick.

Let me go over that online. I said I was going to do that. Let me do it. All right. Now that we're to the online folks, if you want to speak, click the raise hand function in Zoom, and then we'll get you in order. When it's your turn to speak, Your hand will be lowered by the meeting host. And you select on your own selection unmute when prompted. Once unmuted, staff will confirm that we can hear you. Again, for the record, please state your name and address for the public record. Public comments are also limited on Zoom to three minutes. Once you begin, your timer will start by saying your name and address just like it did for those here in the room. And so let's go with it. We have one.

Yep, we have one right now. Christian Shank. Passed him to unmute. T.M. up.

All right, sir. Good evening, Mayor Walker and members of the City Council. My name's Christian Shank. I live on 14032 Old Savile Road. I've been a longtime resident of Draper since 2009. I'm here tonight to strongly oppose the proposed regressive property tax increase. Working families in our community, as others have pointed out, are already stretched thin Inflation, high interest rates, high gas and energy costs, and the exploding cost of living have made it incredibly difficult to manage basic household budgets. Asking residents to pay higher taxes based on these skyrocketing home valuations is inherently unfair. It amounts to taxing an unrealized capital gain, forcing us to pay cash for paper wealth that we haven't actually collected. Furthermore, a tax hike is completely unnecessary. Looking at our city's financial track record and health, Draper has successfully run structural operating surpluses in six of the last 10 fiscal cycles. Our existing tax rates generate more than enough revenue under normal conditions. The city states that this tax increase is necessary to fund public safety cost pressures, but I also see you have not looked at cutting budgets of discretionary spending. However, the budget shows that the council has not exhausted these options. Before rating the pockets of taxpayers, we should look internally at areas we can scale back and exercise fiscal prudence. We can start immediately by canceling the $39,000 annual renewal fee for the flock safety camera system. The surveillance program is widely unpopular and it is just flat out a violation of our rights. It represents money that should be redirected to core emergency services for these firefighters. Additionally, we can cut back on the $350,000 discretionary community events budget, pause cosmetic upgrades to parks and other areas, utilize our consolidated fee schedule to raise recreation user fees. Our public safety needs can and should be solved through strict fiscal discipline and reallocating existing funds tightening the purse strings, and exercising the same fiscal responsibility you're asking your everyday citizens to exercise. Increasing this burden on struggling households is unacceptable. I urge the Council to vote no on this tax increase and prioritize the residents of Draper. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else?

Yeah. Yes, Mr. Mayor. There's one more. All right, we've asked Marvin Clough.

Sound check, can you hear me?

It's a little quiet, sir, but yes, we can.

It's a little muffled, sir. Go ahead, give us your name and address.

Okay, name is Marvin Clough. Address is 1459 East Forge Way. 84020 off of Finer Road. So yeah, I'm a little bit surprised about the late notification about this meeting, because all I was aware of was an email that I received today. Is that the way you guys customarily do it? Yes? No? Maybe? I need an answer.

It's a public comment period. Go ahead and make your comment.

So here's my comment. Number one, whoever advocated the elimination of flock cameras, I disagree. Leave them. They're worth their weight in gold. How's that? That's my first comment. My second comment is it's really unfortunate that we're having a 45% rate increase. I suggest that maybe... We cut the baby in half and have half of it for this calendar year and circle back with the remaining balance next calendar year. Because 45% is a little hard to absorb. The other thing also is folks on the line... Inflation is for real. Services that we want have got to be paid for. And it just sucks that that's just the reality of life. Anywhere you go. So what I would advocate is that the city of Draper do a better job campaigning for rate increases periodically. That means yearly. So we don't get in these situations where we have this really ugly situation

uh optic of a 45 rate increase thank you very much thank you anyone else there is currently no one else that is raising their hand mr mayor no more zoom comments I'll show you the comments we have.

There are comments in the chat, but nobody wanting to address the council. Nope.

Correct. Okay. And we'll upload these into the record as well, just so everybody's aware.

All right. Then I will close the Zoom public comment, and I'll give it one more shot for those of you that are here. Is there anybody else, if you've sat there, that you want to make a comment that haven't yet? All right. Thank you all for coming out and making your comments, taking time out of your busy time and schedule.

Go to the Utah County portion. Oh, I will.

I will.

I've got the paper. Okay.

That is the portion of, now you're welcome to stay. That's the public hearing portion number one, which is Salt Lake County. Now I'm going to open up the public hearing portion. for the proposed property tax rate increase for Utah County. And this is for folks that live in the Utah County portion of our community that would like to address the council on this property tax increase. And we'll have the same presentation by Mr. Veik for this portion of this public hearing. So go ahead, sir.

So I won't go into all of the details that I went into again because I see no new members here, but I will go through the slides quickly. We did a property tax impact statement prior to the certified tax rate. That is the... Slide that is currently showing following the certified tax rate. Here is the statement. Draper City is considering levying a tax rate that exceeds the city's certified tax rate. The proposed tax rate is estimated to increase the current tax rate from .000902 to .00128. The proposed tax rate increase would generate approximately $2,696,000 of additional ad valorem tax revenue to be used to pay for operational and compensation costs. The proposed tax rate increase would increase the city's ad valorem tax revenue by approximately 25%. If the city proceeds with the proposed tax rate increase, the city will provide notice of and conduct a public hearing, which we are in tonight, as required by Utah Code Section 592919-4C. Current Draper City property tax rate based on the new certified tax rate is .000902. The current Draper City property tax revenue is $10,186,000. The proposed Draper property tax rate increase is .001128 with a proposed Draper property tax revenue with tax increase of $12,882,000 with new property tax revenue at $2,696,000. Within Utah County, the primary residence is valued at $838,000. And based on that, the monthly amount of the increase would be $8.68 annually, $104.17 for a 25% increase. The estimated increase to a business valued at $838,000 would be $15.78 on a monthly basis and $189.38 on an annual basis. Again, same property tax impact schedule that we would expect. If the property tax rate is not adopted, then we would draw down fund balance even further than we would if we adopt the property tax. We will make the changes necessary in the fire department and also in the parks and rec department. Draper City General Operations will receive additional property tax revenue each year as a result of the proposed property tax rate increase. The additional property tax revenue would be recognized as follows. Salt Lake County, $2,455,712. Utah County, $122,224 for a total of $2,696,000. Additional tax revenue will be used to offset increased operational and compensation costs within the city budget. Following tonight's public hearing, the city will hold an additional public hearing and adopt a final budget on August 18th at 7 o'clock p.m. at Draper City Hall. This is the Utah County ad. Again, this ad has been posted in Utah County newspapers for two consecutive weeks and is also available on the city's website. And this is the Utah County combined advertisement, which has also been posted in the newspaper and has been available on the Draper City website. These are the property tax rates and the revenues and expenses as shown before. And then again to the process on May 19th, the city council adopted the tentative budget and set a date for a formal public hearing on June 2nd. On June 2nd, a public hearing was held during the city council meeting on the tentative budget. On June 9th, the council adopted an interim budget which carries the city from the July 1 start of the current fiscal year through the adoption of a final budget. The property tax from the proposed increase was set aside in a restricted account to be used, not to be used until a final budget with an approved and certified tax rate. August 12th, tonight, we are holding our truth in taxation, and all parties will be allowed to speak about the proposed tax rate change. August 18th, we will adopt the final budget, and a public hearing will be held in conjunction with the final budget adoption. That's everything.

Anybody have any questions on this? All right, thank you, John. All right, this is a public hearing, item 2B. It's a public hearing on the property tax rate increase proposed for the Utah County portion of our community. Is there anyone here in the room that would like to address the council on item 2B? All right, I'm seeing no interest in public comment on 2B for participants in the room. Is there anyone online?

There is nobody online that has their hand raised. Mr. Mayor?

All right. Hearing no interest in further public comment on item 2B, I'll close this public hearing portion of this meeting. Now, I kind of have prepared some comments that I'm happy to do again. I did these at the beginning of our budget, which I'm happy to, if you guys would like me to do it again, those of you that are here, maybe you haven't heard it, I'm happy to do it. So just and I appreciate I took notes on a lot of the comments I've been elected for a long time in Draper City in my Past my 18th year of elected service both as a council member and as a mayor and in those 18 years We have done one property tax increase one and that was two years ago, and it was a 20% property tax increase it was the very first one that's been done in my entire time in office and The reason, and I heard one of the comments, and it was about why one of the commenters online was talking about why don't we do a little bit every year so it's not such a big hit or a big percentage. And I'll tell you what my thinking was as a council member. I can't speak for past council members or mayors, but I saw absolutely no reason to take people's money if we didn't need it. And during those years, we did not need it. We had property tax issues. revenue coming in at the rate it came in, but we also had massive sales tax growth that for years kept our budget in a really amazing position. It allowed us to have a fund balance because the sales tax grew year over year over year. And it was it was we didn't need more property tax. We just simply didn't need it. And, yeah, we could have done small incremental increases over the years. But my philosophy politically and tax wise was why take people's money if we don't need it? We have sales tax handling our budget. And so that's why last year. We also tried to raise 10 more percent. That failed, so we didn't get that tax increase because we didn't follow the procedure exactly correct in the truth and taxation process. So that 10% didn't happen. And that 10% increase, if you will recall, was really just keeping the same bond payment. We had a revenue bond that had rolled off, and we wanted to keep the same amount you were already paying for the bond, and you've been paying it for years. We didn't want to reduce it. We just wanted to keep that money. So we had to have a truth in taxation. We did, but we didn't get it. So that money actually went back to you. We didn't get that bond fell off, and we didn't keep the rate. So this year, as we started looking at the budget, and like Mr. Veik said, we are trying to do some long term budgeting and long term planning going out into the future. The budget is not something that we just had staff throw together and none of us looked at. I want you to understand I've spent months with the staff going through it line by line, all of the items. Every council member here and online has been involved and has met with staff and met with department directors we have looked at places where we can cut this budget we absolutely have done so it's not a situation where we just said let's just get as much money as we can get and just pay and just go forward with it it's not how it's been done um the if you look mr vike if you'll pull back up our our expenses um And Tasha pointed this out, and it may not land on you mentally, but go back to that other slide, if you would. No, the one above it, sorry. No, the one you had up first. No, next one. No, the one that shows this one. Okay. Okay. This is important. Sales tax revenue for Draper City, $22,440,000. We are a city of just 50,000 people. That is a significant sales tax number for a city of our size. It is like, and I always use a boxing analogy because I'm the chair of our fight commission, but it is like, I'll use a more politically correct one, but it's, like Muhammad Ali in his prime, punching above his weight. I will say that. There are many cities in this county that do not collect that much in sales tax revenue that are much larger populations than we are. There are a lot of cities that have so few sales tax collection I can think of some Utah County ones that have massive property tax rates above what we have. So we have used that as our way to balance our budget, and we have counted on it. This economy, as everyone has pointed out, is not a good economy. I have no control over the cost of fuel, and neither do you. But that cost is real. You're feeling it. We have to buy fuel for our vehicles. We have to buy asphalt. We have to buy concrete. We have to buy every single thing that you would buy or people buy in the community. And all of those costs have gone up. For example, just with if you take, for example, fire trucks. When we started our fire department seven years ago, we were able to buy fire trucks at the prevailing rate at the time, which if you've seen our black truck, our ladder truck, roughly a million-dollar vehicle. It's been in service for seven years. We take care of it. We maintain it. But that same vehicle to replace has gone up 300%. I can't account for it. The fire truck manufacturers were called in front of the United States Congress last year to answer this question because every city in america is facing this three hundred percent increase in just the truck costs uh... police vehicles when we started five six years ago buying and we we've upgraded our are the way we handle our vehicles as well our our public works director is new and he's out he's been with us a while now but when he took over we we have a fleet program now where we don't use our vehicles out We run them to the point where we can still get some money back for them when we get a new one, and we've hit the sweet spot with the vehicles. But the vehicles cost, they've gone from about $40,000 to about $80,000. If any of you bought a new truck or a new vehicle like that, you know a police vehicle costs what it costs. We have to have them to do our job. Our property tax does not cover our public safety. Go back to the expense slide. There are a couple of cities, a lot of cities, if you look at our police expense, $14,346,400. We raised roughly $11 million in property tax. It's $4 million short of covering just police. Now, in the city of Harriman, for example, it's a great city. They cover their entire public safety in some special service districts. So the way they do it is they set up two special service districts, one for fire, one for police. And then they tax, those districts tax the citizens for the public safety. Their city tax is lower. But that's not including the public. Our budget is inclusive. We like it that way. We've thought about and talked about the potential of splitting off into special service districts so that you know every time that there's a public safety tax increase, you'd know exactly what it's for. But we haven't done that. So our budget is blended. We cover all of our expenses out of all the revenue sources. Fire, $8.5 million. In other cities, they would separate that out. There is a philosophy in local governments that we should have a property tax rate that covers 100% of public safety. That is a philosophy that's around and about. We could have a lot of debates on whether it's a sound philosophy or not, but there are cities that try to do that. We haven't done that. We've tried to use sales tax and our other revenue sources to cover it. The fundamental situation is these expenses are real. A few years back, we increased the pay of our police officers. We did it for a couple of reasons. Number one, we wanted to retain and have the best police force we can have because the better police officers you have, the less claims, the less problems, and better crime resolution. Draper has seen a declining crime rate over the last few years as we've upgraded our police department both in pay, quality of officer, and equipment. We... We have added police officers to our department to make sure we can cover the city. A city of 50,000 in the position we're in, we have a substantial amount of police work that is done. The police department also puts out an annual report, and you can go see exactly. Someone made a comment that they wanted to know what kind of the increase in officers, the increase in pay, what did it get you as a citizen? That annual police report is on our website. It is worth perusing because it does tell you what you're getting for public safety. Firefighters, fire department, we are a unique community. in the sense that we have a large portion of our taxpayers, their homes are in the wildland urban interface. This is a real situation, be it Suncrest on top of the mountain, be it the mid-mountain at, I guess, South Mountain, and then, of course, steeplechase in the ridge. Those homes and those families, they sit in that wildland urban interface. Part of the problem that's occurred over the last few years with these wildfires And the constant threat that property has, property and casualty insurance companies have started to decline to insure people that live in the wildland urban interface. It's happened to our own citizens on the mountain. Part of our fire department increase with these three firefighters that we're adding in this budget is to make sure we have the four-handed staffing at all times and that we have enough rotation so that our firefighters Our firefighters are not getting overtimed. As you saw, the amount of overtime that we were spending, that's great if you want overtime, but if you're a firefighter that doesn't want overtime, then you get called into work, you don't want to work for us, and you go work for someplace else. So part of it's retention of the quality firefighter and paramedic. We have the top of the line paramedic service. We have the best cardiac care available by paramedic. That is not inexpensive, but if you have your heart attack, your coronary event, and our paramedics will be there in four minutes, they will save you. They'll have a really good shot at it if you're in the right spot. And so those services are excellent and legitimate. Our ISO rating, which is the rating insurance companies and other communities look at to determine the quality of fire protection, we are sitting at, if a one was the best and a 10 was the worst, We've moved to a two, and so it helps our citizens get casualty and fire insurance in certain areas of our community. And plus, we have the four-handed staffing, which helps on medical calls. We have a dedicated wildland fire crew that thins the forest in our community and protects and gives great protection and prevention of wildfire and property loss. Knock on wood if you all have it. We haven't had a forest fire, big fire in Draper in a number of years. We haven't lost anything. any significant structures to wildfire. We've had a few other fires. But we have excellent public safety. Our officers and firefighters are not the highest paid. They're not the lowest paid. They're paid well. We are not striving to be the highest paid public safety city. We are striving to be the best quality public safety city with good, fair pay that brings in quality employees. And I can tell you Our police department, our fire department, they are outstanding folks, and they do a really good job protecting us. And I always tell people, I always tell my kids, government's not that good at much. We're not very good at a lot of things we do. And that's local government, and it's certainly the national government. and our state government. But some of the things that we're good at, we do well here. We didn't used to have, when I first was elected, any type of a road maintenance program. We didn't do it. We just fixed potholes or fixed roads when they failed. We now have a comprehensive program where we go through our roads, and you see it, the slurry program, whatever programs are going forward. Part of that money that we collect, we're doing that better and preserving our roads better than we ever have in our history. The playground equipment came up, and it's a fair point. I can just tell you that the playground over behind me at Draper Park, just the surface, the rubber surface where the kids land... That costs about $100,000 every two years, Rhett? Two or three. Every three years it has to be replaced. That surface alone is over $100,000. But if you've ever been to that park, it's used like no other park I've seen. It's used. We've opened some new parks on the west side that are fantastic, the Jensen Farms. We've done this, folks, because we've put surveys out and asked people what they want in this community. and they overwhelmingly want parks and recreation, so that's where the council has prioritized a substantial amount of our money, because that's what people have said they want, and that's what we've tried to provide as best we can. The road program's better, the public safety's better, our fund balance, and so this tax increase, if you look at it, if we were to do no tax increase, we can move forward with our budget. Someone made the comment that You shouldn't move forward with it if it was the same whether we did the increase or not. It's not the same. If we don't do the tax increase, we take about $6 million out of the fund balance. And every year we'll take another $6 million, and then we're down to no fund balance really quickly. The only way to significantly cut this budget, if you want to cut it and really cut it, personnel you have to cut public safety you have to cut firefighters and equipment you have to cut police officers and equipment you have to you have to do a smaller overall public safety service and that's just the reality of it that I've looked at it every way it can be looked at and that's how you do it if you want to take five or six million out you remove those expensive portions and you can see what the biggest chunk of our budget cut public works you cut roads you cut road repair you cut parks and rec, you cut all those things. Someone made a comment about raising the fees for participation. I'm all for that. I think we should have higher recreational fees, but that's something the council can consider. But we look at our staffing. With a city of 50,000 people, our total all-in employees is 298. That includes our seasonal employees. We haven't added staff other than public safety to this city. We don't have extra staff to fire. We don't have an economic development coordinator. We don't have a bunch of other jobs filled by... Some cities have economic development. They have... They have people that write grants for them that do other evaluations. We try very hard to run it lean and make it work. Someone brought up cutting the $350,000 out of annual events. We did this year make large cuts in our Draper Days, which is our biggest single event. We cut the cost of the entertainment down significantly, about 35%. We raised the rodeo cost, the fees to go to the rodeo to generate more running, to lower the cost of Draper Days significantly. but overwhelmingly our citizens tell us they like the community events, they like those things. Those things cost money to put on. We have to provide public safety when we do them, and we do, I think, a good job in those areas. It's not fun to ask you to raise your taxes, and I have only done it in my elected life one other time, well, two, last year. We didn't, like I said, we didn't achieve it. But we've had a track record of not taxing people more. The other key point I want to make, and it gets brought up all the time, new homes, all this growth, why do you need my money? Folks, if we got the new growth every year, we would never, ever, ever come to you and ask you for more money. We would just linearly grow with the growth. That is not how it works in the state of Utah. We have equalization. If your home goes up in value, your tax rate goes down. We do not get the new growth. We don't get it linearly. We don't get it without a truth in taxation hearing. The legislature has set it up that way, and that's the way it works. So it's frustrating because you look at your tax notice and you think, and everybody says, my taxes have gone up every year. Not your city taxes. They have not. We have only raised them one other time in my entire elected life. But other taxing entities have raised your taxes on a fairly regular basis. The bigger chunk is school district, other entities. But folks, government costs money to operate. We have good employees. We have good workers. We pay fairly. We are not the most expensive. There is no raise for the council members in this budget. We are part-time people. We do not get paid anywhere near what we are worth in our service to the community. I can tell you my time as mayor, if I add up the hours I have given up in my law practice for the things I've done extracurricular out of the city for our city, be it the league, be it other things, everybody serves. You know, you might not agree with me, but I think for what you pay your elected officials, you get a heck of a lot out of us for what we are paid. And none of us are doing this to make money and make a living off of it. We all either have our own jobs or other careers. I work significant hours outside of being mayor. But I think as you look at overall what we're trying to accomplish, this budget, this tax increase does not balance this budget. We are still taking, to be precise, 3.2%. I want to get the number right. We are still going to spend $3,295,700 out of our fund balance this year if the council passes this tax increase. That's money coming out of the balance. Now, the debate is how much fund balance should you have? We had a storm a couple of years ago. They call it, they do the storm events in 100-year, 150-year storm. You might remember this storm. It was significant. But in 26 minutes, it did $3 million in damage to our road infrastructure in 26 minutes. And we had the money to fix it. And we had to fix it immediately. We didn't have a chance to go bid and get the lowest price. We had exposed gas line, a water line, exposed electrical, sewer line, just roads ripped apart. We were able to immediately repair those roads and had the cash to do it. Fortunately, we did get some of it back, too, but we keep a fund balance. We think it makes sense. We've been, you know, my budget and my family, we have a reserve. It's always good, prudent advice to have some savings, and so that fund balance is our savings of tax money to... handle events that come up. We have had a tax, our fund balance over the years has always been, we've been able to keep it at the max because of the sales tax growth. We can't do it anymore. There has been debate last year at the legislature. There was some debate about a couple of things. One was to cut fund balance. They talked about having a max fund balance of only 20% and making cities not have extra money in the fund. Of course, the state legislature has a massive rainy day fund, but they wanted to focus on local government and make us cut our rainy day money. But that didn't go anywhere at the legislature. It didn't make it through. One of the other ideas that came up, because everybody hates property tax. I hate them as well. One of the other things that came up was cap property tax. Cap it at 5%. Well, we talked a lot about that as a league, and cities like us who have not done tax increases for multiple, multiple years, that would be unfair to us because we've tried to manage your money in a prudent way and not spend more than we need and obviously not take more than we need until we're to where we are. But if you cap property tax at some percentage, and if the number was five, what you would have then is every city, every year, every time raising it 5% because there would be no way out. If we didn't do it every year, we would never match inflation. Now, folks, we didn't create this national economy, and it is not a good economy. The inflation rate is ridiculous. It is crazy. It is out of control. But the inflation you feel is the same inflation we feel. It's the same in fuel, asphalt, concrete, steel, police computers. There was some talk about the flock system. That system is part of the police budget. Obviously, people have their opinion about it, and we can have that debate and some other. another a different meeting but that again you could cut the flock system it it doesn't change the budget it it's it's not a big piece the big pieces of this budget are police officers firefighters public works you can just see going around the corner uh... we have no a very low amount of bonds a lot of we don't have very much debt We've avoided debt as much as we possibly can to keep from having payments. You can see our executive pay, the whole city, the whole staff at $4 million. Administrative services, facilities, our judicial, our court. Our court costs $822,300. And I'm going to be honest with you, I looked at that in the budget process and I thought, well, maybe we should get rid of the court. I'd save $822,300. Well, if you go over here and look at the revenue and fines and forfeitures, it generates about $680,000. So the court really doesn't cost $822,000. It costs about $200,000. But the court is there for you. If you have a small claims matter, you don't have to go to the district court. And I'm going to tell you that if you did, you would want a municipal court because the district court calendar is unbelievable to deal with. So small claims gets handled locally. Our police officers, when they handle Class B misdemeanors, domestic violence, DUIs, some levels of assault, property damage, those are adjudicated right here in Draper City. Our police officers don't have to take time to go to a district court. sit in that district court off duty, waiting for a court case to get called, which is hours. I can tell you I do it twice a week. I prosecute for a local city. And when I have to go to district court, I want to pull my hair out. Our cops are here. They can come off the road, do the case. It saves everybody time, money, fuel, and stress, and it gives the community a face. So I looked at that. We looked at some of that stuff. Fines and forfeitures is $727,000. People talk about other revenue sources, and people say that to me, and I'm always like, I don't know what you want me to do. The revenue we get as a government either comes out of some form of tax. We don't have any other sources. We get sales tax. We might get lease payments if we had some land and we were leasing it. We could do that. But you really look at where we get our revenue, and it's really simple. Sales tax is huge. And the reason we hit it 25% at this tax increase, the reason that's where we landed to talk about to you, is because we thought, well, we have some exciting sales tax opportunity coming. It's not here yet, but there are a few bigger businesses. There's some new retail coming our way that could be significant, and it could make a really big difference and keep us from having to do any more property tax increases for a while. The point is the next future part of our community, and what we will get from the point over time is our fair share of the sales tax revenue. The point has the potential to be a very big source of sales tax revenue to aid us in our budget. But these are the items that, this is how we get the money, and we're telling you how we spend it. the comments about you know you can always cut stuff yet you can we could cut for police officers six or seven firefighters we can cut those things and if we do we would be able to balance our budget without any tax increase but i don't think that is prudent for our community we have a safe community low crime We have excellent emergency services and response. Our road improvements are better than they've ever been. We are doing our level best to make roads good. Our parks are fantastic. They're beautiful. They're loved. Our festivals are what people like. But other than that, that's our... That's our situation. There are some times, there are some discussions. We could go to the special service district, and we could set a police and fire district up, and we could let those service districts tax you at exactly what it costs to operate those two departments. And then the city rate would be significantly low. People will say to me in Riverton, oh, we have no property tax in Riverton. We have zero. Except for, if you look at their actual tax rate, pull that up if you would. Someone said we shouldn't compare ourselves to other cities. Here's why we do. Just so you understand it, because it's about the real amount of money. The city of Riverton doesn't have a local city property tax, but they sure do have a massive public safety property tax. And that's what they do. That's the way they do it. Our all-in budget lets you see we're spending your money on everything. We're not trying to silo out public safety. I frankly think it might make sense to silo out public safety, but that's a different discussion, and I'm not the one that gets to decide that. But you can see that we've held the line on rates, and I think as you look at it, that's what we're trying to do. We're citizens like you. I pay the same tax on my house you do. I pay the school district tax. I pay all the taxes. I frankly think personally what I pay in property tax for me, I like my community. I like the level of service that we get. I think it's a fair amount of money for the services that we get in Draper City. That's my view. That's why I support it. But anyway, I'm done with my speech. You guys go ahead if you want to chime in.

I just wanted to clarify. Oh, just real quick. We had a couple people talk about notification. And I constantly am giving a shout out to Notify Draper. So if you go on the website, you can sign up for emails or texts. And that went out today. It has gone out a couple times already. earlier in the summer about the truth and taxation process. You can get all sorts of information about whatever you want, but that is a great way. So if you didn't personally get an email or a text about this truth and taxation hearing, please go and sign up for those notifications because we definitely want, it's been on the website for a couple weeks, we want participation. We really appreciate your time coming here. That's the only way we can make informed decisions. I think Bryn wanted to say something.

Yeah, well, I appreciate everyone who came out in person and who's online. I know people are busy and take time out to come express your thoughts and opinions and your concerns about this. Like Katherine said, it is really important to us. I do think that it might be helpful if we can Maybe if John could come back up and explain the different, the progressive and regressive taxes with sales tax and property tax, because I think there was a little bit of confusion about how those work. And then also, I think the mayor did a really good job of explaining that the property tax revenue does not increase each year. Like, we don't get more money every year. We get money from new growth, but not from our... property values increasing. And so I think that's something that is different about Utah. And I think that's important to clarify, too.

Brent, I'm not sure what you were asking me to speak to.

Sorry.

If you can explain it, then perhaps I can talk to that.

So the difference between a regressive and a progressive tax.

Wow. I'm not sure exactly how you want to address that, but a progressive tax is something that continues to increase, whereas a regressive one would be decreasing. I have a different slide that's not in this presentation that shows the property tax rate over time, and it really is a regressive tax rate. But the way the state has established the tax really holds it steady. So in theory, if the city were getting $10 million in property tax this year, we would get $10 million in property tax next year, regardless of the value of a home. If a home value goes up, the rate goes down correspondingly to be able to bring in $10 million. Now, there are adjustments for new growth. So if a new home comes on, we would get an additional amount for that home. So in this case, a single home is taxed, a $941,000 home is taxed, and it brings in 100, I'm trying to remember the number, no, 1,000, let me get to the right slide. Going the wrong direction. So a new home that was valued at $941,000 would bring in an additional $116 to that $10 million. That over the course, you know, with additional multiple homes, that does make a difference, but it really kind of puts it into perspective that a single home really is about worth $120. To the city at the average price.

Well, and I'd just like to add to that, John, that we then also provide services to this home. So it brings in money, but then we're fixing the roads. We're picking up the trash. We're providing a park and recreation option to them. All the same, we have expenses that now count against the money that come in. It's not just free cash.

Correct.

There's also, again, on the website, all this information is on there. If you go under the city government tab, there's a property tax tab, and there is one of the frequently asked questions is, why don't increased property values increase city revenues? And it explains how Utah law is unique and great. It protects us from that growth in our home values, that growth. The government does not automatically get that, and it explains that there.

I believe there's a video on that same site. Is that correct, Linda? Linda's nodding yes.

All right. Is there any other comments? Fred made a good point that when we went for the 10% increase last year, which was to hold it level with the payments you were already paying. It was already coming out of your, out of your property tax. When we didn't get it, it went back to you. We didn't, it went back and we didn't collect the money. So we didn't get, not only we didn't get it, you actually got it back. So if it had, if it had happened, if we would have been able to hold that, that revenue, it was about $900,000. If I recall, it would have, we would have been asking for a little bit less this time around. Our goal going forward, folks, is to, Is to hope and try and increase our sales tax revenue. That's the only place we have a lot of power as far as revenue goes. And we are doing that. I think our business community is fantastic. We have tremendous business in our community. And we have a lot more on the way. The point is a part of our community and it is the property development of the future. And it will be the increase of our committee as we go forward. But anyway, any other comments?

I just want to say one thing. I was just looking at my notes from some of the comments, and Ms. Walton, I think you mentioned how you came a couple years ago, and it seems like the decision has already been made. They actually changed Utah law so that the proposed tax increase cannot be spent right now. It's held so that whatever happens at the next— meeting when the vote is taken, it used to sort of be like the decision was already made. Well, they've changed the law, so now that money is held really in escrow and then goes back to people if the tax increase does not pass. I think that they're trying to make truth and text just because of how our taxes are that we have to wait for counting numbers it does make it very hard and I appreciate efforts to include the public to allow for more public comment before those decisions are being made but so I think there are people trying to address that concern that you raised so the public input does have an impact

All right. So you're invited to our next meeting. It's the 18th of August. That is when the council will approve its budget, which will include either this tax increase as presented or some other. That's the place where they make the vote. That is also a public hearing. You can come and make comment on that. So if you didn't know, if you're listening, now you know. Is there a motion to adjourn? Motion by Fred. Is there a second? Second by Catherine. Fred, how do you vote? Catherine?

Yes.

Tasha? Yes. Brynn?

Yes.

All right. We stand adjourned with the vote four to zero. Again, thank you all for coming to our meeting. Appreciate it.