City Council - Special Meeting

Make sure my mic's on. We'd like to welcome everyone out to our Pleasant Grove City Council special meeting on Tuesday, June 16th, 2026 at 5 p.m. And are we live? We'd like to welcome those who are with us via social media and those in person. Thank you for coming. I'm gonna turn the time over. We have really one item and then the property tax impact statement, but I'm gonna turn the time over to Scott.

Thank you, Mayor. By law, we are required to adopt a tax rate before June 22nd. Normally, we would have done this in our June 22nd meeting, but it needs to be before June 22nd, so that's why we have arranged for the special meeting tonight. What the City Council has before you is the time to declare what our proposed tax rate would be to our residents. So the county has given us a rate. That is the rate that if we were to not propose a property tax increase, that would be the rate that we adopt. If the city council's willing to consider the proposed tax increase, then we have the rates that would put that into effect, or at least propose it, I should say. It's important to note that you're not voting on the tax increase tonight. You don't have that authority or ability or power to do that tonight. That can only be done after you have the Truth in Taxation public hearing on August 11th. What you're voting on tonight is what you are proposing to the public what that tax increase would be. So we'll walk you through the numbers and what the staff recommendation is and then the City Council can have a deliberation and decide what you want to do. So in the past, the past two or three months as we've been talking about the proposed tax increase, the number we've been working off of is generating $683,088. The purpose of that would be for three firefighters, two police officer, a reserve police officer, and then also what we call retention abilities to help retain those employees in regards to salary. That increase is 16.35% at $4.23. Now in the past, that number was $4.16, it went up to $4.23 because we got our new assessed valuation numbers. And so that changed, obviously it changed at 7 cents, but that's just the calculation that it spits out once we got the new assessed valuation. As Denise and I have looked at this in preparation for the meeting tonight, we wanted to figure out ways that we could reduce that number. And so all of this is on the revenue side on the general fund. Part of this was spurred by an agreement with Alpine School District on the funding of our SROs, our resource officers at our two schools, so the high school and the junior high. What they were paying us for that was not meeting what our cost is. Now, these officers are not at the school during the summer, so there is some cost to the city, but they were paying a different amount for the high school as that they were for the junior high. And so we were able to get that figured out to a point where they were gonna pay us more for those officers. Well, that revenue is now gonna come back into the general fund to the tune of about $44,714. So that is money that will be ongoing revenue in the general fund. And so we have built that back into the budget. We also have a new hotel in town that is, to my understanding, I thought was opening in the fall, but apparently they're opening here in a couple weeks. So this new hotel will generate transient room tax, or what we call TRT. That is a general fund revenue. that we can use on whatever we need. And so generally speaking, like when we got the new hotel, the Hyatt House, we didn't build any revenue into the budget until we had one year's worth of revenue so that we had an understanding of what it would generate because we didn't know at the time. Because we have one hotel in town, we have a general sense. So instead of waiting the year, we have built $30,000 of anticipated transit room tax into the general fund budget to account for the new hotel.

How does that compare to what the first year was for the Hyatt House?

I don't know. Yeah, we'd have to look at that. Because this one's a significantly larger hotel.

Yeah. I wasn't necessarily assuming it would generate more because it's a bigger hotel. I'm actually going the other way and thinking if there's cannibalization, people that would have booked at the Hyatt House may now book at this one. Over time, I think things will grow on the aggregate together, but I don't think it would be wise to assume that whatever we got, regardless of size, whatever we got in year one from the Hyatt House would be equal to what we're going to get at this new one because I think there's...

Well, what you're explaining is the reason why we wait a year. 100% agree. I totally agree.

I'm with you. So I think there's some caution from my voice in being too aggressive in that assumption.

This 30,000 is not too aggressive. We feel comfortable with that number that it's going to generate at least that. but we don't put in a full board number because we just don't know. And so that's generally been how we budgeted these types of things in the past. I mean, we're getting new businesses in town, but we don't know how much tax they're going to generate until they generate the tax. And most of what we have going out in the Grove is not big box type of stuff. And so when we have some of these smaller restaurants or, I mean, even a steakhouse coming, that's going to be We think it's gonna be, it's just not gonna be a Costco. It's not gonna be a Walmart, obviously. It's just not that big. It's not gonna generate that much. But those are things that we wait till we have a year's worth of track record so that we know, okay, we can now plug that into the budget. So with the transit room tax and the school resource officer, the last thing we looked at was sales tax. Now, sales tax is our largest revenue generator in the city. It's over $10 million. So if we get any sort of play in that of even 1%, that's over $100,000 that would affect our budget. So as we evaluated, just the receipts from the last two months have come in better than what they had been coming in for the year. So on your paper here that shows the rates, Our budget for 2026, so that's our current year budget number, was $10,602,509. Our 2026 estimate is what we estimate will be the actual revenues. Now we still, is it two months or three months? We still have three months of revenue to come in. But based on what we have seen, at least the last two months, we feel confident that we can move that number up $129,841 to build into the general fund. So anything that we can build revenue-wise into the general fund will help reduce the tax burden that we're requesting as staff in order to fund the firefighters and the police officers. So we boiled it down to two options for the council. So the option number one is to take those three revenue sources and say, all right, those are gonna be built into the general fund budget. If we do that, it drops our number to $2.96 a month. This is on an average home, which an average home in Pleasant Grove now is $601,623. And so that is 296 a month, that's an 11.45% increase. The second option for the city council to consider, or third option, option one is keep the rate is what the county's given us. Option two is increase the rate, but also with the accounting of the additional revenues And then option three is taking into account what I just explained plus another $112,000 of money that we had initially been using capital funds for that we moved over into the general fund. It was for contracts that have an expiration date. So that's kind of a middle ground, at least when Denise and I look at what the difference is between one-time monies and expenses and ongoing. And so in the past, we have built that into the capital fund, which, I don't know, probably isn't ideal. Ideally, that would be in the general fund. But if we back that money back out and put it into the capital fund one-time money, that $112,000, that would further reduce the tax burden to $2.26 a month or an 8.75% increase. So that's the options that we have for the city council today to present. Are there any questions?

I should have asked for this information. I know it was presented and I don't have it in front of me, but there was a graph that you had presented that had kind of the prior tax rates that we had had through the years. The effective tax rates. The effective tax rates that we have had.

They've all declined because as we grow they decline.

Yeah, and so I'm wondering where these proposals sit in that graph.

Like how far back would it put us?

Yeah, does it put us up to where, you know, we were and would have been had property taxes been kind of more of what people anticipate, which would be a tax that carries over and is the same from year to year? Does that put us at the highest tax rate we've ever had in Pleasant Grove? Does it put us?

No, no, no, no, no. I think when I started here, we were over .002, okay? That was in 2010.

This, what we're proposing, is .00...

one zero two so half of like oh i mean this is this is going to be just a slight blip up compared to where we have been traditionally and that's when you're normalizing it based on the market value of the homes but basically we've benefited from the appreciation which yeah the appreciation but we don't benefit we don't benefit from the appreciation no we we as a city we don't as a resident you do because that rate decreases And so that's, I mean, this is talking about the buying power from property tax dollars. Every year that we don't adjust our tax rate for inflation or for, yeah, just in essence the growth, then we are falling behind on our purchasing power. And the reason why is if we can do this without raising property taxes, ideally we do it, and we've done it numerous years. But four years ago, we said we need this, and this is what the city council adopted, and that's what we did. But when you look on the chart, even with that tax increase, it was almost a straight line across. Like it was this, because I don't have the graph in front of me. Yeah, I don't know.

Like it will go up very slightly. Do we have access to that? That's, I mean, because you can see my point is I just want to be, you know, we're all up here, none of us. as individual citizens are like, let's tax everybody. I want the highest tax rate we could possibly have. I don't think anybody believes that. Yeah. And I don't think anybody on the council wants that.

Yeah.

I guess my thought is I just want to make sure that when we're talking about a tax increase and especially with all of the public that is engaged, which I'm grateful for, we've had the We've had the survey go out and I think that's been helpful for me to see and I'll make some comments on that later. But I think it's also helpful to disclose to the public the realities of what the tax rate means. Yes. Because I didn't understand it until I got into city government and to understand what property taxes do over the life of our property as it appreciates in value and what property tax does in for the city and so i think it's important to know where we sit so when we say hey we're increasing this by point zero zero zero nine three eight if we adopt the eleven point four five four we're talking about a rate that still is probably one of the lowest that pleasant grove has had historically it will be the second lowest compared to last year

So if that makes sense, I think that, yeah, I, well, I, I, I guess I need to be careful. I don't know what it was the year before that. Right.

Yeah.

But I mean, do you have the historical, I mean, that's what we're we have.

So that would be helpful. I think just to, I mean, this is obviously not the final decision. Yeah. But it's a decision that sets the bar of what we're going to send out to the public sphere. Yeah. To have them engage even more. Yeah. So that coming up in August, we will have a final vote and we'll figure that out then.

But Steve, does rate matter or does budget matter?

To me, rate matters because I think when you look at it and you say, if, for instance, we had what I had in my mind, which would be like, hey, my property tax rate is X percent and that's what I assume it is moving forward. That matters to me when I see, okay, we have a property, we have a tax dip in the rate, right? So if income tax functioned the same way, Todd, and we had, okay, we have a state tax, let's just call it 5% for easy math. I think they've changed it a little bit, but we say 5%. But then every year it went down because your income is assumed to have gone up with inflation. So instead of five percent income tax for the state, it's now five and a half, it's four and a half and then it's four and then it's three.

Yeah, but I don't know if you I don't know if you can categorize that, because if your income tax, you're paying less. This, for a property tax, the rate's going down, but the valuation is going up, leading the budget number to be the same. So you're paying the same. You're not paying less this year than you did last year.

You're paying less as a percentage. As an effective rate. And so what I'm saying is if you are assuming, for instance, we did a COLA, we're anticipating a COLA increase, many people may get a yearly raise to account for that, but your income tax doesn't adjust. Your income tax doesn't say, well, no, the state only needs this much money and so we're not going to tax you at 5%. Now it's at 4.9%. No, they say, okay, well, because inflation has gone up and you're now making more money, you now pay more money in.

But that's why I'm saying it's not apples to apples because we're actually asking our residents to pay more.

And I think it's not apples to apples, but I think the real reason why I see that it makes sense to be paying more is if you look at, again, your tenure here, Scott, let's say is 20 years, and let's say the average inflation rate over that 20 years has been? 2%. 2%, I think that's conservative, but especially given the last three or four years.

Very conservative, yeah.

But let's say 2%. There's been no, well, there's been one adjustment. Four years ago to compensate that. And especially when you think about wage inflation, especially since COVID. I mean, it'd be interesting to go back and measure that from a macro level. Wage inflation has been insane over the last three or four or five years. And our budget is 75% wage. And so if that pressure is on there and we've only made one adjustment in 20 years, four years ago, we just don't have the budget to meet the needs of the city.

I think my argument, I think, to this whole process has been we need the people, we need the public safety staff. And I believe in, I mean, I have spent hours and my staff has spent hours reviewing the budgets, trying to get a sense of how city budgets work versus public or private enterprise. I believe there's money there. And I still believe there's money there. I mean, we found some money today. We're short about 300,000. We're gonna have leftover monies next year. Actually, we're gonna have leftover monies as of July. Um, I believe, I believe there's monies there and given the pending tax increases and utility increases that are coming, I don't think it's fair to our residents to continue to tax them. Um, until we know the impact of school district and utility fees, utilities, utility has been significant this year. It's coming. Yeah.

Gentlemen, I think we had some questions down here from the ladies.

Unfortunately, we don't have the resources or the ability to teach residents about the tax rate. Frankly, I don't think they care. What they care about is that their bill is going up. to say the 0.9 what like it just we don't have the time or resources to educate that way and they want to know why their bill is going up it doesn't matter what the tax rate is at the end of the day that's what's happening and so we can set up because we're here every other week and we're talking about it but they're not and it's our job to do whatever we can to minimize that and yes help them understand the best of our ability but that's a lengthy conversation with residents and they don't They just want to know how much their bill is going up and why. Number one. Number two, I'm going to go back to, because I'm trying to come up with solutions. about partnering with the other fire departments. And I spoke to three other cities and no one did a year long study and no one hired a consultant. They spoke with chiefs in the neighboring communities and they ran a spreadsheet and it probably took a few hours and they were able to come up with a base amount. The reason I'm bringing this up again is because we can give fire employees and I'm talking partnering specifically for fire.

Can I just ask you a really quick question and you can continue. What, what department, who did you talk to?

Lyndon, Cedar Hills and Orem.

You talked to their mayor and city council?

I talked to mayor, city council, and chief.

And chiefs.

Not chiefs, chief. Chief Sanderson, Carolyn Lundberg, and I talked to Kelly Smith, and I asked them, did you do a year-long study, and did you hire a consultant to be able to come up with these numbers, and they did not. Because I'm trying to get a feel for how we can just get a baseline of numbers, because what the issue is, is number one, that we can give fire 10 more people, and it doesn't matter because we can't pay to keep them here. So we have that issue going on. So I'm trying to find a solution in a way that we can keep our employees, we can run an economy of scale because the more cities you partner with, the more economy of scale you have and the more resources you can partner and use together with. Because right now we are bleeding people and I don't know how to solve that so I'm trying to come up with additional solutions just like Todd is with the budget and reviewing it. And they ran spreadsheets and they decided and they ran some numbers. It wasn't a consultant or tens of thousands of dollars to figure out this would work. And that's all I'm asking is because we can give them 20 more positions. And the next day, a neighboring community is going to come to them who can pay them more and they're gone. Now we're right back to square one after we've just taxed residents a double digit tax increase. So I'm asking for that to be looked at as well as Todd. He's done a lot of research on the budget. I'm trying to do a lot of research on this end because I think it's a valid solution and a reason why communities are doing this because they can't afford to keep their people. The same reason we can. And I agree with Todd. I think there's some more money to be had. A double digit increase does not make sense. I do agree that something we can raise a little to keep up with inflation and wages, that's fine, but a double-digit increase with everything else coming, the inflation, economy, gas, everything we have right now, I can't do that without knowing that we have gone through every single piece of the budget knowing that this is where we're at. I'm asking, that's why I'm bringing this up again, is to just get some numbers to see if this might make sense so we can continue to keep our people and provide a quality of service and a level of service so we don't have to call other departments. That's what I'm asking for, just like Todd is.

Thank you. I don't want to rehash this again from our previous discussion, but I think if you're going to engage with other chiefs, again, we have to make sure we go down the proper road. Were these other cities engaged or the mayors and the council engaged to say, hey, Pleasant Grove, we're interested to come talk to you? We have to be very careful there. Also, again, you're correct, other cities are having the same issues that Pleasant Grove is having. I mean, we can pull up our chiefs, we can pull up chiefs from other cities. You're seeing it across the board. And I talk to these mayors all the time, that there are ongoing issues of retention, wages, Grass is always greener on the other side. It's happening all over our state, in particular, Utah County, it's happening. American Fork is worried that their officers are going over to Lehigh. Lehigh is worried that their officers are going to go out to Eagle Mountain or Saratoga or Draper and vice versa. I'll just say this, going with like a unified or a combined is going to increase your costs. If you think it's going to reduce your costs, it's not. They're going to come in and say, you not only need three, but you probably need six or nine. And this is what we're going to tax your citizens at because we're going to do a special service district and it's going to increase. But that's another here or there. This is not what we're discussing. And Scott, I have to apologize. I forgot to read the action item. Is it okay if I hurry and read that and then we can continue the discussion, Council? Okay. Action item is ready for vote. To consider for adoption 2026-30, adopting proposed certified tax rate for the 2026 fiscal year, the proposed tax rate includes the property tax rate increase in order to fund public safety personnel. A final property tax rate will not be established until after the truth and taxation process. Okay. Back to, Diana, do you have anything?

You probably wanna.

So we're just stating our.

I think we're just having a discussion up here tonight to talk over these three options that Minister Darrington has.

I kind of interrupted Scott. I don't know if you had anything else. Yeah, sorry, Scott. No, no, I was opening it up to you.

I was trying to figure out the flow of what was happening because there's been some things that have been stated. Mayor Denise had something to say.

Denise, sorry, go ahead. We found the graph.

Okay.

And so I don't know if we want Sierra to bring that up on the screen.

I think Councilman Rogers requested it. I think we can fill the graph up.

Yeah, and then just as she's pulling that up, if we did option one, our rate would be where our rate was in 2020. So when she pulls that up on the screen just for baseline.

Yeah. And then Scott, maybe you can go over this and talk about it a little bit.

Sure. Okay, this is since 2016. So... I mean, obviously, we don't have the exact numbers in there, or do we? If you scroll on it, does it give us the exact number? Is there a way to pull up the exact number?

It gives the visual effect, though.

So 2022 is when we had the last tax increase, and you can see the line actually, because I think 2022 was- Hey, Bob, we have it up on the back screen.

Sorry.

2022 was a high growth year. Thank you. So this is our rate last year. Is that right, Denise? 0.00096. The year before that, .000103. If the council adopted the second option on the tax rate, it is .000102, so it would be less than where we were the year before. Does that make sense?

Yeah, if you did the 16.35, it would be where we were at 2020.

Yeah, we're not recommending the 16.35. I mean, yeah, so the other option is .00145, and that is pretty much in line with where we were in 2023. So this doesn't reset us all the way back to 10 years ago, if that makes sense.

So Scott, just for the public, how did we come to this process of requesting what we're requesting, and then how do we guarantee that these, let's say the council moves forward with this, or one of the options, one, two, or three, how do we guarantee that those monies are going to be used for those positions?

Well, they are general fund revenue, so they can be repurposed at any time. Council has the right to, whenever we have a budget year, if it's general fund, which is, How much is general fund revenue? Do we have 18, 16, $18 million? Council at any given year can redistribute that however they want. You have that flexibility to do that. Generally speaking, when we do something like this and this money's gonna go into people, then that's where it's gonna stay. unless the council decides to repurpose it and say, you know what, we don't need these three firefighters anymore, we're gonna let them go, we're gonna take that money and put it into streets.

Hope we don't say that. Okay, and I think councilmember Phillips state.

Yeah, I mean majority of our budget is level of service employees This is I think we've talked about the reason why we've proposed this is because we have a need in our fire in our police departments these six people so two police officers a reserve officer and three firefighters is expensive it's six hundred and $83,088. Yeah, but Scott, we haven't used the budget this year for that. Well, but along those lines, Todd, if we're hedging on this year, okay, let's say we have an $800,000 surplus this year. The money's available this year, but then it has to be available next year. And the year after, and the year after.

No, but it will be. We've underspent our police budget this year.

So to answer Todd's question, why have we underspent? Have we had people that have left and we didn't recruit that until maybe a month or two later until we hired someone? I just, that's to me, one-time type of monies that we can't always guarantee.

It is.

You can't operate. We can't operate on that type of assumption. What I'm saying is not one-time monies, just to be clear. This is our budget that we voted on last year that we didn't spend. We're not up to speed this year on our police budget. So this isn't one-time monies. This is monies that will roll over next year. We not only have to hire two people, we've got to hire, I think, four to be at budget? Four, sorry, what? We're under budget, under spent, so that's probably a better way of saying it, our current police budget. We're now asking for two plus one, so three. But we haven't spent what we've already allocated for this year.

But not intentionally or by strategy.

No, I know. But it's still monies that we still have. I mean, it's still monies that we have. So my take is we may have to hire up to six just to be within budget if the budget amendment is approved tonight. And I don't think we can even hire six.

But I think you're making an assumption that our expenditures are gonna stay static or that they're gonna stay in that same rate.

No, I'm just making an assumption that can we hire, should, if we were to hire, let's say two, I think it's two that were under budget, how long will that take us and should we be having this conversation on a tax increase this year or next year to pay for those two?

Okay, so let me address the first question first, which is two years ago in our police budget, we spent 99.5% of the budget. Yeah, so we didn't have that $400,000, $500,000 cushion this year due to either positions being open or positions that the person that was left was making X amount and we brought in somebody new. So there's a difference in what the wage was paid. Those things add up. We actually built some more money into training, but due to some of the manpower issues we were having, we weren't able to spend all the training budget. And I just want to say our department heads, if there's money in their budget and it's June 25th, they don't go on a shopping spree to spend it all so that we sit in a meeting one day and say, how come this money hasn't been all spent? They're very good about just doing what they need to do. And so, If we have the same year in 2027 that we had in 2025 and we've hedged on that 400,000, we're now 400,000 in the hole. And so it is one-time money in this given year, that money is in the budget next year. It's not guaranteed to be there. So this is, uh, again, that's why it's wise, but Scott, just to be clear, we're, we're, our budget in the police department is 5.936 million.

So far through March, we have spent 3.9 million. So we're 66% of budget at 75% of time passed. So we're gonna be under budget. We're gonna be under budget this year. If we just keep the budget just like we have, we're gonna be $5.9 million in the police department next year. That money's not going away. It's not one time monies.

Right? So the expense side is gonna change. Oh, we're going to spend more. We're going to spend more than the 3.9. I mean, for this year, we know how much, we have an estimate on how much we're going to spend.

We don't know next year. We don't know next year. No, but your budget's going to stay the same. It should stay the same at 5.9 million.

I know, but if we're under an assumption that we have... if we have this money that's available this year and we meet all of our obligations this year, then you're right, it's the same on the expense side.

Yeah, I mean, what's gonna happen is you're probably gonna spend probably, let's say you're at four million now, you're probably gonna spend another $1.4 million. You're gonna have, in the police budget alone, probably close to a million dollars under budget that's gonna either roll to one-time monies or it's going to be utilized in other areas. That 5.9 million that was budgeted last year at this time, we didn't spend it all. So what you're asking me to do is you're saying, hey, Todd, we didn't spend our budget last year. but I want you to vote for a tax increase and raise that budget for next year, even though we didn't spend it this year. That's where I just, I morally, ethically, I can't, I love our police department. I want us to be there. I want us to hire. I want us to hire more people. But if we're not spending the current budget, I can't vote for a tax increase. But that was for one year. But it's going to be that. If we just voted for no tax increase for this year, our budget for police department is going to be $5.9 million. Dustin, I need to let Council Member Phillips. It's still going to be the same next year.

Todd, you're making the assumption, though, that they're going to operate next year at 70% capacity of FTE.

No, no, no, it's 100%. No, I am absolutely... assuming that they will be at 100% budget next year. What the budget increase is proposing is that we spend 130% of our budget next year in police department.

So the reason the department is below budget this year is because we've had, and I'm making up numbers, 70% capacity or 70% of target for staffing. Totally agree. None of us want to have our city serviced or manned at 70%. Nope, we don't. So they're going to be hiring those to get us up to what 100% of capacity was looking backwards. Looking backwards and hiring those that are going to get us to what we feel like we need going forward because of additional housing stock, business, new laws for monitoring safety and pedestrians and scooters and everything else. And so we have to hire not only the people that we were missing last year, but also the next one, which is why there's the gap from.

But all the while, we're gonna put a million dollars in our one-time monies. Which is available. So my feeling is, let's try to hire last year's staff this year, and then if we need another three people for police, then let's talk about that this time next year. In my opinion, now is not the time.

Go ahead and finish, Council Member Phillips.

Yeah, I just don't think that's the right way to do it, because we've already assessed the need from a staffing projection. And I'll make up numbers. Let's say we've got 20 FTE today working on average throughout this fiscal year, and we should have had 25. and we're now saying because of all the new laws enacted, the monitoring, the safety demands from the public, that we need 30. We can't just say, okay, well, let's hire up to get to 25 now and worry about the 25 to 30 next year if we need it. We've gotta be prepared to spend what we need to spend to protect and serve this community As we need it today, which which does allow us to have that one time money to be used properly. And I'm not saying go out and even spend it all. On one time money, our reserve isn't where it needs to be from a city wide reserve standpoint, in my opinion. So some of those one time monies could be used to. help bridge the gap on that reserve, but we need to have the budget in place to hire what we feel from our experts, from our trusted officials to say that they need to serve this community. We need to have that budget in place.

The difficulty is the council can do taxes one time a year. And so what you're suggesting, Todd, if we wanted to write it out.

I said next year.

Well, I'm just saying if we wanted to write it out and see where the budget is and we get to April and we're not where we want to be, then we're in, now we're looking at using the reserve funds.

I just believe, I believe, I believe that we are being too conservative about on our budget estimations, feeling like we need to put another $600,000 in the budget when I believe now is not the time to entertain a tax increase. I think now is the time to, let's tighten our belt, let's figure out what the community's gonna be hit with I'm not, again, I'm not arguing the fact that we need people. I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing the fact that after hours and hours and hours of analysis in the budget, and now we're asking for $300,000, I can guarantee you that there's $300,000 in this budget we can find to pay for those three.

So probably for this coming year, but we don't know. We don't know.

And this is the hypothetical question that I would want to ask then of this line of thinking. Because there's legitimacy in what Todd's saying, I think. But that is, so let's say we do hire everybody. and the police need the additional $380,000 in their budget in order to fully stop. Let's say they do. Let's say we have everybody in place by October. Where do you wanna cut? Because the money will have to come from somewhere because that's what was allocated. If we don't raise taxes now and we wanna have a fully staffed police and fire station, the only way to do it then would be to cut, period, the end. So what do you wanna cut? There's gotta be employees from somewhere. And it's employees because that's the only way that we save money.

Well, there's other funds. There's enterprise funds, there's special revenue funds.

You can't pull for enterprise funds. I guess what I'm saying is I have seen where this city has been in the past, Diana has brought this up, and where we have been short in years. because we were not allocating sufficient funds for the needs of the city. And do we want to put the city at risk by saying, I think the money is there as long as the police run on short shifts, as long as we ask the fire department to leave a shift open a day and use part timers instead of full timers, as long as we ask them to do that, there's money available. And that's the question that we have to ask up here. I think it's a fair question to ask. And the answer may be, I'm okay with running at part timers and at not full capacity. And if that's your answer, then that's okay. But my answer is after seeing what the police have to deal with on a weekly basis, because Chief Brown is sending us these updates, seeing what they have to do, Seeing what other cities are doing in order to sure up their public safety, we talk about joining Orem. Orem's asking for a 7.2% tax increase. Let's join with Cedar Hills, 20% tax increase this year. Let's join with Highland. Oh, they have to re-up their library dedicated levy. So that's 53.18% on their library. Let's talk to Saratoga Springs, 54%. tax increase. What about Eagle Mountain? Look at all of their growth, 245% tax increase. So you talk about what we have to do to protect our public safety people, keep them here, make sure they have the budget necessary to run at full capacity. Because I'll tell you right now, if my parents or my in-laws have a medical emergency and we need a fire truck there, I don't want to be short staffed. If I know somebody who has a domestic violence disturbance, I don't want there to not be an officer available to come and protect our public. Now, you can say, hey, there's money here, and this year we might be okay. What I'm trying to evaluate is what is responsible long term for the city, not what we can get away with in one year. but what is necessary moving into the future. And that's where I was hoping Scott would talk about the survey that we did, because I think that there is a contingency of our community. And I have people who are very close to me who probably fall into this bucket who are never raised taxes, period. I don't care what it's for. I don't want to raise taxes. But the majority of the people in a statistically significant survey have said, I would be OK with raising taxes. Now, does that tell me that there's a tax raise mandate? No, because nobody wants taxes to raise, like I've already said. But what that tells me is that the majority of our population looks at how the city is being run and trusts us to make the call if necessary. And I get, Todd, from you, you're saying you don't think it's necessary. I appreciate that. I've sat in meetings with Todd and Denise and not just ran blank numbers off of incomplete financials, but I've talked to them about year over year numbers, where we're at, where the budget is, where there's money. And I think that they have felt the pressure from the council to come back with numbers that are lower than what they initially proposed. i know i've seen them go through the budget i know what they're doing in the budget and what they're trying to accomplish and so now the question comes down to me is do i want to risk one year and say we don't we don't increase it and we see where revenues come in at or do we ensure that our public safety people have what they need in order to be fully staffed i know that the fire department I love those guys. Running two part-timers every shift is not acceptable. And if we joined with Orem or if we asked other people to join with us, we could not have that portion of our people and our shifts being filled by part-timers. It wouldn't be acceptable.

Right, Steve, they would be full-time. We'd have a completely full-time department. There would be no part-time.

Exactly. So in order to staff our station, they would ask us to hire at least three, if not five, full primers.

If not five, yeah.

Which again, why don't we get the numbers and find out, you want a long-term solution? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The reason our first responders keep coming to us for their needs, losing people and wages, is because we keep doing the same thing. So let's do something different and get some numbers on what this would mean to partner with resources in an economy of scale with other cities.

I want to be clear that that is a conversation I'm willing to have. It's not going to fix what we're talking about here today. But I'm just reading off the list of everybody that we could partner with. All of them are doing property tax increases.

Well, that's fine. Fine.

Lehigh, 9.8%.

Okay, but their property tax increase doesn't affect us. We're partnering for a specific service.

No, but it does affect us because you're saying if we joined with them, our costs could go down possibly. It's not going to go down.

No, no. I never said our costs could go down. I've never said that.

So then why even entertain and go look?

I'm saying get the numbers to find out either way. And if we're going to talk about this, let's talk about a long-term solution instead of year after year, we have the same issues with our first responders. I don't even understand why it's going to hurt to get the numbers to find out if this would make sense. We could come back and we could save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and have it fully staffed and be able to pay our first responders what they deserve.

I think you're seeing this happen in other cities. That's why I brought it up a couple weeks ago and why Steve brought it up. The other cities have had this conversation. They're saying this is their needs. We're having the same issues at Pleasant Grove. This is what it's going to take for us to even survive. That's why even Orem is doing one. That's why everyone around us is doing one because they need to survive. Scott, can you really quick talk about the survey really quick, and then we'll entertain any other questions.

Yeah, so we hired a consultant to run a one question survey for us that was done via, they purchased email lists for residents of Pleasant Grove and cell numbers. So they ran emails and cell phone surveys and we had, last I checked this morning, there was 590 results. I don't know if we quite got to 600. Did anybody on the council get that survey?

Steve Special, apparently.

It was in my spam. Oh, it was?

Yeah. I think you used Everbridge too, right? We used Everbridge. But I know that they, here's the thing with Everbridge. I think when we moved over, they had their own database. We had ours. And I'm not sure, and I'll have to ask the chiefs, if they were properly merged or not merged. Because I never got it through the Everbridge. So I actually went through and re-upped again, right? And re-entered my information, so.

We used every resource we could to get as much, and we were trying to get to a number that would be statistically significant. The consultant that did our survey texted this morning and said, with the numbers we have, are we statistically significant? And he said, yes, you are. He said, in fact, once you hit about 300, your number was not gonna change. It was gonna go one or 2%, and that's been correct from what he told us.

The way you could prove that out is just add 10 votes to get you to 600 at the worst possible scenario of adamantly opposed, and just see where your numbers are.

Well, the numbers ever since we hit about 300 fluctuated between 61% to 63% of definitely support or probably support. So those were the two options. There was also probably oppose and definitely oppose. So there's four options for people to choose. But this was at the request of the council to say, let's take a look at what the general public feels. Not everybody got the survey. Not everybody took the survey. We have so many residents in our community. We have 600 people that were just under 600 that responded. So for you, that's, council, that's just for you to make the determination what you want to do with that. That to me is more politically than it is administratively. That to me is, here's what this says you can make about what you feel.

Sure, so Scott, can you run through the options one more time, just in a brief 10,000 foot, what the options are, what the cost is, and what it means in the dollar amount?

So option one is to just keep our current rate that the county gave us. So that would be no tax increase. That would be, uh, if the council adopts that rate today, then the discussions over as far as any potential tax increase option two would be to add the additional resources from the TRT tax, the SRO reimbursement and the sales tax adjustment, which is about $204,000. If that is implemented, then the average household will pay $2.96 per month or an 11.45% increase. If the council wants to take that and add on top of that the $112,000 that we moved from capital into the general fund and move that money back, then that drops it to $2.26 per month at 8.75% increase. Those I think are the options.

Do you have anything else to add?

No, look, like I said in my piece two weeks ago, this has been a frustrating process for everybody and maybe that's a good thing in a sense that this is, I don't think it's been easy.

Well, I don't know how to use the word frustrating. It's just we have to be, you know, we have to educate, learn, right, and then listen to the citizens and then gather as much information as we can. That's why I'm glad Council Member Rogers suggested doing the survey, right, to give us one more little option to look at. And so it's hard, right, because I have neighbors that talk to me on pro and then against. Yeah. right and so it it does get up i hate to use the word political but political right um and you hear all both sides every day and so i appreciate the city council being here discussing and going over these these options whether we do it or we don't and then we move forward to august 11th or not

Frustrated is probably not the appropriate word, so thank you for correcting me.

No, I'm frustrated. You can use that. I'm frustrated.

Maybe not everybody's frustrated.

I will say that if property tax increase was our default as staff, we would recommend one every single year to keep up with inflation. That would be our default recommend, and some cities have done that. Just a handful of cities, they hold their rate every year, so they're capturing inflation. So that was a strategy we talked about a few years back. It didn't work for us. It didn't work the second go around when we tried to do it. So again, this is not our default. This is not something where it's like, well, hey, council, we need more money, just do a tax increase. There's some thought and some process that goes into that.

So I don't want to keep rehashing certain things and kind of going in a circle, but if the council has anything new to add, go for it.

I just have a couple of things I want to add. I appreciate all the comments. I appreciate the hard work. I do want to say this about the 12 years that I have been here. I am very, very OK with the budgeting style. I'm also very okay with how I trust staff. And I also am, I'm very mindful of the sacrifice that they do. I also know that they, it is, it's, they don't wanna do this, they don't want increases.

I also know they try really hard to keep it level.

I will say this because of my time here. There was a point where our secondary was near bankruptcy. And so I've watched how the problem of running too lean I will also say that it's very hard as citizens to be good employers. We want the best employee and we don't wanna pay him. And I've also been very mindful of that. I am going to speak to the frustration of Sid and that is that I have reviewed the minutes and notes of meetings eight years ago where I made a pro and con list of why I wanted local control. And nothing has changed on that list. I am 100% not interested in giving my city public safety to someone else. In business, I would never go to a vendor and tell him to give me a price of what he wants me to be charged. Never. I would never go to a vendor and say, how much are you going to charge me? Because he's going to tell me what he's going to charge me. I would also never go to mayors and councils to find out what numbers they want to get because I know for a fact we don't know very much. So why I would go to mayors and councils to get ideas of how much it was going to cost me, not, I would never do that. So in my local control, I am not going to let somebody else tell me how many men I need and how much I'm going to pay them. That's our decision for our city. And if we can't buck up and make the right decision and looking down the road, then, then there's something wrong with us because we've been hired to make decisions for pleasant Grove in 50 years. Next. That was perfectly timed. I'm also very, very proud of how lean we run and how great our employees are. And after the directors and the chiefs made their presentations, in February, whenever that was, there was no doubt in my mind that number one, we needed more in public safety and there wasn't any other department that I was willing to cut. So as painful as it is, I would love to consider what option we're willing to go for.

So Scott or Denise, if when I ask for a motion and let's say a council member, I'm just making a guess here, either one, two, or three, but let's say if they go with three, what does that motion look like and how do they proceed?

The property tax, sorry. Okay, just to make sure.

Whatever, one, two, or three, whatever they choose. I mean, I've written down here one for deny, I've written down two or three different ones for approve on different ones. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask for a motion.

Unless you have more, sorry. I just wanted to maybe signal where I'm at because the process here is a step-by-step process. We've gone through all of the steps and here we're adopting a rate and then we'll have the chance to engage with the public even more over the next couple of months until there's a public hearing in August and we'll have a final determinative vote there. I have talked with Scott a lot about this stuff. I appreciate the time he's willing to give to me because I know he's managing hundreds of other employees and different directors and I appreciate that. and so i know i've seen we have some unallocated funds and i where i'm at is i believe that it the 8.75 is probably appropriate at this point i think being under 10 being on the lower end of all of the cities in the valley that are considering property tax increase And I think that then to Todd's point, taking a breath, seeing where we're at next year and next year, hopefully that gets us a bridge through the future. And I think that the 8.75% with our current budget and where we are with unallocated capital funds probably gets us the money that we need in order to be fully staffed in our public safety, ensure retention. And I think it's fiscally responsible. I think it's conservative. I think it represents... hard work on behalf of the staff and getting us a number that's under 10% and is well within what other cities are considering and even on the lower end. So that's just where I'm at as far as

You're referencing option three, the $2.26? Correct. Okay, sorry. Okay, so then with that- That's where I'm at. Thank you. I'll entertain a motion. Oh, Dustin, sorry.

I just want to echo, and I don't have the long-term history on the council to have gone through some of these discussions eight, 10, 12 years ago. Yes, but we didn't deal with the budget. Maybe I have a question. It's a lot harder up here. I'm open to seeing information, Sid. I don't personally believe that's the right decision currently. Local control is a big deal for me, but I haven't seen the big picture presentation to be able to come up with a firm decision. Local control is a huge thing. One thing I will say, in your comments earlier, you did reference economies of scale as a major point. By definition, economies of scale means reducing costs.

And it could.

So it is proposing that that would be, if it penciled out that way, a reduction in cost. But whether that would come to fruition, I don't think a couple of spreadsheets is enough due diligence to determine whether we should go forward or not. It's a huge decision. And so for me, it's not even an option to consider for this budget year. With proper timing, with the proper sensitivity research, I'd be interested in seeing what's there, but local control is a major concern for me. And Diana, you probably can't read my tiny chicken scratch from that far away, but I wrote the words trust right here. And so I appreciate your comments to begin with. I've seen both on the committees. I mean, I attended the library board meetings a few times since I've been on the city council and they shared the last time that after the last remodel, they furnished with used furniture. They didn't go out to any new retailer to get the best and greatest, most beautiful, most expensive furniture. They furnished a newly renovated facility with used furniture. that's the kind of representation that I've seen over and over from our teams here, whether they be public service or whether they be Parks and Rec or arts, that they have a deep respect for the taxes that we do collect from our citizens, from you and me, from the people in the audience, the people online, and they are using that to the best of their ability. And to say that spending is out of control, I don't think anyone has ever said that. I will say absolutely they have.

I have record in it. Not on this broad stream.

I'm not saying from this side of the podium, but I absolutely have copies of emails from those who've been sent who have explicitly said spending is out of control. And I think that statement is as irresponsible as they think our spending is. I agree. Absolutely. I'll go on record for that. I've had numerous conversations with our department heads to understand what they go through to respect the money that they are entrusted with. And that includes Scott and Denise. And I just wanna reiterate full-heartedly that I appreciate what you do. I appreciate the philosophy and recognize that you are, as Diana said, planning for the long-term and I support that.

Okay.

All right, I have one more thing.

All right, Council Member Williams.

You know, when we first started talking about this, I don't know, four months ago, five months ago. I said a swear word in my head. Oh, I've said them out loud. Well, this sucks. Nobody wants this. I don't want this. Staff doesn't want this. Council doesn't want this. We don't want this. But so I really took the time to dig. And Scott and Denise and staff have been phenomenal about working with me, working with the questions, working to try to figure out my view as a private business owner and a business consultant in seeing it from a city perspective. I wanna go on record to make sure that everybody knows that I support staff, I support public safety, I support the hiring of additional officers, both fire and police. I believe that the ability that we have to hire appropriate responders is absolutely critical. We cannot fall behind anybody, whether it be whether it be Unified, whether it be American Fork, it doesn't matter. We've gotta be on the top of our game. And the tough thing is how do you balance that with fiscal responsibility? And I've asked some hard questions, and staff is responding, and they have responded. We've found some monies. And I think that's not only appropriate, but imperative to ask the questions and also figure out where we can, because we can't spend a dollar that doesn't come from someone else. And I take that responsibility very, very, very seriously. Every dollar that we spend came from a taxpayer. And And we just have to be, we have a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that we are asking the right questions and not just saying yes. So I appreciate the patience of staff as I've asked a lot of these questions. I appreciate the opportunity that we've had to look at a reduced rate. I believe that that rate of 8.75 increase, which would be .001020, would be appropriate to go into a truth and taxation discussion with the residents to figure out if they believe that that's also would be appropriate. So I'm okay with that option. We found some money by asking hard questions. Staff has responded and found the money as well, which is totally appreciative. And that will allow us to stay on top of our game, stay on top of our staff, hiring. And so Mayor, I'll make a motion if you want.

Just a second. I think Diana wanted to make one more quick statement and then I'll entertain your motion. And I'd like to, everyone else has had a turn, so I'll have to... Okay, we'll go on down to Diana.

I may have something to say after. Okay.

No, but this is also what I love about this process, and I love this process.

You may be the only one.

No. Actually, this is what I signed up for. I love this process. I also love that this budget, this very, very conservative budget, which by the way, if you go revenue to citizen and you do that all over the state, we are literally one of the most lean cities. We run lean and I'm proud of that. But this also, this very conservative budget was able to handle $7,000 more in a month for one department in fuel charges. So as prices of materials have skyrocketed, I want to say even 50%. Those of you in the construction industry would know that for sure. But in an economy where the cost of living has skyrocketed, this budget was able to handle it. And I'm very, very proud of that.

Council Member Lamone.

Yeah. I'll speak to my frustration. Because Diana, I don't think it's appropriate for you to speak to my emotional frustration. One thing that's been frustrating for me is to have Todd be able to get his questions answered, Steve be able to warrant a survey that would cost us thousands of dollars to go out to the residents, and I ask for numbers regarding a partnership and I'm shut down and dismissed. That's been frustrating for me. I'm trying to come up with solutions just like everyone else. And that's been beyond frustrating. Don't ever tell me that I cannot reach out to another mayor or council member or chief in another city to do my job for due diligence. I didn't say that. Yes. I did not say that. Don't ever tell me I cannot do my job to gather information, to make decisions on behalf of the residents I represent. I have every right to gather that information because no one else is here but me. And I'm trying to do what's best for my community and my residents and the first responders. and I was told it was dangerous, it's inappropriate, you shouldn't do that. No one else is doing it, so I am.

Because you're taking them out of their council meeting, and as a mayor in a council, and putting them in a position where they're not in an open meeting to discuss numbers that they're talking to another city.

Actually, I never got any numbers. That's why it's not appropriate. I never got any numbers. I just asked them about the partnership. And to gather, again, information. It's no different than asking a developer or asking a resident or going on site to a visit. That's no different. And I have every right to gather that information.

When you're talking with another city, you want to make sure that they're in an open meeting. Discussing openly that they're talking to another city and that's why our miss city administrator Scott has talked about that is If you're going to go talk to these chief chiefs or chief You you need to make sure that chief has permission from his City Council mayor to be giving certain numbers Because maybe the City Council mayor doesn't even know what's going on and then you put them in into a situation that they're unsure What's going on? It's just that simple so you you can if you want but i'm just telling you it puts a predicament on that said city council member or that chief or that mayor because you have to be careful we want to make sure everything is out in the open in a public meeting transparency

Right, and nothing I've given them hasn't been in an open meeting or discussed openly, nothing. And I've asked for numbers so I can gather information on behalf of my community. So don't ever tell me that's inappropriate. Someone contacted on our council, Chief Smith, Sheriff Smith, to tattle on me. Do you know how, if we're gonna talk about inappropriate, shame on whoever did that. We're not in junior high. Let's be professional. Let's gather information. I don't want to feel dismissed, and I'm trying to do my job too, but to be shut down and not even get these numbers, and then to have someone tell Sheriff Smith, come on, you guys. We're better than that as a council. We're better than that.

So you know what, Council Member Limon? We can easily go right down the line right now. Council Member Anderson, are you interested in entertaining Council Member Limon's seeking to combine our fire stations with a Special Service District, Unified, ORM, or whatever, are you interested? 100% no, and I said that from the very beginning. Council Member Phillips, at this time right now, are you interested?

At this time, we don't have the time to do it. So for this context, no.

Great. Council Member Rogers, at this time right now, are you interested?

For this budget year, I don't think we have the time to do it. So that's what I'll say is right now in this moment, I don't know that it's appropriate. But I think if a council member requests information and there's a way to get it, then the process should start together.

Because it's a large process, huge process, huge decision.

That information, in my mind, trying to combine multiple cities is a pretty large undertaking, and I think there's probably a pretty robust process that needs to happen.

Okay, Council Member Williams.

I believe that our fire and our police department are run very, very well and very, very lean. At this point, I don't think it would be... necessary to have that conversation given our current budget year. I think that our publics, our first responders are run very well. I think we would potentially lose service capabilities if we did that at this time, but it never hurts to even ask the question. And if Council Member Lamone wants to ask that question, she's absolutely in her right to ask that question and for us to have the discussion.

Great, thank you. Okay. Council Member Lowen, do you have anything else to add? No. Okay. With that, I'm going to entertain a, well, Todd, if you'd like to entertain your motion at this time. And then again, you want to, I think, per council said, state the rate and the tax rate. Is that correct?

Yeah, I'll do that. Mayor, I'll make a motion to adopt Resolution 2026-030, adopting a proposed certified tax rate of 0%. 0.001020 for the, isn't that the rate? Yeah. Yeah, that's the right one.

Option one and two or three, whatever we're calling it.

Yeah. For 2026 dash or slash 2027 fiscal year, the proposed tax rate includes a proposed property tax increase rate increase in order to fund public safety personnel. a final property tax rate will not be established until after a truth in taxation process.

Okay, we have a motion by Council Member Williams. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Council Member Anderson. This will be a roll call vote. Council Member Lamone.

Yes.

Council Member Williams? Yes. Council Member Phillips? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Rogers? Yes. Okay, it is approved, unanimous, which means, again, that we're going to seek more information and move forward with citizen input and discussion. Thank you.

Now, Denise, your favorite spot?

Favorite thing. Favorite thing, number three.

Just to be clear, Mayor, I just wanna make sure that the public's aware that ultimately we kind of came in at the beginning of this meeting at 16% increase.

Correct, so we can state that the rate that we came in, it was at $4.23 and or 16.35%, or $4.23. You made a motion for option, whatever we're going to call it, three or one and two combined. Just a lower rate. Yeah, $2.26 a month or at 8.75%, roughly, not only half, but almost half. Yeah, so what we're proposing is a $2.26 increase.

to keep the effective rate in line with other cities.

Correct, thank you, yes. Denise, time is now yours.

Mayor and council. After August 11th, I won't have to read this anymore. Okay, so I have a new one of the rate that we just adopted. So we'll talk about those numbers. Yeah, had them all, so yeah. So proposed property tax impact schedule, tentative budget, July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2027. Pleasant Grove City will consider an increase to its property tax rates from 0.00938 to 0.001020 to generate an additional $365,667. Our copy actually has the original amount, so we'll change that and get it on the website. The following information is intended to provide decision makers and the public with an explanation of how the city's operations would be affected if the proposed property tax increase is adopted. Current property tax rate, .00938. Current tax revenue is $4,178,247. The proposed revenue with tax change is $4,543,914. The new property tax revenue to Pleasant Grove City $365,667. Estimated increase to Pleasant Grove City's property tax revenue is 8.75%. Estimated annual increase to a primary residence of 601,623 is $27.16. Estimated annual increase to a commercial value at $601,623 is $49.38. Affected department is police. Proposed budget is $6,443,047. A budget without the tax change is $6,289,380. The budget change would be $153,667. The impact of the tax increase is the police department will hire one new police officer and provide funding for reserve and retention. The affected department is fire, proposed budget $3,616,747, a budget without tax change is $3,404,747, a budget change of $212,000. The impact of this tax increase, the fire department will hire two new firefighters and provide funding for outfitting. The total general fund change is $365,667.

Thank you again, I just want to say thank you to all the City Council for the open dialogue open discussion ideas Information is thrown out and asked and so thank you I think the citizens are watching and and they're curious how this process goes down and I think I think we've had it a good open dialogue of ideas, so thank you with that and Please have a good strawberry days this week. I mean, things are starting to gear up, right? I mean, things... Concert tonight. Concert tonight. See you over there. We had a great opening day on Saturday with our Fireman's Breakfast and then the car show and, sorry, eSports. They'll get after me if I don't bring that up. And then the concert on Maine was, I thought, really good. And we've already had some... great things going on and so again tonight i think the band is fire at will tonight i think they played before they're good but with that said go out and have a great time represent the city strawberry days this is all about our city and i'll entertain a motion to adjourn mayor i'll make a motion to adjourn i have a motion by councilmember rogers a second second second by councilmember williams all those in favor aye it's unanimous thank you we'll see