BOUNTIFUL—Reps. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful and Melissa Garff Ballard, R-North Salt Lake came before the Bountiful City Council on Jan. 13 to discuss their priorities for the upcoming legislative session. The city also had some questions and requests for them to consider and keep an eye on throughout the session that could impact municipalities.

“A couple of things I want to make sure are on your radar,” said Mayor Kate Bradshaw. “Your colleague Rep. (Paul) Cutler (R-Centerville) who does have one small Bountiful precinct that he represents, is working on a bill with e-motorcycles and e-bikes that I think we’re particularly interested in.”

It’s been something that the council spent a work session on with the police chief as Bountiful experiences some challenges with damage to parks, damage to trails where motorcycles, in particular, aren’t allowed, she said. “There're myriad safety issues of youth without driver’s licenses driving e-motorcycles without helmets, those types of issues and fleeing the police so we’re really excited to see this bill.”

Bradshaw said she knows that Cutler has been working with the Law Enforcement Legislative Committee. “We’re so excited to see that when he’s ready to number so please keep that on your radar. Many cities are also tracking that.”

The second thing is energy, said Bradshaw. “We’ve asked you in years past to be aware that Bountiful is a public power system city and that is an important issue for us. We expect that there will be some additional legislation in that regard about disposition of assets for public power and making sure that if cities are going to divest of those we get fair market value for those.”

It was suggested in a meeting that they didn’t need to involve the cities in the discussion, she said. “They would have just involved the legislators that represent municipal power system cities. So we would ask that you make sure that as those bills are coming up that you’re staying really close to us as the operators of those municipal power systems to know what those impacts truly are and what our wishes and impacts are since we’re the only power system city in your district.”

“We really appreciate you both being here and always being so accessible when we reach out,” said City Administrator, Gary Hill. “I thought it might be a good opportunity to share with you a little bit on how we view property tax.”

It’s an interesting revenue source because the state doesn’t get a property tax, he said. “So changes can be made at the state level without really considering the pretty dramatic impacts on the local level. As you know, property tax is the only tax revenue that we actually have any control over.”

 The city’s sales tax rates are set by the state, Hill said. “We can’t just go out and increase the sales tax rate or decrease it, we can decrease it I suppose but we don’t have any ability to generate or create new taxes. So the only one we have the ability to actually change is property tax.”

Hill said that has a couple of really big benefits for the city. “The first one is in the event we have something we have to act on. I think one of the times we’ve increased our property tax – one of the two times in the last 10 years – was to add some new police officers. We use property tax to be able to do that.”

Another thing that’s really important is the way bonding agencies look at cities' ability to raise revenues, he said. “It’s hugely important to the rating agencies and our ability to get low interest loans, to have the ability to pledge the full faith and credit of the city toward repaying our debts. One of the reasons we have the ability to do that is because we essentially have an unlimited ability currently within the confines of a pretty high cap and the Truth in Taxation laws to assess property tax.”

Hill said one of the bills that concerns them is an effort that would cap a city’s property tax increase to 5%, any tax entities, not just cities. “You can probably already see why that might be a concern to us in the event that we have to take action in some way. Right now we have the ability to do that. If there’s a 5% maximum cap on what we could increase, it really reduces our ability.”

The practical effect of that is you’re going to see a lot more tax increases, that cities as a precaution – not just cities, that all taxing entities as a precaution will say, ‘well we’ll just take the max every year.’ Bountiful has had Truth in Taxation three times in the past 26 years.”

So 2021, 2008 and 2000, he said. “ Those increases were 36% in 2021, 13% in 2018 and 12% in 2000.”

“One of the things that I wonder about Truth in Taxation is if the state system has made it very unpleasant to go through it in general,” said Ward. “If it’s made it so unpleasant that it gets put off so long, needed services may be significantly degraded by the time we get around to doing it and B, that when it does happen that it is a very large amount because it’s been put off so long.”

“We wish you the most health and energy as you go forward with the next 45 days and the sprint that the session is,” said Bradshaw to Ward and Ballard. “We will be in touch if you have questions for us, please also be in touch with us.”