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LOGAN — The Cache County Council is planning to vote on a new sales tax increase Tuesday night that would net the county an estimated three times what its proposed property tax would.
Council Chairman Dave Erickson told KSL.com that the council is poised to approve the increase and designate that money to public safety, despite a letter signed by 19 mayors opposing the resolution.
"We've decided that we'll probably be passing that sales tax," Erickson said. "That gives us latitude, and it brings in sales revenue that we can then use for several different things within the county."
The Cache County Council of Governments, composed of mayors across all 19 incorporated cities in the county, signed onto a letter written in October by Council Chairman Craig Hidalgo, the mayor of Clarkston, requesting "the opportunity to be involved in the process before implementation of any new local option sales tax."
Cache County Executive David Zook is also listed as signing on to the letter but told KSL.com he did not attend the October meeting where the council of governments discussed the tax. "I didn't sign that letter. My name was placed on it in error," he said in a written statement.
Hidalgo is set to give a presentation to the Cache County Council before the vote, in hopes of dissuading the use of that tax for anything other than transportation.
"We have sort of learned inadvertently that the County Council is considering adopting what they call an additional quarter percent sales tax," Logan Mayor Holly Daines told KSL.com.
Flexibility was granted in code during the 2024 state legislative session to allow a local sales tax that was previously designated to fund transportation projects, to be used for public safety in certain sized counties, according to the letter. "The requested flexibility was largely driven by smaller rural counties where transportation capacity issues are perhaps less of an issue," Hildalgo wrote.
"This is certainly not the case for Cache County," which is the largest county in the state this flexibility applies to, according to Hildalgo.
Jeff Gilbert, executive director of the Cache Metropolitan Planning Organization, told KSL.com that the tax "historically has been targeted by the state Legislature for really addressing needs, and largely roadway capacity needs, not necessarily maintenance, but roadway capacity needs on the local system."
"Prior to last year, the whole focus in terms of eligible activities on this were related to transportation," Gilbert said. He calls this tax the "last, best" option for these transportation needs.
The mayors argue that Cache County "has significant transportation needs on the local system, and those demands will only accelerate as projected growth is realized." It is the only county in the state where "more vehicle-miles are traveled on a daily basis on local roads (city and county) rather than on state roads."
"Exploding construction costs are making it extremely difficult to fund the many projects critical to improving the thoroughfares in the valley," Hidalgo wrote in the letter. "Ultimately if the second quarter local sales tax is being considered, we are firmly supportive of using these funds specifically for transportation projects."
"There's been a lot more requests and need than there is money," Gilbert said.
The council of governments "want it all just to go to the them and the roads," argues Erickson, "but I think the Legislature spoke fairly strong in the change of that saying that no, it has flexibility to be used several different places."
The mayors are seeing the flexibility, according to Gilbert, and fear the county will use the funds "to plug budget holes."
Erickson says the new flexibility of the funds is precisely why it is appealing to the county. "By having this and using it, you're basically then turning some restricted funds into unrestricted funds and be able to use them in other places," Erickson said.
The council chairman said the public safety need is "strong" and usually "swallows up one of the biggest portions of our budget." According to Gilbert, mayors of the cities are "certainly willing" to talk about covering the county's public safety deficit, if it exists, instead of using the funds previously earmarked for transportation.
"Certainly there are needs for public safety," Daines said. "As mayors in this council of governments, we're focused on transportation. ... We all work together to try and improve the grid, the major corridors, add capacity, try and solve problems that way."
"We were hoping that that tax will be passed specifically for transportation," she said.
Gilbert estimates the tax increase of 0.3% would result in "somewhere to the tune of $8 or $9 million of revenue," or around three times as much revenue as the property tax increase, also on the table Tuesday night.
Another consideration is fairness among cities that pay for their own police departments, North Logan and Hyde Park's North Park Police Department, Smithfield, and Logan, for example. "Some of the cities contract with the county sheriff, and they pay kind of a fee to have (the) county sheriff patrol their cities," according to Gilbert, "but there's a few cities that don't pay that, and they have their own public safety, their own police departments."
"It's got an equity consideration for (the mayors)," Gilbert said. "They're citizens who can be taxed twice."
Erickson and the council have been hammering away at the county budget since the Truth in Taxation Hearing Nov. 12. "We cut, actually, several million from the budget in different places," he said, lowering the property tax increase from 20% to the currently proposed 10% to 12%.
"We've really done due diligence to save everything that we can," Erickson said. "We've really dug into it hard." The council will vote on officials' salaries Tuesday night as well, and public documents show no increases in pay.
Gilbert says the mayors' disproval of using the sales tax for public safety "is not to suggest that there's not public safety needs and that's not a legitimate use, but it's just an opportunity to work through that with the mayors and the cities and try to come up with a solution."
Hidalgo, who is giving the presentation Tuesday night, said he doesn't know what the county's intentions are, but "we're all trying to get the same objective."
