ALL RIGHT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WELCOME TO OUR MEETING THIS EVENING. I WANT TO CALL OUR MEETING TO ORDER. WE HAVE ALL THE COUNCILMEMBERS PRESENT. COUNCILMEMBER FRED LOWERY IS ONLINE FOR THIS MEETING. THE FIRST ITEM, SECOND ITEM ON OUR AGENDA IS A PUBLIC HEARING. THIS IS A PROPOSED TAX INCREASE, AND WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A PUBLIC HEARING REGARDING THE PROPOSED TAX INCREASE. I'M GOING TO TURN IT OVER TO JOHN VEIK, OUR FINANCE DIRECTOR. GO AHEAD, JOHN. So we are here for the public hearing on the tax increase associated with holding the tax rate steady. So we are required by statute to inform people of a few things. And so this slide will take care of that. We will need to read it twice because we will have two public hearings, one for Salt Lake County and one for Utah County. So Draper City General Operations will receive an additional property tax revenue each year as a result of holding the tax rate level with the combined rate from last year. The additional revenue represents from Salt Lake County $891,036 from Utah County $44,929 for a total of $935,965. The additional tax revenue will be used to support inflationary cost increases within the city budget. And for note, following this public hearing, the city will hold an additional public hearing and adopt a final budget on August 19th at 7 o'clock PM at Draper City Hall. So that meets all of the requirements that we are scheduled to do. Just quickly through this, We are holding the rate steady, so you can see the combined rate on my left-hand side shows what the rates have been since 2003 within Draper City. Last year, we had a combined rate, which was the general operations rate plus the bond rate of 0.001022. The proposal for this year is to maintain that rate at .001022. The certified tax rate, which did not include the bond rate, which because the city had paid off the bond, was .00936. So there's a difference there on a million dollar home of 47 and 30 cents. So that would be the difference. IF WE HAD USED THE CERTIFIED TAX RATE AS OPPOSED TO USING THE SAME TAX RATE AS LAST YEAR. THIS CHART SHOWS ALL PROPERTY TAX RATES WITHIN SALT LAKE COUNTY. THE RED LINE AT THE BOTTOM, SECOND FROM THE BOTTOM, IS DRAPER CITY. DID YOU GET THAT, TASHA? THE CHART OF THIS IS A CHART OF GENERAL FUND REVENUES IN A COMPARISON FROM LAST YEAR TO THIS YEAR ON A BUDGETARY SCALE AND THEN TWO SLIDES ONE EXPENSE BY TYPE SO THIS SHOWS US PERSONNEL COSTS VERSUS OPERATIONAL COSTS AND THEN THIS ONE BY DEPARTMENT. JUST THIS LAST SLIDE SHOWS A FEW OF THE NOTABLE INCREASES OR CHANGES WITHIN IT, SO REVENUE ON MY LEFT-HAND SIDE AND EXPENSES ON THE RIGHT-HAND SIDE. YOU CAN SEE THE DIFFERENT CHANGES THAT WERE WITHIN THE PROPOSED BUDGET. AND THAT'S THE END OF MY PRESENTATION, AND WE WOULD OPEN IT UP FOR PUBLIC COMMENT. ANYBODY HAVE ANY QUESTIONS FOR JOHN BEFORE WE TAKE PUBLIC COMMENT? I DON'T THINK FRED HAS SOUND YET. THANK YOU, SIR. THIS IS A PUBLIC HEARING. MR. MAYOR. Before we start, can I fix the audio really quickly so Fred can hear? Just a few things. Thank you. We'll hold off then. Okay, perfect. We should be good now. Yep, he's on. You should be good. Thank you. All right, this is item 2A. It's a public hearing proposed property tax increase in Salt Lake County. So this is an opportunity for Salt Lake County residents to speak to the council on this proposed tax increase. We'll have a second hearing for those. Is anybody here from Utah County? You're all from Salt Lake County? Okay. All right, who would like to go first? Rules are, come up, state your name and address, and you'll get three minutes. That's the time frame we allow for public comment, and the council will listen to your comment. Who would like to go first? Come on up, sir. John McMahon, address 14344 Lapis Drive. Just, I guess, clarification on, from my reading, I know the bond's paid off and we want to extend it. Just where that money would be used more clearly. Is it for law enforcement, for, you know, infrastructure, where that money might go? Thank you, sir. We'll talk about that when we discuss it. Anyone else like to make a public comment on this item? Come on up, sir. Yes, I'm Paul Kearsley. I live at 14686 Ravine Rock Way in Draper. And I guess my questions are, as we went through a tax increase last year, 2024, uh... for twenty twenty five and there was really no mention of the the bond coming do and it seems a little odd concerning to me that were of the bonds do so we're essentially continuing the same rate but nothing's really changed so we're we're spending this additional money her money's on that was feeding the bond to add to the to the taxes it feels like that money ought to be BUDGETS SHOULD BE BASED ON NEED AND REQUIREMENTS, AND IF WE'RE JUST ADDING THAT MONEY, IT JUST SEEMS LIKE AN EXTRA THROW-IN TO KEEP THE MONEY. AND SO THAT'S KIND OF MY CONCERN IS WHY WASN'T THIS REALLY BROUGHT UP BEFORE OR PART OF THE DISCUSSION WITH THE RATE INCREASE THAT WAS STARTED TWO YEARS AGO. THANK YOU, SIR. WHO WOULD LIKE TO BE NEXT? Come on, it's interesting. Anyone else? Come on up. Cordell Anderson, 12263 Doral Place. And maybe I just don't understand, but the notice I just received recently shows the 24 and 25, and it shows an increase of 9%. and it does say the 25, so I was confused why it didn't say 2026 if we're planning ahead for next year, but the one I just got shows Draper City with a 9% increase, so I'd just like to understand on that. All right, thank you, sir. Anybody else? All right, if there's no further public comment, we'll close public comment on the Salt Lake County side, and then... we can address some of the questions that you raised. We did a tax increase last year, that is correct. First one in 17 years that we've done. That was primarily designed to go to public safety, and it did. It all went into the public safety personnel equipment. This money is the same we've been paying on this bond since, I believe this is the Corner Canyon, when we first bought the Corner Canyon as voters. And so if this bond were to fall off, we could reduce your taxes, and it would take $935,000 out of our budget. The problem is we need $935,000. It's the same exact situation. All of the inflationary costs have gone. So we could do it where we reduce your taxes and then have another truth in taxation and come back and meet the budget that we need. That's really what we're doing. We thought this... made sense with respect to we're all paying it and we hold the rate level with this we're still we're all still paying this we hold it level because we most definitely use the money to the question as to where it goes it goes into um some of it will get spent on equipment that public safety uses it'll get spent throughout our general fund budget but the important thing to know we've lived for a long time in draper city as a growth city where we've had the benefit of increasing sales tax year over year. And so our property tax that we collect, it doesn't cover basic operations of Draper City. It doesn't even get close. So we've lived on this sales tax growth over the last 17 years, actually 18 years. Despite what you might hear about this economy, sales tax has not only flattened out over last year, sales tax is down. And so we have our limited resources to collect money. And sales tax is where we've been. The reason we've been able to keep the rates so low, and we're still low, the reason we've been able to hold it is because we've had this growth in sales tax. We're out of growth. We're really phasing out of the growth phase. We don't have any more new retail except for the point. And the point has the potential to be a significant retail contributor over time. But right now it's... NOT CONTRIBUTING A NICKEL. IT'S NOT DOING ANYTHING. SO A LOT OF CITIES, WE'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE THAT'S DONE IT THIS WAY, BUT WE'VE BEEN LIVING ON THAT DIFFERENCE IN THE SALES TAX. EVERY YEAR OUR SALES TAX INCREASES, WE'VE ADDED MORE RETAIL. WE'RE OUT OF THAT PHASE. IT JUST IS WHAT IT IS. WE'RE GOING TO MOVE FROM A GROWTH PHASE CITY UNTIL THE POINT KICKS IN TO A CITY THAT'S GOING TO HAVE TO FUND ITSELF ON ITS PROPERTY TAX AND ITS SALES TAX, OBVIOUSLY. THAT MIX IS WHAT IT IS. WITH RESPECT, JOHN, DO YOU WANT TO ADDRESS WHY THIS DIDN'T COME UP LAST YEAR? SO WHY WE DIDN'T DO IT LAST YEAR, WE HAD A BOND PAYMENT LAST YEAR. SO THE BUDGET THAT WAS PRESENTED LAST YEAR PRESENTED A GENERAL OPERATIONS PIECE AND THE BOND PIECE. SO AS THE RESIDENTS, YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN ON YOUR TAX TWO LINE ITEMS in your property tax detail for Draper City. It would have been a general operations piece as well as a bond piece. Now with no bond payment due this year, you only see one line item from Draper City. So the change in that one general operation is what represents the 9% increase that was asked about. That's where that increase comes because rather than that money going to pay off the bond, we are allocating that money into the general operations. Why did it not come up last year? I think as we've been planning, we've been looking at different things that we could do as a city, and we weren't sure exactly what we would do last year. Whether, you know, if sales tax can continue to grow, then would we actually need the money? But as we looked at the budgets and projected things this year, there was a need to be able to find some money, and we felt like this would be something that would be something the residents would be able to do. So that was kind of reasoning. Thank you. Council Members, any comments? Do you want to come back to slide six? We can show the expenses. that we need to cover. Do you want it by type, or do you want it by department? By department is fine. John, do you want to? You can see the increase in expenses that we're having there in those FYs. We're having some changes to cover in facilities. So if you look at column for FY25 and FY26, you can see that the projected costs require just a little bit more money. I think this makes prudent sense that since we're retiring a bond debt, we're keeping the tax rate the same and we're just taking that money and using it to cover these increased expenses. I think that makes sense rather than trying to figure out how to cut something in here that is an essential service. I mean, I don't think anything in there is really... not essential, especially with the quality of life we want to have in our community. So I'm happy to meet with anyone one-on-one. I'm happy to talk with anyone one-on-one and hear your thoughts after the meeting. I think what the mayor stated was really important, that we are not able to pay for police and fire with our general services. fund money. We have been using the sales tax revenue to supplement that fund for a long time. And that's kind of a risky thing to do because sales tax can go up and down. We're always hoping, hoping that it goes up or stays stable, but we're not there now. We're at a place where instead of even staying stable, it's dipping and dropping. And there's never a moment where we cannot pay for police and fire. We always have to have police and fire. And in fact, there's some cities that do an annual adjustment to the tax rate just to keep up with those expenses. Because the other piece you need to understand is that we have to pay more and more to our police and firefighters every year. Because there aren't as many people going into police and fire, right? We have to try to keep a base team here. And unfortunately... they leave us frequently to go to other cities that are paying $5, $10 more an hour, which is substantial for some of these young people just getting started. So those costs just continue to go up. Just fire trucks, just fire trucks alone. Seven years ago when we started our fire department, we bought all of our engines. One, you could buy an engine and have it delivered in a few months. That was the norm. We buy Pierce firefighting equipment, Pierce engines. They're made in Appleton, Wisconsin. They're handmade. They're the best quality firefighting vehicles there are. We paid for our main engine, the black one with the ladder, about, I want to say, $400,000-ish, $480,000. And we got it in a couple of months. That same truck's $2 million now. And it takes two years to get it. So you order it, you pay some money down, and then you wait a couple of years to get the truck. Meanwhile, we still respond to calls, and you know we've had a busy year in firefighting. So, I mean, those are just some of the actual hard money expenses that have gone up. I don't know why Pierce has gotten that expensive, but it is what it is, and it's hitting every community as far as that goes. Police officers, we're fully staffed now because of the increase from last year. We have a full staff of police officers. They're a high-quality bunch of police officers. They're happy. They like to work here. We don't have turnover like we were having because we were... You can't be the highest-paid city, but you can't be the lowest one either. So you've got to find a way to be somewhere where it's a good place to work and the money's still good. It's not as good as some other cities because they pay more in worse places to police, quite frankly. But... Those are some of the things we do. Our firefighters, part of the reason they deploy, when you hear us talk about that, they deploy because we get paid by the federal government to deploy them, and it helps fund and supplement. So we're trying everything we can physically do to keep your taxes low. Like I said, it's been a long run with sales tax growth year over year. We're in the sales tax decline right now. Now it could pump back up, but this economy is not... economy that you're told it is at least with respect to sales tax people just aren't buying stuff like they used to so that's sort of just an example of some of the expenses everything's gotten more expensive from asphalt um to pipe to it doesn't you name it it's gone up you know this go to the store and buy something it's the inflation's real it's it's legit and it's not something we're making up we're just trying we felt like this was a way this wasn't really adding to the tax burden this time. It was keeping it where it is. Yeah, we could have done a refund, but we would have still had the hole we have. So that's where it is. I hate taxes as much as the next person, so that's where we're at. All right, we appreciate your public comment. We have another item coming up, item 2, 2B. It's another public hearing. It's a proposed tax increase for an opportunity to hear from Utah County residents. Is there anyone that's come in the room that's from the great county of Utah? Anyone want to make a comment they didn't make before? I'll give you a chance. Come on up. Good to see you guys. Appreciate what you do. I'm now one of the senior citizens, so I don't have to chase it too much, you know, but I'll chase Mike every once in a while, I guess. Give us your name and address. Bob Clark, 135 90 South, 30 East. here for a few years this thing and I just wonder when you say that fully staffed I've always been interested in why we have to have this the numbers we have I mean where do those numbers come from like how many police officers we have to have how many firemen we have to have and things like that I was in a public meeting one time with Spanish Fork and a police officer got up and said we don't have to have as many police officers in Spanish Fork because You know, we don't have the trouble we have in other places. He said, I was a fireman. He said, I was a police officer in another city that had more bars than churches. He said, here we have more churches than bars. So I just sometimes think, are we really doing the right things? And I'm surely not knocking what you guys do because you do a good job, and I'm not volunteering, so I can't complain about it too much, right? But I just wonder sometimes if we're not looking at other ways to reduce and simplify in what we do. And I think some of those things we could do is say, you know, like I've talked a couple of times police officer in the last little while, and I say, what if they ran those vehicles a little longer and paid you more? Because your worry is that you're always having to fight with other cities to hire people so you don't have to train people. But what if you actually had fewer and paid them more and had better quality people? And I'm sure you've probably discussed all that stuff, but some of my thoughts that I have for you that I look at those kind of things and say, is there a better way to do it? Yes, everything you're saying is about cost going up. I mean, I just read the other day that 70% of the households in America are living from paycheck to paycheck. Draper is one of the most expensive places to live, and we like it. We love being here. You provide great services, you know. But people are suffering in what they're doing, and it's amazing to me when 50,000 people would get 10, you know. I came because I haven't been to one of these before, so I thought I'd better come and check it out, you know. So that's just some of my comments. Why aren't we looking at other ways to maybe run things longer, reduce and simplify? I'd like to pay police officers and firemen more money and have fewer of them that were quality people. I mean, I asked a guy the other day, what if they paid you more and you drove your truck a couple more? You're a different city, you know? He said, I'd love that because they're not making it either, you know? So just my thoughts, and I appreciate your time. Thank you. Anyone else? Well, you already weighed one, so go ahead. Anyone else wants to make a new one? All right, we only do one. All right, I'll close the public hearing on 2B, which is the Utah County. And to your point about how many do we need, well, if you ask the chief, we need 10 more than we got. If you ask both chiefs, they'd tell you that. So obviously, we got the number that we think. Part of the problem is the concept of pay them more, have fewer. People don't want to work all the time. And you always have a training rotation where a certain number of officers are training at any given time. Some of that stuff, we work through that. But I think we have the minimum number we need to be safe and be able to provide service. You may not realize the level of crime that we deal with. I mean, we've had everything in the last year, every kind of crime you can almost imagine. We do some economies of scale. We have a South Valley enforcement team where we work with Harriman, South Jordan, Sandy, ourselves. We have a joint sort of a major crimes team. We all share resources. We all share officers. And they have made some amazing criminal busts in the last six months. Major crimes, trafficking to drug trafficking to you name it. Major bank robbery ring. We broke it right here in Draper. right across from McDonald's, our joint team. So we're doing stuff like that. All of us cities want to work together and help each other. But we do look at those concepts, and we have to do it. Police officers, it's interesting. When I asked the youth council, we have about 125 youth council members. How many of you want to be police officers? The last seven years, it's been exactly zero kids. Zero. I've asked them how many they want to be firefighters. Zero kids. How many want to go in the military? It stayed at 1%. This year is the first year I've ever had two kids raise their hand about being a police officer. And it may not seem like much to you, but when you think about how long it takes to get a person in the system, train them, make sure they know how to police the way we want them to, and the kind of people that you have a pool from, it used to be a waiting list to become a police officer. There used to be 30, 40 people on any given waiting list. Not the case now. And so... We are paying them more, paying them a lot more than I ever thought we'd pay them. But everybody else is too, and it's hard on each other because Salt Lake City can raise it 15 bucks. Not every cop will go there because they don't want to necessarily be in that every day, but there's some that will. We have really good ones. We have really good firefighters. The other thing that's a premium right now is paramedics. They're really, really expensive because there's not many of them, and they sort of have a market of they're their own thing. And of course we need them as well. So anyway, all right. Mr. Mayor, can I just add something? I had the opportunity to go on ride-alongs with both the fire and the police and to see them, you know, how they treat our residents was really remarkable to me. And my only experience I've had with police is watching TV shows. And when I rode along with them, they are not in pairs. We just have one officer there. PATROLLING AT A TIME. AND THAT WAS REALLY SHOCKING TO ME BECAUSE I ASSUMED THAT OUR OFFICERS WERE OUT THERE TOGETHER. AND SO, TO ME, I FEEL LIKE I WOULD RATHER HAVE OUR OFFICERS, YOU KNOW, HAVE BACKUP AND THOSE KIND OF THINGS, WHICH THEY CAN. THEY CAN CALL. BUT JUST INITIALLY, IT'S JUST ONE OFFICER IN A PATROL CAR. AND SO, WE ARE NOT GOING OVER AND ABOVE AND BEYOND TO PROVIDE PUBLIC SAFETY. WE ARE DOING WHAT IS GOOD FOR OUR CITY. In my opinion, I would like to see more. I would like our officers to feel like they are also protected and not going out there all on their own. I mean, it's a 24-hour operation. So if we have 42 officers and you have three shifts, eight-hour shifts, you're already looking at 24 a day. Someone calls in sick. Someone takes vacation. You're now looking at like three or four at a time are on shift and on duty at any point in time. So if you just take the number you have and realize that it's 24 hours a day, people get sick, people get vacation days, they're stretched a little thin at times. And there's a reason why we have the cross-mutual aid agreements with Sandy City and our other departments. And the other thing is when we set up Draper Fire in 2017, we wanted to have four-hand crews. So our first fire department shows up at the house, they can go in the house and get you, right? So if we did the UFA model where we only had three-handed crews, you're waiting for a second fire truck to show up before someone goes in because they've got to have four guys on scene to go in the house. Someone at the truck, two guys going in the house with the hose, and one person monitoring the roof, right? So that's the four-handed thing. So if we were to – and that's a firefighter safety thing, and that's get people out of houses that are on fire thing. And so I think it's the right thing to do to have four-handed crews. And I think we have three-handed crews up at Suncrest on night shifts and weekends, but every other time we have four-handed crews. So our first fire truck that gets there can go in the house and get you and start putting out the fire so they're not waiting for a second vehicle. I think that's a really critical thing in our community. We've got open space. So I think our manning levels are close, and they might not be – There might be times where we may want to increase them. So I think we're doing what we're supposed to do at this point in time within our means. And I mean, you look at the roads. We've got roads that we've got to fix. We want to make our parks clean, warm, welcoming. We want to make sure that when you go to the park that the bathroom works. And we want to make sure that the level of services that you receive here in the community, in the city, are that of... the caliber of the community we live in. So I think our budget makes sense. And I think this was just a way of keeping our rate the same and without having to add more money into people and take from more people. So it's maintaining the status quo while giving us more money. It's kind of a unique, I think, compromise in the situation. I also, I want you to know that we do always look for other ways to bring more funds into Draper. We've tried to bring car dealerships into Draper. If you need to buy a new car, please buy a car in Draper. That sales tax revenue really helps us. Trader Joe's, I mean, there's ways that we can help. Shop local as much as you possibly can in Draper. And we always look at things that we can cut back on. We did eliminate a couple of positions this year that we just thought we didn't need to fill, and that could be a cost savings for us. So it is a whole scope here. We're not just looking at just one piece. Any other comments, council members? All right, that will conclude our hearing. Is there a motion to adjourn? Motion by Mr. Green is a second. Second. Second by Ms. Lowry. All in favor of adjourn, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, we stand adjourned. Thank you for coming.