Cache County Council Truth In Taxation Meeting – 11-18-2025 @ 6:00 PM

Alright. I need someone to approve the agenda. I would go ahead and move to approve the agenda the amended agenda. Second.

Okay. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. K. K. We're gonna give our five minutes to our executive to give an overview of where we're at with our budget.

This is the beginning of a truth in taxation hearing and so there's there's limited things that can be discussed tonight. I'm going to just briefly that is, it's been presented to the county council. They're considering it. While they're doing that, they have to have a truth in taxation hearing that deals with revenues where the budget deals with expenditures. So what they'll be dealing with tonight is the revenues needed to support the budget. The budget, we have worked to try and reduce it as much as possible. We started with a deficit of 7,800,000. We've been able to reduce the expenditures about 2,800,000.0. With this 3,700,000.0 that's proposed, our deficit will be reduced to about 1,300,000.0. In saying that, let me just emphasize that 70% of the budget in the county is personnel. So when we reduce budget, we actually have to reduce people we employ. We've been doing that for about three weeks. We've eliminated a number of personnel positions and let those employees go. We've also delayed expenditures and we have put off some expenditures. The the way taxes are computed for truth in taxation hearings is based upon revenues. So in order to increase our revenue from its base last year, we have to increase and we have to have a tax in truth in taxation hearing. But that's the amount of revenue that's increased. How that will translate to your personal taxes will depend on appraisal values and also will depend on how many new properties are added to the tax roll during the year. Last year, the council advertised that it was considering a 20% raise. In the, subsequent proceedings, they reduced that to 12. But when the 12% was spread amongst the taxpayers, it ended up being closer to five to 6% and many taxpayers didn't feel or have any increase. That's again what will happen this year because your property tax values aren't determined until May or even a little later than that. With that said, I turn the time back to the council.

Okay. Thank you. This truth in taxation meeting includes a truth in taxation public hearing. To hear public comments regarding the proposed tax increase and to explain the reasons for the proposed tax increase. The public is encouraged to participate in person or online. To join the meeting virtually, please visit the Cache County website homepage and click on the meeting link button under the proposed county tax increase. If you're viewing on YouTube and wish to participate, the direct virtual meeting link is in the title. Virtual participants will be called on after in person comments have finished. And so, I would ask again if you plan to speak publicly tonight that you there's a sign up sheet over there. I've already got the one but if you still want to speak, we want to, make sure that we have your name. Cash County is proposing an 18% property tax increase of $3,721,500 for 2026 for the purpose of meeting inflationary costs for personnel and public safety, and so with that I'm going to open the public meeting. We'll open the meeting to public comment. So we'd like to call on Ron Castell. And would you please keep your comments to two minutes if you can, please? Sure. It should be easy. So State your name and go ahead and state your name publicly. I'm Ron Costa. Chair, may I interrupt? Please.

I think earlier we mentioned that the link for the to join the meeting is in the YouTube description Mhmm. Not the title. In the title. Oh, in the description. In the description. Okay. Thank you,

Mark. So if you're listening online, the link to participate virtually is in the description of the YouTube channel. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry, Ron. Go ahead. Your two minutes concern. I'm Ron Costell. I'm a resident of Logan. Okay.

So first off, I wanted to say, you know, it's very good that you've gone through and kept our, you know, work to keep our taxes low, etcetera. I wasn't able to get here in time for the general discussion earlier today. So the real thing that the question I really had for everyone is, did you ask the taxpayers what we're really willing to, you know, what services we're really willing to pay for? So like, you know, with the firemen that are here, I certainly am willing to pay more taxes to make sure that we have fire protection. The garbage disposal, sewage systems, all of those things are really important to me on a daily basis. So, I don't know what process since this is just a revenue meeting really, you know, we don't really get to talk about that. But it would be really nice as a taxpayer to know, you know, what it is you're considering. I know in the letter, it said, you know, like the library is gonna close, for instance.

We are considering that. That that is that's still under consideration. Yeah. Mostly, it's like, well, you know, maybe

as, you know, a taxpayer, you know, we all say, you know, hey, that's okay. Keep that. How much is it going to cost each of us? So it would be nice to have some way to weigh in on that budget in advance.

We did set a budget hearing for the December 2 where we will have a public on that. Okay. And just for a statement that may help, the county is in a position that a lot of what we do is the business. There are things we're mandated by the state. We don't get to choose. We have to run elections. We have to run the jail. We have to prosecute crimes. We assess properties. We collect taxes. Those are things that we are mandated by the state to do and, there's not a lot of wiggle room there. Those are things that we just have to have the personnel to do. So I was just gonna mention, you know, in the prior meeting,

general months up talking about the, Fawnerville Shoreline Trail funding. Mhmm. You know, I I use that several times a week. I know the upgrades that they've done up north are really nice. You know, yes. Those are the things that as a community, we all get support or at least have something on. So I better get out of here my two minutes. You're good. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. Is Chris Nielsen here?

I always love coming to these meetings. Very enthusiastic. Some problems I have with increasing taxes, number one and I know I've heard from a lot of people, especially sheriff who's in paradise with me, that you're the lowest paid counsel in the state. I really don't care. If you don't like it, you can move on and somebody else will take your place. That's how I feel about it. Where it comes to fire service, I did a development down in Davis County back in 2014 and we were required to put an eight inch water line. We're in the middle of nowhere. Clinton Fire was in charge of the fire. And they wouldn't let me not do it unless Clinton Fire said, yeah. You can go ahead and do it. He said, no. This is our ordinance. You're gonna do it. And you know what I asked him? I said, I want you to give me in writing a promise that you can make it to these three homes before they burn down. And he said, I can guarantee you we won't make it, but that's the ordinance. This is the problem we have as we stretch ourselves so thin. Oh, yeah. We can't make it. And it it honestly, a waste of taxpayer dollars. I know our county clerk really well. I know our attorney really well. Good people. My number one problem with Cache County and with the state of Utah right now, everybody every one of you that have an oath of office are required to have crime insurance under the state code, and it's supposed to be kept in the clerk's office under state code. Guess who doesn't have it? Our clerk. He'd never even heard of it. Why is that? I've had the same problem at the state level with my state property taxes. I can't even get a copy of the rules of office. I've submitted three grant requests, can't get what I need. Can't get the crime insurance. Why is this? Why are things hidden from the people? They're supposed to be open and acceptable to all to get and yet we can't get it. Deny, deny, deny. That's what I get. We don't have it. Well, go find it. That's what I want from you. I want service. If if you believe you have service, I wanna see it. And that's all I really have today. I I I wanna see property taxes eliminated, and I think as a country, we got seven states right now that are on board to to do that. Make it up somewhere else. I don't care where it is. I don't have much good to say about our school school district, and I do have our school district crime insurance. So I'd like to know where the county's is. We'll check on that. Thank you.

K. We have Kristen Christiansen.

Hi. My name is Christine Christiansen. And first, I wanted to say thank you. I've appreciated reading in the newspaper of of of your hard work and effort in tackling this issue. And, I just appreciate the letter that came out. I thought it was well written and gave us the information that we needed, and I'm glad that you offered to have time to explain. The 02:00 time is kind of difficult for those of us who work, but I still appreciated that that was, offered. I wanted to thank the department heads and all those who have had those hard conversations and and difficult decisions. So I appreciate that you have done the work before you come and say we're gonna raise your taxes. And and explaining that. Anyway, well done all the way around. But my question is on the deficit. So you said that we're currently running a deficit, and we have been, and we will this year at least as well. Where does that deficit

come from? I mean, who who makes up the difference on that? We we currently have a rainy day fund that we would like to keep for a rainy day, but that that does give us the leeway so that we're not borrowing money and going into debt. We we can we can cover the deficit. And our goal is to get to the point where we can keep property tax levels at a level that we don't have to go into that at all.

Where did the bringing day fund come from?

It's been built up over years for a lot of conservative management of county funds. Some of it came from COVID, but it's a it's a fund that we, would would really like to to keep And fund. For as much as we and for large expenditures that may come up. Thank you. Did you wanna say something else about that, George? I would just say, we have 22,000,000

in unreserved funds at this point. So we have more than adequate to cover the fluctuation. And we are working to reduce the deficit to zero this year. We're not accepting of where we are. We just we're gonna continue to work that down.

K. Keith Nelson.

I lived in Cache Valley most of my life. And when I was 14, I bought my property. I pay more now on taxes each month than I did for my property back then. It was my goal as a young man that I might build a home there one day, and I've been looking forward to owning that home. As you well know, I don't own my home. I rent it from y'all. And to prove that, I just have to not be able to pay for about three years and you'll sell it for me. Right? And so that's why it's kind of a concern. I'm retired on a fixed income and it would be wonderful if I could sit down with my wife and say, you know, we're running probably a deficit this year. Well, let's raise our income about 15%. It would sure be lovely. Then I hear the school district's gonna raise it a 100%, so I don't know if I could pay that much. We're gonna go to from 300 and some odd a month to over 1,000 a month, and that's gonna make it kind of tough on us. And I can't sit down in y'all's meeting that you're having right now and talk to my wife and say, you know, we need to come up with an extra $500 a month. And and so you might consider that just a little bit. And there I know that there's places to cut. I was a budget officer in the Air Force, and I know I could cut my budget pretty easy, and I did. So that's my concern is, what do I do in order to keep my home that I dreamed of and and and I find out I really don't own it? That's kind of a a stark something. You all you all in the same boat. So

thank you. Thank you, Keith. I appreciate that. Okay. Was there anyone else in the audience that would like to speak that did not sign up? We'd we'd like you to sign up on the sign up sheet. If you haven't done that, it's, we can still manage that. Okay. For those who are listening online, please raise your hand and when I call you and the place where you raise your hand is on the bottom of your meeting display of your device. So please raise your hand if you would like to speak. When it is your turn to speak, we will first send you an invite to be a meeting contributor. Please accept you have to accept the invitation. Once you've accepted that, we will enable you to speak. As soon as you've accepted the invitation, please unmute yourself and turn on your camera. You will then have two minutes to speak and I'll repeat those instructions as we go if we need to. So if there's anyone online that would like to speak at this meeting, now is your time. Please raise your hand on your computer. I'll give you a few minutes to try and figure that out. I'm just watching the computer to see if anybody I'm going to give that another thirty seconds just to make sure everyone has an opportunity. I don't see anybody. Do you see anybody, Ethan? I'm going to continue with the meeting then. If give that just a couple more minutes if somebody wants to raise their hand. We'll take care of that at that time. Okay. At this time I need someone to make a motion to close Public Hearing.

Move to close the Public Hearing.

Second. Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we close the public hearing. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. So now is the discussion on the final action on proposed tax increase. And I just want to say thank you to everyone who's here. I want to thank, our executive who came in just a couple of months ago and has really done an impressive job of managing where our budget is and giving us a clear direction. Here's where we are and here's the pathway that we need to become whole. And it's been some tough decisions. Like he said, they have found $2,800,000 of cuts. Some of those are really hard. Some like, like he said, some people have been able to we've had to lay them off and that's a really tough decision. And I just want to say that I'm really appreciative of the seven people up here, that the seven of us work really well together. There's some hard decisions to be made and we don't take that lightly. And I just hope that, that if you have any questions, those of you that saw the presentation that Executive Daines did where he pulled up a specific person's taxes and showed where they were five years ago and where they have gone in the last five years, anyone who's interested in that, we have several people here in the room that would be willing to pull you outside in the hallway and show you that for your own taxes if you're interested to see where your tax rate has been and where it's going. So, with that, I'm gonna turn discussion over to the council. We have we have to make a decision on the tax rate tonight.

Madam chair, I move that the cash county council raise a combined health and general fund ad valorem property tax revenue by 18% for the 2026

fiscal year. K. And I'll second that. K. It's been moved and seconded that we let me read this Exactly. The move and seconded that we raise the combined health and general fund ad valorem property tax revenue by 18% for the 2026 fiscal year. Is there some discussion on that, further discussion?

I have some things I'd like to say. Thank you. Thank you, executive. Appreciate what you've done and how you've worked things out. It has been a hard time with it, but there's some things I'd like to say regarding the library and the senior citizen center. We had we had a public hearing on the library a couple weeks ago and all of those that wanted to participate should have come and expressed their views with that. But I, as a Logan citizen, am being double taxed on the county library, and I think we really need to take a good hard look on that. And those who of you who are outside of, you know, of the Providence and River Heights should voice or, you know, take a good look at that, and do you enjoy being double taxed? That's one of the things I want to say on that. For the senior citizen center, I and executive Danes mentioned this this afternoon. He is not going to do anything right now with the senior citizen center, and I totally agree with that. I think it's a very important part of this valley and that we need to look at that. But to increase revenue and just just the thought out to throw out there, Have we ever considered charging the summer citizens? When they come into the valley and they get go get a free meal, they're not paying any taxes or anything here. Should we not be charging them a little bit of money to come and get a meal at a senior citizen center and and have some income there? It's just a thought out that way. Customer service was mentioned. If we don't have the people or the revenue to provide customer service, then, yes, we have a problem. And to us, all of you out there to me, all of you out there are our clients. You are our customers. And you come and use our services, and we're glad to provide those services, but we need to have the people available to provide that to you. And I know I've heard comments, well, so and so, I went to do this and I went to do that, but no one would help me or nobody had the time to give me the answers that I needed. And so, you know, we we need to provide a customer service to our people, and I appreciate all of our people here. One last thing, security. We we need to have our security here in the valley. We have an excellent cash attorney's office. We have an excellent sheriff's office that helps us and we need to provide them with what they need to protect our people here in the county. And that's all I have to say. Thank you, Barbara.

Is there any other discussion?

I'll I'll mention a couple of things as a as Ron, I think, that brought up a couple points. He mentioned the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, and I think I I really appreciated the point about asking taxpayers what services they value. Because at the end of the day, this is a value exchange. You're you're paying this money, and you're getting something out of it. Right? Barbara mentioned that some people have different thoughts on the library. That's a service I've I'm willing to pay for. Some people have said, yes, I know I'm being double taxed, and I'm still okay with it. We want to hear feedback like that, because it helps us make a decision. Again, to that point, with the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, to use as an example, we found out today we just got a million in grant money. Cities have put in for that. The the county has contributed via the RAPS tax. That's a a tax that is on your your food when you go to eat out, which is not necessarily earmarked the same way the general fund is. So so some of these fundings, and and I get that there's a lot of complexities with taxes, but some of it isn't coming out of that same fund. Some of it is state grant money, some of it is rep's tax, some of it is sales tax. There's there's a variety of sources, and sometimes that money has a multiplier effect. So if you cut it, maybe then the state doesn't put in money or the federal government doesn't put in money. So these are all considerations that we're making. And the question I always have when when I start this process is, what can we cut? Right? And and we've seen cuts. We've seen departments eliminate positions and people. That's happening. How can we raise revenue? Well, we can do that next year, but that's not something that's gonna help us right now immediately with the deficit, and and there are already efforts to do that. And I wanna be accountable for that. The other question, with with taxes along the the lines of what can we value is can we pull from the rainy day fund, which is also in the proposal, pulling a million and a half from the 22,000,000. So as as I've gone through the flow chart of what can be eliminated and what's left, you know, we're we're trying to do this as responsibly as possible. And I think the other big factor in this is have we been incrementally increasing taxes as raises have gone up, as inflation has happened, as property values. When your property value goes up, that's real money. You can get a HELOC, you can that's equity you can do something with. Has it gone up in proportion to that? It hasn't. And so, quite honestly, we're running behind, you know, as what was brought up in a previous meeting is proportionally, I can't remember that how we how you put it, executive Danes, but per capita, the the dollar amount per person is the lowest in Cache County in the state. So I think we're we're trying to run lean. There's a certain point where you're running so lean that you start to see poor customer service. You start to see turnover because wages aren't keeping up. So these these are all considerations we're making, and I I want you to know every one of us is looking in great detail at that and trying to be as responsible as possible with this money. We're accountable to you. We wanna hear from you, and we appreciate you coming to the public hearing. I know you have things to do. You have families to raise and hobbies. So it means a lot to come out here and and hear from us. And I I I have made a commitment to try to respond to every single email that I've received on this issue. So, if there's anything else to say, if you didn't say it here, please write to me or anyone else. And we need to hear your feedback as we do the final budget. Thanks.

Thanks, Keegan. Anybody else have any further discussion?

Sandy, I will. As was mentioned earlier, this has been truly collaborative. It's been very educating. I feel like it's been a good process. And now as we narrow down the revenue portion and we move into actually the budget portion for the next few weeks, I encourage those that that want more input, reach out to each of us as we go into now we go into the expenditures. And, we've gotten a very good budget from the executive and his team. And and as he is not satisfied with using the 1,300,000.0 from, our reserves, we will continue to work on this budget. This is not we will adopt a budget, and it will be a balanced budget for this year, but we will continue this process. We are fine tuning as we have,

as we continue the the the upcoming year. And so, and we've worked, I think, quite

and we've worked, I think, quite well with with a lot of work into this. And, I appreciate everyone and their efforts.

Thank you. Anybody else? George?

Let me just build on what Keith had said. We we've had to play catch up the last couple of years. There were there was a series of time periods where our our revenues were not keeping pace with inflation and with the growth in the county. So we went back to 2019, which was the year before COVID hit and things kind of got turned upside down and compared CPI inflation over the last that period of time. During that same period of time, 10% more population has come to Cash Valley. Those two numbers mean that our increase have to be 40% to just stay even with inflation and population growth. So we've compared our budget to that Because if you have 10% more people, you're gonna need 10% more services. Inflation, CPI may not be an exact match, but our employees that are 70% of our budget have to have a call every year. Our problem is we're playing catch up. That's why the increase this year is larger than we'd like it to be. What I would hope is that our increases going forward match inflation plus growth in the county. If we can do better than that, we become more efficient. If we can't do that, well, we become less efficient. And that's how I'd like to measure our future. But if you're really interested, taxation is not a one year game. It's a five, ten, fifteen year game. And what we'd like to do is set the county on a track that matches inflation plus growth, and that that's the way we run our taxes. You need to understand that this is a and we have a bunch of funds we operate for other entities, but we're a $60,000,000 business. $60,000,000 passes through Cash County and is spent in our general fund. We have 500, 600 employees. So this this is a big business, large, and it it takes sophistication to run it, and it's difficult. And frankly, it requires a lot of attention. We have very good officers. I'm pleased to say that that's what I've encountered here is people who are willing to work together. We met with the department head. They came up with their deductions, and we didn't have a situation where it was a forced situation. People looked at us, agreed, and reduced their budgets accordingly. Measure us by the future. We have had to play catch up this year. Year, but measure us by that future and I think you'll be happy with what we do with our taxes. Thank you.

Thank you, George. Okay. I have a motion and a second on the floor. If there's no further discussion

I'd like to I'd like to share. It's it's kind of been interesting the past few years. We have had what I would declare almost the perfect storm. COVID came in, and a bunch of free money come flying around everybody. Nothing's free, though. And some there was some mismanagement we've had to dig into. Home values because of relocation, flood of and I will say a flood of the of people that were getting out of some areas that had serious mismanagement were leaving and coming here and living and selling high dollar high dollar value homes, coming here and buying, you know, homes here, but inflating our values with what I call a false bottom to them. That was paying asking price plus to get those. So we've had acceleration of home values. The the commercial side did not grow as fast or was was not able to keep up in the value. So home value shot up. They took a higher proportion of taxes as it was shifted from commercial because of the acceleration of value. Now we're seeing these are starting to somewhat flatten out and commercial is strengthening. And so we're seeing a little bit of shift the other way in the total amount of taxes paid by those two entities, which I think is a huge process. It's a huge it's kind of a what I call a correction in what's happening in the economics of this, county. The other thing is I am so pleased. I am so pleased with the, the past couple months as things have been presented to us as a council. The honesty, the openness, the ability to understand, lay it all out. Our auditor has worked feverishly with the executive and gotten, I think, the truthful numbers of everything, laid it right out to where I think it's extremely understandable to all of us. There's a lot of numbers, but I think it's been brought to us in a form that again, also, if you've noticed in your tax bill that's come to you in listening and reading the letters that have come, it's very explanatory. I think what's shared here and what was even shared earlier, very detailed. I appreciate it. I know I go back and I look at my taxes, and my taxes, the past since 2019, have gone down. Dramatically, no. But they've gone down. But again, it's to offset the cost of living. And so we've got, again, some still some things that everyone is experiencing with their cost of living in inflation is still strengthening strengthen this against us in what we have to pay versus taxes and everything that may be piled onto that. I I love that some of the comments that were made here are are very valuable. I love the comment about what we would really like to pay for. I think if we just said, okay, statutorily, this is what we have to pay for, we could probably still cut fairly deep, whether if that's good for a community. I don't know. Your trail that you're talking about is so wonderful. I probably never will go on it. I'll but I'm I'll probably end up paying for some of it. But there'll be a lot of other people that probably will go on it and enjoy it. And then I wish we would never call that fund a rainy day fund. I love rainy days. Yeah. I'm a farmer. And a rainy day means, hey, something's going to grow. I think more we ought to really look at it. It is our emergency money because it wouldn't take much of a calamity, much of a whatever something would happen in the form of what you see in other parts of the world. Something like that was to hit here. That that base money that we have to have to just function for a period of time to keep people safe, to get them a, you know, emergency cert whatever it may be. That emergency might to build a bridge, things like that, whatever it may be for emergency, I think that we I would call that an emergency fund and that that needs to remain strong enough and healthy enough. And to dip into it for a little bit, for a short period of time, that's fine. But the long period of time, I think we need to just get it to where we're at a satisfaction level and then move incrementally above that as we go. Yeah. The thing I would like to see is I would like to see a stronger return on things that we do do for the state. We are housing Department of Motor Vehicles. I don't think we're getting really they just say thank you, but it's costing us as county. It is a convenience, but it's costing the county quite a bit of money to have them, you know, within our facility, and we're not being reimbursed really what we should be getting from the state for things like that. So that would be a source of revenue. So a few things like that as we dig into it and the comments that I've heard here, I think are are valuable comments. I, I personally wanna thank everyone that's I mean, it it does. It it means as elected officials, it means it it we have a a deep yearning to really do what is right. The problem is what's right for one is maybe not right enough for another. You're the judge. I just hope that as we make those decisions that, we are stretching ourselves to do the best that we can. Thank you. Thanks, David.

Any further discussion before I call for a vote? Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we The motion has been moved and seconded. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you all so much for being here. Also for Mr. Nielsen, I got a text from our clerk that said we do have crime insurance through the trust. We don't have the we don't have them in our possessions, but they can be provided to us. And so we will we'll work on that. Okay. With that, I'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. We'll move in second. We adjourn. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Thank you all for being here and being a part of this. We appreciate you.

Thank you so much for engaging in this.

Years. Were you? Yes. And then we ended up moving here. Uh-huh.

Hey, Ethan. How's your brother doing? Portuguese.

Right?

There's a hot list.

Probably no AC.