Cache County Council Regular Meeting – 11-18-2025 @ 5:00 PM

These these blessed situations that we have that we can share our ideas freely with each other. We're grateful for the freedoms which we enjoy. It's beautiful, Vali. The beauty of it as well as the opportunities to grow and to and do things correctly and to enjoy each other. We're grateful for the protections that we have. We pray for special blessings to be upon those that protect us. And emergency services that help us. Grateful for volunteers. Those that also that extend them to go out and beyond for who they are. And they're going to they're going to they're going to financial situations within the county and working through budgets and working through this time that as we share each other's feelings, that we'll do civil liberties, that we'll also be able to stand up and share with clarity. And that good ideas will come forth, and the good decisions to help the economics of everyone that's in the and pray for constant guidance and do this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. And if you'd stand, we'd have the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dave. Before we get started, I just want to say that if you plan to come well, this is our regular council meeting, but at six, we will start our truth and taxation meeting. If you are here to stay for that meeting and you would like to speak, we'd ask you to sign in so that we can make sure that we call on the people that want want to speak. So I'll just say that. Can I get someone to make a motion about the agenda? So moved to approve tonight's agenda. Second. It's been moved and seconded that we approve tonight's agenda. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Can I get a motion about the minutes from the October 28, the October 30, and November 4 meetings?

October 28 section eight c says Keegan Erickson. No such member of the council. It should say Keegan Garrity. I'm just making sure you're out on this one.

A a is this AI? The state. Is this AI that's created these? Let's see. Maybe.

Anybody have any other amendments for the minutes? K. Can I get a motion including that amendment?

I move to approve the October 28 minutes with that modification.

Can we do all three of

them? And the others as presented. I have an issue with the other and others as are presented.

I would second that. K. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the minutes of October 28, October 30, and November 4 meetings. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you. Report of the county executive tonight. I don't I don't have any points. You're going to help us later. Okay. Perfect. Alright. So the first item on our agenda is Amy Adams.

Good evening, council. What's being brought before you is outlined in Utah Code, chapter seventeen seventy five dash five zero one. This is, where the County Personnel Management Act is now, it has been renumbered, and that's where it's sitting in state code. Basically, it talks about the roles and responsibilities of the Career Service Council, and also an alternative administrative law judge to take care of any grievance and appeals that may come before us from employees. In that code, it says in nine a, a County legislative body may appoint one or more administrative law judges to hear appeals referred by a council under this section. And b, each administrative law judge shall be trained and experienced in personnel matters. So, I have asked my colleagues, throughout other county, HR, who they use as administrative law judge. And, Jay Richard Catton has come, as one of the names. And I've spoken with him and, found that he would be a great person to, fill this role. I have a little bit of a bio for you so that you can understand why I believe that he is the one that would be experienced in these personnel matters. Jay Richard Catton is an individual whose expertise spans municipal governance, complex litigation, and administrative law. The recommendation is that the council appoint him as the Cache County, administrative law judge. Mister Canton's career includes a distinguished period of public service highlighted by his tenure as the city attorney for West Valley City from 2005 to 2011. In his leadership role, he managed all legal manners matters including employment law and HR issues for Utah's second largest city. He supervised a staff of 31 across civil prosecution and risk management divisions. His service to the city spanned twenty six years during which he was assigned as the HR attorney. Mister Catton brings significant experience as a neutral adjudicator and expert in conflict resolution. He has served as administrative law judge for the Utah Department of Public Safety, Peace Officer Standards, and Training since 1994 and as Salt Lake County Sheriff's Merit Commissioner for eight years. He is currently contracted by multiple municipalities and counties including Park City, Mill Creek City, Holiday City, and Farmington City, Box Elder County, and Uinta County to serve as a hearing officer for matters involving employee discipline, land use, and appeals. Patton is currently the president of Canton Law, focusing on administrative law, public contract law, and dispute resolution. He is an active member of the Utah State Bar in the sections of government administrative law and labor and employment. He also contributes to the development of future public service leaders as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Utah's master of public administration program. So So as you can see, he does have extensive experience and I believe that he would be a good candidate to be our administrative law judge. Are there any questions?

I have a question, Amy. Number section 14, it says this agreement is subject to and conditioned upon future legislative allocations of funds by the Cache County Council. So is there a cost allocated to having this judge and is that in our budget already or is that to be determined in the future? How tell me about the the money. At this point, it's basically on an as needed basis and he charges us per hour. K. So

that language is in almost all of our contracts that we engage in so that if there isn't budget that we're able to get out of a contract easily.

Okay. Anybody else have questions for you?

Give me some examples of other hearings. They said they call them hearing officer. I know we've talked just give us some examples of specifics on that. So what he would be used for for Cache County

would be for our career service council. So in state code under the personnel, personnel management act, it says that if, an employee is not able to resolve a concern at lower levels, meaning between me and the department head, then they have the opportunity to go before the career service counsel to have a hearing, to hear have them hear their side of the story and the county's side of the story, and then they make a determination from there. We have used the career service council a few times in the past. At this point, we haven't had that opportunity to have the career service council or an administrative law judge. And in the County Personnel Management Act, it states that either the employee who has the grievance or the director of personnel management can request that it go before an Administrative Law Judge, rather than a Career Service Council. So one of the reasons that we would want to have this option is in a past grievance that happened, we did have a conflict of interest with career service council members. And so that left us, with almost the possibility of not even having a career service council, and we would have had to start over from scratch. So this gives us another option. And where mister Katten is out of Salt Lake City, I don't believe there would be much of a conflict of interest, if any, ever. So

Any other administrative

uses there would be besides career service type things? We have only contracted with him for career service counsel, but if there was an interest, I could talk to him about other things because it does say that he has experience with land use as well, and I know that may be an interest to you.

I know the contract also says the certain day of October, so that had to be amended. Mhmm. So thank you.

Anybody else have questions for Amy? I have a question on anticipated usage and if that's a could be a net savings based on, you know, reducing liability or retaining employees or anything like that. I know it's probably a lot of soft numbers, but

So just to give you an example, I've been with the county for nearly eight years, and we've only had two instances that have gone to the career service council. So Very and very frequent use then. Then. And we try to resolve everything, at the lower level and not have it escalate higher, but there are instances that that happens. So k.

Thanks. Mhmm.

K. Do we need to take a motion on this? Yes.

And approve it. K. I would I would go ahead and move to appoint Richard Catton as administrative law judge for personnel grievance and appeals for for Cash County.

It's been moved and seconded that we approve the appointment of Richard Catton as our administrative law judge. Any further discussion? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you, Amy. Okay. Let's talk about our CDBG grant, Alma. I had to practice that one.

Alma Burgess, grant administrator for Cache County. So I want to give you a summary and I think it's already been presented to you. Ideas from the public hearing on November 4 for the CDBG funding ideas. So one of the ideas that was presented that evening and that I passed on to you, I just want to make a clarification. The Cache Community Food Bank, I talked with Bear River Association of Government and they said that it would probably be better that that because they serve regionally, that their application should go through Bragg's. So you don't need to have any discussion about that. We wouldn't be applying for that one. Clarification on the election center at the airport. The ADA bathrooms are they are possibly eligible, but a generator is not because it's a government building. The Senior Center, it suggested, or that evening, there was suggestion of two Meals on Wheels trucks, a generator, a split unit for the ceramic unit or for the ceramic room, land acquisition, and a new building. And then for fire, and I believe all these representatives are here, for fire, replace the Newton Station, a frontline fire apparatus, and a fire station for the North End. The fire station for the North End is is a new one that came to me after the public hearing, which is okay, as well as the split unit for the senior center. So there's those are the ideas. If you wanna have a discussion or have any questions, I believe all of the representatives for each of those applications are here. Can

and can you just explain really briefly the process so that we understand that many multiple applications can be made and then the state will make a determination.

Sure. So we can apply for money. We would kind of need to prioritize which ones we we think are the most important and we would put those forth. But we can apply for as money, and then like you said, it would be given to Bragg and then they would kind of

tri counties. Yeah. When's the deadline the three tri counties. Yeah. What's the deadline?

Deadline is December 1. I know the federal government has just opened back up. I haven't heard if they are going to extend that. So right now, as far as I know, December 1

is our applications need to be given to Bragg. Yeah. That's a Bragg deadline. That's The the state the state deadline is January It's the January. January. But they're they're so meticulous about how those applications are done that Bragg is hoping if everyone gets their applications to them, they can foresee some of those problems and help them be done correctly by January. Correct. So that's that's why Bragg has set the deadline of January of December 1. Right. We would just need to apply for whatever or how many

we want to apply for and get the majority of the information in there. But like you said, they will work with us and make sure that everything is ready to go by the January.

So do you need us tonight to prioritize those three things that we've talked about? It's totally up to you.

Whatever you would like to do, we can put in, I didn't count them, eight or 10 applications, or we can, you know, do one or two or or whatever. But if any of you have some thoughts, please share.

Or there's Bragg has additional applications, don't they? Yes. Correct. There will be How did they prioritize from all of the applications? That move forward?

I I think what they could do is probably apply or submit more than the million dollars, and then they would just have some sort of a priority method. And then they would just start at the top and start funding from there.

These applications, do they all have, like, some bid bidded costs and all that kind of stuff? Well Yeah. They should have. Attributed to every one of them. Yes. That does have an impact on really how even some priorities to be able to get them done soon. Right. Right. They

they don't say shovel ready, but I think they want them pretty well shovel shovel ready because there is a time limit as to when you can spend the money.

Any other questions for Alma? Or any anybody have a an idea that they wanna discuss about prioritizing those kinds of projects? Or should we just have them all apply and see where where they fall with Bragg? We have estimated cost if all of them apply what the total is. Oh, I'm sure it's way exceeding a million dollars. Sure it is too.

If anyone did have a top three, it might be I mean, the Senior center Building itself is probably

Giselle's here. I I don't think we have an estimate on a building or a or a ground. We're meeting with

feasibility study on February on December 3.

Depending on how great you want it, 3 to 8,000,000 for a full time service structure.

And the way the grants work, you could you could say we've got this estimate to build and we are gonna apply for 500,000 this year. And then for for land acquisition, you can hold it for a year and then add to it the next year. So that's a possibility. You don't have to ask for the whole the whole pot. You can start in phases.

Correct.

So if we don't have enough to complete the project, even if we're awarded the entire million, what what happens? Do we have to come up with the rest of the funding

ourselves? Yes. There's gotta be a match. Of course, the county is gonna have to come up with with some of the money. And, you know, when we're doing dealing with higher dollar items, 3 to 8,000,000 for just a fire station, that would be a significant, you know, investment for the county.

I mean, the highest one on my list in terms of bang for your buck would be the swamp coolers at the food pantry. Just because it's We don't have they're gonna apply through Bragg. Oh, that one's not there. Okay. Pulling theirs. Yeah. They're gonna Okay. Apply through Bragg.

I I think we in terms of just quantifying the senior center and the ADA bathrooms would be small enough where the fire is a bigger ask that is maybe a little more nebulous. And I don't know, chief, if you can be able to narrow that down when you do your application. Have you got Have you started an application process or kind of identified how you would do that? We haven't yet. Okay. Okay. I I just I think that we, say that all three of those projects are good. Let Alma

I was wondering if you could if if you if it could be sent to all of us, we just did a ranking like we do similar to wraps. We I can And then we can send it back. Yes. Send that into you and and then It's a really good idea. And then do that ranking. Yeah. Itemized list with the cost as well would be great. That'd be great. Kind of abstract right now. K. I could see if we, you know, score of one to five between each of them or so but, you know, like we do with Raft, it works out. You you get a pretty good

I guess the cream will raise to the top on some of those. That's a good idea. Okay. I could come up with some some prices and and send you the list and rank them. I could work with Andrew. It wouldn't be too cumbersome, and we could fill it out and and just email it right back to you. K.

Thanks, Neil. Mhmm.

K. We have our our CASH open space advisory committee representative here, Eric

Peterson. It's not dangerous if you cut it down. If I pointed it at you.

Council, thank you for the opportunity to, present to you today. The chair of the committee is Chris Sands is also, here with us. The reason, for presenting is, regarding a proposed mailer that we do, from the COSAC committee. Just a quick overview of projects that have been approved or finalized and I've got one that's gonna be coming your way here. I think it's interesting to note the amount of state funds that have been involved in the projects And, we down at the bottom is the Christiansen farm that's gonna go to Cosec, voting, December 1, and it already has Leray McAllister the conservation easements are going, you know, a small dollar amount, a fraction of the value of the land, in in order to do preservation. And I think that's fantastic. And and Sherwood Hills, of course, had, state other state funds participating and other funding as well as you Wellsville, etcetera. So, the purpose for the mailer is is similar to, what was done with Sherwood, Hills recognizing the value of that opportunity to the, citizens of Cache Valley, Cache County, is to look at certain areas that have been underrepresented in the application, process and to boost applications in key areas where, valleys, valley gateways, scenic vistas, and agriculture. There's approximately a 150 proposed mailers that we're looking at, and up to $350 for postage, and that would include the paper that, you know, it it would go on. It's it when it's not a big dollar ask. It'd be targeting land owners wishing to keep land in agriculture for a win win solution. And, you know, if if you look at, Del Corn Ranch or the Harris property, these people really would rather farm. You know, there's future generations that look at developing it and when it's a win win, to keep that in long term farming in some of these areas, especially where our only other option may be developed end to end in the corridor of the valley here. It'd be nice to do some preservation. The criteria for choosing the mailing areas for us were high profile views with high traffic counts, so lots of people seeing them. We're getting applications from a lot of hidden locations, and we're still you know, we're looking at that, and there's some value to those properties. But, I I think is, what really benefits just like you did with the Sherwood Hills property. That's one that we all, benefit from. Eminent development risk. We know development's gonna happen, but it'd be nice to have a few jewels in those areas that kind of separate our communities a little bit and make them unique. And then, properties greater than 15 to 20 acres, even at 15 to 20 acres, it's really hard to put a conservation easement on that small. But that was kind of our our threshold because some of them there are some that, for example, if they developed, you wouldn't see past the the highway, you know, the highway would just be filled up. All of our highways would be filled up with development. This is a relatively tight map, but I think you'll be able to follow. I'm just going to go through those areas really quickly. Right here we have the rest of the of Sardine, Sardine Canyon. The landowners in Sardine Canyon, there's about eight to 10 that we'd love to get mailers to. Here is the exit of Sardine Canyon and the view that you get, as you look out from Sardine Canyon, we know that there's rapid development going on there where there's several still buildings going up there. And once they, once the infrastructure is put in, it's too expensive to look at a conservation easement at all. So the earlier we at least give people an opportunity to make this choice, the better. This block also has that little corridor between Nibley and Hiram where you can look out and look out over, that lower valley and you see the Wellsvilles in the background. Here's the valley view corridor, up to the, where the Cutler, Marsh area starts. This one's a little bit hard because it's really fragmented. No big land owner that has like a 100 or or 200 acres. It will be hard, but, you know, it's a corridor that we we'd like to look at. This northern corridor and the what this one, I'll point out something that affects all the others. While this corridor looks fairly small, the landowners extend beyond that. So if there was a landowner that come out, it wouldn't it, you know, it wouldn't just be for this corridor. It'd be for their piece of property or their farm. And we do have, the Vivian Christiansen property that we were talking about is right here. It's just to the north of the Mill. The mill. The mill. Yep. And then this is one that's as as our group drove back home last night after viewing the the Vivian Christiansen property, that area between Richmond and Smithfield is worth a million bucks. Just just say it. It's heaven. It's heaven. It is. You know, you look out there and it's it's really a piece of Cache Valley. And so, that was an area that, we, added to the list as well. So these are the areas, it's the land owners here. The emphasis of the letter is one, to, really reiterate the bond language, that they that they are in one of these VISTA areas that that we would be, that we are are looking for willing landowners. And then the second thing is just two examples. And the examples are quite different from each other, which I think helps, not set expectations too crazy. But it's two examples that have been approved, and that's what would go, in the letter. So again, about 150, about 350 So any questions on that?

If I could just make a couple follow-up comments. If you remember kind of the two concerns that were brought up by the council, I I brought these concerns to COSAC and said we were concerned about spending money to advertise a program where we're already spending money. And two, there were concerns about the equitability that not everyone gets a mailer. So I really appreciate the work Eric and the group has done here on identifying why we're targeting certain areas to send mailings to. And, also, if you read the letter, there's some symmetry between the bond language that, you know, that the voters put 20,000,000 towards. And I think this is helps us fulfill our obligation to preserve the areas that they want to have preserved. Also, I wanna add that Eric's been a busy guy. He also went on the radio to promote this. The mailer isn't the only, you know, outreach method that that that the group is using. And I I think it's a pretty modest amount, and, I think it would go a long way to raising awareness

about the program. Yeah. What we'd hate to do is have a really low scoring application, and those are the only ones we get, more because of of the vistas. And we've got some great agriculture areas. They're gonna be fairly low cost. We may bring those as recommendations to you. But we do know the pressure that's going on in some of these areas right now. So

these seem to be picked because of the vista or the corridor. Right? Mhmm. If you're doing this, have you also and you mentioned agricultural, but what about wildlife or waterways?

We would like to then come with you as a next phase and look at those, particularly as we study and say, you know, experts in that area, where are those areas that that, that we ought to do the same thing with and, and promote to those areas as well. And particularly get a little bit of feedback, similar to the feedback we got here on on what people value that way. I I don't think

they would mind if we gave you more money, but I think we just wanted to do something that was a quick win, very noncontroversial,

very obvious. And very threatened. And and imminent, as you mentioned. Yeah. And we know that these are gonna develop. We're not trying to keep them from developing. We're like, can you have a could you have a farm out there and that we can see as we enter the valley or a few large farms? We just want property owners to know their options. There there there's an option. Yeah. Does anybody else have a comment or a question for Eric?

Can I get a motion about Eric's proposal for $350? That's Yeah. Okay. And that would have to go through the budget opening that we do next next week. Yeah. Actually, we have it available in the debt services. Okay. Debt services overseas. So we can have that online available. Thanks, Angie. Okay. I would entertain a motion then.

I'll move to approve the motion to grant the COSAC 350 to do this mailing.

Second. It's been moved and seconded that we approve $350 for the COSAC committee. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, Eric. Thanks for all that you guys do. Okay.

Andy, you're up next. Angie, you're up next. Yes. Angie Zetterquist, Interim Director of Development Services. I will be brief, but, I just wanted to bring attention to the fact that our trails division, applied for a grant through the, outdoor rec initiative, through the Department of Natural Resource. It's a new grant program and Landis can give you a little more information about that. But, ten days ago or so, they did receive word that they received a million dollar grant for this project, and that will help cover the full build out of that Northern BST. But, again, I'll turn it over to Landis and just, again, thank Landis and Emily for all their work on getting these grants to get these projects rolling.

Thank you. Landis Swiner with the Cache County Trails Division. I have some slides to show you exactly what this project's gonna look like. I'm trying to keep it quick. But, yeah, I just wanted to share what we got going on and what the next next steps are going to look like to get this money put on the ground in our county.

You could just start talking to us while they get that figured out, Landis.

So I I have some maps to show you where we're looking, but I'll start with where we're at in this. So this is Bonneville Shoreline Trail, which is a statewide project along the entire shoreline of historic Lake Bonneville. Almost every year new cities or counties join this effort. So it used to just go from like Santaquin to Ogden. And then we joined back around 2001. And now, yeah, Tooele has jumped on board. Eagle mountains jumped on board. So this is an ever expanding project that we get to be a piece of. What we're specifically getting funded is about 10 miles of trail from Green Canyon to Smithfield Canyon. And we've been working on this for a couple years now, trying to piecemeal it off where we have willing landowners that are excited to work with us. And so we got some money last year from the Outdoor Recreation Initiative, just over half $1,000,000 at that point to pay for about two and a half miles. Then we went and worked with North Logan and we applied for $755,000 to build out the rest of the trail through their city limits. And then that left us the county gaps between North Logan and Hyde Park and then the rest of Smithfield City. Everything to the East Of Smithfield. And so that's we went back to the URI this year and pitched our project. And we last year they told us to break it into two phases and they only wanted to fund a bit at a time. And so we came prepared for that but they gave us the whole thing. And we also this is partly because of the match we received from the RAPS grant this past year of about almost $400,000 from RAPS that then we got this million dollars from the ORI because of that commitment from the county. I want to thank Mark Hird who sits on the regional council, that oversees this grant. But, yeah, sorry I can't show you, where exactly we're looking. That's great news. Yeah. We're we're very excited. A lot of work to do now to get this all this money spent.

What's the time frame?

We need to start spending some of it next year, because we got the money staggered. We're probably gonna spend it staggered because it all has different deadlines to get spent, And we're in various places with easements with landowners and progress with cities. So starting construction next year and it will probably take two or three years to get it all built.

Cool. K. Would you email us all a copy of those maps? Yeah. For sure. K. Thanks, Landis. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Good job. Well done. If yeah. If I may add, madam chair, just Yes. Stretching our tax dollars as far as we can. Landis mentioned the RAPS tax funding, this funding, and in the COSAC presentation we just talked about with the Smithfield Hills land that we did obtain there. All that factors into this project. So we're we're stretching our

Have we in this project? So we will have built 10 miles. Hyde Park had already built about two miles before we joined the project. They actually came to us. So I do yeah. Just shout out Hyde Park City. They worked with Carly Lynch before me. So we were still involved. But then they came back to us and said we built this great trail but it dead ends on both sides of our city. How do we work with our neighbors jumped in as, like, a a leading force in this to apply for grants and get the other two cities on board and make sure that the work Hyde Park did becomes bigger than what they could do themselves. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

K. Can I get someone to make a motion about public hearings?

Madam chair, I move to set the public hearings for December 2 at 05:30 for ordinance twenty twenty five dash 41, county treasurer compensation correction, resolution twenty twenty five dash 43, approving and adopting the 2026 Cash County budget, and resolution twenty twenty five dash 44, budget opening amendment for the 2025 Cache County budget.

Seconded. It's been moved and seconded that we set public hearings for December 2 for ordinance twenty twenty five dash 41, 43, and 44. Is there any further discussion? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Andrew.

Good evening, council. So resolution twenty twenty five dash 42 essentially is more of a how do I say it? Let's start with some context. On the September 16 meeting of the county council, you all approved the removal of two parcels from the Jensen agricultural protection zone. So state law requires that once passed, a removal of parcels from an agricultural protection zone has to be filed with the county recorder. So when filing this with the county recorder and reviewing all the documentation with her, she said that since the original agricultural protection zone was created by a resolution, she would feel most comfortable that the taking out of these two parcels also be done by resolution. So in essence, this is just passing this again just up to standards that our, county recorder feels would be most legally appropriate.

Hey. Can I get a motion on that then?

I'll make a motion on resolution twenty twenty five dash 42 approving the removal of certain parcels from an existing agricultural protection area.

I'll second it. I'll admit Point of order. Oh, actually, I I move to amend that as

Oh, we have to suspend. Suspend the rules. Okay. Spend the rules.

Second, still stand? I'll still second. Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we approve that we suspend the rules and approve resolution twenty twenty five dash 42. Any further discussion? Those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Okay. Number nine.

I move that we can actually keep these as pending action and consider both ordinance twenty twenty five dash thirty five and twenty twenty five dash 36

on December 2. Okay. We don't need to make a motion. I agree with you, but, yeah, I don't think it needs a motion. Keep this pending. Okay. K. Other business. We'll talk we can talk to Andrew about the USAC fall workshop. We're gonna turn a a few minutes over to our executive. Sorry. I I kept you as much time as I could. He's gonna give us okay. Our executive George Daines is gonna give a short presentation about property taxes that will help lead us into our truth in taxation meeting that starts at 06:00, but we have to be finished with this meeting right at five. So this is this is we're gonna turn some time over here.

We're gonna take just a minute to get set up, but what we're gonna try and do is talk to you a little bit about property taxes. During the Truth in Taxation hearing, there's some limitations as to what we can talk about and the materials we can use. So I'm gonna try and give you a little preparation for that hearing and I have about eight minutes to do it. So I'm gonna talk fast and try and get you that information. First of all, property taxes are complex. The put up the pie chart. The first thing to understand about taxes is that Cash County collects the taxes, but we collect the taxes for a lot of other parties, principally the schools and the cities. So when you look at your tax bill, this is a breakdown of where your tax money actually goes when you pay property tax. The blue is school taxes. So we collect those school taxes and we pay the money over to the schools. It will vary a little bit where you live. This particular pie chart has to do with John's home. So John's home is in Nibley, so he pays property taxes to Nibley. So Cache County collects those. The portion that goes to Cash County is what's in green there where it says Cash County General Fund. So tonight, all we're talking about is that portion. We have a truth in taxation hearing about that slice of your property taxes. If your property tax concern had to do with a portion that's going to the schools, you should go to their truth in taxation hearing. We don't have anything to do with the school except we're the tax collector for them. Same thing for the city. So when we talk about an increase, what we're talking about is a revenue increase based upon our small slice of property taxes. So you have to understand that when we talk about roughly 20% of the taxes, an increase on that of 2% would be 10%, 3% would be 15%. Have you got my math? You really shouldn't do math in public, you know. No, you shouldn't. Seriously, if we increase the tax at 18%, our revenue would go up 18% of the 20%. So I think that anybody have any questions about that, I'd be happy to answer them. Now the next thing is to move to understand a little bit about how taxes are computed. I've asked John to put up his personal taxes. Everybody's taxes are public, so we can all look at each other's taxes. But John's home is in Nibley. So his appraised value of his home is here. See how it goes from $3.29 to $4.54? That's your home, right John? That's what the county assessor here has assumed that John's home's worth. Now, if you were talking about a primary home, you're only taxed on 55% of the appraised value or market value. So John's taxable value is 55% of that. So that's true across the county. Primary home is 55 percent. You get a 45% deduction that a commercial business doesn't. Now the the way taxes are expressed is in terms of a fraction, fractions and decimals. So John put up the, this is the decimals point. So for example, in 2019, it says point zero one one five two one. If you converted that to percentage, he had to pay 1.15% of the value of his taxable value as taxes. And that's his entire tax bill. If you look, his levy has gone down to 0.7544. So that's actually three quarters of 1%. So as the value of his home goes up, his levy goes down. And in John's case, his property taxes actually go down. That's the benefit of working for the county, gentlemen. I'm really kidding John about that. I've got Todd here who also works with the candidate. His taxes have gone up. Anyway, just joking about that. I'd like you to put up your taxes now, John. Okay. So let's take off all the other clutter. So this this is John's taxes on his home. So his tax in 2019 was $2,088 Though the value of his home has gone up, the levy's gone down and as a result, he's actually paying less taxes now than he was paying five years ago. You might think that's unusual, but I took a look at the county. 80% of this county has property taxes that are less this year than they were a year ago. 80%. Quite remarkable. Now I tell you the other 20% went up, but 80% were at zero or less than zero. In John's case, it went actually down. Now if I put up Todd's case, you'll see taxes go up. So in 20% of the cases, home taxes actually did go up. What I want to tell you and communicate to you is that the county is working hard to control its expenditures. We have gone through, the department, many of the departments are sitting here. We went through every one of them and tried to lean out as much as we could in the expenses. And we're trying to do that because we're trying to reduce the deficit that we're having between expenditures and revenues. 70% of our budget is personnel. So the only way to really cut a lot of expenses is you get into cutting personnel. You're actually having to reduce your personnel count. And we had to do that. I had a young lady yesterday that I had to tell her we were going to let her go. And it wasn't because she was a bad employee, it's because we're trying to reduce our expenses. We've been working on this hard for about two months. We've been able to reduce our expenses overall 5% to 7%. And that's in the half that doesn't include public safety. We will get to public safety in the next year, but that's in the half that's not public safety. Those cuts are really spread through all the departments. We will continue to work on that. But we're in a situation where at the beginning of the year, we started with a deficit that was 7,800,000.0. We've been able to trim 2.8 off that. Our tax increase will be 3.7. We're still $1,300,000 worth of deficit. We're gonna work on that the rest of the year to try and take that deficit out. But I just wanna explain to you the reality is this county has been operating at a deficit. We're gonna continue to be in that situation and we're gonna continue to cut expenses. We hope to get taxes so that taxes match inflation plus growth in people. That's the goal that we have. The tax increase this year is more than that. As is illustrated by John's taxes here. So that's what we're going to do. I just would like to close by giving you a little information. If you look across all the counties in Utah and you say, how much revenue does each county collect per citizen in the county? In this county, you collect $451 That's and licenses. Dollars $4.51 per person for county government. That places Cash County in a position of number one. We are the least expensive county in the state as of 1924. '8 or excuse me, 2024. Gotta get the right century. I I just have to be honest. We can't run that. We we have colas, and we have to increase our taxes. We welcome you to come to the truth in taxation hearing. It'll start in twelve minutes. Thank you.

Thank you, George. That was good that was good explanation. And I just wanna say we're gonna take a I I have a statement to read to finish the meeting, and then we're gonna take a short break. We'll start back at six. Anyone that's here from the public that wishes to speak during our truth and taxation meeting, there's a sign up sheet over here. We need you to sign up so that we can be efficient and go through those names. So when we take that break, if you'll go ahead and sign up, we're gonna skip the council report so that we can have a little bit of a break here. So this is what this is officially from the state tax commission. Cash County will conduct a truth in taxation meeting beginning at six p. M. Tonight. This meeting will include 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, visit the Cache County website homepage and click on the meeting link button under the proposed county tax increase. So if there's anyone watching online, if you're on the YouTube channel, there should be a link in the title of that meeting Description. In the description of the meeting so that you can join virtually. And, we would wish to speak to please sign up so that we can get through that in an orderly manner. And with that, I would take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. K. It's moved and seconded. We adjourn. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. K. We will be back in we will be back in ten minutes.

Yeah. That is really good.

You want me to sign a blank paper? I

I dare you.

Good.

There's a battery pack somewhere I can go swap. I will do so.