The Utah Association of Counties meets with the Cache County Council

At Tuesday’s Cache County Council meeting, representatives from the Utah Association of Counties presented their proposal to form an urban-rural caucus. They also discussed the upcoming implementation of recently enacted legislation. 

The urban-rural caucus would focus on issues that affect both urban and rural areas, and would create a forum for the counties to explore solutions to their common problems. 

“We like the idea of taking time to concentrate on issues that are important to urban and rural communities,” said Adam Trupp, the chief executive officer of the UAC. “There are many problems that affect both urban and rural areas across the state. Certainly Cache County deals with many of the same issues as Salt Lake County such as a large, growing population. If representatives of both counties could meet and discuss such problems, perhaps common ground could be found, and a solution could emerge.”

The idea for an urban-rural caucus was first presented by Salt Lake County council member, Aimee Winder Newton, who initially thought just the most urbanized counties would participate. However, the UAC believed it would be beneficial to also include rural counties in the conversation. 

Next year, the Utah Indigent Defense Act will place a financial strain on county and local governments. Utah is one of only two states that does not fund the cost of defending indigent criminal offenders on a statewide level. Instead, it delegates the funding of those costs to the counties. Trupp expressed concern that the burden may be overwhelming in rural areas, so discussions need to be had to assure the rural counties were not being given more than they could handle. 

2016 will also mark the rollout of the Utah Justice Reinvestment Initiative, which seeks to divert nonviolent offenders from incarceration by placing them in non-custodial rehabilitation programs. This will place pressure on the counties to fund those rehabilitation programs, and again, the effect on rural counties that may be financially devastating.

“As these financial challenges approach, counties have to recognize that we need to fashion solutions that serve all of our colleagues and counties the same,” said Trupp. “Counties need to find solutions and share burdens as much as possible without taking everything on their shoulders. We need to recognize that counties can push back against the state if necessary.”

Governor Gary Herbert released a $16 billion budget Wednesday that included cuts to the general fund, the source for most county funding. Lincoln Shurtz warned the council of a “rough road ahead financially.” 

UAC placed several funding requests with the governor including $6.4 million for statewide Medicaid match funding for drug abusers and the mentally ill and a $9 million request for the justice reinvestment initiative to help fund some of the required rehabilitation programs. 

Shurtz predicted that the upcoming policy that might have the greatest effect on Cache County is the transportation funding proposal, which gives counties the right to impose a quarter-cent local option sales tax to be used for road improvement and public transit projects. 

The Cache County Council had previously expressed concern that it did not have a need or want to distribute the mandatory 40 percent of the revenue from the transportation funding proposal to public transit, so a proposal has been put together that would allow the county to allocate the funds differently. 

“We have worked very closely with the Jack Draxler, the representative in charge of drafting the proposal, and have made a few suggestions to ensure that it is narrowly tailored enough to address the circumstances in Cache County,” said Shurtz, the governmental affairs director for UAC. “Hopefully those suggestions will help to get that proposal passed.”

Greg Merrill and David Erickson ready for their new roles as chairman and vice chairman

On Wednesday, the county council elected Greg Merrill as its new chairman and David Erickson as its new vice chairman. They are both ready to tackle the responsibilities of their new positions. 

“It’s an opportunity to serve the citizens of Cache County,” Erickson said. “I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t seek it, but I’m glad to have this opportunity.”

Each council member is elected to a four-year term. The council chair and vice chair each serve one-year terms in those positions after election by the council. 

Merrill was re-elected to the Logan district three seat in 2012. Erickson just finished his first year on the council in 2015 following his appointment to fill the vacancy created when the serving northern district council member Craig Buttars was appointed as county executive. 

Both men have set goals for 2016. 

“I have a masters in communications, so I want to work to improve the dialogue between citizens and the council,” Merrill said. “We need to improve our customer service and make sure the citizens realize how much the county actually provides for them.” 

“One of my goals is to establish a water conservancy district, so we can maintain and control our own water in the valley,” Erickson said. “We need to properly manage the natural resources that we have here.” 

The 2016 Cache County budget was finalized at the Tuesday council meeting and both Merrill and Erickson expressed their concerns with this year’s budgetary process. They both have plans to improve the process for adoption of the county’s 2017 budget. 

“Every year that the budget grows, we end up having to raise taxes,” Merrill said. “Our biggest challenge with the budget is living within our means, instead of passing a tax hike every year or two. I want to work with Craig Buttars to make sure that we operate more efficiently.”

“I want to look for new non-tax revenues to help with the budget this year,” Erickson said. “We need to stop raising taxes on our citizens.”

Merrill said that he has full faith in Erickson and thought that the council made a great decision electing him as vice chairmen. Merrill has been impressed with how quickly Erickson has adapted to his new position on the council and he believes that Erickson will be a great help to him and the rest of the council. 

Erickson likewise expressed praise for the selection of Merrill as county chairman. 

“I have total confidence in him,” Erickson said. “He has good business savvy and common sense, and is focused on the big picture. He is not easily distracted from his goals.”

2016 county council budget passed at Tuesday’s meeting

At Tuesday night’s meeting, the county council voted to approve the 2016 budget by a three-two vote. 

Before voting on the budget, council members Cory Yeates, Val Potter and Greg Merrill insisted that the entire council discuss and resolve their concerns regarding tax and spending increases. 

The initial budget had a gap between revenues and costs that had to be closed through some combination of increased taxes or spending cuts. Yeates, Potter and Merrill felt that the council had relied too heavily on the idea of increasing property taxes and hadn’t looked hard enough at cuts to close the deficit. 

“We were handed a budget with no cuts and a tax increase,” Potter said. “We put the budget in front of the public and the public rejected it. Out in the grocery store, out on the street everybody I talked to is pretty ticked off about a tax increase.” 

Many of the proposed increases in the budget this year came from pressure by department heads to increase funding to their departments. Yeates, Potter and Merrill felt that the council had accepted the premise that it needed to raise revenues without properly evaluating the use of those funds. 

“Department heads have put pressure on the council: ‘we need all these things to provide better services, so you need to make the budget work,’ that’s their direction,” Potter said. “Citizens are putting pressure on us in the opposite direction not to raise taxes. As a council we are elected by the citizens to be their representatives here with the county, and we need to make sure we take care of them.” 

In the end, the council approved a budget that was balanced by a combination of increased taxes, spending cuts and a one-time withdrawal from the general fund reserve account.

$675,000 was pulled from the general fund. 

“We cannot continue to rely upon the general fund to make up budget shortfalls,” said Merrill, the county vice chairman. “If we keep borrowing from that fund, at some point in time, it’s not going to be there anymore.”

Cuts to the budget included firing one full time road department employee, reducing funding $135,000 for developmental services, cutting $21,000 from the information technology budget and rolling over unused funds from this year’s water modification budget to next year. All told, the cuts equaled about $200,000. 

In the end, the council was unable to completely avoid a tax increase, but it settled on a property tax increase that would only raise the tax on a $201,000 home by about $10. 

2016 budget expected to be announced Tuesday

The 2016 Cache County budget is expected to be announced at the county council meeting at 5 p.m. tonight. If the budget is not approved, the council will call a special meeting to finalize the budget before the end of the year. 

This year’s budget process has been particularly contentious due to a general property tax increase and the adoption of a new municipal service tax to cover a deficit made larger by proposed salary increases for the county council and elected officials. 

At the Dec. 1 meeting, the council denied increases for county council and elected official salaries and rejected a new municipal service tax.

“I don’t think the municipal service tax is a fair tax,” said Jon White, a council member. “I would rather see us raise everyone’s property taxes to 6.2 percent and be done with it.”

Originally, the council released a public statement stating the general property tax rate would not exceed 6.24 percent. In recent meetings, the proposed property tax rate was at 4.19 percent while the municipal service tax was on the table. Once the municipal service tax was rejected, the council discussed raising the general property tax above the publicly announced cap of 6.24 percent to cover the deficit. 

“Both of these taxes have been a moving target from the first time we heard about them,” said Val Potter, a council member. “They keep changing and evolving, and that’s frustrating.” 

“This is a part of the budget process and we do this every year,” said Craig Buttars, the county executive. “I’ll admit that the initial tax proposal that went out to the public was not a good target, but we had to send that out and say that is the maximum that we would tax.” 

If the council chooses to raise the general property tax rate above 6.24 percent at today’s meeting, the proposed budget would need to be adjusted again before it can be completed and announced by the council. 

Other items on the agenda for today’s meeting include: 

• UAC Report from Lincoln Shurtz and Adam Trupp. 

• Public Hearing – Requesting a rezone of a 0.69 acre portion of 73.69 acres in the resort recreation zone to include the public Infrastructure overlay zone, located at the Cache / Weber County line, Powder Mountain.

• Public hearing for the open 2015 budget.

• Adoption of 2016 Cache County budget. 

The meeting is in the Cache County Historic Courthouse, County Council Chambers, 199 N. Main Street, Logan.