Utah County Commission approves 2025 budget that includes property tax hike

Courtesy image
A screen grab taken from video of a Utah County Commission meeting Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024, in Provo.The Utah County Commission approved the 2025 county budget Wednesday afternoon, ushering in a 47.99% increase in county property taxes for the upcoming year.
County tax on a $532,000 residence will be raised from $190.78 to $282.33, a $91.55 increase, while the tax on a $532,000 business will go from $346.86 to $513.30, a $166.44 rise. The county expects $25 million in added revenue from the tax hike.
The approved budget also includes an increase in the Utah Assessing and Collecting tax, taking the cost from $31.89 to $35.35 for a $532,000 residence and from $57.99 to $64.99 for a $532,000 business. The uptick will lead to an expected $1 million increase in county revenue.
Commission Chair Brandon Gordon and Commissioner Amelia Powers Gardner voted to approve the budget, while the commission’s newest member, Skyler Beltran, who was elected in September to replace Tom Sakievich, abstained from the vote because he felt he wasn’t able to do enough of a “deep dive” into the situation. Beltran added he didn’t agree with the full amount of tax increases “hammered out” but acknowledged a tax increase was “absolutely necessary.”
According to Powers Gardner, the tax increase was critical to fund public safety and prosecute crime, and 80% of the tax increase will go toward funding public safety, she noted.
“I would not vote for this budget if it wasn’t absolutely necessary,” Powers Gardner said. “Public safety is paramount to our community.
“Utah County is the best place in the world to live or play and raise a family, and in order for it to remain that way, we need to be able to fund our criminal justice program. That doesn’t just include prosecution and criminal justice, it also includes public defenders.”
Another issue spurring the taxation decision, Powers Gardner added, was inflation.
“Bidenomics is a real thing,” she said. “We’ve had significant inflation. We’ve had trillions of dollars that were printed by the federal government, and it hits every one of our pocketbooks.”
Utah County Director of Financial Services Jeremy Walker reported to the commission that the budget is balanced. The county projects $163,118,114 in both revenue and expenditures for its 2025 general fund.
“Very grateful for the department heads and their staff and you commissioners who have engaged in the process,” Walker said. “It’s not perfect — I have yet to see a perfect process, and we certainly want to do better and fulfill needs as we can going forward — but we feel really good that it’s a solid budget.”
A lot of work had to be done to get the budget to a place the county commission could agree upon. According to County Budget Manager Gina Tanner, the tentative budget was not balanced and included use of rainy day funds along with the tax increase.
Tanner said Wednesday that, under the direction of the commission, the finalized budget was revamped to not include any rainy day funds.
Powers Gardner added that it took a “herculean effort” across different county departments to get the budget finalized.
“Everybody had to give more than they wanted to,” Powers Gardner said. “We were able to balance the budget, to come up with a fiscally balanced budget. The only thing that I think that’s really suffering badly right now is the capital plan, but we do recognize that if we have any windfall, that’ll try to balance that out.”