* Our story titled “Uintah County Certified Tax Rate Tabled Until Wednesday” ran on
Tuesday, June 19th. This story is a brief report on a long and complicated discussion over
the agenda item titled “Adoption of 2018 Tax Rates” from this week’s Uintah County
Commission meeting held at 11am on Monday, June 18th. The audio from the entire
Uintah County Commission meeting can be accessed at www.pmn.utah.gov. Under
Government select County. Then under Entity select Uintah County. Finally, under
Body(s) select County Commissioners. Scroll down for a list of Uintah County Public
Notices and relevant attachments. The link for the Audio Recording of the June 18th
meeting can be accessed by clicking on the attachment titled “june 18 2018 audio.mp3”.
Because of the complexity of this item and the discussion surrounding it, we recommend
listening to the entire audio of the meeting.
The agenda item “Adoption of 2018 Tax Rates” begins at (7:00) on the audio.
● At (52:40), Commissioner Horrocks makes a motion to adopt the 2017 tax rate
that he says will not raise taxes. The motion fails for a second.
● At (1:01:51), Commissioner Shepherd makes the following statement which
correlates with one sentence in our June 19th news story:
“I have complete faith in
our Clerk Auditor here in what he has done and the recommendations he brings to
us. I also see that we want to make an extra million dollar payment on that public
service complex. We want to keep things fairly stable. Also, look, we have an
incentive program we are putting together for the employees for those that earn
that, and so unless you call for a motion from me I’ll make it but I just want it duly
noted here that we have a clerk auditor here that has been doing this business for
over 30 years and our county is in very, very good shape because of his expertise
and I trust that man with the funds of this county. And I’ll just leave that statement
with you.”
● At (1:06:10), Commissioner Shepherd makes a motion to adopt the 2018 certified
tax rate recommended by Clerk Auditor Mike Wilkins. The motion fails for a
second.
With a feeling of Déjà vu, Uintah County Commissioners grappled again with the adoption of the State recommended Certified Tax Rate. If adopted, the 2018 Certified Tax Rate would increase property taxes by approximately $11 dollars per $100,000 dollars in home value in order to provide the county with the same revenue totals as 2017. Uintah County Clerk Auditor Mike Wilkins presented the Commissioners with this proposal via e-mail Friday afternoon stating that Commissioners have until June 22nd to either accept or reject the proposed rate increase or the State would by default adopt the certified tax rate. Wilkins stated that if the increase were not adopted, it would reduce the amount of tax revenue the county receives by 1 point 4 million over the past two years. Commissioner Shepherd argued to accept the proposed increase stating monies are needed to fund an employee incentive program and for an additional principal payment on the Public Safety Complex. Commissioner Horrocks argued against the increase stating that at this time our citizens do not need the additional burden of more taxes. The final motion failed due to a second. A public hearing to address this matter has been scheduled for 5:00 p.m. Wednesday, June 20th at the Commission offices at which time a final decision will be made.
