The vote was unanimous. Four board members voted in favor of the tax increase, with Nick Hill absent.
A primary home in the district valued at $1 million will see a $210 annual tax increase. The tax increase on a secondary residence will be about double that amount.
The increase in property tax revenue will primarily be used to pay for a new employment contract that gives school district staff a 16% pay raise.
Park City School District spokesperson Heidi Matthews said those raises were necessary to stay competitive with hiring and retaining staff.
“We are seeing education in particular face a number of shortages,” Matthews said. “There are simply not the number of people who are going into the profession… There are many people who are choosing to leave the profession for a variety of reasons. I think the climate is, on occasion, very difficult for public education right now.”
During the public hearing Tuesday night before the tax increase was approved, one attendee made his concerns clear.
“Everywhere I run into town, people are saying, ‘can you believe this thing with the property taxes,’” he said. “It’s kind of mind-blowing to me personally that they’re going up this much this year, and that you guys are actually raising the proposed budget this much. In my view, that is tone deaf.”
Board chair Andrew Caplan’s responded.
“We have an obligation from state and federal law to provide education to all students in this community,” Caplan said. “In order to do that, we need teachers, and we need bus drivers, and we need custodians… We hadn’t raised wages for a lot of these employees for many years. What ended up happening was we couldn’t employ people. We didn’t have people applying for our jobs, and the reason was because we weren’t paying market rates for wages.”
Caplan also noted that the school district is prepared to send $29 million to the state next year in a process known as recapture.
He said Park City has “the highest recapture of any school district in the state of Utah, and I would argue, probably with the exception of maybe a few in California, the highest in the country. So they take $29 million - and that’s your money, that’s my money, that’s everyone here’s money. They give it to other districts.”
Board member Wendy Crossland added that they heard a lot of community support regarding the pay raises for teachers and other district staff when the contract was finalized earlier this year.
Utah ranks second to last in the country in public school spending per student, according to U.S. Census data.
