With the Utah legislature set to open next Monday, the 28th, Summit County officials are keeping an eye on some bills, or proposals, that could impact them.
County manager Tom Fisher said that the county could be seriously affected by a change in sales tax distribution, reportedly being broached by House and Senate leadership.
The tax distribution now is based in part on Point of Sale and in part on population. The change would fix it entirely on population, affecting the county and communities like Park City.
He said they are calculating what the financial hit could be.
“I’ve got Matt Levitt working on that right now.” Fisher explained, “We want to get some information obviously to our lobbyist and our representatives on that. We’ll have that out next week. Everybody wants more right? More is better in the sales tax world and those areas that are higher population like to take advantage of that. However, the rural parts of the state, us included, and resort areas rely heavily on sales tax to deal with the impacts of tourism. Without a point of sale distribution method, we don’t have that ability to react the same way.”
Fisher said the county won’t be alone in expressing its concerns.
“If you look at just the big organizations, UAC and the League of Cities and Towns will all have some opinions on that.” Fisher said, “Usually the rural caucus is listened to fairly well. It’s early, these proposals on taxes come out all the time every year and they tend to get a little bit more refined as the session goes on.”
On other topics, they’re trying to amend some legislation from the 2018 session, concerning underground oil pipelines. Fisher said it is connected to the Tesoro proposal which prompted county concerns about four years ago.
“Senate Bill 191 last year, probably our attitude about it goes back to the Tesoro issue and we want to be able to have that ability to provide some regulation within the county.” Fisher continued, “We believe this bill limited that, so we’re working with the bill sponsors in order to propose some amendments that might help us.”
They are also looking at a proposal that can set up an involuntary assessment district to address septic tank problems. Fisher said that comes after the county acted as a facilitator to extend sewer to lower Silver Creek.
“That was a very difficult process.” Fisher explained, “It required that all of the commercial land owners either opt in or not opt in to that. We had enough in that area that saw the benefit of putting sewer in that we were able to pull that off. In a case where we have failing septic systems, we really need a mechanism in order to correct that. The only way to do that is to have really an involuntary system because unfortunately septic systems don’t all fail at the same time in a subdivision. If one or two start to fail, we don’t necessarily want to allow new septic systems or sometimes they’re just not possible. So, we need to have a mechanism in order to correct that situation and get them on sewer.”
Finally, he said that the county is looking for another avenue to pursue renewable energy.
“We don’t have the ability to work outside of Rocky Mountain Power in order to get renewable energy as a source for an entity.” Fisher said, “So, we have to work with Rocky Mountain Power who would like to allow municipalities and counties to be able to do that. They’re working through that process if you’ll remember the middle of last year there was a bill file opened as a result of some testimony from ourselves, Salt Lake City and Park City. We’re looking forward to getting that draft in front of the legislature to get some feedback.”
