According to Wasatch County Manager Dustin Grabau, next year’s budget is about 15% bigger than the current year. The new money he says is due to growth and the resulting increase in sales tax revenues.
“It's all growth,” Grabau said. “We didn't do any truth and taxation this year. And we're- a lot of it's being driven by really strong growth in sales tax, and we hope some more accurate predictions of what those revenues are doing over the next year.”
The additional dollars will help fund a 7% across-the-board cost of living increase for all employees, with the chance that even more money could be coming their way.
“We're also in the process of doing a wage study, he said. “So, we've reserved an additional 5% to implement the findings of that wage study.”
Like many other communities in the state, he said the high cost of living along the Wasatch Back has made it difficult to attract new hires.
The 2023 capital budget has a couple million dollars set aside for some road projects.
The biggest change to the budget he says is the sales tax revenue that will fund the new bus service with High Valley Transit.
Given the early popularity of route 106 between Heber City and Park City he says means they will need to add a full length-bus sooner rather than later. Whether they’ll be able to add additional late-night routes to service those working after 8 p.m. he says depends on funding.
“That's definitely a point in consideration, and something that will work with High Valley Transit to see how we can best service it,” Grabau said. “Much of what the service that we've set up is set to match what we expect to receive in that transit sales tax. Summit County has implemented all of the transit sales tax, but Wasatch County did our first earlier this year. And so, we have only so much funding available. And as we identify additional funding sources, then we would be able to expand the service, I think a little bit more aggressively to the point where we would really like it to be.”
He says the county will conduct onboarding surveys on the buses to get a better sense of who is using the transit. They’ll use the data to make decisions about future service.
Meanwhile, he says he’s working with the county assessor’s office to level the property valuation and equity to make sure more residents are paying their fair share of property taxes.
“I think Todd Griffin, our county assessor, has done a really good job of trying to make up for lost time on making sure that we have accurate values. I think the unfortunate result of that is that some people have been caught in a pinch of their values have increased dramatically to where we feel like it's now more accurate. We do have some more work to do. But I think we've made big strides.”
The Wasatch County Council will welcome three new members to the council next month. Luke Searle, Erik Rowland, and Karl McMillian will be sworn into office on Jan. 4.
