In August, Midway’s city council voted to put a proposition on the ballot for what could be the town’s second open space bond.
If voters pass the bond, they’ll see an added property tax for the next 21 years. For a home worth $490,000, the tax increase would be about $40 per year. A business worth the same amount would pay an additional $73 per year.
At a public hearing Tuesday, resident Gayle Kilgore said she inherited a 56-acre Snyderville Basin farm from her father and knows how difficult it can be to keep farmland undeveloped.
“We’re seeing it happen here,” she said. “The impacts of the developers and the increase of the taxes make it no longer sustainable for the families and community who make community, in my opinion.”
She asked Midway City councilmembers to come up with ways to preserve open space that didn’t require raising taxes more. She says she cares about conservation, but the cost of living is becoming prohibitively expensive.
Kilgore said she doesn’t want to see Wasatch County towns lose their identities and their original residents amid all the new development.
“Honestly, Park City’s become a place for the rich and famous, not the common people like us,” she said. “I know you talk about it’s a little here, it’s a little there. There takes lots of taxes to operate a community, as you all know, and every little here and there adds up for the common people not to be able to live here anymore.”
She asked the city to consider using resort tax dollars or impact fees to pay for open space, rather than taxes.
Mayor Celeste Johnson said she understood Kilgore’s concerns and will consider her ideas, but state law limits how open space can be funded. She also mentioned some Midway residents are interested in setting up a fund to cover the open space tax for locals with fixed or low incomes.
“I think we’ve got folks in our community that would like to help those for whom this is a hardship,” she said.
Brad Winegar is a member of Preserve Midway, a nonprofit focused on the town’s open space and heritage. He said the last open space bond was leveraged to preserve 400 acres and almost $200 million worth of land.
He said when people learn how open space bonds are used, many say it’s worth the extra expense.
“I want to give one anecdotal conversation I had with a woman here in town,” he said. “And when she thought it through, she thought… if that’s what it costs me to be able to preserve some of this open space and future open spaces, count me in. I’ll work overtime to earn enough to pay enough for my incremental taxes.”
Midway residents will put the proposed $5 million open space bond to a vote on Election Day Nov. 5.
