Recently I opened up my city utility bill and found an extra surprise. While I was expecting to find a charge for water, garbage, street lights and storm water, I wasn’t expecting a new charge titled “public safety fee.” I then scrolled through to previous months to see if I had missed this fee in earlier bills and sure enough I have been paying this extra $9.25 fee since September.
The fee has no explanation on the bill and when I visit the city’s website there is nothing on the front page referencing this new fee. When I used the website’s search feature putting in the words “public safety fee” the only item that came up related to this fee was the city’s fee schedule noting this was a new fee created on the first day of September.
To be fair to my city, they’ve had a long history of trying to fund the fire department. The city council twice has voted to increase property taxes to cover the cost to adequately fund the city’s fire department, a justifiable reason for a tax increase as long as the city has sufficiently stretched its budget, but both tax increases were overturned by the voters in a voter referendum. It isn’t hard to see my city officials throwing their hands up and saying this is the only way we can provide proper public safety to the city.
My complaint is not with the city or the so-called fee (I would call it a tax). My issue is with the communication to the residents that the city is now taking more money than it used to from them, the communication didn’t happen.
When a city, county, school district or special service district wants additional property tax money it must go through what is called truth-in-taxation. Residents are alerted of the increase on their property tax statement mailed in the summer, through multiple public notices, and the governing council’s meeting agendas. Through these multiple ways of noticing, residents in Utah should not be caught off guard that their property taxes are potentially going up.
In the case of this public safety fee, this is not what happened. I am confident the city did everything legally required of it to impose this fee, but if cities want to collect more money from their residents there is a process to do this in our state and it should be followed.
Rep. Karen Peterson, R-Clinton, attempted to address this issue earlier this year in the 2024 general session in her bill, House Bill 367. The legislation would have required entities choosing to impose this fee to follow similar notices to when a city holds a budget hearing. It also would have required the city to notify its residents about the fee via its monthly utility bill or through primary means of communicating to residents such as a city newsletter.
Unfortunately this bill did not pass. This means cities can continue to impose these new fees and collect additional revenue without the same standards that the state has had in place for nearly 40 years for when new money is collected from its residents.
If a taxing entity such as a city wants to avoid truth-in-taxation by imposing a fee on a utility bill, we cannot standby and let this happen. Safeguards for the residents need to be in place. Taxpayers need to know when they are being asked for more money and deserve the chance to hear from their elected officials the justification for the ask and then respond to that request in an open and public meeting.
We are already working with key legislators to bring this issue forward in the 2025 session. The goal is to ensure that you know when your elected officials feel it is time for additional funds so that you won’t find yourself like me staring at your utility bill being surprised that you are paying for more than just running water and having your garbage collected.