The Park City School Board voted Tuesday to increase taxpayers’ burden to the district by 2.8%, meaning the owner of a $1.1 million home will see an increase of $99.83 annually to the school district.
The intent is to increase funding for “livable wages” for district teachers and other employees, according to the school board.
Even with that reasoning, some members of the community were vocal about their concern over continually seeing their taxes from the district increase.
The frustration, according to Kathleen Britton — who is running against Danny Glaser for a position on the school board next year — is not with increased pay for district employees, as they’re guaranteed through collective bargaining efforts, but with the district’s methods of paying for those raises.
She directed a series of questions Tuesday to the board.
“I want to know why we have to raise our taxes when every year we’re giving back the state — to the MSP equalization — millions of dollars. Why can’t we look at our budget, be more fiscally responsible, and use the current money that we have?” she asked. “People like me, that have lived here 40 years, are going to be taxed out of this town. So how can you explain why you’re not using the current funds that we have fiscally responsibly and have to raise our taxes again at a very large increase?”
School board President Andrew Caplan said the district can’t do anything about the almost $30 million the state of Utah took from Park City School District last year as part of its equalization efforts.
“That’s outside of our control,” he said. “That’s money that’s collected by us, that’s paid by you, that’s taken by the state and distributed to other districts.”
Britton, who’s worked in a position with the state Board of Education for a decade before retiring this summer, didn’t buy his explanation.
“We do have control over how much money we send back. That is on a formula by the amount of money from the (weighted pupil unit) and what our taxes brought in. And then it’s based off of that and whatever’s left goes back to the state,” she said. “If we would use our budget correctly, we wouldn’t have to send as much money back.”
Essentially — because Park City’s district raises a highly disproportional amount of tax revenue per pupil than other public districts in the state — Utah takes a portion of that back to send to districts with less revenue.
Britton argued that if the district would proportion its budget differently rather than raise more funds, the state wouldn’t take as much money because the amount per pupil that the district would raise would be lower.
Britton also asked why the district was deciding to raise taxes even though its enrollment over the past several years has been declining.
“That’s based on permitted building,” Caplan said. “We don’t know for certain, but what we can do is look at permitted building.”
As more affordable housing is built — which he said is a good thing — more families will be able to join the community. He also cautioned that the district can’t be positive about growth and make predictions.
Wendy Miller, another community member concerned about rising taxes, also spoke to the district leaders.
“We are from New York. We left New York because — one of the reasons — the taxes are outrageous,” she said.
Still, despite her woes living in the state, she said the district she lived in required a vote from the community to approve their budget.
“There were times it was turned down, and they would just have to redo their budget,” she said. “Here, and we have been to a number of council meetings and board meetings, I’m sorry to say this, but it doesn’t seem to matter what anybody says or what anybody says they can’t continue to do because the decisions come out the same and the taxes go up.”
She stressed that Park City is not across-the-board an extremely wealthy community.
“This is not sustainable,” she said.