LOGAN – In their final regular meeting of 2024, the members of the Cache County Council approved a tight-fisted budget for 2025.
Despite having imposed budget reductions totaling about $1.7 million on its departments and holding most salary increases for elected officials to 2024 levels, the county budget for the next calendar year included a 12 percent property tax increase and 0.3 percent sales tax increase.
With council members Sandi Goodlander and Kathryn Beus absent from the meeting, the council unanimously approved a 2025 budget of more than $121 million, including $3.4 allocated to the Logan Cache Airport Authority and airport capital projects.
Although county officials had originally projected a worst case budget scenario requiring a 20 percent property tax increase, Council Chair David Erickson said the 2025 budget was finalized with only a 12 percent property tax increase, thanks to painstaking budget reductions negotiated in recent weeks.
That property tax hike is projected to provide increased revenues of about $2.1 million, according to Wes Bingham, the county finance director.
While most of the details of the budget that been worked out in previous meetings, a polite dispute arose over the allocation of funding from the 0.3 percent sales tax increase.
Taking advantage of a recent decision by the Utah Legislature granting county governments more flexibility in allocating revenue from sales taxes, the members of the county council had originally earmarked 100 percent of the revenue from the new sales tax to go to public safety.
Representing the 19 community mayors of the Cache County Council of Governments, however, Mayor Craig Hidalgo of Clarkston made a brief pitch for at least part of the new revenue to fund transportation projects throughout the county.
As the largest Third-Class County in the state, Hidalgo argued, Cache County has significant transportation needs in its local system, where more vehicle-miles are traveled on a daily basis on local city and county roads rather than on state roads.
Council member Barbara Tidwell agreed with Hidalgo and made a motion to amend Resolution 2024-28 to include roads as well as public safety. That motion passed unanimously, but details of the allocation split are still to be worked out.
In a flurry of amendments, the council members also adjusted the salaries of some county officials to make their 2025 compensation more competitive with other county entities.
The salary of the county treasurer was increased from its current level of $106,535 to $123,027. The salary of the county recorder was increased to $112,157 from its current level of $106,513.
All other county elected officials were held to their 2024 levels of compensation – including members of the county council – and were ruled ineligible for end-of-year bonuses.
Speaking for his fellow members of the council, outgoing member Karl Ward said that the council members has done their best to spare county residents from the burden of increased taxes.
“I’m at a loss for where else to we could make budget reductions,” he confessed.