Salt Lake City Council adopts $202 million budget
In past years, the council has toiled over its budget into the summer, often pushing against the state-mandated deadline (the end of June) for budget adoption. But this year, with county tax information in on time and not a whole lot of argument over specifics in the budget, the council finished much sooner and is now on summer break until July 10.
Still, the budget — which totals about $668 million when taking into account funds such as the airport, golf and library budgets — has been hashed over for weeks, dominating council discussion at every meeting since Mayor Rocky Anderson presented his recommended budget May 1.
Only one council member, mayoral candidate Nancy Saxton, voted against approving the budget. She said she would have voted for it if the rest of the council had backed her desire to pull funding from the police department's civilian review board, which has been under some scrutiny following a leak to the media about an ongoing investigation.
The budget includes new employees for the police department and the fire department. Anderson had requested six new firefighters, and the council agreed. The mayor had not recommended any new police officers, but the council approved hiring 10. The budget also gives the police department $105,000 to investigate cold cases.
Anderson's budget included a program new to the city, the so-called Energy Fund for the Future, which would collect 1 percent of the city's general fund revenues every year and put it toward investments in pro-efficiency projects in city buildings, loans for private projects and other uses.
That would have amounted to almost $1.9 million this year. Instead, the council pumped only $500,000 into the fund, setting it to begin next year on a trial basis.
The budget also includes changes in garbage pickup. It offers residents the option of a new green-waste can for disposing of grass and other yard clippings at a cost of $3.50 per month. Residents can also choose to replace their current 90-gallon trash cans with smaller cans — either 60 or 48 gallons — and doing so will reduce their monthly rates by $2 or $3, respectively.
The council boosted by $250,000 the ongoing money it grants the struggling Tracy Aviary, which is working to recover its national accreditation. That doubles the amount of city money the aviary was receiving.
The budget does not increase property taxes, but it does increase a few fees. A parking tax at city-run facilities will increase to $1 an hour. That tax is currently 50 cents an hour at the Salt Lake City International Airport, so rates there will go up by 50 cents. But at the main branch of the city's library and the parking garage under the Gallivan Center, the tax is not currently levied, so rates there will increase by a full $1.
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