ST. GEORGE — The St. George City Council shaved $2.2 million off of its 2023 budget Thursday evening so a balanced budget mandate from the state could be met. The cuts come in the wake of the Council’s voting down a proposed property tax hike for public safety last week that left a hole in the city’s $500 million budget that the council had until Sept. 1 to fill.
“We’re under the gun to get this passed today,” Councilman Jimmie Hughes said.
Among the items cut from the budget were an $850,000 contribution to the Sugarloaf interpretive trail, $500,000 for the Bloomington Hills Park renovation, and a combined $100,200 for a ticket booth and new lighting at the Electric Theater. The city will also be opting out of sponsoring next year’s St. George Area Economic Summit to the amount of $62,000.
The majority of the items cut from the 2023 budget came from a list compiled by Councilman Gregg McArthur that matched many of the items other council members had on their own lists.
Some items he had listed retained funding, as council members said they needed to be funded for the health and safety of St. George residents.
One of these items was the restrooms at Sandtown Park, which Mayor Michelle Randall said were in a state of disrepair. Funds that would have gone to the Electric Theater’s lights and ticket booth was shifted to the restrooms.
The $3 million the property tax would have generated was meant to help fund the first two years of the city’s Safe St. George plan, a five-year initiative that paid for new police officers, firefighters and dispatchers as well as public safety facilities and vehicles. The overall cost of $90 million for the plan was covered with the exception of the $3 million the city wanted to use property taxes for.
It was hoped that $2 million of the $3 million in additional property tax revenue would fund the second year of the plan on top of the first.
The first year of the public safety plan is projected to see compensation increases for public safety personnel and the hiring of new staff as well.
“At a minimum, it has to be $1 million,” Assistant City Manager Deanna Brklacich said, referring to the size of the hole in the budget that needed to be filled in order to balance it.
That hole was filled in twice over by the $2.2 million in cuts McArthur proposed. However, Councilwoman Michelle Tanner felt the city should cut more items from the budget.
“We committed to fund the first two years of the public safety plan,” she said. “I think we should do that.”
Among the items Tanner suggested cutting from the budget were travel to out-of-town conferences the city put $38,000 aside for. She also asked if the city’s annual $85,000 to the Utah League of Cities and Towns was necessary.
“Absolutely necessary,” said Mayor Michele Randall, who had Shawn Guzman, the city’s director of government affairs, detail the relationship between the city and the League.
“The League has been very good to us,” Guzman said as he shared how the League acted as an advocate and lobbying group for the city with the Utah Legislature. Often, legislators in Northern Utah tend to forget there is more to the state than the Wasatch Front and the League helps them remember that, he said.
“We have their ear and they protect our interests,” he said.
As discussion over the budget continued, Hughes confirmed with city staff that the council could return to the budget later and amend it with additional cuts. He suggested the council take this course as they had a state-mandated deadline to meet.
Ultimately, McArthur made a motion to adopt the revised 2023 budget with $3 million from the failed property tax increase and $2.2 million worth of items removed to cover it.
The motion passed 3-1 with Michelle Tanner dissenting. Councilwoman Danielle Larkin was not present at the meeting.
“We have now funded one year of the public safety plan,” Tanner said, adding while she was happy about that, there were many more budgetary items she said she would like to see discussed and cut. However, as no one else on the council was likely to agree with her, she said, she chose not to delay the vote and gave a “nay” on the motion to pass.
Other budgetary and revenue generation items Tanner mentioned involved the sale of a city-owned golf course and charging non-residents more to use city facilities like the Sand Hollow Aquatic Center.
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2022, all rights reserved.