SOUTH SALT LAKE, Utah (KUTV) — Close to a dozen Utah cities impose “transportation utility fees,” which are collected in addition to taxes. Now, commercial property owners in one community are pushing back.
“They’re changing the name from ‘tax’ to ‘fee,'” said Derek Mortensen, who has owned a 10,000 square foot building in South Salt Lake for years, and who is paying the new transportation fee, $250, for the first time this month.
“Now that property taxes have tripled for me in the last eight years,” he said, “they want to change the word from ‘tax’ to ‘fee’ and say this is something completely different.”
A city representative refuted the characterization.
“This is a utility fee, not a tax, assessed similar to paying a fee for water service, stormwater and wastewater systems, or garbage service,” said SSL City spokesman Joseph Dane. “The city’s roadway infrastructure is considered a utility, and is treated as such.”
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He said the city must repair its aging infrastructure, and has already deferred maintenance on streets.
Whether a fee or a tax, it’s real money targeted to go underneath your tires, and other cities in Utah have already driven the fees to utility bills.
Highland, Pleasant Grove, Provo, Mapleton, Farmington, Kaysville, Fruit Heights, South Weber, North Ogden, and Pleasant View have transportation utility fees. Millcreek may be next.
The South Salt Lake fee, though, may be different than all of the rest. It does not charge homeowners — and apparently does not charge developers who may have as much work as ever in the city — only business property owners.
Dane said that was a decision of South Salt Lake City Council members, and it’s “within their prerogative.”
Mortensen can pay, but maintained businesses are growing weary with the city, and he cast the fee — and the way it’s structured — as “driving them” away from South Salt Lake.
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