Fiscal Year 2023-2024 Budget Information

The City Council passed a tentative budget for fiscal year 2024 at their April 26, 2023, Council Meeting. This tentative budget will continue to be discussed and modified during the next few meetings. A final budget is scheduled to be approved on June 14, 2023. 

The following items are some of the highlights of this year’s budget:

• The law enforcement department and fire department have been moved into a new governmental fund called the Public Safety Services Fund.

• The City will be able to levy property taxes that can only be used in this fund.

• The tentative budget includes a proposed property tax levy in the Public Safely Services Fund that will raise $520,400 to be used exclusively by the police and fire departments. The tax increase is needed to pay for changing two of our six positions in the fire department from part-time to full-time as well as provide for annual COLA adjustments. The increase is also needed to pay for market-driven pay increases, promotions, and standard step increases for the police department.

• Our major budget challenge this year is addressing a projected reduction in General Fund revenue of almost $400,000. This is the Fund that pays the costs of the bulk of our city services. This revenue reduction and the impact of continuing high inflation are major hurdles for the city.

• As the City population and businesses continue to grow each year, the infrastructure needed to provide water, transportation, parks, etc. also continues to grow. Additional Public Works personnel positions have been added in the budget to provide additional manpower to maintain the additional city assets.

• The 20-acre park in the Independence area will be completed.

• Construction on the new Public Works building will begin.

Fiscal Year 2022-2023 Budget Information

On June 2, 2022, the tentative 2022-2023 City budget was passed. The City Council has worked with the accounting department for months going through every expense evaluating the city needs. The City Council has discussed and poured over the budget and does not take this lightly.

We want to explain the budgetary challenges we are facing as a city. Unfortunately, the annual inflation rate is at a 41-year high, and just as inflation and cost of living increases have impacted all our personal budgets, the increases in costs have also impacted our city budget.

Only a small amount of your property taxes come to the City of Bluffdale. Bluffdale receives approximately 13.59% of the total property tax bill. The largest part of your property taxes goes to our schools and to Salt Lake County.

How is the 13.59% of property tax allocated in Bluffdale? Property tax collected by Bluffdale pays for public safety which is our fire and police departments. Unfortunately, last year the amount collected only covered 44% of the total public safety costs. The other 56% of our public safety had to be funded by sales tax and other smaller revenue sources. 

This year, City costs are increasing significantly just to maintain current levels of service. Major costs such as fuel prices and public safety personnel costs are much higher than last year. If we do not use the certified tax rate from last year, our property taxes will only cover 33% of our public safety costs.

Because of the increase in home values, the certified tax would normally decrease in 2022 (the rate drops as home values rise). We are proposing to leave the certified tax rate that was used in 2021, to maintain our current level of service and to have the ability to hire a traffic officer. By keeping the rate used last year, this would translate to an increase of $11.34/month (for the average homeowner in Bluffdale) for your city portion of property tax. 

In summary:

1. Property taxes do not increase with inflation or the housing market. You will pay the same amount this year unless the city uses a different certified tax rate than the one calculated by the county.
2. Bluffdale only received about 13.59% of your total property taxes paid last year - any increase the city proposes only affects that 13.59% portion. Most of your property taxes paid go to our schools and the county.
3. Road projects and infrastructure are covered by other funds (see the budget explained graphic).
4. Bluffdale was incorporated in 1978. There was not a single property tax increase until 2002, not even to offset inflation.  
5. As you can see on the graph, residents of other cities pay more property taxes for public safety services than we do.

If you have other questions, please email info@bluffdale.com

You can attend the Truth in Taxation meeting on August 16th at 7 pm at City Hall.