Parowan City Manager Joe Melling has said the city had not raised its tax rates for 30 years. It had balanced budgets by depending on profits from utility funds but had delayed upkeep of those utilities. He said needed upgrades on them now are forcing the increase in property tax.

Similarly, West Valley City officials said they had not raised tax rates for services in its 25-year history. But the city had used one-time money from land sales and other sources in recent years to make ends meet. Now it is imposing a large increase to maintain services and catch up from years of not raising taxes.

Big Water is essentially reversing an earlier big tax cut. Municipal clerk Genia Joseph has said that a previous mayor had cut taxes in half and the city had survived largely on old surpluses. She said that is now gone, and the town is putting taxes back where they were before the cut.

South Salt Lake Mayor Robert D. Gray has said a change by the Legislature in how it distributes sales taxes is costing his heavily industrialized city $2 million a year, so it had no choice but to raise property taxes to make up the difference.

How to lower taxes

When Alder heard that her Shadow Mountain Lane had the state's highest tax rates, she asked what might be done to lower them. When it was suggested that residents could lobby officials to lower them over time, she scoffed, "Like that's going to happen."

But it actually did happen this year more often than might be expected, amid heat from upset voters.

At least 82 local governments had proposed to raise tax rates beyond levels that would provide the same revenue as last year. To do that, "Truth in Taxation" laws required them to advertise the proposed increases in newspapers and in preliminary tax notices — and required them to hold public hearings.

Three of them totally abandoned proposed increases: Garfield County School District, which dropped a proposed 17 percent hike; Kanab City, which dropped a proposed 18 percent hike; and the Panguitch Lake Fire District, which axed a 125 percent hike.

Eight others reduced, but did not eliminate, proposed increases: the Central Iron County District, which went from a 1,349 percent increase to 697 percent; Ballard, from 643 to 271 percent; Bluffdale, from 81 to 36 percent; Highland, from 55 to 39 percent; Kane County School District, from 46 to 23 percent; Box Elder School District, from 28 to 24 percent; Hurricane, from 26 to 13 percent; and Taylorsville, from 15.4 to 15 percent.

In short, 11 of 82 governments proposing hikes either dropped or reduced them amid political heat in the Truth in Taxation process. That is about a one in seven chance of success for residents wanting to cut hikes.