Syracuse residents applaud tax hike

SYRACUSE — What do you get when you take a roomful of skeptical residents and add a 48 percent property tax increase after a four-hour public hearing?

Applause.

At least, that's what happened just before midnight Aug. 14 as the Syracuse City Council unanimously passed a tax increase designed to raise $392,000.

Maybe they just applauded because the meeting was over, but of the 120 people who came to the meeting, 70 were still in their seats as the city's $6.3 million operating budget became official.

The council also voted to soften the blow of an average $52.93-a-year increase by lowering culinary water rates by $2 a month and forgiving an intergovernmental loan.

The increase comes on top of property tax increases approved by Davis County and the Davis Mosquito Abatement District in December, and proposed property tax increases by the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District and the Davis School District.

City officials took turns making a case for the tax increase by telling residents they needed to raise employee pay because too many employees had left the city to take higher-paying jobs. They also need to hire more employees because the workload is currently too heavy, they said.

Syracuse Fire Chief Craig Cottrell said his department has had the same number of firefighters — 25 — since the department was founded in 1965. Since that time, the city has seen an 800 percent increase in population. The city will hire two full-time firefighters to allow for a better response to fires.

The city's police department will get two more police officers, and the city's recreation program will get a boost to maintain the city's growing sports programs.

Syracuse city administrator Rodger Worthen said the city only has half of a city planner because he holds that job, too.

Clinton, which has a slightly smaller population and slightly slower growth, has three city planners, and Layton, which is approaching three times Syracuse's population of 24,000, has more than five planners, he said.

"Every department in this city has done more with less," Worthen said.

Resident Melinda Brophy told the council she appreciated hearing from department heads and what their plans were to use the public's money. She said she felt unsettled after public hearings by the Davis School District and Davis County.

"I at least feel like I know were this money is going to go," Brophy said.

Various residents told the council they agreed that the city should stop being the training ground for employees to flee to better jobs.

"Did it have to be done? Yeah," said Syracuse resident Larry Shingleton. "I think there should have been better planning."

That way, the city wouldn't have to make a large tax increase.

"They should have been biting away at it," said Cody Lasley, a resident who addressed the council.

But he called the decrease in water rates a good compromise to the increase in property taxes.

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E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com