The brouhaha spurred Davis County officials to provide emergency funding for the Davis County Assessor's Office so a similar outcry doesn't happen in 2008.

Stowell's bill would have a friend in Utah County Commissioner Steve White.

White said he's "drawing a line in the sand" over property taxes after the number of tax-appeal hearings more than doubled in Utah County this year.

The Utah County commissioners recently resolved to ask legislators to enact a law that would implement a five-year rolling valuation and place a 5 percent maximum cap on tax increases for any year.

No legislation has yet been proposed that deals with a cap on tax increases.

"There's more work to be done," White said. "I'm not suggesting how they work it up, but we need to come up with something."

If such a bill is passed, White says he is not concerned about losing revenue with a property tax cap.

"We're going to do what we need to do here, and if that means that we're going to have to cut some non-essential services or non-statutory services, then that's what we'll do," White said.

White's frustration is that, even though the county tax rate dropped this year to adjust for rising home values, other taxing entities in the county, such as school districts, increased their tax rates by five or six times the county rate. Those increases have brought droves of complaining people to White's door.

"People say, 'Commissioners, why don't you do anything about this?"' White said. "But I can't break the law just because I disagree with it. We're going to propose changes. We're not going to sit in the back seat. We're not Davis County, where they raise taxes and then blame somebody else."

Two of Davis County's commissioners were elected in November and weren't part of the commission that raised the county's portion of property taxes in December.

Davis County Assessor James Ivie was also elected in November and said his department has been under-funded and under-staffed in past years. He says certain areas of the county weren't appraised for 10 years, and this year's re-appraisal led to the spikes in property values in Bountiful, North Salt Lake and Kaysville.

Davis officials say they're working to make sure 2008 is a kinder year to Davis County property owners.

---

E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com; achoate@desnews.com