Salt Lake County residents to be billed for police

Some 170,000 residents of unincorporated Salt Lake County can expect a new monthly piece of mail starting next year — a bill for law enforcement services.

Those residents, along with businesses and organizations with addresses in the unincorporated regions, will shoulder an $11 million county deficit — one caused, in large part, by slumping sales tax revenues that have decimated the fund that pays for police services in those areas.

County officials say the deficit could have been handled other ways, including assessing the $11 million on top of a $13.4 million property tax increase proposed in Mayor Peter Corroon's 2010 budget, or by drastically downsizing county law enforcement — to the tune of hundreds of officers.

Salt Lake County Deputy Mayor Nicole Dunn said Thursday that laying off 200 sheriff's deputies was not a viable option, and that assessing a fee on those who receive the sheriff's department services made more sense than a further property tax hike.

"The fee will be assessed to all users, which is a broader base than just property taxpayers," Dunn said. "Of the $21 million it costs to provide these services, only $11 million is coming from fees."

Dunn said a fiscal analysis was under way to determine exactly what those fees would represent, in terms of a monthly bill, but said a very rough estimate was about $10 a month for residents, with higher fees likely for businesses and other entities.

The proposal for the fees comes as a new entity, the Unified Police Department, is set to come online Jan. 1, 2010. The agency is an independent law enforcement cooperative that will provide services to Holladay, Riverton, Herriman and Bluffdale in addition to the unincorporated county. Some 500 current employees of the sheriff's office, mostly sworn officers with some civilian administrative personnel, are transferring to the UPD on the first of the year as part of their startup.

A new county special services district, created in part to administer the funding mechanism between the county and the UPD, gave the county the ability to assess a fee under a statute passed by the Legislature last year.

That fee, however, came as a surprise to Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder.

"The planning for UPD goes back some 18 months … we became aware of this proposal weeks ago," Winder said.

Winder said that financing the county's contribution to UPD via a fee structure was not a part of the initial planning, and after shaving millions from his budget — at the request of the mayor and County Council — saddling the new agency with $11 million in debt was a poor decision.