Hello John ,

Chandler Rosenberg here, Stewardship Utah’s Great Salt Lake Policy Associate, sliding into your inbox to talk to you about an important vote that took place earlier this week at the Metro Water District.

On Monday, the Metro Water District of Salt Lake and Sandy voted to increase the property tax collected for water from 0.000185% to 0.00035% to cover the increased cost of maintaining, repairing, and replacing water infrastructure. 

This 75% rate increase – the first in 16 years by the Metro Water District – amounts to an additional $3.96 per month for the average property owner. While this may not seem significant, it is a bad move for water conservation and getting more water to the Great Salt Lake.

Water districts, our wholesale water suppliers, like the property tax because it offers a predictable source of revenue for covering costs. A stable source of income for basic services like water delivery makes a lot of sense for the convenience of water managers. However, it comes with problematic tradeoffs. 

Using property taxes to fund our water supply hides the true cost of this scarce desert resource. Sometimes economists are right: when things appear cheaper, they get used more. Because districts use property tax revenue, they charge a lower price on your water bill than the actual cost of that water, distorting the market for water and giving consumers less incentive to conserve. It’s no wonder Utah has some of the highest municipal water use in the country despite being one of the driest states.

This is also unfair. Some of our state’s highest water users like churches, universities, school districts, and state properties don’t even pay property taxes.

This means the rest of us who pay the property taxes - either directly or through our rent - are incurring costs for these large institutional water users.

If you try to conserve water, you cannot be fully rewarded for your good behavior because your property tax rate remains the same.

This also creates a negative feedback loop where Utahns use more water than they should and water districts then argue that Utah needs to build more dams and reservoirs, meaning less water for places like the Great Salt Lake.

Read more about Utah’s use of property taxes for water here, here, and here.

Like most utilities and services, we need to move to a user-fee model. It’s that simple. If you use it, you pay for it (and what it actually costs).

When user fees are paired with tiered rates structures, they provide more fairness and can protect low income residents better than our current system. This means water managers can charge a very low rate for the water that the average Utah household needs indoors - for drinking, bathing, and cleaning - and then charge more for outdoor water use, where most of our municipal water goes anyway. 

Conservation is the most cost-effective way to increase our supply of water. Our system and pricing should be set up to encourage conservation – not waste – and efforts towards greater conservation should be prioritized over expensive and unnecessary water projects to augment supply (i.e. pipelines to the Pacific Ocean). 

User fees are better for conservation and fairness but they make life harder for water managers because they can vary from year to year. Because of that, there is political reluctance to changing them. Reducing or eliminating the property tax will require some long term effort, coalition building, and an incremental policy plan – and we’ll need your help to do it.

We’re organizing a series of Town Halls across the watershed to engage with legislators and elected officials about water and Great Salt Lake this election season! We want local community members to join us in developing these events, no previous experience is necessary.

Onward,

Chandler Rosenberg,

Great Salt Lake Policy Associate

[email protected]

www.stewardshiputah.org

P.S. want to chat more about property taxes and the great salt lake? Join us at one of our upcoming events! Join us for a Pint Night at Saltfire Brewing on August 20th from 5-7:30 PM- first 20 attendees get a free beer! 

Can't make it on the 20th? Join us instead on August 29th from 5:30 - 7:30 PM for our Summer Send-off! We'll be grilling some delicious food over at 11th Ave Park.