Hey Eagle Mountain. Colten here.

Posting just on one specific thing is out of the ordinary for me, but after seeing how much confusion there's been around the KSL story on statewide property tax increases, I had to write this.

Let’s talk about Eagle Mountain taxes.

I moved to Eagle Mountain in 2023. If you're reading this, there's a good chance you haven't been here much longer than that either. This city didn't start as a city until 1996, when about 250 people lived here. Today there are more than 76,000 of us. (1) Most of the people living here now weren't here for most of this city's history.

I bring that up because a city that grows this fast has a lot of residents who don't know what's being decided on their behalf. I started the Eagle Mountain Value because I want to change that. I want you to know the city in which you live.

As an example: did you know the city approved a development agreement allowing a gas power plant near Meta's data center? Or that the city approved a $220 million bond for water and sewer infrastructure? I'll come back to both later in this piece. If you're an Eagle Mountain Value subscriber, you already know about them, because I covered both when they happened. If you didn't know, you're probably more informed than most of your neighbors just by reading this far.

Right now, there's a property tax increase working its way through the city council, and it's the reason I'm writing this at all.

Eagle Mountain City is proposing its first property tax increase since 2010. KSL covered it as part of a statewide story, which is likely how a lot of you heard about it. (7) I've been covering the tax proposal since May. Here's the full picture, as best as I've been able to put it together.

These numbers come directly from the city's own Proposed Property Tax Impact Schedule, published June 18, 2026. (2)

The city wants to raise an additional $6,742,938 in property tax revenue. That would take the city's property tax rate from 0.000530 to 0.001700, an increase of 220.88% to the city's portion of your tax bill.

For the average Eagle Mountain home, valued at $488,000, that means paying about $314 more per year to the city, or roughly $26 more per month, for a total city tax of $456.28. For the average local business, valued at roughly $2.55 million, the increase is closer to $2,988 more per year, or about $249 more per month. (2)

One thing to know: the city's portion is a small slice of your total property tax bill. Alpine School District takes the largest share, at roughly two-thirds. Unified Fire, Utah County, and Central Utah Water make up most of the rest. Today, the city's share is 5.79% of what you actually pay. Even with this increase, the Eagle Mountain City government’s share stays among the smallest slices on the chart below. (1)

The city's stated reason for the proposed increase is public safety. Eagle Mountain currently has 24 patrol deputies covering a city of roughly 77,000 residents. On any given shift, only 3 to 4 of those deputies are actually available to respond, since the rest are on leave, in training, or handling other assignments. In 2025, the department handled nearly 26,000 calls, an 18.6% increase over the year before. When the new Walmart opened, calls in that area jumped 73% within two quarters. Chief Deputy Erik Knutzen presented these figures in July 2025 to the City Council. (12) (13)

Eagle Mountain doesn't run its own police department. Like several other Utah County cities, it contracts directly with the Utah County Sheriff's Office for law enforcement services. (3)

The proposal would add 1 sergeant and 6 deputies, moving Eagle Mountain from roughly 1 deputy per 2,200 residents to about 1 per 1,800, still below neighboring cities, but more stable than today's ratio. The city's Impact Schedule shows $1,507,939 in new spending for those 7 positions, which works out to roughly $215,000 per position in total cost, including salary, vehicle, equipment, and training. (2)

That case isn't hard to understand for a fast-growing city. More residents generally means more calls for service and longer response times without more staffing to match.

In a meeting with city leadership in May, officials described the increase to me as part of a larger shift: moving the entire Sheriff's Office contract, now $9,798,139 a year, onto property tax, rather than splitting it between property tax and other city revenue like sales tax, the way it's funded today. Officials told me that shift would free up general fund money currently subsidizing the police contract, and that this freed-up money was intended for other priorities like roads and infrastructure.

The Eagle Mountain City Interim Budget for 2026-2027 shows Public Safety spending within the General Fund increasing by about $2 million, from $8.81 million to $10.84 million. (14) That $10.84 million is about $1 million more than the Sheriff's Office contract itself, which is $9.798 million. I can't verify what the remaining $1 million covers, and I can't currently point to where in the budget the "freed-up" infrastructure money officials described actually shows up. Budgets can shift money between departments in ways that aren't obvious from a single line item, so this isn't necessarily a contradiction. It's simply what I can and can't confirm right now.

I haven't been able to get clear answers to these. If you're planning to attend the August 6 hearing or submit a comment, these might be worth asking directly.

In March 2026, the City Council approved a $220 million bond for water and sewer infrastructure upgrades, one of the largest financial commitments in city history. (5) I was at that hearing. Not one resident spoke.

That same month, the council approved a nighttime noise exception for a new natural gas power facility near Meta's data center, allowing it to run at up to 75 decibels, about 10 decibels above the city's standard 65 dB limit, roughly the difference between normal conversation and a running vacuum cleaner. (6) The council approved the agreement on March 3. (5)

Both decisions went through as planned, with essentially no public input. As far as I can tell, having little to no public input on these types of items is not unusual here. In fact, it appears closer to the norm. The property tax increase is simply the first time in a while that enough people were paying attention to start asking questions, which is likely why KSL picked it up in the first place.

On June 16, the City Council voted 4-1 to approve an interim budget, a preliminary spending plan the city uses while it finalizes numbers over the summer. But the decision that matters most to residents is still ahead.

I'd recommend checking the city's Truth-in-Taxation page for the most up to date details before submitting written comment ahead of the hearing since details can change, and I want to point you to something the city regularly updates rather than a link that might go stale. (1)

Please go to the city's Public Comment Form to share your feedback and comments on this. Otherwise, the council will pass a vote on August 18 without your input.

State law requires any city to hold a public Truth-in-Taxation hearing before it can collect more property tax revenue than the year before. (8) KSL's reporting found numerous Utah cities pursuing increases this year for similar reasons. (7)

Saratoga Springs is proposing its first increase since 2008 (54%). (9) Centerville is proposing an increase to fund police, fire and essential services (15.8%). (10) Orem is proposing one to fund two new officers (7%). (11) This is a statewide pattern, not something specific to how Eagle Mountain is being run.

The size of this increase is genuinely unusual. At 220.88%, it's far larger than any of the comparisons above. I can't speak for the city's internal reasoning, but based on what officials have told me and what the numbers show, this appears to come from a specific choice: fund the entire Sheriff's Office contract through property tax, which the city sees as its most stable revenue source, rather than splitting it across property tax and sales tax the way it's funded today. The city currently covers only $3,055,201 of what would become a $9,798,139 total property tax bill, all of it earmarked for the Sheriff's Office contract. Closing that gap in one step, using a small existing base, is what produces a percentage this large. (2)

The way I see it, the city is doing everything it can to fulfill its obligations to provide essential services to its residents. I've met many Eagle Mountain City employees, and they're good people who genuinely care about this community. I've also heard from council members and staff, more than once, how stretched the current team is. That's not something most residents see, since we rarely interact with them directly. We don't see the day-to-day workload behind what they do.

The gap I see right now is this: residents aren't really involved. The city has kept functioning on a tight budget for years, which says something about how dedicated the people running it are. And people who live here are just simply doing that: living. They don't want to have to think about what the city is doing behind the scenes because they have cares of their own. But if we keep going without residents knowing what's happening or weighing in, decisions like this one will keep getting made without us.

This is the reason I started writing this newsletter in the first place. Eagle Mountain doesn't have many, if any, independent outlets covering city happenings closely, week after week. It has residents who are busy, new, and mostly unaware these decisions are being made at all, until something like a 220% tax increase gets statewide attention and everyone finds out at once.

I can't close that gap alone, and I'm not trying to. What I can do is keep showing up to the meetings, reading the city's documents, and telling you plainly what I find, so that when something like this comes up again, you hear about it from a neighbor before it's already decided.

If that's useful to you, the best way to support it is simple: subscribe, and pass this along to a neighbor who hasn't heard about any of this yet. The more of us paying attention, the less often decisions like this get made without most residents even knowing they happened.

Fred Rogers used to ask a simple question: "Won't you be my neighbor?" That's really all I'm asking too.

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