Salt Lake County Mayor Report
Over the past 20 years the unincorporated part of Salt Lake County has been chipped away through major incorporations (Taylorsville, Holladay, Cottonwood Heights) and annexations into Midvale, Murray and Sandy.
Through that history of carving up financially viable portions of the county, I still firmly believe in self determination for our citizens.
But there are many questions, concerns and opinions floating around from both advocates and opponents of annexation. As Salt Lake County Mayor, I have some thoughts I'd like to share with the general population.
Even after all the incorporations and annexations, unincorporated Salt Lake County has the second largest municipal population in the valley with 165,000 residents, second only to Salt Lake City. All of our 16 unincorporated communities, stretching from Emigration Township to Granite on the east and from Magna Township to Copperton Township on the west, remain unincorporated.
I believe that it is because Salt Lake County provides a broad range of high-quality services. Salt Lake County's municipal services include sanitation removal and cleanup programs, comprehensive animal services, road and sidewalk maintenance and construction, snow removal, street lighting, economic and community development programs, among others.
I think Salt Lake County provides high quality services to our unincorporated residents. And we will continue to do so as long as our services are requested.
We are sensitive to our residents' needs. That is why we have an established community council system that gives communities extraordinary input into county operations.
Recently, the Willow Creek area re-established the Little Cottonwood Creek Valley Community Council. This board will function as an ad hoc committee until November 2010 when an official election will be held.
Although we have all found ourselves in difficult financial times as we face the worst economic downturn in 80 years, Salt Lake County is among only two dozen counties that have achieved coveted AAA bond ratings from all three rating agencies. We work continuously to keep both our debt and our municipal service property taxes low.
Salt Lake County is on an annual budget cycle, so we have already made the difficult adjustments that municipalities, on a July - June fiscal budget, will be considering this spring.
The benefits of our fiscally conservative choices allow us to bond for infrastructure and community development projects at the lowest possible interest rate, which saves taxpayers millions of dollars. We cut a staggering $140 million from the overall county budget for this year in order to reduce the impact of this recession on our taxpayers.
We are also proud of our newly established Unified Police Department. Twelve years in the making, the UPD provides comprehensive policing and investigative services that are simply not available in smaller police units.
We constantly work to improve both the quality and efficiency of our services. Our government is open, honest, and transparent, and we are dedicated to meeting the needs of our community as a whole.
When our unincorporated residents consider important decisions about a primary government service provider there are two overriding issues 1) Satisfaction with the current level of service and 2) Are services being offered at a fair price?
We will face incorporation or annexation issues, but we are proud of our local government services and believe they are delivered at a fair price. I hope residents agree.
