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Show Many local taxpayer's don't realize how fortunate Uintah County is in having other sources of income other than ad valorem or property taxes. At the 1982 county budget hearing Monday one citizen complained about high taxes and stated they didn't think it was right for property owners to be forced to pay taxes for school operations. The protestor said he thought the schools should be supported by the sales tax so more people who do not own property would contribute to the burden of supporting the schools. A few local taxpayers have the idea that they pay the entire revenue that is spent by the tax entities of the county and city. This is misleading, even though many taxpayers may feel they pay high property taxes, in reality they pay very low taxes in relation to what they receive. In 1982 Uintah County proposes to spent $21 million. Only $2 million of this amount will come from property taxes. Only one half of the $2 million will be paid by property owners. The other half will be paid by oil companies, utilities and mining companies using our natural resources. For a county with an assessed valuation of only $150 million to have an annual budget of $21 million without exorbitant taxation, means only one thing. Someone else is paying the bills. This someone else is the industrial growth that is coming into the county. Over half of the 1982 county budget, $11 million, is coming from grants and royalty money derived from oil and gas, oil shale and power plant operations. This money is being used to build new roads into the areas where these resource companies do their work and have set up their operations. The Unit One Bonanza power plant will increase the assessed valuation of Uintah County more than double its present $150 million valuation. This one project will double the county's property tax income. In the public school operations the property tax plays a more important role. But even here in Uintah County District it pays less than half of the over $12 million annual budget. The rest comes from state funding and federal grants. As our county becomes more in-dustralized in-dustralized more and more of the tax monies paid by resource and energy... companies will go into the revolving state school fund. This means that Uintah County will be carrying part of the tax load of other schools throughout the state that do not have such a large natural resource income. Sometimes this may seem unfair, especially when the first impact hits an area with many extra needs caused by industrial growth. But gradually the local developments bring extra incomes to the point of origin even though the state and federal government take a large portion of the tax and royalty payments away from the area. Even though Uintah County property owners received a substantial increase in the assessed valuation of their property this year by the state's new equalizing program, the overall mill levy was reduced and the tax bite was not as bad as it could have been. With an increased tax base and more industrial in-dustrial growth, the tax levies will continue to decrease and the property owners will pay less and the county will be able to receive more income from the large financial investments being made in the energy area of the county. So really, property taxes in Uintah County are less than most counties in the state and the prospect is that they will be much lower due to the growth that is projected for the area. We are getting a lot of mileage out of our local property tax dollars and at the annual budget time of the year we should realize that our tax dollars are being supplimented in the 1982 county budget by about 20 to 1 by other sources of income. That's a pretty good deal. Last week television viewers using the county aerial translator system were anxious to finally turn their TV set knobs to Channel 20 and get clear reception. County technician Joe LeBeau said last week he would have the translator on the air Wednesday since he finally had received FCC permission. TheFCC didn't stop Joe last week, he was stopped a mishap he had while unloading the heavy transmitter last Wednesday. Joe said he got banged up and couldn't make it up to Blue Mountain until this Monday to install the new equipment. We were sure that after Joe had told us he would have Channel 20 on the air last week that something must have happened to him to miss this important event to the many aerial television viewers in the county. Anyway Joe has Channel 20 TV all hooked up in time for the BYU-Washington BYU-Washington State Holiday Bowl football game Friday at 7 p.m. By the way don't turn your TV dial to 20, Joe says, turn it to UHF 51. Many ," people called in last week saying they couldn't get anything on -Channel 20 when they dialed number 20. Also you will need a UHF aerial to get a clear picture. Joe says the picture is coming in good and clear. He says UHF is more critical than VHF. The aerial should be in the right direction with no obstructions ob-structions in the way. We want to thank Joe for getting Channel 20 on the air, even though he got hurt doing it. Now we can all start anxiously waiting for the FCC letter telling Joe he can hook-up the BYU Channel 11 translator. |