The North Summit Fire District is walking back its proposed property tax increase and has asked the Summit County Council to discontinue the Truth in Taxation process this year.
The fire agency is largely independent, but the County Council is responsible for greenlighting its budgets on an annual basis, including any potential tax increases. Councilors were set to hold a public hearing and final vote on a proposed 4.56% tax hike on Wednesday.
But the district has now reversed its course.
In a staff report published earlier this week, North Summit Fire Chief Ben Nielson said the agency’s administrative control board held a specially called meeting in late November “to evaluate the necessity” of the increase.
“During the meeting, district staff presented updated financial projections, anticipated revenues, capital needs and operational impacts associated with maintaining current service levels,” the staff report said. “After reviewing the information and discussing potential tax implications, the Board determined that a Truth in Taxation process was not necessary at this time.”
Nielson in an interview on Tuesday said the community’s overwhelmingly negative response to the proposal spurred the decision.
“We just want to make sure that everybody knows that we listen to your concerns,” Nielson said. “We heard your ideas, and then as a district, we remain committed to making the decisions that reflect the will and the values of the people that we serve. … This represents our continued dedication to transparency, public involvement and responsible governance.”
The public hearing scheduled for this week was not technically canceled, though, because only the Summit County Council has the legal authority to end Truth in Taxation proceedings. Councilors will either accept the board’s recommendation on Wednesday or decide to proceed with the property tax increase and public hearing.
The proposed 4.56% increase would generate an additional $100,000 for the North Summit Fire District next year, with the funds going toward ongoing operating expenses. Nielsen previously said the intent was to keep up with inflation, not to expand programming or staffing — a challenge the department is still facing.
“All it does is kick the can down the road with the high cost of inflation, with the high cost of tariffs,” Nielson said. “Everybody’s been affected by this, including the fire district.”
As for the North Summit Fire District’s 2026 budget, Nielson said the plan is simply to eliminate the additional $100,000 that the agency anticipated receiving from the tax increase. Most of those cuts will affect the department’s fleet vehicles and maintenance, according to Nielson.
“The whole goal of this, though, is we feel like this hopefully buys us some time because there are a lot of things pending in the community, with the Wohali project and the growth going on,” he added. “We don’t know what’s going to happen exactly in this next year, so what this does is buy us one more year to figure it out.”
Summit County Council Chair Tonja Hanson, who represents the North Summit area, told Nielson in October that she was wary of raising property taxes because of the 0.5% emergency services sales tax that voters passed last year.
Hanson said voters saw the new sales tax as a way to hold off on property tax increases. She encouraged county staff and the North Summit Fire District to work together to see if the generated revenue could assist the fire agency with any of its needs instead.
Hanson additionally expressed concerns about public opinion in the wake of a 300% property tax increase in 2022 to fund the North Summit Fire District. But Nielson said the 4.56% raise was intended to prevent such a large increase from happening again in the future.
“We promised the community to never do the large increase that we had to do again,” he said. “My philosophy and the board’s philosophy is we take smaller bites as we go and not have to wait 30 years to do Truth in Taxation again.”
Summit County Manager Shayne Scott in November proposed an $826,800 grant program funded through emergency services sales tax revenue as part of the county’s budgeting process for 2026. He specifically pointed to the proposed program as a potential solution for the North Summit Fire District’s budget.
State law mandates the tax revenue can only fund emergency medical services, search and rescue, law enforcement, fire protection, solid waste collection and land acquisitions related to allowed uses, such as an expansion of the Three Mile Landfill.
Summit County has a few partners — namely the three fire districts and municipal police departments — that qualify for assistance under the emergency services sales tax statute, even though the agencies are not necessarily run or entirely funded by the county government. Through the grant program, the county could distribute tax revenue to those partners in addition to funding county departments, Scott explained.
“That could help us, but I think people are confused because that money doesn’t help with operational costs,” Nielson said. “That’s a one-time fee that is given to the grant applicants. That’s a county tax that was levied, not a North Summit Fire District tax. … What I want people to know, though, is that those are two separate things.”
Nielson said the department received some money from the county’s emergency services sales tax, but it’s not enough to fund ongoing expenses or prevent tax increases in perpetuity.
“We’d be derelicting our responsibilities if we just said, ‘Hey, we’re never going to raise people’s taxes again,’ because the fire district has to be successful for the safety of the citizens,” he explained. “We should be fiscally responsible and cover our own operational costs, our ongoing costs, and the (emergency services sales tax) is not for that.”
For a primary residence worth $722,000, the 4.56% property tax increase would add $20.88 onto an owner’s annual bill. For a business worth $722,000, the tax would add $37.97 per year.