Europe could still melt down financially. Washington could fall off the fiscal cliff into a debt crisis. Even economic powerhouses China and Germany could be unsettled by leadership challenges, economic consultant Doug McDonald told the council.
Those threats account partly for projections that Salt Lake County’s economy, which McDonald noted is growing twice as much as the national average, will slow next year along with the rest of the country.
The trend he described was mirrored by county financial officer Lance Brown’s sales tax figures. This year’s total is projected to be a healthy 7.4 percent above last year’s, before sliding back next year to a 5.7 percent gain.
But he is not as concerned about sales tax as he is about Salt Lake County’s property tax collections. In the decade since the property tax rate last was raised, he said, the county’s share of those revenues has lost 26 percent of its purchasing power.
In addition, Brown said the county has experienced no net gain in property tax revenues over the past two years because so much of the income generated by new growth is siphoned off by various redevelopment areas — long-term benefits coming at the expense of current budgets. Salt Lake Tribune
