Jared Jardine running for Orem City Council

Contact Jared to get signs to put in your neighborhood.   801-224-2743.  jared@jardinefam.com  http://www.jardine4orem.com

Why I oppose the Property Tax increase

I first contemplated running for Orem City Council during the budget meeting in 2012. The current city council seemed far more concerned about their precious city projects than they did about the people of the city who were losing their homes. As a Republican Precinct Chair in OR21, I had been taking primary election information notices around to the homes in my precinct, and had noticed several homes that appeared to be vacant with “For Sale” signs in their yards. I then heard the members of the Orem City Council discuss the proposed tax increase of roughly $100/year for the average home like it couldn’t possibly be a burden to any resident in Orem. The council seemed drastically out of touch. Because enough of us were there to protest the tax, they only raised our property taxes by roughly $50/year, although council members Mary Street and Karen McCandless still wanted to raise it the full $100.

Afterward, a group of us got together to see what we could do about it. We met at the Cafe Rio in Orem and decided that we would try to stop it with a referendum petition. Although others were the primary organizers, I organized my precinct and we got several hundred signatures to stop the property tax increase, and along with the other volunteers across the city got over 5,000 valid signatures to stop the tax. This property tax increase will now be voted on this November.

However, even with all of our efforts to tell the Orem City Council that they needed to reduce their spending, we have been ignored. When you look at the budget for the coming year that was proposed last week, again the focus is on raising more revenues for the city, this time through countless fee increases. If you look back at the budgets from the year 2003 (simple totals are found on page number 30) and then look forward to the year 2012 (simple totals are on page number 30) you can see that the city total expenses have grown from roughly $59 million/year to now roughly $81.5 million/year in the last decade.  I think with this nearly 38% revenue growth, the city shouldn’t be complaining about needing to raise additional taxes.  However, even with the recession that hit in 2008, the city has expended all of the city reserves rather than live within our means.  If I am elected I pledge to do my best to see that the city lives within our means.