City Weekly
By Josi Hinds
June 19, 2024
Full story:
Salt Lake City residents will pay higher taxes and service fees while funding larger salaries for the mayor and city council under a nearly $2 billion budget approved on June 11.
The budget, which sets spending for the 2025 fiscal year, includes new funding for Capital Improvement projects and services for the unsheltered, including additional public restrooms, with a series of fee and property tax increases aimed at addressing inflationary pressures on departments like public utilities, garbage collection, parks and libraries.
According to a breakdown of the budget posted to the City's website, the annual impact for a resident living in an average single-family home is projected to be $413.19.
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Public Restrooms
In their deliberation process, the Council made several adjustments to the Mayor's proposed budget. One of these adjustments addressed the lack of accessible public restrooms available to Salt Lake residents, specifically those experiencing homelessness.
"Homelessness is so much more than not having a home," John Hall, an unsheltered man, told the Council at their meeting on June 4. "It's utter despair, and you can help us by giving us restrooms, a place where we can keep clean. I had my foot amputated because I couldn't keep the wound clean."
Hall is one of several homeless Salt Lake residents who spoke on the need for accessible public restrooms, showers and laundry facilities at recent Council meetings. These speakers were brought to City Council meetings by the Nomad Alliance, a non-profit organization built to help the chronically unsheltered in Salt Lake.
"We believe that the people that need to be pushing change when it comes to, you know, the biggest human rights crisis we have going on right now—which is our homeless crisis—needs to be the people that are experiencing the terror of living on the streets," Kseniya Kniazeva, founder of Nomad Alliance, explained.
This advocacy led the Council to allocate $500,000 to a holding account intended to fund "near-term delivery of more restrooms," a staffing document from the Council's June 11 work session reads.
Council Chairperson Victoria Petro and Councilmember Alejandro Puy led the push for this funding. While a $100,000 study on public restrooms was recommended for funding as part of the Capital Improvements Program (or CIP), Petro and Puy emphasized the need for a quick solution to the lack of public restrooms, a situation from which unhoused communities specifically suffer.
"The study is for the totality of our population," Petro explained at a Council work session on June 4. "But we also know that there's a specific hygiene crisis for our unsheltered neighbors. So, the study in no way answers the urgency or even, maybe, the level of appropriateness of response to that."
At that same work session, Puy seemed to express disappointment at the Administration's lack of initiative in solving this problem.
"The administration also heard the concerns from the community as we did, and we didn't see that in the current budget," Puy said. "So, you know, this is an approach the administration could have also taken, much like with the micro shelter community last year. This is basically a pilot program to see if we can move the needle on this issue."
Council members floated the idea of using this money to create mobile hygiene facilities in the work session and in conversations with Kniazeva.
"Initially, [Chairperson Petro] was talking to me about the feasibility of purchasing decommissioned UTA buses and renovating them into each of those three hygiene items," Kniazeva explained—the three hygiene items being bathrooms, showers and laundry. "I know that the City Council has expressed their desire for this to be a mobile service so we can rotate around to different neighborhoods where people congregate, but it's up to the mayor now."
Now that the budget has been approved, the Administration is responsible for proposing a plan with the allocated funding.
Salary Increases
One of the most contentious items in the new budget was a salary increase of 26%—or $44,000 per year—that Mayor Erin Mendenhall proposed for herself. This means her salary now sits at $211,765.
"I think it's disgusting that the mayor asked for a 26% wage increase for herself," Kniazeva said. "To ask for that in the face of the worst human rights crisis that we've seen in our city with people dying."
Kniazeva wasn't alone in her opposition. Scores of public comments, written and received live at City Council meetings, were highly critical of the proposed salary increase. Jaycee Miller, a Salt Lake City resident, said she doesn't just disagree with large pay raises but also with the way the City Council's salaries are dependent on the Mayor's.
City code states that salaries for Council Members must be 25% of the Mayor's compensation. This means the Council, too, will see a pay raise with this new budget. Their salaries will increase from $42,017 to $52,941.
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