Board proposes weekday-only counts and appeals process as starting point in transportation utility fee talks

Cameron Hill, league staff, told the board on Tuesday that officers will meet later this week with legislators and representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to negotiate the transportation utility fee (TUF) framework.

“The Supreme Court ruled this was a fee, not a tax,” Hill said, summarizing the legal backdrop and why the legislature asked stakeholders for good-faith alternatives.

Hill and other staff outlined a multi-part proposal the board asked officers to present to negotiators: define a subcategory of large institutional or “religious/charitable” users; for that subcategory use weekday-only traffic counts (excluding lower-impact days such as Sunday) to calculate trip generation; require a local appeals process so users can challenge a fee they consider unreasonable; and explicitly preserve the constitutional property-tax protections courts have recognized.

The idea, as explained by Hill and by board member Roger (board member), was to offer the speaker and senate president demonstrable alternatives rather than opposing every proposal outright. “We have been asked to come with good faith alternatives,” Hill said. Roger argued that the public‑good exemption argument is likely to be the core of requests for relief and that methodology changes should directly address those concerns.

Board members voiced concerns about the weekday-only proposal, noting that some large institutional facilities generate heavy weekend traffic (weddings, conferences and sporting events). Mayor Kate (board member) said Saturday activity can “throw my numbers off the charts,” and Councilor Bradshaw and others urged caution about exempting weekend travel in ways that might leave major generators unaccounted for.

Several members said a data-driven threshold tied to measured trip counts or a definition of “regionally significant” facilities would be preferable if negotiators could agree on a workable definition. Hill said the work group could not reach consensus on a clean “regionally significant” definition but offered the weekday-count compromise as a narrower option.

The board did not adopt an ordinance or a final policy in the meeting. Instead, members signaled they were comfortable with two elements of staff’s package — addressing constitutional/property-tax concerns and adding an appeals process — and directed officers to present the subcategory/weekday-counts approach as a starting point in Thursday’s meeting. The board asked staff to emphasize that the proposal treats the measure as a charge for service, not a tax, and to return with any legislative language and a roster of attendees after the officers’ meeting.

Why it matters: the legislature and the courts have treated TUFs as fees rather than taxes, but the Supreme Court left an open question about how to measure whether a fee is “reasonable.” The board’s approach is intended to provide negotiators a statutory methodology and a local appeals path to reduce litigation risk while trying to preserve local authority and avoid broad exemptions for institutional users.

What’s next: league officers will meet with legislators and church representatives later this week; staff will circulate the list of attendees and the language they present to the board afterward. Board members asked staff to return any concrete proposed statutory text and examples showing how weekday-only counts would change fee calculations for representative facilities.