Orem officials put school-district split to voters after study found long-term tax outflows

Mayor Dave Young said Orem's city council unanimously agreed to commission a financial study of the city's share of property-tax funding for Alpine School District to determine whether Orem taxpayers were getting commensurate value.

The consultant study, Young said, found that over the previous 20 years approximately $180 million to $200 million in property tax revenue collected in Orem had gone out of the city's schools without proportional benefit to Orem schools. Young said that finding, together with an Alpine School District bond plan that he described as offering Orem comparatively little of the bond proceeds, led council members to place a district-split question on the ballot for voters.

Young told the interviewer the city pursued the study because outside firms were reluctant to take it on due to political sensitivities; the firm ultimately hired, he said, included personnel with school-district and fiscal experience.

He described public opposition led by a group he called Stronger Together, which objected to the study and to the potential split, and said some critics framed the effort as partisan or unnecessary. Young said the Utah Taxpayers Association later assessed that Orem could operate its own district without raising taxes.

Young said one impetus for the ballot question was a proposed $595 million Alpine bond on which he said Orem would have been responsible for about $130 million while receiving only limited facilities (he said two gyms in Orem valued at a small fraction of the city's share). He said that allocation made the proposed bond appear, in his view, financially inequitable.

The mayor described the ballot measure as an "or only" process defined by state law and said neighboring cities indicated they would join if the measure passed.