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South Jordan staff propose $5.28 monthly park fee to fund maintenance and capital
Summary
City staff presented a proposed park fee at the May 5 study meeting — $5.28 per month for single‑family accounts and $3.38 for multifamily — estimated to raise about $1.7 million annually for parks operations, maintenance and a $500,000 annual capital floor.
Mayor Dawn Ramsey on May 5 asked council members to consider a staff‑developed park fee intended to create a dedicated revenue stream for maintaining South Jordan’s parks and related assets.
Parks director Don Tingey told the council the proposal was built from a detailed analysis of the 2027 parks and cemetery budget and comparable allocation methods used for impact fees. “$5.28 is a single family, and $3.38 is the multifamily fee that will generate estimated about 1,700,000,” Tingey said, describing a structure that separates operations and maintenance (O&M) from wages and benefits and also allocates a base capital amount.
City staff said the revenue would be split to cover ongoing O&M and a capital improvement program (CIP) floor. As an illustrative breakdown presented to council, about $2.00 of the monthly charge would go to active parks, roughly $1.50 toward CIP funding, and small fractions to cemetery care, forestry, trails and neighborhood parks; staff said they can provide a pie‑chart and handout for public outreach. Tingey said the CIP floor used for modeling is $500,000 per year to address deferred projects identified in the parks master plan.
Mayor Ramsey emphasized the budget role of the fee as an assumption in the tentative budget, not a binding appropriation: “Nothing about this obligates the council to choose that for the budget,” she said, noting the council could adopt a tentative budget that excludes the fee but would then need to find roughly $1.7 million elsewhere or cut the tentative spending assumptions.
Council members asked technical questions about how the fee would be applied to multifamily units and how the city counts housing units. Staff said the city bills many multifamily units individually and used utility account classifications as the basis for the model. Staff also walked through examples of what incremental changes would cost residents: roughly 30 cents per month in additional fee for each $100,000 in new annual CIP spending.
If implemented as modeled, staff said the fee would be added to South Jordan utility bills beginning in July and the city’s communications team would run public education materials explaining how the funds are collected and spent. Council members and staff agreed the fee is meant to provide a transparent, dedicated source of funds to avoid deferring maintenance further and to allow predictable small capital investments without competing each year in the general CIP process.
Next steps: staff will provide the council the detailed handouts and the communications materials used for public outreach. The council may choose to leave the fee assumption in the tentative budget, remove it and cut spending, or adopt a different approach before the final budget vote.
