School board members in Summit County were relieved Monday to learn that state legislation failed that could have siphoned several million dollars from schools in Park City, Coalville and Kamas.

“We dodged a bullet,” Park City School Board member Michael Boyle said. “I believe we need to be vigilant because I think equalization of property taxes will come back at some point in the future as proposed legislation.”

An early version of House Bill 66, sponsored by Rep. Merlynn Newbold, R-South Jordan, could have taken about $30 million from 19 school districts in Utah to redistribute among 22 other districts and charter schools. The House voted 42-33 to reject the bill.

Homeowners in the Park City School District have voted to increase their own property taxes to better fund local schools, Boyle said.

“This bill attempted to take those monies and redistribute them to other districts that may or may not have a similar tax effort,” Boyle said in a telephone interview Friday.

Originally, HB 66 could have taken almost $8 million from the Park City School District, $797,000 from the South Summit School District and $589,000 from schools in North Summit.

“Losing that money would have really put us in a bind, and this is a point for celebration,” North Summit School District Superintendent Steve Carlsen said when reached Friday. “We’re just getting to the point, in the past couple years, where we can afford to fix our buildings and some of our parking lots.”

School districts in the county might have raised taxes to avoid cutting programs had a substitute version of HB 66 passed.

State officials already take about $66 million from Summit County residents in income tax each year to help fund other school districts throughout the state, Boyle explained.

He praised state Reps. Mel Brown and Christine Johnson for helping defeat HB 66.

“If the state felt they could come after property taxes and equalize them to other areas of the state, what’s to prevent them from taking locally approved taxes such as recreation-district taxes and fire-district taxes? Where would it end?” Boyle said.