Budget season in Wasatch County is underway and Heber’s City Council held its first meeting to review the tentative fiscal year 2026 budget while grappling with an uncertain economic outlook.
Matt Brower, Heber’s city manager, presented the tentative budget and called to light three headlines from the Wall Street Journal that all point toward a bleak economic future. One detailed a report from the Institute of International Finance, which said the U.S. will face a recession this year. Another said the Dow Jones Industrial Average is headed for the worst April since 1932 — the midst of the Great Depression.
Mid April, J.P. Morgan updated its research on the probability of a recession in the U.S. with a likelihood of 60%. That’s up from a 40% likelihood earlier this year.
Heber City’s last examination of Utah’s economic outlook happened in November, when the process of creating the city’s budget calendar began. After 100 days under the Trump Administration, that outlook is vastly different.
“We’ve had a lot of things change since then,” Brower said.
In Utah, the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute’s 2025 Economic Report to the Governor details “sticky inflation and an enormous federal deficit.” Potential immigration limitations and tariff increases can also add upward price pressures, the report said. The 2025 outlook is titled “Price Uncertainty.”
Ultimately, the forecast details a slowing, but not stalling, economic outlook for 2025.
“This outlook is showing that we will still have a strong economy but there is price uncertainty on the horizon, primarily due to monetary and fiscal policies on the federal level,” Brower said.
Brower’s recommendation? Stall.
“We don’t know what’s in the future and we don’t know how serious it might be based on the previous 12,” Brower said, referencing the 12 recessions that have happened since the Great Depression ended in 1939.
According to Brower, the revenues most vulnerable to recessions include sales tax, building permits, zoning and subdivision and transient room tax. Until later this year, Brower recommended deferring hiring for funded positions and large capital requests until “there’s more clarity.”
Brower also suggested possibly leveraging property tax increases to fund new positions and to “stay small as we go.” That means using advanced technology and outsourcing certain jobs or responsibilities where it makes sense. Most importantly, he suggests Heber evaluates how “efficient and effective” the city is.
Heber City operates on a zero-based budget, where departments are asked to start with zero and work their way up from there.
“The departments know their budgets inside and out,” Brower said. “They know their contracts, they know the demands on their budgets.”
The Envision Central Heber Initiative is one priority. Ongoing projects is another. Those projects include items like the Trails, Arts and Parks Tax Fund, new angled parking downtown and $40,000 for a historic preservation study where the council is reimbursed for half.
Heber’s 2026 fiscal year budget will also include a newer software designed to make the city’s financial projects more transparent to the public. The software is called ClearGov. Everything will be broken down online with a description of each budget and position. There will also be a simple breakdown showing the amount of debt the city has and related trends.
The council’s budget workshop Tuesday was the first of two. The tentative budget will be adopted by the city council after a public hearing on May 6.