Wasatch County Council Chair Erik Rowland has officially joined the Military Installation Development Authority board. 

Rowland’s appointment to the board comes after Karl McMillan, who held both positions, resigned from the County Council in April, citing serious health problems. The MIDA board reserves one seat for a Wasatch County councilor, which Rowland accepted as chair of the County Council.

“Unfortunately it’s not the best situation to have that appointment,” Rowland said. “He’s not doing so well, so our thoughts are with him right now.”

Rowland attended his first MIDA board meeting on Friday morning. He said he is just getting started with MIDA operations and working as a liaison between the County Council and the MIDA board. The county councilor said, as chair, he was interested in the appointment because he wants to better understand MIDA’s processes and “the cadence of how things work.”

“I thought it would be appropriate to be able to have that direct connection with the MIDA board because it is the largest project happening right now,” Rowland said.

He’s referring to the Deer Valley East Village project and development by MIDA. In nearly 10 years, MIDA will be nearly finished with the 6,200 units currently planned for development, which was 22% complete in May 2025. 

Homes, townhomes, hotels and condos will be spread across six zones in the Jordanelle Basin. Numbers stand at 196 homes, 861 townhomes or condos, 230 hotel room units and 143 hotel condos, which are privately owned but attached to a hotel. The build-out date is sure to be after 2035. 

By then there will be 1,267 homes, 3,240 townhomes or condos, 1,358 hotel room units and 314 hotel condos. Nearly 95% of development will occur sometime between the 2034 Winter Olympic Games and the county’s 175th anniversary in 2037.

“It’s important that I think everyone understands just how much influence that has. It’s currently redefined the future of the county,” Rowland said. “We’ve gone from kind of a quiet mountain town to a resort town.”

With Deer Valley Resort now just up the road from the Heber Valley, Rowland said there’s also pressure to increase the county’s workforce and to increase affordable housing. There’s also pressure on traffic needs and infrastructure, he said.

Rowland said, even in his first MIDA board meeting on Friday, there is a good deal that he wants to weigh in on and share with MIDA board members. 

“There’s a lot of moving pieces that cause the board to be very influential in how it shapes our county,” Rowland said. “(To) be able to have a voice to advocate for the county … that was important to me.”

If the board is promoting itself as a “public good,” Rowland said, then there needs to be “more effort to really advertise that.”

“So that people understand, what does that mean,” Rowland said. 

Next steps for Rowland include sitting down with board members to better understand their role and how operations work within the board. 

Meanwhile, MIDA did not discuss the controversial multibillion-dollar data center project backed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary that would be located in Box Elder County.

The post Wasatch County Councilor Erik Rowland joins MIDA board appeared first on Park Record.

Tuesday marked 99 years since Heber City resident Ted Crittenden was delivered into the world in his grandmother’s Hoytsville home. There weren’t any hospitals nearby at the time, he explained. 

The soon-to-be centenarian celebrated the milestone by riding the Deer Valley East Village’s 10-passenger gondola with a handful of his five children, 36 grandchildren, 95 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.

The 142-cabin gondola opened last autumn. Each of its 40 towers was flown in by a Chinook helicopter. It rises 2,570 feet over the course of the nearly 3-mile journey at 1,400 feet per minute.

Ted was impressed. 

“It’s an absolute miracle of engineering. To get all those poles and all those cables? I can’t believe it,” he gushed.

The gondola ride was facilitated through Ted’s son, Kendall.

Kendall is a Wasatch County Councilor and works regularly with representatives from the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA), which has a foothold on development in the Deer Valley area. MIDA representatives came up with the idea because Ted is a World War II Navy veteran.

Ted was a 14-year-old student at North Summit High School during the attack on Pearl Harbor and signed up for the draft with several classmates three years later.

After turning 18, he joined the Navy and was shipped off to a boot camp in San Diego. That was in March 1945, six months before the war ended. 

When they arrived at the boot camp, Ted got quite a hoot out of the city boys’ gorgeous locks being shaved off.

“They wasn’t careful about it. These long curls would drop in their lap. It was quite funny,” he laughed.

After intensive training, Ted was loaded onto his first ship with an estimated 1,500 other soldiers.

As the ship traveled under the Golden Gate Bridge and into the Pacific Ocean, seasick crewmates were “puking everywhere.” Ted was unfazed.

About 18 days later, the ship made it to a U.S. base on the island of Guam, which had been recaptured from Japan the year prior. 

That was where Ted was stationed when the United States dropped its first atomic bomb on Japan in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

“All we heard was that there was a terrible explosion. We had no idea the magnitude of it,” he said. 

At the time, he simply couldn’t believe that one bomb had destroyed an entire city. 

After Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces in September, ending the war, Ted stayed in Guam for 17 months, working his way up to a third-class petty officer. 

Following that, he was stationed on the destroyer USS Allen M. Sumner (DD-692), which embarked on a goodwill tour in February 1947 that began in Australia. 

“Oh, they did a hoorah there. They had a big paper that says, ‘The fleet’s in. Ladies, make the most of it,’” Ted recalled. 

The food in Australia was a marked improvement from the Navy diet of potatoes, beans and Spam. Ted and his crewmates also found weevils wriggling around in the bread they were served on multiple occasions.

“We used to hold it up at the light and pick them out, but pretty soon, we didn’t give a crap. Protein,” he joked. “A little cream or butter or something on them, and they went down just fine.”

Navy life was anything but glamorous. That was best exemplified by the hazing seasoned soldiers put rookies through the first time they crossed the International Date Line. 

Ted was forced to crawl through a garbage chute. Then, the onboard dentist “sprayed a bunch of crap in (his) mouth,” and his crewmates dunked him in a tub of water suspended on the side of the ship. 

There were elements of Navy life that were more breathtaking: watching flying fish gliding alongside the bulkhead using their batlike wings, and ginormous jellyfish dancing in a bay in China.

Ted’s service also took him to the Philippines and Japan before he left the Navy in January 1948.

Afterwards, he moved back to Hoytsville and quickly fell in love with his first wife, Pauline Brown, who later died following health complications related to a respiratory disease in 1983. 

Ted irrigated land for Pauline’s father, who was a Holstein cow breeder, and met her when they were both actors in a community play held by their Latter-day Saints ward. 

That thespian spirit never quite left Ted. He also acted in live performances as a Salt Lake Temple ordinance worker for 16 years. He knew almost all the parts of the performance — “even Satan” — which has since been replaced by a video.

Ted calls himself a jack of all trades, with a career and hobbies that have taken him on all sorts of adventures in Summit County. He lived in Hoytsville and Kamas most of his life until moving into Spring Gardens Senior Living in Heber City in January, where he lives with his second wife, JoAnn.

He worked for Mountain Fuel, the predecessor of Enbridge Gas, and was the head custodian at the Summit County Courthouse, roles he held for about a decade each.

He was also a small-time bobcat trapper and taxidermist. He even de-scented two skunks for his children to keep as pets. 

Fly fishing is his passion, and he even wrote a few articles with fishing advice for The Park Record.

He’s always been an artist, as evidenced by the doodles on postcards he sent his mother while he was in the Navy. He also got into photography in recent years and crafts his own frames from barn wood.

He was a milkman for 17 years and stumbled in the role of first responder several times while walking his route. For example, when a car went off the side of a hill, killing two parents and leaving their two children injured, he was the first on the scene, performing first aid.

Another time, a muscular man fell out of the top story of a bar, splatting on the ground. His friends remarked that he wasn’t much of a bouncer. That’s right, Ted is also an amateur comedian if he can find an audience that will endure his jokes.

His advice to younger people is simple: “Don’t have calluses on your ass. Get up and do something.”

Kendall’s suspicion is that his father has made it to 99 because he’s always been physically and mentally busy.

Ted’s daughter, DeAnn Witt, said her father would always do three miles of his milk route at the crack of dawn before coming home for breakfast. 

His mantra was, “You don’t get breakfast until you’ve earned it.”

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The Grand Hyatt Deer Valley opened on Wednesday, marking the end of more than 20 years of planning, negotiations and finally building the Morale, Welfare and Recreation hotel. 

In a collaborative effort among the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA), the Air Force and the Grand Hyatt, the hotel offers 381 rooms, with 100 rooms available at subsidized rates for eligible military use. 

“The driving force behind this whole project were these 100 rooms,” said Kristin Kenney Williams, public relations manager for MIDA. “MWR facilities have been forever increasingly so important to the behavioral health of our active service members and of our retired service members.” 

The first military guest to stay at the new hotel was Staff Sgt. Jensen Martinez and his wife, Staff Sgt. Micailey Martinez, with their 7-month-old daughter, Kaia. Jensen was deployed in Saudi Arabia for six months, arriving home in March. They stayed Wednesday through Friday before returning to their home in Spanish Fork.

Grand Hyatt Deer Valley General Manager Anthony Dugger said, “The Grand Hyatt’s purpose is to care for people so they can be their best. And it really does drive every decision that we make and that we get to take care of you guys, particularly pre- and post-deployment.”

With amenities geared toward family connection, activity and relaxation, Dugger expressed pride in the capabilities of the new hotel to give military personnel time to rewind and reconnect with family. 

The Martinez family was excited by the opportunity to explore this new space for the beauty and connection it offered.

“Just coming up the highway and seeing it up on the mountain, the big, beautiful space here, it was amazing,” said Jensen.

Jensen said he understands the need for a space like this in the time before and after deployment.

“It’s a huge life adjustment of preparing to go, of knowing that you’re going to be out in a place that you’ll you’ve never been before, and then coming back, returning to those life structures and get back into ‘real life’,” he said. “Being able to come here with your family and just kind of settle down and take a relaxer for a little bit.” 

Of the many spaces available at the Grand Hyatt, the Martinezs said they were especially excited about Camp Hyatt, the kids lounge, where there’s room for their young daughter, Kaia, to play and spend time with other kids. 

The Northstar Lounge is also available to military guests with a private concierge, offering a space for the guests to connect and get to know each other in the space. Jensen offered his challenge coin from his latest mission to be held in the lounge room, soon to be kept beside others who stay in the future. 

A challenge coin is a unique coin symbolic of achievement and service to the country. Jensen said he has earned upwards of 20 in his career. 

“It’s always cool to share stories with others, like seeing those challenge coins. There is significance behind it, and being able to explain the challenge behind it, and tell your story to others, it’s great,” said Jensen. “I remember my first sergeant, she always carried one in her arm pocket. And so ever since she told me that I do that quite often as well.” 

Both Jensen and Micailey Martinez have received challenge coins in the past year. Micailey was granted one in 2023 for work she did as commander support staff, and Jensen for the significance of his work as an HVAC technician in Saudi Arabia. 

“It was my first deployment, I was gone while Micailey was pregnant, and there was a great challenge that came with that. We did a lot of cool missions. It’s just a nice little reminder,” said Jensen. 

The Grand Hyatt is slopeside to the new Deer Valley East Village expanded terrain and offers shuttle services to other mountains in the area.

“MIDA facilitates public-private partnerships in meeting their goals of boosting the economy and supporting the military, and this is the first MWR facility integrated with a national brand,” said Williams. “So many eyes are on this project. The idea of replicating this model of a public-private partnership is really enticing.”

The dream of a new MWR facility in the area has been long lived since the removal of the Hill Haus in the late 1990s. In preparation for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, a seven-room MWR hotel near Snowbasin Resort called Hill Haus was removed to make space for Olympic venue events. 

In 2001, Congress granted a parcel of land to rebuild a space in Park City to the Air Force, who partnered with MIDA to aid in forming the public-private partnership that led to the Grand Hyatt as it stands today. 

20 years in the making, the hotel stands for more than the expansion of market-rate ski lodging, according to Kristin Williams. 

“We’ve jumped from seven rooms to 100 [military subsidized] rooms because the demand is there. Even before the seven rooms were taken down at Hill Haus, Air Force Base had identified this need,” said Williams. 

The Martinez family echoed this need and expressed how significant the opportunities that MWR facilities provide to their family have been. It is more than a vacation, it is a point of connection and decompression that is deeply necessary to the wellbeing of military personnel, they said.

“It allows you to meet other people you would never normally meet. So particularly coming here, especially with our little one, we would never have the opportunity [economically] to come up here. So being able to be at these types of events with our daughter, especially, it’s a really good experience,” said Jensen. 

Protections are in place to prevent the removal of the MIDA rooms and the Grand Hyatt in the future.

“Within negotiations with Congress and the Air Force, there are multi-year negotiated agreements to protect these rooms,” said Williams. 

The Grand Hyatt offers military-exclusive discounted rates for these 100 reserved rooms, eligible to active-duty service members, National Guard, Department of Defense employees, and retirees with 20 years of service or more. Based on rank, these rooms are rated at $109/night, $171/night, and $209/night, including significant resort fee discounts. There are no blackout dates to military discounts, though the rates are increased during peak occupancy periods including Dec. 21-Jan. 5, Jan. 17- Feb. 3, and Feb. 14- 18. 

A non-MWR rated room can cost between $250 and $300 a night during non-peak periods, and in peak occupancy can go for upwards of $900 a night. 

Rates for MWR rooms are based on other facilities across the country and internationally and are not determined by the Grand Hyatt. These MWR room rates are comparable to other government facilities, including Shades of Green in Orlando, Florida, or the Dragon Hill Lodge in Seoul, South Korea. 

Just an hour’s drive from their home, the Martinez family is excited to plan their next stay.

“We will definitely be coming back here, especially for our anniversaries or birthdays. Yeah, we’ll make up any excuse,” joked Jensen.

The post The Grand Hyatt Deer Valley welcomes first military guest appeared first on Park Record.

Grand Hyatt Deer Valley — the large building that looms over U.S. Route 189 across from Jordanelle State Park — is on track to open its doors to guests in November.

Extell Executive Vice President Kurt Krieg spoke about the project — and where his company will next spend its time within Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority — during Thursday morning board meeting.

“Everything at the end is always a push, but we’re working through with Wasatch County MIDA staff — so the building department, the fire department and the (Jordanelle Special Service District) — and are very appreciative of those efforts,” he said. “We have sold 100% of the project. So the 55 private residences are all contracted and will start to close in October.”

Further, he said, Extell has scheduled punch walks for September, and the first three stories of the hotel have been turned over to an operator.

“Most importantly,” Krieg said. “The military concierge and lounge is on track to being completed in October, which is a big initiative.”

The large development is the result of collaboration between Wasatch County, MIDA and private developers.

MIDA — a governmental body made up of appointed officials — exists in Utah to fulfill projects with military incentives and promote economic development. It’s been around since 2007, when it was first formed to help develop the Falcon Hill National Aerospace Research Park at Hill Airforce Base after state officials wanted to cement the military location’s importance in the eyes of the federal government.

Over a decade later, the group made an agreement with Wasatch County to declare undeveloped land near the Jordanelle a military recreation facility, a place where service members can take their families to enjoy activities at reduced prices.

Sticking with that part of their mission, 100 of Deer Valley Grand Hyatt’s 387 rooms will be available to active military service members and veterans who served for at least 20 years before their retirement. 

One tool that MIDA uses to fund its development projects is tax increment financing from partnering governments. In the case of its project area near Jordanelle, MIDA has partnered with Wasatch County, Wasatch County School District and smaller taxing entities in the area.

Those entities’ tax revenue within the project area is paused; any increase is split between them and MIDA, with MIDA receiving 75% in most cases. The agreements last for 40 years.

With Grand Hyatt Deer Valley quickly approaching its opening, Krieg said the company’s construction crews are starting to look toward other hotels slated to go up in the area.

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Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority this week approved a much leaner $81 million budget than the current one, but found enough in this year’s spending plan to cover the purchase of housing for local workers at Deer Valley’s East Village.

MIDA will purchase Building D of the Pioche Village development and use those 42 units for workforce housing.

The prospect of purchasing the units first materialized after Extell Development staff decided to change the Pioche Valley from apartments to condominiums late last year, according to Richard Catten, MIDA’s legal counsel.

He said Extell was extremely cooperative and understanding of the housing issues people in the area face, and they agreed to the deal that Catten said worked well for MIDA.

“The cost is $15 million,” he said. “We’re going to put $5 million down.”

Then, for the next 10 years, MIDA can pay $1 million annually at 5% interest.

Per terms of the agreement, a deed restriction on the property prevents MIDA from using the property for nightly rentals or purposes other than moderate-income housing for no at least five years but not more than 10. That restriction would fall once MIDA paid off its remaining debt to Extell after at least five years.

Extell has also worked with Hyatt to take 14 of the units for less than two years under a market-rate lease.

“That helps both parties,” Catten said. 

He explained it would be beneficial to Hyatt, as they’ll be able to bring in workers to help their hotel get up and running, and he said the agreement will help MIDA by giving them a base income to help them make their payments to Extell.

As well as helping MIDA secure the Pioche housing units, MIDA Chief Financial Officer Paula Eldredge said this year’s approved spending plan funds will help the authority finish other projects at the Falcon Hill Aerospace Research Park at Hill Air Force Base.

The authority’s board unanimously approved an $80,699,279 general fund budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year, way down from the current budget of over $126 million.

But growth and development in MIDA project areas continue to raise the tax base of other taxing entities with incremental tax financing deals MIDA made to get them built. When the deals expire in a few decades, those entities — including Wasatch County and the Wasatch County School District — will receive a boost in tax funds they likely would not have seen without MIDA’s involvement and development in their jurisdiction, Eldredge said.

Next fiscal year, Eldredge said the authority looks forward to projected funds from the East Village’s Grand Hyatt Deer Valley Hotel, $6 million in federal grants for infrastructure improvements, and higher revenue as more developments continue in the project area.

Looking five years into the future, Eldredge showed the board how municipalities’ tax bases are expected to grow in MIDA’s Wasatch County project area, which will mean the amount of taxes the entities receive will also grow, as the increment financing model allows them to retain a portion of the revenue even as the majority goes to MIDA. In 2029, Wasatch County is expected to receive over $2 million. In comparison, it’s expected to get $309,000 for the 2024 fiscal year. The school district is projected to get over $3 million, whereas its 2024 projection was listed as $292,000.

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Wasatch County Manager Dustin Grabau will join the Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority’s development review committee over the Mayflower Project area, which includes the new Deer Valley East Village ski portal and resort as well as several other developments around the Jordanelle Reservoir.

The MIDA board voted him in unanimously Tuesday morning.

“As chair of that committee, we’re so excited to have him on board. He has been participating in those meetings for quite some time now, and, as you’re aware, is very knowledgeable about the things happening in the MRF project area,” said Nicole Cottle, the committee’s chair and MIDA’s chief legal and administrative officer.

Grabau is not the first county leader to be given an official position working with MIDA and coordinating the association’s efforts with the county. In July 2021, former Wasatch County Manager Mike Davis left his position to become the county’s MIDA coordinator. He retired in January, and county employee Richard Brietenbeker has filled the open position he left.

Steve Farrell, a current county councilor whose term ends at the end of this year, has sat on the board since 2020.

MIDA itself has largely been involved with the county since 2018, when the land use authority made a deal with county leaders to create a Morale, Welfare and Recreation hotel for military members and help the county develop the mountain and the area next to The Jordanelle and grow its tax base.

The agreement — which is based on tax increment growth — takes a certain percentage of tax revenue from taxing entities within the lakeside project area, though each taxing entity receives the amount that they did from the project area prior to MIDA’s involvement and then some. The idea is that after the county’s 40-year agreement ends and all of the area’s tax revenue goes to the more traditional taxing entities, the area’s increased tax base that could have largely remained the same without MIDA’s interference will have grown exponentially, making the county’s agreement with the authority worth the investment.

Already, Grabau said the agreement is working in favor of the county and its taxpayers.

“As of the end of 2023, the county collected more in revenues from the MIDA Project area than we incurred at direct costs,” he told The Park Record last month. “Since that time, the revenues have picked up.”

As more properties come online and as recreation opportunities within the project area begin to open and see patronage, he expects the county to see more revenue, and he hopes to secure the benefits of the project for the county.

“I’m just looking forward to being more involved in this aspect of the project,” Grabau said about his new position on the development review committee. “I will be more aware of the status of developments in what happens over there.”

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It’s been about six years since Wasatch County agreed with Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority to put a large portion of its tax increment increases from the Mayflower project area into that same area’s development, and it’s becoming a profitable endeavor.

“As of the end of 2023, the county collected more in revenues from the MIDA project than we incurred in direct costs,” Wasatch County Manager Dustin Grabau explained. “Since that time, the revenues have picked up, particularly from the municipal energy taxes. These are franchise fees on power purchases in the project area, and they’ve multiplied.”

A large factor that led to the increase, he explained, is the Pioche Village apartment complex that is now online.

According to Grabau, the municipal energy taxes are not something the county would normally be able to implement without its partnership with MIDA.

“We collected somewhere in the range of $100,000 last year,” he said about the revenue from energy taxes. “I think it’ll easily be four or five times that this year.”

Looking forward to the remainder of the project, Grabau said revenue from the project area to the county will only increase as other properties are developed.

“More and more revenues are going to be generated in the project area,” he said.

While the county’s longstanding agreement dictates that a lot of the revenue will go back into the project area to continue development within the military recreation facility area, this will also mean more revenue for the county, and particularly in the long term after its 40-year agreement with MIDA expires.

Grabau also said the portion of tax increment increase that goes to the county will increase significantly from last year due to the number of developments being constructed within the project area.

The Grand Hyatt — a hotel within the project area that will have 100 rooms reserved for and offered to military members at discounted prices — is expected to be completed by the 2024-2025 ski season. Other hotels being constructed will also receive property valuations based on their progress.  

“We’re talking about billions of dollars in investment,” Grabau said. “The base values were very low prior to this. There was no growth. There were no properties up there. So you’re talking about really significant increments, so even though the county and other entities might only be collecting a portion of the property taxes, the portion of those is really large because the values are so high for such high-scale, large-scale development.”

Grabau said the county has also worked to make sure the heightening taxes coming from the MIDA project area can benefit all county taxpayers, even as the county only receives a portion of its property taxes from the area.

“We passed the transit sales tax, and the anticipation is that, as this area generates sales, that the significant contributions they make to those transit sales taxes will help subsidize the countywide transit service,” he said. “This is also true of the EMS sales tax, the TAP tax that we passed. All of those things were done with an understanding that this significant economic activity is going to generate such high levels of revenue that the whole county-wide is going to benefit from it.”

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A bill broadening the taxation powers and other abilities of the Utah Military Installation and Development Bill now only needs Gov. Cox’s signature before it becomes state law.

Senate Bill 169 — sponsored by Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton and Rep. Orem Rep. Val Peterson, R-Orem — passed in the state Senate on Feb. 26 before being sent to the House Business and Labor Committee, where it received a unanimous vote for a favorable recommendation. See https://le.utah.gov/~2024/bills/static/SB0169.html

Along with allowing MIDA’s board to impose an accommodations tax of up to 15% for certain accommodations and services sold within MIDA areas — a tax that doesn’t come with an expiration date — the bill also allows MIDA to make agreements with school districts to let them keep some of their tax-revenue increases that would otherwise go to MIDA.

The bill also exempts MIDA from needing to post physical notices of meetings.

According to MIDA chief legal officer Nicole Cottle, MIDA will still give online notices but some project areas are not in convenient places for the land-use authority to physically post notices.

Senators and representatives who opposed the bill expressed worries about its allowance for MIDA to bypass physical notice requirements and the increased power it gives the land-use authority.

Sen. Heidi Balderree, R-Salt Lake, said it was the lines exempting the physical notices of meetings that lost her votes.

Other representatives worried the bill would empower land-use authorities further, something they see as an overstep from state government.

“MIDA already lacks transparency in many ways, and is emblematic with many of the state land authorities exceeding what they were originally intended,” Brett Garner, D-West Valley City, told The Park Record. “I don’t believe this is a proper role of the state government in the end.”

Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Salt Lake, expressed worry as to whether groups like MIDA are entirely focused on the public interest. 

“I’m concerned with the continued expansion of authorities generally in Utah and the potential for these groups to make significant decisions and spend significant money without proper oversight or accountability,” he said. “It remains an open question whether these bodies are constitutional or not, because they stretch the bounds of separation of powers. There is too great an opportunity for malfeasance or undue influence, and I always think carefully about my votes on entities that have the potential to misuse funds or contribute to personal gain at public expense.”

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A bill granting Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority more taxation powers and land jurisdiction passed the state Senate on Monday in a 19-4 vote. Six senators were marked absent.

If the bill, which is sponsored by state Sen. Jerry Stevenson of Layton, is passed by the House and voted into law by Gov. Cox, it will allow MIDA more taxation powers within their project areas. It will also require county auditors to include information regarding annual payments to the authority on affected property valuation notices and will allow MIDA to make agreements with school districts so MIDA can pay them “a certain portion of the authority’s property tax allocation.”

The bill would also grant a process to allow authority control of Utah Department of Transportation owned land “created to provide military recreation facilities and support” within a project area so long as it is not a class A state road and is within two miles of a state park.

This could be applied to many roads near MIDA’s Deer Valley East Village project area formed on the outskirts of the Jordanelle State Park.

And though state code dictates UDOT may sell property, the bill text specifies that if it sells land to MIDA, it “shall transfer the proceeds of the sale to the authority.” 

The bill also allows MIDA’s board to impose an accommodations tax of up to “15% of the amounts paid to or charged by the provider for accommodations and services,” for any transactions where a long-term benefit other than something “commonly provided” is being sold to members of the military within the project area.

The bill includes a line to ensure this tax burden falls to the consumer as “a provider may recover an amount equal to the MIDA accommodations tax from customers, if the provider includes the amount as a separate billing line item.”

When Stevenson was asked how long this imposed tax would last within project areas during a Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee meeting by Chair Daniel McCay, he answered that it would be indefinite or until MIDA’s board decided to remove it.

MIDA Chief Legal Officer Nicole Cottle said the taxes would “provide a small layer of additional tool” to help MIDA with “infastructure-heavy” projects.

While McCay recognized this would allow MIDA’s leadership to impose taxes on communities that don’t get a vote to determine MIDA’s leadership, that didn’t stop the bill from moving to the Senate with a unanimous favorable recommendation.

In the House, the bill is being sponsored by Orem Rep. Val Peterson. 

The post Bill increasing MIDA’s taxation and land use power passes in Utah Senate appeared first on Park Record.

A bill that would allow Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority the ability to impose resort communities sales tax has made little progress in advancing through the state Legislature since it received a favorable recommendation from the Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee on Feb. 7.

Senate Bill 169, sponsored by state Sen. Jerry Stevenson of Layton, would allow MIDA to impose taxes that would apply within project areas even after MIDA’s agreements with local taxing entities have expired.

The bill, MIDA Chief Legal Officer Nicole Cottle assured the committee on Feb. 7, wouldn’t necessarily create the possible taxes, but would allow them to be imposed by MIDA’s board for “infrastructure-heavy” projects. She said the taxes would “provide a small layer of additional tool.”

According to the bill, these taxes could apply to any purchases for accommodations or services in a project area, whether the property is government-owned or privately owned, in which “a provider is providing a significant long-term benefit, including lodging but not including a benefit that is commonly provided, to members of the military at the property.”

This tax could be up to “15% of the amounts paid to or charged by the provider for accommodations and services” and could land squarely on the shoulders of consumers since the bill also allows providers to “recover an amount equal to the MIDA accommodations tax from customers, if the provider includes the amount as a separate billing item.” 

When Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee Chair Daniel McCay asked Stevenson how long the MIDA accommodations tax would last, Stevenson specified that they wouldn’t come with expiration dates, but would either last indefinitely or would need to be removed by the same MIDA board.

“I worry about sales tax rates around the state,” McCay said. “Having the ability to add a tax on and then use it locally is good because MIDA is treated like a local government as much as anything else.”

Still, he recognized, this would allow MIDA’s appointed board to impose taxes on communities that don’t vote to determine its membership.

While the bill still passed unanimously for its favorable recommendation, it remains without a floor sponsor or Senate approval.

A motion to circle the bill and thus postpone any action passed on Feb. 12.

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