Salt Lake County sales tax increase would generate $76M for transit and jail beds. 

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• Benjamin Wood
• A Trax Blue Line train rolls through Salt Lake City's Old Greektown area on Wednesday, Feb. 12.

DEPOT DISTRICT—The Utah Transit Authority is poised to get a $38 million shot in the arm after the Salt Lake County Council voted Tuesday to move forward on a sales tax increase.

Council members voted 7-2 on a preliminary motion to increase taxes by 1 cent per $5 of spending. If finalized, the increase would generate $76 million per year, divided between transportation and public safety initiatives according to formulas mandated in state code under the so-called "fifth-fifth" local option.

The proposal—which requires a final Council vote, scheduled for Feb. 18—would generate $19 million each year for the county's jails and allow for an additional 184 beds at the aging Oxbow detention facility. The Council's action follows the narrow rejection by voters in November of a $500 million bond that would have funded significant renovation and reorganization of the county's public safety apparatus.

"Obviously, our public safety bond failed," said County Council member Aimee Winder Newton. "We still have an overcrowding problem and need to figure out what to do next."

Counties, like cities, are limited in their ability to raise revenue through sales taxes, with various caps and formulas mandated by state law. The local option being explored by Salt Lake County was previously restricted to transit and road projects, but in 2024 was altered at the County's request to include a quarter portion for law enforcement.

Summit County and Utah County have previously adopted the "fifth-fifth" local option sales tax. If finalized by Salt Lake County, half of the funds collected would go to the state for transit improvements and one-fourth would go to cities within the county for local transportation projects, with the county retaining one-fourth—or $19 million per year—for its Oxbow bed expansion and other related expenses.

"It was a package deal," Winder Newton said. "And we do know there’s transportation needs in our county as well."

While the largest portion of the new sales tax will be directed at transit, it is not yet known exactly how those funds would be spent. The money would not be made directly available to UTA for operational costs—like driver salaries or the purchase of new vehicles—but instead would be deposited into a fund for capital projects that is distributed through a formal prioritization process.

Winder Newton said the transit funds would likely go toward a long-delayed express bus route on 5600 West. But she emphasized that she could not speak to any specific services that would stem from the County tax increase.

"We're not the decision makers on that," Winder Newton said. "That's going to be decided by other people."

(The 5600 West express bus is intended as a non-driving counterpart to the Mountain View Corridor, and would offer west-side transit connections between SLC Airport and several key Trax hubs and park-and-ride lots. It is similar to a long-planned Davis-SLC connector bus, which was originally pitched as a Davis County Trax line in Utah Department of Transportation documents justifying the environmental impacts of the Legacy Highway. Both routes have gone through several rounds of iteration and delay, with the steady dilution of the projects' intended scope, efficacy and investment over time).

Members of the UTA Board of Trustees were briefed Wednesday on the transit agency's ridership levels and finances, which largely show an upward trajectory after the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. A new five-year plan calls for a significant expansion in the frequency and breadth of services—some of which are set to begin in April—and major capital projects are either underway or about to break ground, including the MVX bus rapid transit service under construction in Murray and Taylorsville, a new Trax station in South Jordan's Daybreak neighborhood that will begin service this year and an imminent extension of the S-Line Streetcar that is being reexamined for the potential of moving beyond Highland Drive and into the Sugar House Center retail cluster.

UTA chairman Carlton Christensen said it's easy for people to become their own worst critics, and for transit stakeholders to focus on the gaps and flaws in the network. But he said he's reminded when he travels or attends conferences with other transit agency administrators how well-positioned UTA is on the Wasatch Front.

"We sometimes overlook the fact that we have, comparatively, a really solid system," Christensen said. "We have a good system that we want to make better."

And the addition of local option revenue from the state's largest county, Christensen said, would help to further improve services.

"Yesterday, Salt Lake County took its first step toward enacting [a] transportation sales tax," Christensen said. "That is likely to move forward next week, which would put us in a much better position."

The UTA Board of Trustees also voted unanimously on Wednesday to support SB195, the annual "omnibus" clean-up bill from the chairmen of the House and Senate Transportation Committees. Among the additions this year is a requirement that cities study and develop plans for the connection of streets and roadways that are dead-ended by canals.

Adam Gardiner, an attorney representing UTA, noted the canal elements in the bill and said those potential areas of street connection could impact the routing of buses or the ability of pedestrians to access transit stops.

"This could affect transit as well," Gardiner said, "especially with students who are trying to walk to bus stops and do they walk on main, arterial roads or do they not."