Salt Lake County appears poised to take another financial hit when it comes to the issue of double taxation, and this time the cities have their collective eyes pinned on investigative services.
Mayors, city managers, the Salt Lake County commissioners and Sheriff Aaron Kennard have been at the negotiation table trying to reach an agreement that is palatable to everyone.
It's not been an easy process, but most agree it has been cordial, despite the loss of millions the county stands to suffer.
At issue is what cities pay into the county tax coffers for the $22 million investigative services budget of the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office.
The cities that have their own police departments want that amount reduced because they say their own detectives investigate their own crimes.
In West Valley, Police Chief Alan Kerstein oversees a department that has its own force of detectives that probe the myriad crimes out there — from simple thefts to burglaries and robberies to homicides.
The county, he says, does not investigate crimes that happen in West Valley City.
"I don't get any detective assistance from the county. It's not appropriate for residents here to be paying millions a year and to get nothing for that money."
The figure up for grabs at this point is $9.2 million of that investigative services budget that the cities say they have been overpaying for years.
West Valley's assistant city manager, Wayne Pyle, said he suspects the figure could be more because of the difficulty in tracing hard dollars back to actual services.
It is, however, a number many think is credible, said Salt Lake City's chief administrative officer, Rocky Fluhart.
"We're hopeful that it will come to a successful conclusion we can bring to the Legislature and get them to clarify for us," Fluhart said. "If we could effectuate the $9.2 million change, we would be supportive."
The kind of restructuring in the discussion stages now is identical to the paramedic issue tackled earlier this year in a bill passed in the 2000 legislative session.
Ushered through by Sen. Al Mansell, R-Sandy, the law essentially shifted the taxing authority from the county to the cities that had their own paramedic services.
The change meant the county lowered its tax rate and gave up the money, while the cities were able to increase their tax rate a corresponding amount so the dollars ended up strictly in their control.
Smaller cities that contracted with the county for the services faced a financial flogging, however, because their rates went up to make up for the shortfall. As it turned out, the larger cities with more residents were essentially subsidizing smaller cities, making their portion of the bill to the county smaller than it should have been.
Salt Lake County Commissioner Brent Overson said the same kind of fallout could hit contract cities with this latest proposal to restructure investigative service dollars.
That could be mitigated, however, by making the change in increments that the counties and the cities could live with, especially since the county operates on a calendar year budget and the cities operate on fiscal years that begin in July.
As the numbers stand now, Pyle figures West Valley will eventually see an additional $800,000 that it could pour into its own police department.
Short-staffed and optimistic of moving out of City Hall's basement some day, Kerstein can think of a lot of uses for the money.
In Sandy, Mayor Tom Dolan said the city stands to gain about $825,000.
Salt Lake City will get around $2 million, Fluhart said.
Many of the cities concede the sheriff's office does provide services residents need to keep paying for, such as search and rescue operations in the mountains and canyon patrols on heavily traveled and accident-prone roads.
E-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com