TREMONTON CITY CORPORATION
BUDGET MEETING
APRIL 10, 2026
Members Present:
Kristie Bowcutt
Brent Jex
Beau Lewis
Sharri Oyler—excused
Blair Westergard
Bret Rohde, Mayor
Linsey Nessen, City Manager
Cynthia Nelson, City Recorder – excused
BUDGET WORKSHOP AGENDA
Mayor Rohde called the April 10, 2026 Budget Workshop to order at 10:00 a.m. The meeting was held in the City Council Meeting Room at 102 South Tremont Street, Tremonton, Utah. Those in attendance were Mayor Rohde, Councilmembers Bowcutt, Jex, Lewis, and Westergard, and City Manager Nessen. Councilmember Oyler was excused.
Mayor Rohde said I appreciate the Council for taking the time to discuss our budget and concerns that have been brought up with the public. This discussion will be an open public format, so people are welcome to speak and debate. However, we are going to treat each other with dignity. Councilmember Lewis said we have been elected to help. It is us and the community, against the problem. I love that you are here and involved. We are excited for feedback. We are all in it together and on the same team. Resident Brian Bollingbroke was then asked to present the data and his concerns.
1. Budget Discussion
Mr. Bollingbroke presented the Council with data from the State auditor on the Utah.gov website, saying, transparency is not just about compliance, but about building trust with people. From a citizens’ perspective, that trust comes from having accurate and consistent numbers that are presented in a way that reflects how taxpayer dollars are being used. There may be minor human errors here, but the data itself comes directly from reported sources. This was not done to upset or target anyone, my goal is simply to open the door for productive conversation, not debate. I have been transparent about where the data comes from and encourage everyone to review and validate it in order to come to their own conclusions. This is not my data, but the City’s data as reported to the State. I have organized and present it in a way that makes sense to me. Hopefully it is clear and useful to you. This is simply data drawn from reported sources and is here for us to examine, understand, and discuss. By looking at the facts clearly and openly, we build a better and stronger community. Building trust requires more than just showing the numbers. It requires a willingness and courage to talk about them.
After some discussion on the disclaimer at the bottom of the website where Mr. Bollingbroke’s data was acquired, Councilmember Jex said it is pretty obvious we are in disagreement. You have made claims that are inaccurate and paint the police department in a poor light, and there has to be accountability for that. Mr. Bollingbroke said I just pulled the data and this is what has been reported. Mayor Rohde said we need to bring your data and our data together to validate it and present the facts. Mr. Bollingbroke said if the data is wrong, please forgive me. I am not beholden to the data. Councilmember Lewis said I love truth so let us go get truth. I love your report and have been stewing on impact fees and how we can adjust those. I wanted to ask a bunch of follow-up questions in our meeting on Tuesday, but I wanted to do some research first. Between then and now you posted to Facebook and some words were probably misrepresented about intention. You referred to my comment on Truth and Taxation, but the way you said it was out of context. Mr. Bollingbroke said I agree with Truth and Taxation, but I believe there are other avenues before we go there. Councilmember Lewis said I felt like your post was really a villainization of City Council and the things we are doing here, without validation. I do think the public deserves the reality. You said there is $2.6 million available without any discussion and diving in first and now the public mistrusts the City Council. I do not feel it was an avenue that was benefiting both of us when we are on the same team. Mr. Bollingbroke said I am sorry it came across that way, that was not my intent. That was all the sources that were available to me at that time. Councilmember Jex said you should not look at just one single source. You have multiple avenues available to verify things. My problem is that you did not do that. Also, you took things massively out of context and since you refuse to look at the context, how can I take anything else you present seriously? How can I trust that everything else you put in there is accurate when these significant things were grossly inaccurate? Mr. Bollingbroke said I hope everybody in this room will take a look at that data and see what your conclusion is.
After some more debate back and forth, Mayor Rohde stopped the discussion, saying what Mr. Bollingbroke presented was data and we need to go through and find out what is accurate and what is not. In the future, I would ask that you allow us the chance to do that. Mr. Bollingbroke said that is why I addressed it in the previous Council meeting. I would rather this type of conversation than those on social media or anywhere else. I am not trying to deceive or hide anything. I am only trying to present the data I found. Councilmember Lewis said we scheduled this meeting right after that meeting as a way to say, I think you found some truth so let us dive in together. That is why I was caught off guard to see it posted as fact. Mr. Bollingbroke said I just posted what I found. I presented the same information I did in that Council meeting. Councilmember Bowcutt said the bottom line is we can do better with this budget. We need to stop the bickering and start going to work. We have problems in our budget. I have gone through it since 2019 and we can do better. We have been given the charge to make a change and that is what we need to do. Not everybody is going to agree with everything, but we have to live within that budget and not stretch it to where we are in trouble. Councilmember Jex said that should be based on fact and truth and honest analysis. We cannot legislate based off feeling and emotion. We have to legislate off the actual numbers. In everything we do, we have to look at the context. The extra layer of questions helps creates understanding. My gripe is that the analysis for context in what was brought up was never sought. Mayor Rohde said we have asked citizens to get involved. Mr. Bollingbroke has done that, as have other citizens. They are going to present data that may not be as accurate as we feel it is, but we need to listen and encourage people to present things so we can have discussions and move forward. We can bring things together and come up with good solutions.
Finance Director Curtis Roberts provided some clarifications on auditing and how that works with the City. The State has very specific requirements we have to meet. I agree we need questions, but we need to understand where the current conditions lie. Let us not get so caught up in what one piece of data says. As a professional auditor I do not rely on one piece of data. Data is a tool, and the Council needs to ask clarifying questions. That way we can find additional information and clarifying factors.
Mr. Bollingbroke then presented his data, saying, I am comparing apples to apples from transparentutah.gov. I am not digging into anything else. I am taking eight cities and comparing them to Tremonton. Councilmember Lewis said if there really is $2.6 million dollars, let us go get it. What do we not know? Mr. Bollingbroke said this looks at all nine cities and compares them against each other. Here is what they all have for parks and recreation from highest to lowest charges. If you add all those fees up, we are at $315. The lowest is $305 and the highest is $435. Why not put that fee somewhere in the middle. Let us jump it to $345. Raising a few fees with roughly 2,300 people enrolled in those activities allows you to end up with an extra $14,950. Next look at dog licensing. Tremonton is $10 and the highest is $20. There are other fees for dogs intact and an impound fee. Let us raise all these fees to be closer to the average and that will bring in approximately $9,600. There is also an area for specialty licenses. This is food trucks, special events (small and large), alcohol off-premises and fire recheck. Adjusting all of these to a middle range would bring in approximately $4,336. Next is general business licenses. There are certain areas we currently charge nothing on, including apartments and storage. With all those things considered you could get about $225,000 annually. Next, is the court. Currently, Tremonton subsidizes the court 92.6%. That means every dollar that goes through the court, we are paying almost 93 cents on. There is a lot of wiggle room there. After much discussion on the court, Director Roberts clarified, our revenues have consistently been around $90,000. We were subsidizing it for about $10,000. We have been subsidizing it anywhere between $10,000 and $50,000. This is something the court would have to address as far as the individual fees and their structure. I just know what we typically have for revenue and expenses and this year we are scheduled to subsidize them by about $30,000.
Mr. Bollingbroke then addressed Tremonton’s monthly utility bills ($18.90 for water, $22.25 for sewer, $13.50 for garbage, $6 for storm drain and $10 for secondary water). He then reviewed the highs and lows of these other eight cities. This would add in a TUF (transportation utility fee) at $9.10, along with an increase to all current utilities. This would raise citizens’ total bill from $75.65 to $102.60. That would affect everybody and is why it is a little tougher, but this would raise approximately $1.4 million. Councilmember Lewis said what I hear you proposing is essentially more taxes to people. Mr. Bollingbroke said these are fee increases. Councilmember Lewis said but it is an increased burden on the same citizens. Yes, it is new revenue, but it is technically off the same backs of the same citizens. Director Roberts said we do need to clarify, and I want this on public record. Every single fee he discussed is not in the General Fund. So that $1.4 million does nothing to help the General Fund. This is all based off of our enterprise funds. I have been on record in the past indicating that all those fees should be evaluated and considered for adjustment. I am 100% on board for these fee adjustments. I think there is validity, but I want to make it very clear this does not satisfy any general funding issues.
Mr. Bollingbroke then reviewed an adjustment to building permits and the factors surrounding that. Basically, you are looking at $175,000 on 100 homes. He then addressed impact fees for water, sewer, roads, storm drain, parks, and public safety. Growth should pay for growth. After all is said and done, I would propose raising the building permits to $15,862, which is just above the middle. We currently charge $7,487, which is the second lowest. Director Roberts said impact fees have a lot of laws associated with them and they are subject to legislative review every single year. There is not a year that goes by where they are not tweaking something. We have some that are a little bit older. The biggest issue that comes up with impact fees is after a project has been identified, how are you going to spend that money. You would collect this money for a project, but it has to be built within six years. Sometimes developers do not even build out their entire subdivision in that timeframe. You would have a project that benefits current residents, as well as existing residents, but the developer’s participation may only be 30% from the impact fee. If it is a $10 million project that would be $3 million you would hope is collected. The City is then required to spend and build that project within six years. The Council would be committing to spend $7 million just on that one project. We have to be careful as we adopt impact fees that we do not commit to build something that would actually cost the City more and put the City in financial jeopardy. Impact fees need to be considered, but we always have to consider what the existing capacity is versus what the new capacity is.
The Council and citizens spent time addressing how to improve Tremonton and make it an attractive destination for businesses to come to, which would create more sales tax. After much discussion, Councilmember Lewis said technically most of what we have talked about today is increasing fees, but we still have the conversation to be had about Truth and Taxation to help the General Fund. I do not want to touch property tax unless we have to. Our costs are rising. Mr. Bollingbroke said I am working on some more reports for that, too. When I get those, I will address the Council again.
Councilmember Lewis said what I have heard today is we need to increase revenue by increasing fees. The way it has been posted online is, they are going to raise property tax so come help me fight to get this down, but what I heard today is let us raise fees to get new revenue. We still need to talk about property tax. However, I think the way the public is seeing it is there is $2.6 million on the table that the Council is not taking advantage of. I just want you to know that is the message you are sending. Councilmember Bowcutt said I think this has been food for thought. I appreciate what has been brought to the table and ways we can look to see if we can make adjustments. Mayor Rohde said you brought together some great ideas on increased revenues. We are also looking at several ways of decreasing expenses. If we can decrease them, that is going to give us more to the bottom line. We are actively looking at a lot of ideas.
2. Adjournment
Motion by Councilmember Jex to adjourn the meeting. Motion seconded by Councilmember Bowcutt. Vote: Councilmember Bowcutt – yes, Councilmember Jex – yes, Councilmember Lewis – yes, Councilmember Oyler – absent, Councilmember Westergard – yes. Motion approved.
The meeting adjourned at 11:45 a.m.
The undersigned duly acting and appointed Recorder for Tremonton City Corporation hereby certifies that the foregoing is a true and correct copy of the minutes for the City Council Meeting held on the above referenced date. Minutes were prepared by Jessica Tanner.
Dated this 19th day of May, 2026.
Cynthia Nelson, City Recorder