Mil Rate or NEEDS

The idea of "we haven't raised the mil rate in years" or "we have a much lower rate than our neighbor" is at best a specious argument for a tax increase.   (At worst, it is intentional deception)
(Gee, our taxes would be CHEAP compared to Park City. even with an 80% increase)

You may have noticed the chart on the front page of the Wave demonstrating how much Wasatch needs/deserves/wants a tax increase.  The chart is basically mil rate expressed as property taxes 

As we should be aware, the question is NOT about mil rates, but about expenditures, the continuing discussion of mil rates simply disguises the truth.   Higher property values result in MORE revenue with lower rates.    Below is another look at the issue:

• It appears that some fire expenses may be contained in County budgets.
• Many cities apparently provide fire protection.
• Most entities do NOT have Special Service District.
• http://propertytax.utah.gov/library/pdf/taxrate_pdfs/budgetratesbyentity2013.pdf'

The first two columns are from the website, property value is computed as calculated as budget/mil rate.   The asterisks indicate the ones which  were used for WCFD propaganda purposes.   A better comparison would consider population, someone else can do that one.

Fire districts	mil rate	Fire budget		Property Value
Park City	0.00095	$10,248,496	*	$10,787,890,526.32
Wasatch	0.000244	$782,364		$3,206,409,836.07
Millard	0.000314	$659,762	*	$2,101,152,866.24
No Davis	0.001444	$1,922,516		$1,331,382,271.47
Weber No. View	0.001131	$1,432,722		$1,266,774,535.81
No Tooele	0.000771	$804,700		$1,043,709,468.22
Moab	0.000489	$415,873	*	$850,456,032.72
Juab	0.000793	$634,460		$800,075,662.04
So Summit	0.000311	$221,575	*	$712,459,807.07
No Summit	0.000589	$268,264	*	$455,456,706.28
Castle valley	0.000427	$37,939		$88,850,117.10