Lehi City News
Changes proposed to Lehi PARC Tax grant application process
Nichole Coombs | Lehi Free Press
The Lehi City Council is working on streamlining the PARC Tax grant application program. During its work session on August 10, Matt Lee with the Lehi City administration department presented several possible updates to the PARC tax policy based on feedback his department received during last year’s process.
Currently, Lehi City Council splits PARC tax revenues between city parks and recreational facilities and the PARC Community Grant Program, which aids arts and nonprofit organizations that benefit the community. Previous councils set the revenue split at 70 percent to parks and 30 percent to the grant program, but that’s not necessarily a hard line.
“It could be beneficial for us to have some flexibility there,” said council member Heather Newall. “We can stay within the 70/30, but maybe there are years where we should put a little more towards parks.”
Lee agreed, saying that this is a policy and the current council can make that decision without amending it, distributing the money how they see fit. The money is collected in a single account, and a paper trail tracks the allocations.
“Another possible option is to articulate that it’s ‘up to 30 percent’,” said council member James Harrison. “Some years we may use all 30 percent, but there may be a park capital project or something that we really want to focus on, and maybe one year we would only use 20 percent [for grants].”
In past years, the grant money has been completely used. Sometimes grants are awarded, but the nonprofit can’t fulfill its portion of the application, so the grant money sits unused. Harrison said he doesn’t want to see money sit idle in the account and would like to allocate it to other projects.
“My perspective is there’s a big appetite for parks and rec in Lehi,” said council member Rachel Freeman. “I would also support the [wording] up to 30 percent just because of the demands that we have from our population.”
Council member Emily Lockhart addressed concerns that some nonprofits rely on the PARC tax as their sole source of funding. She asked that the policy be changed to say the PARC tax shouldn’t be a nonprofit’s primary source of income but rather a supplementary form of funding.
However, council member Michelle Stallings disagreed.
“Referring to state law, it says the intent is to provide predictable and substantial funding for these organizations,” said Stallings.
Another change discussed was whether the city needed a PARC tax grant committee. The current committee includes several city employees and community volunteers. The committee receives grant requests, narrows the applicant pool based on a rubric (predetermined criteria), and then those applicants present them to the committee. Once the presentations are completed, the PARC committee presents its recommendations to the city council for approval. The council can choose to support the committee’s recommendations or not.
“It was a bit redundant,” said council member Freeman. “I can see the benefit of streamlining it and having it [the presentations] in a work session with the council. This is how we do some of our other funding.”
Council member Lockhart was hesitant to move away from the committee model.
“This is an opt-in tax that the residents opted into. I think it’s really, really important to have a committee of residents who give input on how it’s spent. If we want to continue, we need to make sure that there is resident engagement throughout the whole process.”
Last year, the council listened to the PARC tax grant committee’s recommendations, but most were altered to shift programs funded through the city’s general fund to the PARC tax budget. This shuffle required the council to use all PARC tax grant funding for nonprofit programs and dip into a reserve fund of PARC tax money. Moving funding out of the general fund helped balance the city budget and contributed to no tax increase for Lehi residents this year.
“I know I’m not going to be the smartest person in the room and I like to hear what others think,” said council member Newall. “I would like to keep the input from a committee still but also understand that ultimately it’s our responsibility [to make final decisions].”
Council member Harrison asked if having the committee adds additional work for city employees. Lee responded that it’s not a huge lift for employees, but that it is for committee members.
“They [the volunteer committee] meet with all of the applicants, and they do the presentations,” said Lee. “They discuss and deliberate and do all of that stuff. If that’s not useful to the council, I can see how they would feel like their [the committee’s] time was wasted. So really, if the committee isn’t doing a service to this council, I would probably say not to do it. But if you find value in it, keep it.”
The council also discussed clarifying the policy language to clarify which nonprofits can apply for PARC grant funding. Last year, there were questions about whether a nonprofit had to physically be located in Lehi City to receive a grant.
Lee will now take the council’s feedback and rework the PARC tax policy. The updated policy will be presented to the council in a September meeting. Applications for the 2027 PARC tax grant program open in November.
