With the weather turning cold and snowy, I look forward to greeting our ski season residents soon!
As many of you have heard, with Kate Black’s retirement Piper Lever became our new Town Clerk. That appointment opened up the Deputy Town Clerk position. Jen Clancy moved upstairs from her old office to join the Town’s staff. With Jen’s extensive background with Friends of Alta, we are all glad to have her on the team.
For years, I have been hearing about desire for a community center and I have been asked many times about how we could keep more of the tax dollars we spend in our community. Happily, there is a way to connect these widely-shared goals and make progress on them at the same time. We have been working with Salt Lake County on creating a Community Redevelopment Area (CRA) that can help Alta retain Tax Increment Financing (TIF). The CRA is an area within which development leads to higher valuation; and TIF allows us to retain a large portion of the taxes paid by the property owners within the CRA. It is important to note that the creation of a CRA does not increase anyone’s taxes! What it does do is allow Alta to keep a larger share of the taxes the property owner is paying. The officials from Salt Lake County who have been working with the Town of Alta on this project will be making a presentation to the Town Council at our November meeting. I welcome everyone to attend and hear about this creative and exciting opportunity.
Finally, a note on temporary dog licenses. The Town Council recently increased the total number of permanent licenses to accommodate more of our residents. In addition, there is now a limited number of temporary licenses available for me to issue to our residents or visitors. Given that there is likely to be more demand during the ski season for those limited number of licenses, we are working to have a process that is a fair for everyone. We will offer a handful of up-to-30 days tags, and some shorter-term ones as well. We will take requests for temporary licenses no more than 30 days in advance of the requested date of issue. You can let Chris Cawley know if you want to make a request for a temporary license.
