Bluffdale's redevelopment money bought roads and housing. The rest of the ledger is not public

Bluffdale's case for tax increment financing is concrete, and most of it holds. The city runs three areas — Eastern Bluffdale, created in 1999, Gateway, in 2000, and Jordan Narrows, in 2001 — each allocating twenty per cent of what it collects to housing, up to ten per cent to administration and the rest to infrastructure and incentives 1. FY2025 spending was roads: $1,751,162 for the Freedom Point Way extension, $801,376 for 14730 South, $273,700 for the Heritage Crest collector and $247,126 for Rising Star Way 2. The agency budgeted $20,000,000 of increment toward the state-funded 14600 South railroad crossing in FY2026 210. The city's own test is what happens at the end: its 2015 report says that when a project area returns to the taxing entities' rolls, "the taxing entities will recognize the benefit of the increased taxable value of all property within the Project Area" 1. Eastern Bluffdale has reached that point — the budget records its collection ending and its property tax line at zero for FY2027 2. The businesses came too: 133 new licenses in 2024, 742 businesses in the city, 364,076 square feet of commercial building 6. In September 2024 it joined the South Valley Chamber, Mayor Natalie Hall citing support for existing businesses 9.

By the county's arithmetic the toll is small. The Salt Lake County auditor puts $1,272,738,370 of assessed value inside Bluffdale's two areas against a base of $17,190,237, generating $10,841,815 of full increment. The amount allocated to the agency after prior-year adjustments was $2,410,921: $1,581,764 in Eastern Bluffdale, $829,157 in Gateway 3.

What the report does not do is reconcile its columns: for Eastern Bluffdale it lists $722,506 requested in the agency's state filing, $10,012,658 available and $1,581,764 paid 3. Neither explains the gap, and we could find no annual report to the taxing entity committee later than the one dated November 2015 12.

The city also sits on both sides. The redevelopment agency board is the city council, meeting in combined session 5, and the agencies pay the general fund an administrative charge on their tax revenue 2: $741,249 in FY2025, 5.1 per cent of the year's $14,551,649 of general fund revenue, falling to $77,500 in FY2027 because Eastern Bluffdale's collection ended 2. The allowance is in the project area budgets 1. Having the same officials approve the payment and the receipt is what should be documented.

The collection periods have moved three times, by the same board. In 2014 the agency found it had "mistakenly not been paid approximately $1.5 million in tax increment" it was entitled to, and rather than asking the taxing entities to return the money it took a one-year extension of collection 1. On 8 December 2021 the board extended all three periods by two years under the COVID-19 emergency statute, moving Eastern Bluffdale's end "from 2023 to 2025" 4. The statute lets the agency make that finding alone; each decision is defensible. Together they mean the clock on a tax diversion is set by the body that receives it.

What the last seventy per cent buys is not public. Gateway's FY2027 budget is $1,115,000 in and out: $806,500 to "infrastructure and incentives", $210,000 to housing, $21,000 to Redwood Road mitigation, $77,500 to administration 2. The $806,500 carries no project name. Eastern Bluffdale spent nothing on housing in FY2025, when $3,112,336 went out almost entirely on roads; the housing share now appears as $4,600,000 in FY2027, from $4,300,000 of reappropriated balance 2. A staff summary given the council in January 2023 projected that agency holding $19,326,196.59 uncommitted at 30 June 2025, $5,000,000 of it set aside for "Major Project Incentives" 5. The strategic plan in the same packet set a measurement: adopt "a RDA policy resolution" establishing "priorities and evaluative criteria for RDA participation in projects and incentives" by 1 October 2023 5.

Our judgement is about decisions, not intentions. The Bluffdale City Council, sitting as the redevelopment agency board, extended three collection periods in 2021, adopted a FY2027 budget whose largest Gateway line is an unnamed $806,500, and is ending a program begun in 1999 with no annual accounting since 2015 124. It works for the city and cannot be checked from outside. The Jordan School District paid $17,277,695 of increment across 18 project areas last year, 89 per cent of the growth there against 80 per cent statewide 8. From any Bluffdale document it cannot tell what its share of $2,410,921 bought.

Four things would change our mind. Publish the three project area budgets, the current participation agreements and an annual report each year; S.B. 206 requires the first three to be filed with the state program manager by 1 January 2027, with progress summaries each January from 2028 7. Name each incentive payment and the improvement it bought. Report the housing set-aside as spent rather than carried. Publish the increment by taxing entity, so a school board can see what it forgoes.

This page has argued the redevelopment records of Riverton and South Jordan; it has published nothing on Bluffdale's until now, and leans on the city's own figures rather than voices. Bluffdale is not concealing a scandal. It is running a fund of roughly $19 million without published criteria, and 62 days remain before the state requires some.