South Jordan capped the retail base it now says it needs

The city's case, in its own terms. The adopted fiscal 2027 budget states the objective plainly: South Jordan "is working to establish a balanced and sustainable economic base that includes property tax revenues, sales tax revenues and good-paying jobs", built on "both regional retail and Class A office park development", to become "the economic hub of the Southwest Valley" 1. The City Manager's message gives the fiscal reason: "Without more commercially based property taxes, the City will continue to find it harder to meet the growth related service demands" 1. The record supports the claim. Sales and use tax revenue reached $25.3 million in fiscal 2025 on $2.56 billion of retail and food sales, and ten principal employers account for 9,619 jobs, Merit Medical with 2,403 among them 1. And the tool has worked where it was used: the Redevelopment Agency's report on its eight retired project areas records taxable value rising from $38,832,056 at base to $704,621,527 at retirement 2.

Then the complication. Sales tax is now the largest line in the general fund — $26,711,975 of $68,969,752 proposed for fiscal 2027, or 39 per cent by its own revenue chart 1; the same budget's revenue chapter calls it "approximately 27%" 1. And on 7 January 2026, at the council's budget meeting, the Director of Planning & Economic Development said that "in Daybreak, past decisions to cap retail and office space may have limited growth and that adjusting such parameters could help expand the tax base", that the changes would take time and "will not provide immediate revenue for the current fiscal year", and that the city should pursue grocery-anchored centres in Rio Tinto instead 4. The minutes record the mayor saying the city "once captured a larger share of sales tax revenue", and calling for a strategic plan to grow the base 4. The base South Jordan says it must grow was restricted by its own land-use decisions, and the increment it pays is partly the cost of lifting a restriction it wrote.

Who bears the cost is in the budget. Area increment revenue runs $10,793,745 in fiscal 2025 actual, $13,025,000 estimated for fiscal 2026 and $15,240,000 in the adopted fiscal 2027 budget, and the budget says the money "will be used to reimburse developer costs for the installation of City infrastructure" 1. Who captures the benefit is published too, and the city deserves credit for it: the same document names its ten principal employers and its twenty-five largest sales and use tax contributors — Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club, Target, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft among them 1. The South Jordan Chamber's own case for shopping local cites a finding that 68 of every $100 spent at a local business stays in the community against 43 at a national chain 5. The city's list describes a base built on the second kind.

What is not published is the ledger that would settle the argument. The retired project areas report — the first document to give base values and terms for areas the county auditor cannot report — records $83,527,660 collected across the eight areas against $49,568,420 of expenses 23. It does not reconcile the $33,959,240 difference, and although it says for completed areas that all increment goes to the taxing entities the year after the final one, it does not say what the Jordan School District, Salt Lake County or the others received 2. It records four areas retiring with land still unbuilt — 21 per cent of Area #5, 11 per cent of Area #3, 8 per cent of Area #8, 29.62 acres in all 2. The term ended on schedule; the build-out did not.

The county's table shows why that matters. Five active areas carry $1,716,016,004 of assessed value on a $69,790,116 base, producing $14,387,114 of available increment against the agency's own estimate of $15,342,798 — $955,684 more than the county computed 3. The auditor still notes that base values of inactive projects "are unavailable or have not been updated" 3.

Our judgement. The City Council adopted a budget that depends on $15,240,000 of area increment, and the Redevelopment Agency board administers the areas that pay it. The council's own minutes record that the commercial base it is buying was capped by design in the city's largest growth area, and that the remedy will not produce revenue this year 14. That is not a scandal; it is a sequence of decisions with a bill attached, paid in increment that would otherwise reach the school district and the county.

Three publications would change our mind. A reconciliation for each retired area: collected, paid, and the balance returned to each taxing entity by year. For each active area, the sales and use tax generated inside it, so that the claim commercial growth pays for itself can be tested rather than asserted. And before the Rio Tinto agreement is signed, its increment terms and the retail and office square footage it permits — because the city has just told itself that capping that square footage in Daybreak was the mistake.

If those numbers show the increment areas returning more to the general fund than the increment costs the other taxing entities, South Jordan will have won this argument with its own arithmetic, and this page will say so. Until then, the benefit is a list of names and the cost is a transfer.