By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
Leading into the 2026 session of the Utah State Legislature, Rep. Christine Watkins unveiled HB162, a bill that, if passed, would allow municipalities within counties of fourth, fifth and sixth classifications to create a .5% ‘law enforcement infrastructure’ sales tax increase to fund the purchase of equipment for municipal law enforcement.
In part encouraged by both Price city mayoral candidates and current mayor Terry Willis, the bill has drawn criticism from local organizations, including the Carbon County Democratic Party, which expressed opposition to the bill and referred to the sales tax that could be approved through the bill as a “regressive tax that burdens lower income individuals the most.”
“This bill is important for Price because the cost of running our public safety just continues to skyrocket.,” said Mayor Willis of the legislation. “We’ve seen it since COVID. The cost to equip a police officer just continues to climb. Somewhere along the line, we need to help find some new revenue. We cut corners everywhere we can. We look at the budget … At some point, we need some additional revenue coming in to help cover some of those costs.”
Police pay and equipment have been a topic of discussion in Price for the past several years, with emotions initially coming to a head in a 2024 city council meeting, when members of the Price City Police Department voiced concerns about their pay.
In 2025, City Attorney Eric Johnson commented on the matter,” For one Department to receive a wage increase, there are only two ways for that to occur. The city has to take the money from other city departments and employees or the city has to take that money in the form of taxes.”
“One thing we heard over and over again in our City Council meetings was to find a way to improve the pay for our police officers and for all of our city employees to make sure that we’re not losing good talent to other agencies,” said Willis. “So I began to look at different ways and began to look at how is the least (sic) impact on our citizens, especially those that have the least money to be able to afford any kind of increase.”
If HB162 passes, it would not take effect immediately. Municipalities wanting to implement the .5% increase would have to do so through an election, giving the citizens a choice in the matter.
“This does not keep the public out of that; it actually puts it in the hands of the public to say this may be a good way to do this,” added Willis.
The Mayor also clarified what this sales tax would and would not include, specifying that groceries would be exempt: “This will not be imposed on the necessities that come from the grocery store, those things that we all need just to survive, but it will be imposed on nonfood items.”
Willis continued,” We looked at the possibility of raising property taxes, but because of county raises, and school district raises, and everything, people are already maxing out pretty hard on that. Putting another raise on that would hit some of our lowest-paying citizens, our seniors, those people on fixed incomes, and people with disabilities. We don’t want to put anybody out of a home. We don’t want to put anybody’s home on the tax records that you know, they can’t afford those taxes … We’re looking at a little bit of a fair way to spread that burden out and make it as small as possible.”
“I don’t like being taxed. I hate it, and I hate being this person who came into office and is looking at this,” expressed Willis. “But at some point, we have to look at new revenues. We have to look at new ways of finding some money to support our community. So I’m taking that hard stand to say we have to, we have to move forward with this.”
For citizens concerned about the potential increase, Willis encouraged them to contact her or any city council member to discuss the issue. “This isn’t a you know, spur-of-the-moment thing. This is something I have been working on as we have begun to see that our law enforcement is feeling like we need to step up our game, and so are our citizens. Our citizens have been asking what are you going to do about this situation?”
“Call me if you have needs, concerns, issues that you want to talk about,” said the Mayor. “That is 435-650-1209, and I’ll do my best to get to the bottom of whatever your issues are.”
Currently, HB162 sits in the House Rules Committee, waiting to be assigned for a hearing.