Eagle Mountain · Fact checks
Things residents are telling each other about the city: the tax increase, the staffing, the petition, all set against the meetings, the notices and the audited figures they can be checked against. Some are true, some are out of date, and the ones the city itself put into circulation get the same treatment as the ones aimed at it.
29 claims checkedLast reviewed Oct 23, 2026
“The council raised your property taxes 220 percent.”
220.88% was noticed in June and never adopted. The rate that survives is 0.000900: 69.81% over the certified rate, on the city's own line, which is about a tenth of a property tax bill.
“Every dollar of the increase goes straight to public safety.”
True in the schedule's own terms: the levy is smaller than the Sheriff's contract, so there is no second dollar to allocate. What it left out is that the money largely replaces sales tax already paying that contract, and frees the sales tax for other things.
“They did this in secret and rushed it through.”
Two different charges are tangled together. On whether it was done in the open the record is unusually complete: eight open meetings from April 14, both August hearings set three months ahead, the schedule read into the record five times. On whether residents found out, the council agrees with the criticism: three of the five said so by name from the dais before voting, and a fourth voice said it in the cross-talk that followed.
“The increase pays for the city's own police department.”
Eagle Mountain employs no police officers and no firefighters. Patrol is bought from the Utah County Sheriff's Office; fire and ambulance come from Unified Fire Authority, which bills residents on a separate line of the same tax notice.
“Sign the petition and the tax goes away.”
Signing doesn't repeal anything. It's the first of three steps: enough valid signatures put the increase to a public vote, and only a majority voting no repeals it. The petition going round now is the second one; the first was aimed at a rate the council has since repealed.
“They're building another data center in Eagle Mountain.”
Yes, and the votes are on file. What is being built is more of what is already here: every data center approval in the record since 2024 is an expansion by Meta or QTS, not a new company arriving.
“It's going to be the largest data center in the country, maybe the world.”
No. A single project already approved in Box Elder County covers 40,000 acres: more ground than the whole of Eagle Mountain, which is 32,256 acres of land. Whatever gets built here, the largest in the country is not going in this city.
“You gave the data centers a $150 million tax break and now you are asking residents to pay.”
The break is real and the council was a party to it, but the $150 million was granted by five taxing entities together and Eagle Mountain City's own line is about six cents of every dollar, roughly $9 million of it. What the claim leaves out cuts both ways: the deals struck since 2018 are worth several times $150 million, and the city's share of the newest one alone is larger than twenty years of the tax increase.
“According to that professor, I think it's Utah State, it's going to rise the heat of the land around it and the water, and that's going to affect wildlife, the environment, and people.”
Data centers do warm the air next to them: the one direct measurement found about 1.5°F on average, up to 4°F, reaching about a third of a mile. The Utah State professor's much larger figures were for a 9-gigawatt project in Box Elder County, not Eagle Mountain, and no one has measured anything here.
“The public safety reason was misleading — the tax increase is really to cover up his misdeeds on the rodeo grounds and build their new kingdom.”
There is a new $1 million rodeo-grounds line in the budget, so the question is a fair one to ask. The increase cannot be what pays for it: at the rate in force the whole city levy falls about $4.6 million short of the city's own public safety budget.
“The developer was supposed to build the rodeo grounds out in Pole Canyon, and the city let them out of it.”
The promise was real, it was in a signed contract, and it had a date on it: about twenty acres of public rodeo grounds, built and dedicated by June 1, 2015. The city did release it: nine weeks after residents stood at the podium and asked the council to enforce it. What the claim leaves out is that the release was a noticed agenda item carried 3–2 with two members voting no, and that the city took something in exchange each time it gave ground.
“QTS gave 5.5 million dollars to help citizens and the mayor decided to use those funds to fix a road.”
There was no $5.5 million gift. Two figures spoken on the same night have been fused: QTS agreed to pay the roughly $5 million cost of widening Pony Express Parkway, and $5,591,594 was the new revenue from the tax rate the council adopted hours later.
“Big Tech should have bonded for that road from the beginning.”
A fair criticism with a real fact behind it, the council did cut what commercial builders pay toward roads. It ends with the data center funding the whole project anyway.
“Jared was in road construction as his business and he has been on planning and council for 8 years.”
Both halves hold up against the record. Neither is an allegation on its own, and nothing in the record attaches one to them.
“Why didn't the city make big tech bond for Pony Express since they were going to ruin it from driving on it?”
Put as a failure that already happened. The company is funding the entire project, and a bond is not the instrument that does this job.
“The Waldens built Pony Express 30 years ago. The city has been collecting impact fees for 30 years for that road.”
The founding half is right in substance. The impact fee half describes something Utah law does not permit: a fee has to be spent or committed within six years, not banked for thirty.
“They make builders and developers bond for roads that they could potentially ruin all the time!”
True, and it describes a different instrument doing a different job from the one the post wants it to do.
“Jared should have used 5.5 to build a new jail. Then we would have a revenue source and be able to ticket for city laws and keep all the money from fines instead of giving it to Utah County.”
Right that fine money is going to the county. Wrong about the building that fixes it (that is a justice court, not a jail), and wrong about the scale, which is thousands of dollars, not millions.
“Brett Wright talked about how broke the city is and how there is NO MONEY.”
Not what the recording has him saying. His argument that night was about choices and about not standing for re-election, not about an empty account.
“Build a revenue source. Like owning your own utilities or owning your own police officers.”
The city already owns its utilities, on a scale six times its general fund. And city-funded policing is exactly what the tax increase pays for: the same policy this post's opening sentence calls a cover story, though the city buys it under contract rather than employing it.
“And Jared has been out asking everyone he can for new RODEO GROUNDS, I heard.”
A new rodeo grounds is a real, funded, adopted city project, and a mayor pursuing one would be doing his job. Whether Jared Gray has personally been asking anyone for a site is a different question, and the record does not answer it.
“I offered to fix the eagle by 73 for free since it was ours and was never called back. The city could have saved money.”
A private offer and an unreturned phone call leave no trace in an open-meeting record, so this site cannot settle it either way. What can be checked is what happened to the monument.
“Your argument should have been excluded from the packet as it was a day late.”
The mayor's argument is stamped received on September 8, the fifteenth day after the referendum application was filed. State law gives the sponsors and the city fifteen days each, so it arrived on the last day allowed, not after it. The argument the city's pamphlet marks late is the sponsors' own.
“The lie that without the tax increases the firemen and police will suddenly lose their budgets they already have in place.”
Right that neither budget vanishes, and the city's own impact statement says so: the Sheriff's contract would still be paid, from sales tax. Fire isn't on the city's levy at all this year. What it leaves out is where the money would come from instead, and that fire is due to move onto the city's books in 2028.
“You have printed out and mailed extremely expensive card stock covered packets to every city resident with our signatures and addresses that were not redacted as other cities have done.”
The city's pamphlet does carry the sponsors' home addresses and signatures, and the liaison's phone number and email, unredacted. State law requires the pamphlet to include the application, and the application to contain those details, but Salt Lake County blacked them out of its own pamphlet in January. This page found no record that Eagle Mountain mailed printed copies to every household.
“These delay tactics to push us into an August election that very few voters will turn out for shows your true colors.”
The August date is real: the petition the city issued names a special election on August 10, 2027. Whether the law allows it is open, and one statute reads against it: a city may call a special election on a tax question only in November. Why the city chose August is not something the record shows.
“When a mayor individually approaches citizens challenging a tax increase through a referendum, and a state senator helps negotiate a compromise with that group, which then withdraws its referendum, the public deserves to know how those negotiations occurred and whose interests were represented.”
The mayor and some councilmembers did meet privately with sponsors of the first referendum before August 18, and one of those sponsors said so at the meeting. But the record shows no rate settled there: it was argued out and voted on in the open meeting. And the first petition wasn't withdrawn as part of a deal. State law voided it the moment the rate it targeted was repealed.
“We still cannot legally circulate this petition. The city is holding us hostage over a new statutory requirement that must be put into writing with the city.”
The requirement is real: state law bars the sponsors from gathering signatures until they sign an agreement with the city recorder. The city’s draft, now public, covers the two things the law asks for and adds several terms the law doesn’t mention. Whether the city is refusing to drop them, and so holding up the petition, is still only the sponsors’ account.
“To print our packets we have to sign a contract that waives our constitutional right to a jury trial, grants the city total governmental immunity, and severely limits our legal remedies while shifting liability onto citizens.”
The draft does have a jury-trial waiver and a cap on what the sponsor can recover, but the post describes them as more than they are. The jury waiver binds the city too, the immunity clause only says the city keeps the immunity state law already gives it, and nothing in the draft makes a sponsor liable for anything. Adding terms beyond the two the law lists isn’t barred by the statute.