“You gave the data centers a $150 million tax break and now you are asking residents to pay.”
Seen: Eagle Mountain City Tax Referendum Facebook group, August 2026; and twice in public comment at the 6 August hearing. First seen August 21, 2026.
Our findingAccurate, but incomplete
True as far as it goes, and it leaves out something that changes the picture.
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.
The numbers
Eagle Mountain's share$46,857,489 of the $778,540,678 noticed for area #46.0%
Alpine School District's$493,641,645 of the same pot63.4%
The land before itall taxing entities; $6 of it the city's$66 a year
Meta as a taxpayer15.63% of all taxable value in the city1st
What’s true
The 2018 deal is in the city's own minutes, in plain language. On 15 May 2018 the council adopted the Sweetwater Industrial Park Community Reinvestment Area #1 plan for a 487-acre data center, and staff told it exactly what the company had asked for: 80% of the real property taxes and 100% of the personal property taxes returned to it, against an investment of $750 million. The vote was unanimous (Burnham, Clark, Curtis, Gricius and Reaves), and the same evening the council set the duration of the tax increment agreement at forty years. Melissa Clark, who voted for it, was on the dais for the 6 August hearing. Nor did it stop there: the council adopted Sweetwater #2 in March 2021, #3 in April 2023, and #4 on 5 November 2025 by four votes to one.
What it leaves out
The $150 million was never the city's to spend. Five taxing entities signed those interlocals, and the only per-entity splits the city has ever published, the hearing notices for project areas #3 and #4, put Eagle Mountain City at 6.3% and 6.0% of the money, against 63% for Alpine School District. At that share the city's part of a $150 million break is about $9 million spread across the life of the agreement. And it is increment rather than cash: it is levied on value that did not exist before, on ground the 2018 minutes record as paying $66 a year in property tax across all entities, $6 of it Eagle Mountain's.
More detail
Two details in the version spoken at the hearing are worth separating. The percentage is not the 77% quoted from the floor; the minutes state 80% of the real property tax and 100% of the personal property tax. The forty years is half right. Each phase of Meta's campus is rebated for twenty years: Utah County's report shows the first phase paid 2021 to 2040 and the second 2023 to 2042. What the council set at forty that night, the most state law allows, is how long the agreement can keep paying, so a phase that starts later still runs its own twenty years. Meta's 2025 expansion, project area #4, works the same way with its own forty-year clock that has not started yet, and its agreements set no limit on the number of phases.
The counterweight is audited and sits in the city's own annual report. Stadion, LLC, the company known as Meta, is the largest property taxpayer in Eagle Mountain at $305,404,041 of taxable value, 15.63% of everything taxable in the city, and that is with 80% of its real property rebated. In the year to 30 June 2024 the Redevelopment Agency took in $9,746,126 of Sweetwater increment and paid $9,546,141 of it back out.
The strongest version of this argument is bigger than the number it is usually made with, and the city published it itself. Eagle Mountain's own line on project area #4 (noticed in January at $778,540,678 across the five entities) is $46,857,489, which is about twenty-two years of what the new rate raises above the certified rate. Against that sits what the same notice says of the same money: it is generated “only if the Project Area is developed”. Whether these buildings would have gone up without the incentive is the argument, and it is not something the record can settle.
Where this comes from
Every finding here is drawn from an open-meeting recording or a published document. Check it yourself.
“So in 2018, Facebook got tax breaks on their property taxes that was pretty hefty, and some of you were involved in that. It was $150 million in property tax incentives that they are not paying for, what, 40 years?”
A resident, in public commentA second speaker the same night put it as “tax breaks of up to 77%. $150 million, and that's a large percentage more than the $6 million revenue that you're trying to get.”The meeting, August 6, 2026 →Read the transcript →Eagle Mountain City Council, adopting the first project area, May 15, 2018The economic development director told the council the project covered 487 acres and would bring $750 million of investment: “At this time the property brings in $66 in total property taxes per year, divided among all taxing entities, giving Eagle Mountain City $6 per year”, and at the end of the incentive “the data center would generate over $8M annually among all taxing entities, of which Eagle Mountain would receive $758K annually.” The company had made “a significant request for 80% of the real property taxes and 100% of the personal property taxes to be returned to the company over 20 years”, against roughly $100 million of public infrastructure it would build and $21 million it would reimburse the city for improvements its own project did not require. The plan, the interlocal, the development agreement and the water and sewer agreement all passed unanimously; the minutes then record the amendment made that evening: “The duration of the tax increment agreement was changed to 40 years.”Eagle Mountain City Council minutes, 2018 (15 May, pp. 146–150 and 157–158 of the PDF) ↗Utah County's year-end report on the agency's project areas, tax year 2023, March 7, 2024Lists two Meta phases in project area #1: “Sweetwater #1 Community Reinvestment Area”, trigger year 2021 and end year 2040, and “Sweetwater #1 - Phase 2 - Bldg Only”, trigger year 2023 and end year 2042. Twenty years each.Utah County Auditor, 2023 Report 700 for Eagle Mountain ↗The interlocal agreements for project area #4, November 5, 2025The city's, county's and fire district's agreements each pay the agency “for each Phase for an initial period of twenty (20) full calendar years”, and “the Agency will no longer be entitled to receive tax increment on any Phase after the fortieth year following the trigger year of the first Increment Period.” The city's share is capped at $7,773,762 per phase and $46,642,572 for all phases. The water district's agreement stops all payments twenty years after the first phase.Redevelopment Agency packet, 5 November 2025 ↗The Redevelopment Agency's own hearing notice, project area #4, January 6, 2026The amended plan and budget the agency noticed for hearing on 6 January 2026: “the Agency has requested $778,540,678 in property tax incremental revenues”, and a table of where it comes from: Alpine School District $493,641,645, Unified Fire District $144,784,376, Utah County $78,359,059, Eagle Mountain City $46,857,489, Central Utah Water Conservancy District $14,898,109. The city's line is 6.0% of the total; the school district's is 63.4%. The notice also states the terms on which any of it exists: the increment is “taxes that will be generated only if the Project Area is developed.”Notice of hearing, Sweetwater Industrial Park Community Reinvestment Project Area #4 (Utah Public Notice Website) ↗The same notice, three years earlier, for project area #3, April 18, 2023$20,419,625 requested for the first phase, split Alpine School District $13,518,614, Unified Fire District $3,117,500, Utah County $1,561,112, Eagle Mountain City $1,277,703, Central Utah Water $944,697. The city's share there is 6.3%: the second of the only two per-entity breakdowns the city has published, and close enough to the first to be worth trusting as the shape of these deals.Notice of hearing, Sweetwater Industrial Park Community Reinvestment Project Area #3 (Utah Public Notice Website) ↗Adopting the Sweetwater #4 project area planPassed 4–1, Councilmember Burnham against, the only vote against any of these on file. Burnham is the member who moved the adoption of the first one in 2018.The vote, November 5, 2025 →The interlocal agreement that routes the city's own share of the incrementPassed unanimously the same night. Of those five votes, Wright, Clark, Wood and Gray, who took office as mayor in January, were on the dais nine months later for the tax hearing.The vote, November 5, 2025 →Adopting the Sweetwater #2 project area planPassed unanimously, the 2021 deal the hearing comment refers to. The dollar figure noticed for it is not in the record this site holds.The vote, March 16, 2021 →The city's audited annual report, on what the agency actually moved, June 30, 2024Note 14 records $9,746,126 of tax increment received by the Redevelopment Agency from the Sweetwater project area in the year to 30 June 2024, $10,457,606 across all five of its project areas, and $9,546,141 expended: $8,759,718 of that on site and improvements. The statistical section lists Stadion, LLC as the city's largest property taxpayer, $305,404,041 of taxable value, 15.63% of the city's total.Eagle Mountain City ACFR, year ended 30 June 2024 ↗
“QTS was granted some tax incentives when they started those first 3 buildings. They came back on these next 2 — we didn't even ask this — and said, hey, by the way, you guys have been so great to us, we don't want any incentives on these next builds. Just, we're going to be full taxpayers starting day one.”
Mayor Jared Gray, answering the question from the daisHe put the buildings under construction at over $19 million a year across all taxing jurisdictions and “$2.7 million a year” for Eagle Mountain at the current rate. None of it is collected yet.The meeting, August 6, 2026 →Read the transcript →
Checked August 21, 2026; updated October 3, 2026. Nothing goes on the fact-check list unless an open-meeting recording or a published document can settle it: the rules. Spot a mistake? civicrollcall@gmail.com