The claim

Thirty years of impact fees for Pony Express

“The Waldens built Pony Express 30 years ago. The city has been collecting impact fees for 30 years for that road.”

Seen: Eagle Mountain City Tax Referendum Facebook group, August 2026.

Our finding Misleading

Built on a real figure, used to say something the figure does not support.

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.

The numbers

Statutory spending windowUtah Code § 11-36a-6026 years

City incorporatedcity status in 20013 Dec 1996

Transportation impact feeupdated 2024, partly suspended 2025Reset twice

What’s true

The founding is a matter of record. John Walden and two partners bought roughly 8,000 acres in Cedar Valley in 1994; the town of Eagle Mountain incorporated on December 3, 1996 and became a city in 2001. The original parkway came out of that development, and “thirty years” is close enough to right.

Where it goes wrong

Impact fees cannot accumulate that way. Utah's Impact Fees Act requires a city to spend or encumber an impact fee within six years of collecting it, and only on a system improvement named in the impact fee facilities plan for that fee type; holding longer requires a written finding of an extraordinary and compelling reason and a date certain. Nor is it one continuous fee: Eagle Mountain tabled an updated transportation impact fee twice in May 2020, adopted the update on March 6, 2024, and partially suspended the fee for nonresidential building on February 18, 2025. And for the first two of those thirty years there was no city to collect anything.

Where this comes from

Every finding here is drawn from an open-meeting recording or a published document. Check it yourself.

Utah Impact Fees Act, August 21, 2026A local political subdivision shall expend or encumber an impact fee for a permissible use within six years of collecting it, and may expend impact fees only for a system improvement identified in the impact fee facilities plan for the public facility type the fee was collected for.Utah Code § 11-36a-602 — expenditure of impact fees

Councilmember Wright, moving the updated transportation impact feeThe ordinance adopting an updated impact fee enactment for the transportation impact fee. The same update was tabled on 5 May and again on 19 May 2020; the fee was partially suspended for nonresidential building on 18 February 2025.The vote, March 6, 2024

More checks on roads & impact fees

See all 21 fact checks →

Checked August 21, 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