Eagle Mountain · A field guide

Definitions

City business is conducted in a vocabulary almost nobody is taught. These are the words that turn up in Eagle Mountain agendas, notices and motions, in plain English, with a note on how the city actually uses each one where that matters.

83 entries 6 groups Cross-referenced

Who’s who13 terms

Start here: half of understanding a decision is knowing who actually made it. A surprising amount of what Eagle Mountain residents pay for is delivered by somebody other than Eagle Mountain City, which is also what makes the tax bill hard to read.

City Council¶: Five members, elected at large (there are no districts, so every member answers to the whole city), serving staggered four-year terms. The council adopts the budget, sets the tax rate, and passes ordinances.; See alsoMayor Quorum Roll call
Mayor¶: Elected separately from the council. Presides over meetings and votes only to break a tie, so the mayor’s influence runs through the agenda and the administration rather than through the vote count.; See alsoCity Council Mayor pro tempore
Planning Commission¶: Appointed volunteers who hold hearings and make recommendations on plats, site plans and code changes; some administrative approvals are theirs to make outright, while legislative items go on to the council. Its record is on this site. Switch bodies from the Meetings page.; See alsoConcept plan Preliminary plat City Council
Community Services Board¶: An appointed board advising the city on parks, recreation and cultural programs. Also tracked on this site through the body switcher.; See alsoPlanning Commission
Utah County Sheriff’s Office — Eagle Mountain Division¶: Eagle Mountain contracts its policing to the county Sheriff rather than running a city police department. The deputies are dedicated to the city, but the contract is with the county, and it is one of the largest single obligations in the General Fund.; See alsoGeneral Fund
Unified Fire Service Area¶: The fire and emergency medical provider covering Eagle Mountain. It is a separate taxing entity, so it charges its own rate directly on your property tax bill rather than being paid out of the city’s rate.; See alsoTaxing entity Local districts
Timpanogos Special Service District¶: The regional district that treats wastewater for member cities including Eagle Mountain.; See alsoWastewater Local districts
Central Utah Water Conservancy District¶: The regional wholesale water supplier, and another separate line on your tax bill. Its long-term water costs are a recurring constraint in Eagle Mountain’s development decisions.; See alsoTaxing entity Water rights
UDOT¶: The Utah Department of Transportation, which owns and operates state highways. Where a road is UDOT’s, the city can ask but cannot decide.; See alsoMAG Right-of-way (ROW)
MAG — Mountainland Association of Governments¶: The regional planning organization for Utah, Wasatch and Summit counties. It ranks transportation projects and channels federal money to them, which makes its priority lists a real constraint on what gets built and when.; See alsoUDOT
UTA¶: The Utah Transit Authority, the regional transit operator, funded in part by a share of local sales tax.; See alsoSales tax
ULCT — Utah League of Cities and Towns¶: The association through which Utah municipalities train staff and lobby the Legislature collectively. It is the vehicle for most of what a council puts on its legislative priorities list.; See alsoLegislative priorities
County Assessor, Auditor, and Treasurer¶: Three separate county offices that between them run the property tax: the Assessor sets values, the Auditor computes the certified rates, and the Treasurer sends the bill, collects the money, and distributes it to each taxing entity. None of them works for the city.; See alsoCertified tax rate Taxable value

How a meeting works14 terms

Procedure decides more than it looks like it does. Whether an item is an ordinance or a resolution, whether it sits on the consent agenda, and whether it is tabled or continued all change what happens next.

Ordinance¶: A law. It changes the municipal code, stays in force until it is repealed, and generally requires a public hearing first. Zoning changes, budgets and tax rates are adopted by ordinance.; See alsoResolution Public hearing Referendum
Resolution¶: A formal decision that does not change the code: approving a contract, adopting a plan, setting a fee, appointing someone, taking a position. Lighter to pass and lighter to undo than an ordinance.; See alsoOrdinance
Consent agenda¶: A batch of routine items (minutes, renewals, appointments) approved together in one motion with no discussion. Any councilmember may pull an item off it to be taken up separately, and that pull is often the first sign an item is contested.; See alsoRoll call
Work session¶: The earlier, informal half of a council night: staff presentations, questions, back-and-forth. Substantive votes are not taken here, but this is usually where the thinking happens.; See alsoPolicy session
Policy session¶: The later half, where public comment, public hearings and the recorded votes take place. If you are coming to speak, this is the half to attend. The home page prints both start times and marks which session takes comment.; See alsoWork session Public hearing
Public hearing vs. public comment¶: A hearing is attached to one specific item and is frequently required by law before the council may act on it. Comment at a hearing goes on the record for that decision. General public comment is an open slot for anything at all, and carries no such procedural weight.; See alsoTruth in Taxation Ordinance
Motion, second, and roll call¶: A member moves a specific action, another seconds it to show it is worth discussing, and after debate the vote is taken by name. That named vote is the roll call, and it is the thing this whole site is built to preserve.; See alsoTable & continue Consent agenda
Table vs. continue¶: To table is to set an item aside with no date to return; to continue is to postpone it to a named future meeting. In practice the council often tables an item with an instruction to bring it back to a work session, which lands somewhere between the two.; See alsoRoll call
Quorum¶: The minimum number of members who must be present for the body to do anything at all. Below it, the meeting can be held but nothing can be decided.; See alsoRoll call
Closed session, or executive session¶: The part of a meeting the public may be excluded from, for a short statutory list of reasons: pending litigation, buying or selling property, or discussing an individual’s character or competence. The vote to close is taken in the open, the reason has to be stated, and no final action may be taken behind the door.; See alsoMinutes
Mayor pro tempore¶: The councilmember appointed to preside when the mayor is absent. Eagle Mountain appoints one at the start of each year.; See alsoMayor
Minutes¶: The official written record of a meeting, approved at a later meeting, which is why minutes routinely run weeks behind. This site therefore also publishes summaries built from the meeting recording, so a decision is readable before its minutes are approved.; See alsoPolicy session
Referendum¶: Voters’ power to challenge something the council has already passed: gather enough valid signatures inside the statutory window and the measure goes to the ballot instead of straight into effect. It is a check on decisions already made, which is what distinguishes it from an initiative.; See alsoOrdinance
Legislative priorities list¶: The list of changes in state law a city wants pursued at the Legislature each session, adopted by vote and carried forward largely through the Utah League of Cities and Towns. Items get added and removed by ordinary motion.; See alsoULCT

Money and taxes23 terms

What the city charges, what it may charge, and the words on your November tax notice. The Tax and Budget pages work through most of this with Eagle Mountain’s own figures.

Property tax¶: An annual tax on land and buildings. Utah County sends one bill and collects once, but the bill is a stack of separate rates set by separate governments: the school district, the county, the city, the fire service area, water districts. The city’s own share is a minority of the total.; See alsoTaxing entity Taxable value
Market value and taxable value¶: The County Assessor sets a market value for your property each year. Tax is not charged on that figure directly: a primary residence is taxed on 55% of market value, while business property, rentals and second homes are taxed on the full 100%. Every rate on the bill is a multiplier applied to that taxable value.; See alsoProperty tax Certified tax rate
Certified tax rate¶: The rate that would raise the same number of dollars this year as the city raised last year, ignoring new construction. Utah sets property tax by revenue, not by rate, so as assessed values rise, the certified rate automatically falls to hold collections flat. Eagle Mountain’s 2026 certified rate was 0.000530. The council adopted 0.001500 for FY2026–27 on 6 August, repealed it on 18 August, and adopted 0.000900 in its place.; See alsoTruth in Taxation New growth Taxable value
Truth in Taxation¶: Utah’s rule that a city wanting to charge more than the certified tax rate must first mail every affected owner a notice, advertise it, and hold an evening public hearing. Because the certified rate falls on its own, a city can be charging the same rate as last year and still be going through Truth in Taxation. Eagle Mountain went through this in the summer of 2026; the whole sequence is laid out on the Tax page.; See alsoCertified tax rate Interim budget Public hearing
Taxing entity¶: Any government that levies its own rate against your property. Each one sets its rate separately and goes through its own Truth-in-Taxation process; the county collects them together and distributes the money back out.; See alsoProperty tax Unified Fire Service Area Central Utah Water
New growth¶: Value added by new construction and annexation, as opposed to existing property becoming more valuable. It is excluded from the Truth-in-Taxation comparison so that a city is not treated as raising taxes merely because more houses exist than last year.; See alsoCertified tax rate Annexation
Sales tax¶: A share of what is spent inside the city, plus a share distributed by state formula on population. It is the General Fund’s other main pillar alongside property tax, and it moves with the economy rather than with a council vote.; See alsoRAP tax General Fund
RAP tax¶: Recreation, Arts and Parks: a local sales tax of a tenth of a percent, or ten cents on every $100 spent in the city, earmarked for recreation and cultural facilities. It has to be approved by voters, not just by the council. Eagle Mountain voters approved one as Proposition 8 in November 2025.; See alsoSales tax
Impact fee¶: A one-time charge paid when something new is built, covering growth’s share of the new roads, pipes, parks and public-safety capacity that growth requires. State law is strict about the limits: an impact fee may only buy new capacity. It cannot pay for day-to-day operations, and it cannot repair or replace what already exists.; See alsoIFFP and IFA Capital SID
IFFP and IFA¶: The two documents a city must adopt before it may charge an impact fee. The Impact Fee Facilities Plan is the list of what growth is expected to pay for; the Impact Fee Analysis is the arithmetic turning that list into a dollar figure per new home or per acre. When the council votes on a master plan and an IFFP together, it is adopting both the wish list and the bill for it.; See alsoImpact fee
Transportation utility fee (TUF)¶: A flat monthly charge added to a city utility bill and spent on streets. Because it is a fee set by resolution rather than a tax, it never appears as a tax increase and no comparison of tax rates can see it. Eagle Mountain charges no such fee. Several other Utah County cities do. The Tax page lists them.; See alsoImpact fee Franchise fee
Franchise agreement and franchise fee¶: Permission for a utility (power, gas, cable, fiber) to run its lines through city rights-of-way, generally in exchange for a percentage of what it bills customers here. It is why a new fiber company turns up on a council agenda before it turns up in your street.; See alsoRight-of-way (ROW)
Bond¶: A loan. The city borrows a lump sum now, builds something with it, and repays over decades. A general obligation (GO) bond is backed by property tax and has to be approved by voters. A revenue bond is repaid out of the fees of whatever it built (water, sewer) and does not require an election.; See alsoPID Enterprise fund Capital
Fund¶: The city keeps its money in separate pots that cannot be freely mixed. Water bills go into the water fund and can only pay for water. Most taxes go into the General Fund.; See alsoGeneral Fund Enterprise fund Fund balance
General Fund¶: The pot that pays for the services most people picture when they think of the city: public safety, parks, streets, planning, city hall. It is the fund property tax and sales tax flow into, and the one under pressure when either falls short.; See alsoFund Sheriff’s Office Sales tax
Enterprise fund¶: A fund that runs like a business off its own charges rather than off taxes: water, sewer, and refuse. When one of these needs more money the answer is a rate change, not a tax change.; See alsoFund Wastewater
Fund balance, or reserves¶: Savings. Money the city takes in but does not plan to spend this year. It still appears in the budget total, which is why that total can be far larger than actual spending.; See alsoFund
Fiscal year¶: The city’s budget year, which does not match the calendar: it runs 1 July to 30 June. FY2026–27 means July 2026 through June 2027.; See alsoInterim budget
Tentative, interim, and final budget¶: A city adopts a tentative budget in the spring for comment, then a final one in June. A city proposing a tax increase cannot finish in June, because the Truth-in-Taxation hearing comes later, so it adopts an interim budget instead, spends against it, and adopts the final version in August. That is exactly the sequence Eagle Mountain followed in 2026: interim budget on 16 June, final rate on 6 August.; See alsoTruth in Taxation Fiscal year Budget amendment
Budget amendment¶: A mid-year change to the budget already adopted: moving money between departments, or recognizing revenue nobody expected. It gets its own public hearing.; See alsoInterim budget
Capital, capital outlay, and the CIP¶: Physical things that last: pipes, roads, buildings, vehicles, as opposed to wages, fuel and supplies, which get used up each year. The Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) is the multi-year list of those projects and how each is to be paid for.; See alsoBond Impact fee
ACFR¶: The Annual Comprehensive Financial Report: the audited, year-end accounts, published months after the year closes. Where a budget says what the city intended to do, the ACFR says what it actually did.; See alsoInterim budget
Interlocal agreement¶: A contract between two governments to share a service, split a cost, or divide tax revenue. Utah requires one for a lot of routine cooperation, which is why they appear on agendas so often, including every time tax increment is shared with the county or the school district.; See alsoParticipation agreement Timpanogos SSD

Development districts and their acronyms7 terms

The cluster of near-identical initials (RDA, CRA, TIF, PID, SID) that all describe some version of the same idea: using future tax revenue, or a tax charged on one specific piece of ground, to pay for building something now.

Redevelopment Agency (RDA)¶: A separate legal body whose board is the same people as the City Council, usually meeting the same evening under a different heading. It exists to run the city’s development-incentive project areas, and it holds and spends money the council itself cannot.; See alsoCommunity Reinvestment Area (CRA)Tax increment, or TIF
Community Reinvestment Area (CRA)¶: A mapped project area in which a share of the new property tax generated inside the boundary is given back to development there for an agreed number of years. It is the modern successor to Utah’s older redevelopment, economic development and community development project areas, which is why the record contains several names for what is broadly one tool. Eagle Mountain’s include Sweetwater #2 and #4 and Triple Tail.; See alsoTax increment, or TIF Redevelopment Agency (RDA)Participation agreement
Tax increment, or TIF¶: The mechanism inside a CRA. Taxing entities keep collecting on the land’s value as it stood when the area was drawn; the additional tax generated by whatever gets built, the increment, is redirected into the project instead, for a set term and a set percentage. Nothing is taken from anyone’s existing bill; what is given up is future revenue that would otherwise have gone to the county, the school district and the city. Terms are negotiated: the Sweetwater #2 agreement was amended down from 75% of the increment to 67.5% in March 2021.; See alsoCommunity Reinvestment Area (CRA)Redevelopment Agency (RDA)
Participation agreement¶: The interlocal agreement in which each taxing entity separately commits how much of its own increment it is willing to contribute to a project area. A CRA is not one decision but several, one per entity.; See alsoInterlocal agreement Community Reinvestment Area (CRA)
PID — Public Infrastructure District¶: A district a developer asks the city to create over the developer’s own land. The district issues bonds to build that development’s roads and pipes, and repays them with an extra property tax charged only inside its boundary, so the people who eventually buy those homes pay off the infrastructure through a higher tax bill than their neighbors down the road. Until enough of the land is sold, the district is governed by the landowner: the developer. Eagle Mountain adopted a PID policy in September 2022 amid stated council concern about “allowing developers to oversee resident taxes” and inflated reimbursement rates; several members said they did not want PIDs used for residential development.; See alsoSID Bond Local districts
SID — Special Improvement District¶: An older approach to the same problem: the city builds an improvement, then assesses its cost against the specific properties that benefit, collected over a period of years. Outstanding SID balances have to be netted out of impact fee calculations, so they surface in that context long after the work is done.; See alsoPID Impact fee
Local district and special service district¶: A separate government created to deliver one service across a defined area, with its own board, its own budget and often its own line on your tax bill. They are easy to miss precisely because they are not the city. The ones that touch Eagle Mountain include the Unified Fire Service Area and the Timpanogos Special Service District.; See alsoUnified Fire Service Area Timpanogos SSD Taxing entity

Land, zoning and building22 terms

The bulk of any Eagle Mountain agenda. Most of these words describe a specific step in the sequence a piece of ground goes through between farmland and houses, and knowing which step an item is at tells you how much is still open to change.

General Plan¶: The city’s long-range statement of what ought to go where. It is not itself law, but zoning decisions are supposed to follow it, and amending it is a council act with a public hearing, so a General Plan amendment is often the real decision, taken before the one everybody notices.; See alsoRezone Moderate Income Housing Plan (MIHP)Annexation
Zone, zoning, and rezone¶: Every parcel carries a zone that sets what may be built on it. R1 is the city’s single-family residential zone. Changing a parcel’s zone is a legislative act: an ordinance, with a hearing, on which the council has broad discretion to say no.; See alsoGeneral Plan Overlay zone Land use table
Overlay zone¶: An extra layer of rules laid on top of the underlying zone, without replacing it, used to permit or restrict one particular thing in one particular area. The underlying zone still governs everything the overlay does not mention.; See alsoRezone Land use table
Land use table¶: The grid in city code listing every use against every zone, marking each as permitted outright, allowed only as a conditional use, or not allowed. Ordinances that look trivial (“amending 17.25.030”) are usually moving one cell in this table.; See alsoRezone Conditional use
Conditional use permit (CUP)¶: Permission for a use that a zone allows in principle but only with conditions attached to handle its side effects. It is far less discretionary than a rezone: under Utah law a city generally has to approve a conditional use if the detrimental effects can be reasonably mitigated by conditions.; See alsoLand use table
Concept plan¶: The earliest sketch of a project, brought to the Planning Commission before any formal application. Nothing is approved at this stage, but it is the stage at which the shape of a development is easiest to change.; See alsoPreliminary plat Planning Commission
Preliminary plat¶: The proposed layout of a subdivision: lot lines, streets, utilities, open space. Approval settles the design, and later stages are largely about executing it.; See alsoFinal plat Concept plan
Final plat¶: The surveyed, recordable version of the same drawing. Once it is recorded with the county the lots legally exist and can be sold individually.; See alsoPreliminary plat Plat amendment
Plat amendment¶: A change to a plat that has already been recorded: shifting a lot line, combining or splitting lots, removing an easement. Common, and usually narrow in effect.; See alsoFinal plat
Site plan¶: The layout of one individual site rather than a subdivision: where the buildings, parking, landscaping and access sit. Mostly used for commercial, industrial and multi-family projects.; See alsoPreliminary plat
Development agreement, and the MDA¶: A contract between the city and a landowner fixing what may be built, on what schedule, and what the developer must provide in return: roads, parks, water, landscaping, sometimes affordability terms. A Master Development Agreement covers a whole large project; subsequent amendments alter its terms, which is why the same project name reappears on agendas for years.; See alsoAmenity points Improvement guarantee
Annexation¶: Bringing land that sits outside the city inside its boundary, after which city zoning, city services and city taxes apply to it. The city’s annexation policy declaration is the part of the General Plan setting out which land it is willing to take.; See alsoGeneral Plan New growth
Easement¶: A recorded right for someone else to use part of a property for a defined purpose : a utility line, a drainage channel, a trail. The land stays yours; the use is not exclusively yours.; See alsoRight-of-way (ROW)Vacate
Right-of-way (ROW)¶: The public strip a street occupies. It is wider than the asphalt: it normally takes in the park strip and the sidewalk, which is why the ground in front of your house may not be your ground.; See alsoEasement Franchise fee
Setback¶: The minimum distance a building must keep from a property line, set by the zone.; See alsoRezone
Density¶: Homes per acre. Most arguments framed as being about “traffic” or “character” are, on the agenda, arguments about this number.; See alsoOpen space Amenity points
Open space¶: Land a development must leave undeveloped, and also a zoning designation in its own right. Land designated open space can be rezoned out of it, which takes a council vote.; See alsoDensity Rezone
Amenity points¶: Eagle Mountain’s scoring system for what a development gives back: trails, courts, clubhouses, landscaping and the like each earn points, and a project has to reach a threshold. It is the mechanism by which the city trades flexibility on design for public benefit, and the reason council debates end up itemizing half-basketball courts.; See alsoDevelopment agreement Open space
ADU — accessory dwelling unit¶: A second, smaller home on a lot that already has one: a basement apartment, or a unit over the garage. Utah has steadily narrowed how far cities may restrict them.; See alsoModerate Income Housing Plan (MIHP)
Moderate Income Housing Plan (MIHP)¶: A state-required element of the General Plan in which a city chooses from a statutory menu of strategies for allowing housing that moderate-income households can afford, and then reports each year on what it did. Failure to file has funding consequences, which is why it recurs.; See alsoADU General Plan
Vacate¶: To formally give up a public interest in land (a street, an alley, an easement) so that it reverts to the adjoining owners.; See alsoEasement
Improvement guarantee, bonding, escrow¶: Money or a surety a developer must leave with the city until the roads, curbs, utilities and landscaping are finished and accepted, so the city is not left completing a half-built subdivision at its own cost.; See alsoDevelopment agreement

Water and utilities4 terms

Water is the constraint on growth in this part of Utah, so it turns up in development agreements, impact fees and rate-setting alike, usually under words that distinguish which kind of water is meant.

Culinary water¶: Drinking water: treated to potable standard and delivered through the pipe that serves your taps. The expensive kind.; See alsoSecondary water Water rights
Secondary water, or pressurized irrigation (PI)¶: Untreated water carried in a separate network for outdoor irrigation: lawns, parks, open space. Keeping landscape watering off the culinary system is a large part of how a desert city makes its water budget work, which is why council debates about sod acreage are debates about this.; See alsoCulinary water Open space
Water rights and water shares¶: The legal entitlement to use a quantity of water, held separately from the land. A developer generally has to convey rights or shares to the city to serve the homes it wants to build; one that bought more than it turned out to need can sell the surplus on.; See alsoCulinary water Development agreement
Wastewater¶: Sewage, and the collection pipes and treatment plant capacity that handle it. It has its own master plan, its own impact fee, and its own enterprise fund.; See alsoTimpanogos SSD Enterprise fund

Something missing, or a definition that reads wrong? These are written for residents, not for lawyers. Where a word carries a precise legal meaning, the city code and Utah Code are what govern.