After signature withdrawals, petition drive to force vote on 34.25% tax hike in Roy fails

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Roy's controversial 34.25% property tax hike, targeted by foes, will go into effect after all.
The initial count of signatures on petitions calling for a public vote on whether the increase should be kept or rescinded showed the effort had succeeded.
Twelve people subsequently withdrew their names from the petitions, dooming the drive, which means the increase will take effect.

ROY — After 12 people removed their signatures from petitions calling for a vote on the 34.25% property tax hike approved by Roy leaders in August, the initiative, deemed successful last week, has failed, according to a city memo.

The upshot is that Roy voters will no longer vote on the referendum question asking if the property tax hike should be kept, allowing the controversial increase — focus of heated debate — to go into effect.

A memo Tuesday from Roy City Recorder Brittany Fowers on the matter outlines the shift. "The referendum petition that was received on Aug. 12, 2026, has now been deemed insufficient as the signature requirement has dropped below the required threshold due to signature withdrawal requests," it reads.

The total number of valid signatures from around Roy, 1,845, still surpasses the 1,786 needed. But now the totals in just two of four voter participation areas within the city surpass the number of signatures needed after the withdrawal requests. Petitioners must surpass the minimum required number in at least three participation areas for a petition drive to succeed, per state law.

"The rights of the citizens of Roy have been denied, so the constitutional right to vote has been removed," charged Nancy Inman, who spearheaded the petition drive and supplied a copy of Fowers' letter. "The constitutional right to vote has been removed."

City Manager Matt Andrews said Roy officials received word of the 12 signature removals from Weber County officials, who handle signature counting. City staff, he added, are "neutral" on the referendum question and he has no information on why the 12 people may have removed their signatures.

"Regarding whether there was an organized effort to encourage signature removals or who may have been involved, I cannot speak to the actions of individual residents," he said. "The city's administrative role is to process the referendum in accordance with applicable requirements and communicate the information provided by Weber County."

Mayor Ann Jackson, who favored the increase, didn't immediately respond to a query Tuesday seeking comment.

Inman recognized that petition signers could still remove their names from petitions, even after Weber County election officials formally counted the signatures gathered through the Oct. 8 deadline. She's not sure who, if anyone, may have been behind the effort to encourage petition signers to remove their names, but cast suspicion on city leadership.

"Who else has an interest? So the city employees can't do it on their government time. That's against the law. So if it was a City Council person or the mayor or something like that, they can," she said. "I'd like to know who contacted these people and what was said to them."

Bob Dandoy, the former Roy mayor and a critic of the tax hike, expressed a measure of disappointment at the turn of events.

"Hard work was done to meet all the restrictions of the referendum process. That in itself should have allowed the voters to decide whether or not they wanted to agree to pay a property tax increase or not," he said. "Now the voters have been denied their rights."

The City Council voted 4-1 on Aug. 11 to increase property taxes in Roy by 34.25%, which would generate an extra $1.75 million for the Weber County city. Officials had initially been mulling a 54.9% tax hike, which would generate an extra $2.81 million, but scaled it back in conjunction with plans to shift fire protection in the city to the Weber Fire District, a separate taxing entity.

The increase is needed, proponents say, to boost the wages of city employees to stay competitive with other employers, thus preventing turnover. The critics, though, thought it was excessive, prompting their petition drive.

After the initial count of signatures, the totals met the minimums needed in three of four sections of Roy, according to a memo on Monday from Fowers, also supplied to KSL. In area 1, 472 votes were needed and petitioners garnered 472. In area 2, petitioners needed 423 but only got 329, falling short. In area 3, petitioners needed 435 signatures and secured 564 while in area 4, petitioners needed 470 and garnered 492.

According to Fowers' updated memo on Tuesday, the number of signatures in area 1 after the withdrawal requests fell below the required threshold of 472 to 461. That doomed the initiative since it meant signature totals met the required minimum in just two areas, no longer three. One person in area 2 also withdrew their signature, though the total in that quadrant still meets the legal threshold.

After the initial news last week that the petition drive had succeeded, efforts to defend the tax increase moved forward.

A group called Roy City Citizens sent out postcards to Roy residents noting, among other things, that the hike would amount to $11 a month for the owner of an average-valued home in the city. The increase, the postcard reads, protects funding for police protection, recreational activities, street maintenance, snow plowing and more.

Roy City Councilman Bryon Saxton said he received one of the postcards, but doesn't know who was driving the effort. He cast the sole vote against the budget containing the tax increase.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.