Vineyard City park listed for auction due to unpaid property taxes

VINEYARD CITY, Utah County — A popular park in Vineyard was listed for auction after years of unpaid property taxes, prompting city leaders to take action on Tuesday. Sunset Beach Park, a three-acre public space along the shores of Utah Lake, was recently listed for auction by the county, scheduled for May 21, due to delinquent property taxes dating back five years. According to Utah County officials, multiple notices were sent to the city during that time but went unanswered. Newly elected Vineyard Mayor Zach Stratton said he became aware of the issue after media inquiries from KSL to county and city leaders prompted a closer look. “I spoke with the county today. They’ve been sending notifications for five years to the city, and they just went unanswered,” Stratton said.Utah County Auditor Rod Mann said the issue stems from 2021 when the property’s previous owner, a developer listed on county records as Vineyard Flagship 241 LLC, failed to pay taxes in 2021 and part of 2022. Later in 2022, the developer transferred ownership of the park to the city, but the city also did not resolve the outstanding balance. “When you called, I got curious, so I reached out to Vineyard’s finance director,” Mann told KSL. “He acknowledged the issue and said it was on his list.”  As of Tuesday morning, $83,628.08 was listed as owed on the property for 2021-2025. Utah County Assessor Burt Garfield said that while city-owned land is exempt from property taxes, an exemption cannot be applied until the city confirms its ownership of the property and pays the back taxes. Once resolved, the city was responsible for $25,017.89, including $6,485.31 in penalties, fees, and daily interest accrued.Stratton said the city paid the remaining balance on Tuesday, preventing the property from being auctioned. “He paid it off. It’s clear now,” Mann said, adding that of 200- t0 300 delinquent properties listed for auction, between 30 and 60 properties will be auctioned off.“The property list changes every day because people pay off their taxes every day,” Mann said. “A lot of the stuff gets cleared up. Only about 10-15%make it to tax sale.” Mann also said it’s not unusual for public entities, pointing to land purchased by UDOT as another example, to become delinquent, but he said, “it always gets cleared up.” “Sometimes things slip through the cracks,” Mann said. “What happens is that people don’t realize they owe the taxes … The tax sale is a final check, and it hasn’t failed on anything that I am aware of in the last 13 years.” The delay came at a cost, despite resolving the debt. Vineyard taxpayers covered more than $6,000 in accrued interest and penalties. “I’m super frustrated with the whole situation as well,” Stratton said. “It’s super frustrating that this wasn’t taken care of before and these fees were avoided.”Mayor Stratton, who took office in January, attributed the oversight to previous city leadership and called it one of several issues his administration has inherited. “The former staff and the former city manager, it just slipped through the cracks,” Stratton said, adding that he has all new staff at City Hall working “to change the culture and protect taxpayer dollars.” He added that, while the situation is frustrating, it represents only a relatively small part of the other issues he inherited from the administration of the previous Mayor, Julie Fullmer. “Unfortunately, this is a drop in the bucket. This is a very small thing that I have found that we are rectifying as fast as we can,” he said. KSL reached out to former Mayor Julie Fullmer for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

UPDATE:

In an email response on May 9, Julie Fullmer said Mayor Stratton “appears to be misinformed” and the “matter is a routine issue for municipalities.” “Sunset Beach Park… has become a beloved amenity for our families… and I am very proud of that accomplishment,” Fullmer said in the email. According to Fullmer, city staff spent years “actively working with the county to resolve the property tax question,” and the matter involved extensive coordination between the city, county and developer to determine “what taxes were actually owed” when ownership was transferred to the city. “Because ownership transfer, acceptance, recording, and tax treatment did not occur simultaneously, the county continued assessing the property until public ownership and reconciliation were formally processed through its system, a tax treatment the developer disputed,” Fullmer said. Fullmer said these “timing differences” required the city to file a separate appeal or work through a reconciliation process. She said city officials actively worked with the county and the developer to resolve “the disputed amounts on this parcel,” but staff turnover under the new mayor led to a loss of “institutional knowledge.” “My concern is that, instead of continuing to work through the standard appeal, extension, and reconciliation process, Mayor Stratton chose to expend taxpayer funds to resolve the matter immediately,” Fullmer said in the email.

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