Susan Lee for Davis County Commission: A Vision for Responsible Growth and Strong Communities

Davis County growth, infrastructure, and public services all matter. But for Susan Lee, the issue that lit the fire was much simpler and much more personal: a property tax notice that proposed a 30 percent increase.

That kind of jump does not look like routine government management. It looks like a warning sign. And in Lee’s view, it raised the basic question every taxpayer has a right to ask: How did county government get here, and why were residents being asked to clean it up?

Her campaign for Davis County Commission is built around that question. It is also built around a broader philosophy that local government should live within its means, examine spending honestly, and protect the people who are least able to absorb sudden cost increases.

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Why the tax increase became a turning point

Lee did not describe entering the race out of long-held political ambition. The tax debate pushed her into action. After receiving notice of the proposed increase, she began attending town halls and county meetings to understand the reasoning behind it.

What she found was not just a policy disagreement. It was a moment that revealed how county budgeting decisions land on real households.

At the truth-in-taxation hearing, many of the people who showed up were older residents, especially those living on fixed incomes. That is a significant concern in Davis County, where the population age 60 and older is growing quickly. For retirees, even a single large increase in housing costs can throw an entire monthly budget out of balance.

Some residents came forward with mortgage statements and tax bills in hand. The message was blunt. They were already stretched thin. Another major increase could put their homes at risk.

That concern was personal for her. She pointed to her own parents, both 90 years old, as an example of what many seniors face. After decades of work and a paid-off mortgage, retirement is supposed to bring some stability. Instead, rising taxes can create a new kind of pressure long after the house itself has been paid for.

One small detail captures her broader argument. Her father had decided to cut back on television service because it had become too expensive. To Lee, that mattered. It showed the way ordinary families adjust, trim, and sacrifice when money gets tight. Her question was why county government should not be expected to do the same.

An accounting mindset applied to county government

Lee approaches the issue from a financial management background. She has experience in accounting and helped run a trucking business with her husband across the western United States. Bookkeeping, payroll, operating costs, and balancing a budget are not abstract topics to her. They are practical disciplines.

That background shapes the way she talks about county government. She does not treat a budget as a political wish list. She treats it as a responsibility.

After digging into the numbers, she says she learned that the county had a roughly $12 million deficit. Property tax revenue accounted for about $90 million, while the broader county budget, including other revenue sources such as federal funds, state funds, sales tax, and fees, reached around $300 million.

To her, the problem was not simply that inflation exists or that costs rise over time. The problem was that a government with a budget of that size still ended up in a position where a dramatic tax hike was presented as necessary.

What went wrong in the budget

Lee’s explanation centers on one-time federal funds that were used in ways that created lasting obligations. In her telling, the county received temporary money through pandemic era federal programs. Many local governments used that money for short-term expenses. Davis County, she argues, used it in ways that increased recurring costs.

That is the kind of budgeting decision that can feel harmless at first and painful later. A one-time funding source disappears. The ongoing expense does not. That gap, in her view, is a major reason the county found itself short.

When opposition to the full tax increase became clear, county leaders reduced the increase to about half of what they originally sought. But that did not erase the underlying shortfall. It simply left the county scrambling to close the remaining gap through departmental cuts, early retirement offers, possible additional revenue, and potentially dipping into reserves.

For Lee, that sequence proved something important. If cuts were possible after the public revolt, they were possible before taxpayers were asked to shoulder such a large increase.

She does not pretend cutting government is painless. Counties are required to provide essential services, and those services matter. Her argument is that responsible budgeting should mean small, manageable adjustments over time, not years of drift followed by a sudden demand for a major increase.

In other words, if inflation is real, budgets should respond gradually and carefully. Waiting until the problem becomes severe enough to justify a dramatic jump is, in her view, a failure of stewardship.

The role of county commissioners as keepers of the purse

One of the themes Lee returns to often is that many people do not fully understand what county commissioners actually do. That matters because the office is not just symbolic. Commissioners may not run every department day to day, but they control something just as important: funding.

She describes commissioners as the keepers of the purse strings. Departments such as the sheriff’s office manage their own operations. Commissioners do not step in to run those departments directly. What they do decide is how much money those departments receive.

That means the commission’s core responsibility is oversight. If a department is overspending, the answer is not automatically to hand over more money. The answer is to understand why, work through the problem, and insist on correction before expanding the budget.

Lee makes clear that this should not come at the expense of needed services. She generally speaks positively about the services the county provides. Her concern is not with the existence of public services. It is with the discipline required to fund them properly.

Where she believes savings can be found

Lee points to several areas where she believes closer review is overdue.

• Post-retirement health benefits: She noted that the county had been offering five years of health benefits after retirement. In her view, that kind of benefit is uncommon in the private sector and expensive for taxpayers. She said phasing it out could save the county tens of millions of dollars over time.
• Service duplication: She wants a regular review to determine whether multiple departments or employees are performing overlapping work.
• Outdated tasks and staffing patterns: As needs change, government should ask whether some work still needs to be done in the same way, or at all.
• Routine solvency and efficiency testing: Rather than waiting for crisis conditions, she argues for recurring evaluations that can catch waste earlier.

That last point is especially central to her approach. Lee does not present auditing and review as emergency tools. She treats them as basic maintenance.

She also emphasizes that when she talks about budget numbers, she wants them grounded in fact. She describes spending significant time with the county controller to understand the details. That is part of the image she is trying to project: not guesswork, not slogans, but a working knowledge of how the budget is actually built.

The animal care facility debate

When people ask where county money is going, Lee points to current and proposed spending decisions that she believes deserve more public scrutiny. One example is a planned new animal care facility.

She says the proposed building would be nearly three times the size of the current one. The justification, as she describes it, is tied to a shift away from euthanasia toward a no-kill model. That change, in her view, brings major ongoing costs: more space, more staffing, more food, more daily care, and even a full-time veterinarian.

Lee is not arguing that animals should be neglected. Her question is whether county government is the right entity to absorb that expanded role. She suggests that private charitable organizations have traditionally handled much of this work more effectively and more efficiently than government.

That position fits neatly into her larger governing philosophy. She wants county government focused on what government does best, while leaving other functions to private groups when they are better suited for them.

She is careful not to overstate the specifics behind the policy change, noting that she still wants more research. But the broader concern remains the same: if the county is taking on a larger, more expensive responsibility, taxpayers deserve to know why and whether there is a better alternative.

Her governing style: get the right people in the room

Lee uses her time on the Kaysville City Council as a case study in how she would govern. She served from 2014 to 2018 and became involved with problems tied to the city’s electrical infrastructure, especially on the older east side of town.

Rather than assuming she personally had all the answers, she says her approach was to assemble the smartest people available. At the time, there was no dedicated power commission, so she pushed to create one and then served on it for several years.

With expert input and focused work, she says the city was able to address major issues, including an underfunded reserve situation, without raising rates.

That example matters because it captures her operating principle. She does not see more money as the first solution. She sees structure, expertise, and disciplined problem solving as the first solution.

That does not guarantee every problem can be solved without new revenue. But it does set a high bar before asking taxpayers to pay more.

Responsible growth means more than spending more

The language of responsible growth appears often in discussions about Davis County. It is one of Utah’s faster-growing areas, and growth creates real demands. Roads, public safety, facilities, and infrastructure all feel the pressure.

Lee does not deny that growth requires planning and resources. What she rejects is the assumption that growth automatically justifies bigger government without first proving the money is being managed well.

Her version of responsible growth starts with these principles:

• Protect core county services
• Budget with long-term consequences in mind
• Avoid turning temporary revenue into permanent obligations
• Review programs regularly for efficiency and duplication
• Use tax increases cautiously and incrementally, not dramatically

That is a fiscal message, but it is also a community message. In her framing, preserving quality of life does not just mean keeping services available. It also means keeping homeownership attainable for seniors, families, and people trying to stay rooted in the county.

The race and the stakes

Lee is running for Seat B on the Davis County Commission. She won the party endorsement at convention by a wide enough margin to claim the official endorsement, though the incumbent also qualified for the ballot.

That context matters because this is not simply a generic conversation about government philosophy. It is an active contest over whether the county should continue on its current fiscal path or pivot toward tighter oversight and more aggressive scrutiny of spending.

She also points to support from current Commissioner John Crofts, who is not on the ballot for this seat but has endorsed her campaign. That endorsement reinforces the idea that her candidacy is tied to a particular vision of the commission’s role in financial stewardship.

Leadership that listens

For all the discussion of deficits, federal funds, and departmental cuts, Lee’s pitch ultimately comes back to representation. She says the county needs leadership that listens, talks with people directly, and takes their concerns seriously before decisions become crises.

That listening theme is not separate from her budget message. It is connected to it. In her view, a government that listens would not be surprised by the panic a 30 percent tax increase creates. It would understand in advance what such a proposal means for a retiree, a working family, or anyone already stretched by inflation.

She speaks about tax dollars almost as a trust rather than a revenue stream. That is the phrase that captures her campaign best. Public money is not abstract. It comes from households making tradeoffs every month. If government wants more of it, government should first prove it has treated the money already entrusted to it with care.

A campaign built on one question

Lee’s candidacy can be boiled down to a single challenge: Can Davis County provide strong services and plan for growth without losing financial discipline?

She believes the answer is yes, but only if county leaders stop treating tax increases as the easiest fix. Her approach is to ask harder questions first. Where is the money going? Which expenses are temporary, and which are permanent? What can be cut? What should be reviewed? What belongs in government, and what is better handled elsewhere?

Those are not flashy questions. They are managerial questions. But at the county level, that is often where the biggest decisions live.

And that is the heart of her campaign. Responsible growth is not just about building more. Strong communities are not just about expanding services. For Lee, both begin with competent stewardship, careful budgeting, and leaders willing to remember that every line item on a county budget starts as money earned by someone else.

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