Community safety and fiscal health rank the highest in the Sandy City Council’s priorities for the upcoming fiscal year.

Sandy’s elected officials adopted their five budget priorities for the 2026-27 financial year at a council meeting March 3. The priorities will inform how the council allocates government revenue and which initiatives receive funding.

“It is the mayor’s role to define the budget, but any time we can signal things that we are thinking of is helpful, and we can obviously discuss that when we adopt the budget that we feel is best aligned with our priorities,” Councilmember Marci Houseman said in February.

While public safety and fiscal health were the highest priorities, the city council also listed economic development, infrastructure and quality of life among its prime concerns.

This is the second time Sandy lawmakers have developed budget priorities. Last year, community safety ranked third among the city’s priorities, but now it ranks as the city’s primary concern.

“When we think of public safety, we usually think of our first and second responders, our police and fire departments,” Councilmember at-large Brooke D’Sousa said at a budget workshop on Jan. 27. “But public safety we are talking about … not just keeping us safe from bad guys, but the infrastructure, what kind of safety improvements we can make to our existing infrastructure, or if we are building some of these active transportation modes or expanding sidewalks.”

Prioritizing public safety comes after a pedestrian was killed in a hit-and-run accident in January.

Forty-year-old Joshua Perry was crossing a busy four-way stop at 11000 South and 1000 East when he was struck by a woman allegedly driving drunk. Sandy residents delivered a petition to the city council at a Jan. 20 meeting, demanding immediate safety improvements at the intersection. In response, the city installed a stop sign with flashing lights less than two weeks after the fatal crash.

“Right now, we are battling some concerns from the community around that specific intersection,” Houseman said. “So the fact that we have been so responsive to that and acting swiftly, I think, is just another example of how committed we are to this, and overall, residents feel safe in our community.”

Fiscal health, which consists of a balanced budget, robust reserves and “intelligent investment,” is Sandy lawmakers' second-highest priority.

“By definition, an intelligent investment is an investment in our people,” Houseman said. “We don’t make and structure core services or programs happen without employees that are satisfied.”

While the council desires to maintain well-trained, satisfied staff, the city faces the challenge of an aging workforce, said Shane Pace, Sandy’s chief administrative officer.

“We have a lot of employees nearing retirement,” Pace said at the budget seminar. “What makes that difficult is that we need to keep the people who are working directly underneath them at the city. We can't be losing those people so that they're there and could replace these people who are going to retire.”

Competitive wages, Pace added, will play a key role in the transition.

“Compensation is so important, and being competitive in our compensation is so important,” he said. “We need to be able to have those employees there as the tail end of the baby boomers continue to retire. It’s important for us to replace them with high-quality employees.”