A penny in ten dollars Woods Cross
A restricted, sunsetting parks tax that voters renewed in November 2025
The RAP tax, and the half of it paid by people passing through.
Woods Cross charges a tenth of one per cent in sales tax for recreation, arts and parks, which the city calls one penny for every ten dollars spent and which is not charged on food, gas or pharmacy items. It has raised nearly 4.9 million dollars from 2010 through 2024, the city expected about 520,000 dollars in 2025, and it estimates roughly half the revenue comes from people who do not live here. Voters renewed it on 4 November 2025 by 1,322 to 435.
My own ground is Southern Utah, four hours south of here, so these pages are researched rather than lived. Every figure on them was read at the body that issues it: the city code and the city budget notices, the Census boundary files, the state transit, wildlife and environment agencies, the county clerk, and the federal aviation and chemical safety records. Each one carries the date it was checked. A Davis County partner agent handles the work on the ground.
The live question
Did Woods Cross renew its recreation, arts and parks tax?
It did, on 4 November 2025, by 1,322 votes to 435. The measure appeared on the ballot as Woods Cross City Proposition Number 1, asking whether the city could renew the imposition of a 0.1 per cent sales and use tax for recreational, arts and parks facilities, programs and organizations for ten additional years. It passed, and the next reauthorization falls due around 2035. Those counts come from the Davis County Clerk's reported results, checked 15 August 2026.
One caution worth carrying, because it is the sort of thing that gets repeated wrongly. A percentage of 73.98 in favor circulates alongside the result and does not reconcile against 1,322 yes votes out of 1,757 cast, which works out closer to seventy five per cent. It is very likely a pre canvass number or one that counts undervotes. This page therefore prints the vote counts and the outcome, which are solid, and not the percentage, which is not.
Second caution, and it is a nice illustration of why a page like this has to be dated. The city's own parks page still reads, on 15 August 2026, that in 2025 Woods Cross residents will decide whether to continue or discontinue the existing tax. The vote happened nine months ago. The city's material is simply out of step with its own election, which is a reminder to check the date on any municipal web page before you treat it as current, including this one.
The tax, in numbers
0.1%
a sales and use tax, or one penny for every ten dollars
$4.9M
raised from 2010 through 2024, per the city
1,322 to 435
the reauthorization vote of 4 November 2025
~2035
when the ten year renewal next comes due
How it works
A penny in ten dollars, restricted by law to three kinds of thing.
RAP stands for recreation, arts and parks. In Woods Cross it is a local sales and use tax of a tenth of one per cent, which the city describes in its own material as one penny for every ten dollars spent. Voters approved it in 2009 and the first revenue arrived in 2010. Food, gas and pharmacy items are excluded, which matters because it means the tax lands on discretionary retail rather than on a household's necessities, and it is part of why the city can honestly say a large share of it is paid by people passing through.
The restriction is the point of the whole instrument. The city states that all RAP revenue is dedicated to parks and playgrounds, to recreational facilities and trails, and to cultural arts programs and community events, and that it can only be used for those purposes. That is not a spending preference the council could revisit in a lean year; it is what the tax was authorized to do. The council allocates the money through the ordinary annual budget process, which carries public hearings, so the decisions about which project gets funded happen in public even though the pot itself is fixed.
Scale it against the city and the arithmetic is striking. Roughly 520,000 dollars was expected in 2025 against a population of about 11,410, which is on the order of forty five dollars a head. Except that it is not paid a head: the city's own estimate is that about half the revenue comes from visitors, so a small city with a large retail and industrial footprint on a freeway corridor is funding a meaningful share of its parks from traffic that does not sleep here. That is the genuinely place explaining fact about this tax and it is the reason it earns a page.
What the city says the money has funded, in its own list, is dog parks and playgrounds at multiple locations, trail overlays and trailhead parking improvements, pickleball courts, basketball court repairs, park expansions and facility replacements. The city does not publish a line item ledger with dollar amounts against named projects, so nothing on this page attributes any particular park to RAP money. The city's parks page is where that list lives.
The details
Getting there
City Hall sits on the 800 West civic spine one block south of Hogan Park, and from the freeway it is exit 316 at 500 South, east to 800 West and then south. Regular council meetings run on a first and third Tuesday pattern, and the city posts its agendas and minutes to its own document center; the copies that turn up in search results on the retired woodscross.com domain frequently return errors, so go to woodscross.gov directly.
Before you go
- Read the ballot language rather than a summary. It is on the city's elections page and on the Lieutenant Governor's proposition list.
- Do not attribute a specific park's construction to this tax. The city names categories of spending, not projects with amounts.
- The city's own parks page had not been updated for the November 2025 result as of 15 August 2026. Check dates before quoting a municipal page.
- Every Davis County recreation, arts and parks proposition on the November 2025 ballot passed or was on track to, so the Woods Cross result was not an outlier.
Two different taxes
One you vote on and can leave town to avoid, and one that arrives on a notice in the post.
The parks tax and the city property tax levy get run together in conversation and they behave nothing alike. This table separates them, alongside the special districts that appear on the same property tax notice, because knowing which is which is the difference between reading a tax notice and guessing at it.
| The RAP tax | The city property tax levy | The overlapping districts | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A local sales and use tax of 0.1 per cent on qualifying sales | The city's own share of the property tax on a parcel inside the city | Separate taxing entities that also levy on the same parcel, including the South Davis Recreation District and South Davis Metro Fire, plus Davis County and Davis School District |
| Who pays it | Anyone buying qualifying goods in Woods Cross. The city estimates about half of it comes from people who do not live here | Owners of taxable property inside the city limits | The same property owners, on the same notice, under separate line items |
| What it may fund | Only parks and playgrounds, recreational facilities and trails, and cultural arts programs and community events | General city purposes. The FY2027 proposal ties an increase specifically to bond payments on the city hall and park project | Each district's own purpose. The recreation district is the reason Woods Cross residents hold resident status at the South Davis Recreation Center in Bountiful |
| Who decides it | The voters, at a reauthorization every ten years, with the council allocating within the restriction | The City Council, under Utah's Truth in Taxation process with a noticed public hearing | Each district's own governing board, under the same Truth in Taxation process |
| When it next comes up | Around 2035, ten years after the 4 November 2025 renewal | Annually, and the FY2027 proposal went to an August 2026 hearing | Annually, entity by entity |
Tax structure as described by Woods Cross City's parks and FAQ material, the city's FY2027 Truth in Taxation brochure, and the practical city guide's list of overlapping taxing entities, checked 15 August 2026. Confirm the certified tax area rate for a specific parcel with Davis County. This table is a description of public tax structure and nothing in it is financial, tax or investment advice; a qualified professional is the right person to ask about your own situation.
The city's own parks material lists dog parks among the things this tax has funded, and the city's parks code prohibits animals in city parks. Woods Cross Municipal Code 8-06-080, in the September 2020 codification, provides that no person shall lead, let loose or bring any animal of any species into any city park, excepting a service animal accompanying its owner and city approved events featuring animals. The recreation, arts and parks material on the city's own site lists dog parks among the categories the tax has paid for. Both cannot describe the same present day rulebook. Either the ordinance has been amended since 2020, or a designated dog area sits outside the code's definition of a park, or the funding list is loose language. Until Woods Cross resolves it in writing, plan on the code and call 801-292-4421 first. It is the single most consequential unresolved question about parks in this city.
The 2025 vote
A ten year sunset, and a ballot question nobody outside the city noticed.
Utah law requires voter reauthorization of a recreation, arts and parks tax every ten years, so in 2025 the Woods Cross tax reached the end of the ten years that began with the 2009 approval. The measure went on the general election ballot of 4 November 2025 as Woods Cross City Proposition Number 1, and its language asked whether the city may renew the imposition of a 0.1 per cent sales and use tax for recreational, arts and parks facilities, programs and organizations for ten additional years. It is on the city's own elections page and on the Utah Lieutenant Governor's list of current ballot propositions.
The result was 1,322 in favor and 435 against. Woods Cross was not an outlier that night: every Davis County recreation, arts and parks proposition on the November 2025 ballot passed or was reported as on track to pass, and a near identical measure ran in West Bountiful the same year with its own voter information pamphlet. That is worth one sentence rather than a paragraph, because it means this is a south Davis pattern rather than a Woods Cross quirk, and because West Bountiful's own page belongs to West Bountiful.
The design deserves a moment. A sunsetting, restricted, small rate sales tax that has to be renewed by the people who benefit from it is an unusually accountable instrument for a small city, and the ten year clock is the accountability. It also means that anyone buying here now is buying into a parks funding arrangement that will be voted on again inside a normal ownership horizon. The next reauthorization falls due around 2035.
Confirm the certification if you are relying on it for anything consequential. The counts here are the county's reported results and the sensible place to settle them permanently is the certified canvass on the Davis County Clerk's results portal.
A city of eleven thousand people asks its own voters, every ten years, whether to keep paying a tenth of a per cent for parks. In November 2025 they said yes by three to one.
Living with it
What a dedicated parks tax buys in a city that is already built out.
There is no new land here. Woods Cross covers about 3.83 square miles, it is hemmed on every side by three other cities, and it lost population on the state's own 2023 to 2024 estimate rather than gaining it. A city in that position cannot buy its way to new regional parks, so a dedicated parks revenue stream does something narrower and arguably more useful: it resurfaces, replaces, expands and repairs what already exists. Trail overlays, trailhead parking, court repairs, playground replacements and park expansions are exactly the list the city publishes, and they are exactly the list a built out city produces.
The other thing it does is show up on the largest civic project the city has going. The city hall and park complex now in design pairs a new building with a redesigned Hogan Park, and the park half of that has an obvious funding partner in a tax restricted to parks and recreation facilities. What the city has said publicly is that the bond would be serviced in part by an increase in its own property tax levy and in part by selling the old post office building and the old public works building. Do not read a specific RAP contribution into that until the city publishes one.
For a household, the practical effect is small and real. The tax is not something you can plan around or opt out of beyond ordinary shopping choices, it does not appear on a property tax notice, and it does not change what a house costs. What it does mean is that the city has a fixed, protected, voter renewed source of money for the parks a resident actually uses, which is not true of every city this size, and that the renewal decision comes back around inside a normal length of ownership.
The facilities that money maintains connect outward as well as inward. Mountain View Park is the city's door onto the Legacy Parkway corridor and the county publishes a second walkway at 1875 West and 2290 South, both of which put you on a paved route that runs the length of south Davis. Those belong to the county trail page rather than to this one.
Where it lands
Hogan Park
The block the city is redesigning, and the 1849 burial ground and 1850s cabin that will still be on it afterward.
Read the guideMoving here
Woods Cross or Bountiful
What a city line changes on a tax notice, at a recreation center desk and at a park gate.
The mover pageThe other document
The Station Area Plan
An adopted general plan element that says on the record why housing near the train has been limited.
Read the guideWhere the trails go
The Legacy Parkway Trail
The paved corridor the city helps manage, its trailheads and the water stops, written once for the county.
Read the guidePaid days out
Family weekends in Davis County
The county's paid attractions with their prices and seasons, including the recreation center this city holds resident status at.
Read the guideThe practical side
The Woods Cross city guide
Prices, taxes, providers and drive times, plus what the market is doing right now.
Open the guideKeep reading
More of Woods Cross on The Local.
One block
Hogan Park
An 1849 burial ground, an 1850s cabin, two markers, and a rebuild landing on the block.
Read the guideThe field
Skypark Airport
A public use field inside the city limits, named for the neighbor, 234 flights a day.
Read the guideThe half mile circle
The Station Area Plan
One island platform, no Sunday trains, and a half mile circle drawn around a refinery.
Read the guideTwo plants
Silver Eagle and the name
The 45,000 barrel plant is in West Bountiful. The one inside the city runs waxy crude.
Read the guideMoving here
Woods Cross or Bountiful
Two miles apart, one postal code, and a list of what the city line actually changes.
Read the guideThe companion
Woods Cross, in full
The block with the 1849 graves, the field with the airplanes, and the penny that buys parks.
Read the pageQuick answers
The parks tax, answered.
A recreation, arts and parks tax: a local sales and use tax of a tenth of one per cent, which Woods Cross City describes in its own material as one penny for every ten dollars spent. Voters approved it in 2009 and the first revenue reached the city in 2010. It is restricted by law to parks and playgrounds, recreational facilities and trails, and cultural arts programs and community events, and the City Council allocates it through the annual budget process, which carries public hearings.
Yes. The measure appeared on the general election ballot of 4 November 2025 as Woods Cross City Proposition Number 1, asking whether the city could renew the imposition of a 0.1 per cent sales and use tax for recreational, arts and parks facilities, programs and organizations for ten additional years. It passed by 1,322 votes to 435 on the Davis County Clerk's reported results. A percentage of 73.98 circulates alongside that result and does not reconcile against the counts, so this page prints the counts rather than the percentage.
Qualifying retail sales inside the city, with food, gas and pharmacy items excluded. That exclusion is the reason the city can describe it as one penny for every ten dollars spent rather than as something that lands on a grocery bill, and it is part of why the burden falls on discretionary retail. It is a sales tax rather than a property tax, so it does not appear anywhere on a property tax notice and it is not tied to owning anything.
Nearly 4.9 million dollars from 2010 through 2024, according to Woods Cross City's own parks material, with an estimated 520,000 dollars in additional revenue expected in 2025. Against a population of about 11,410 that is on the order of forty five dollars a head per year, although it is emphatically not collected a head. The city does not publish a line item ledger showing dollar amounts against named projects, so no specific park should be attributed to this money without the city saying so.
Anybody buying qualifying goods in Woods Cross, resident or not, and the city estimates that approximately 50 per cent of the revenue comes from people who do not live in the city. That is the genuinely interesting thing about it: a small city with a substantial retail and industrial footprint on a freeway corridor funds a meaningful share of its parks budget from shoppers and pass through traffic rather than from its own households.
Three categories and nothing else. The city states that all revenue is dedicated to parks and playgrounds, to recreational facilities and trails, and to cultural arts programs and community events, and that it can only be used for those purposes. The city's published list of what it has funded includes dog parks and playgrounds at multiple locations, trail overlays and trailhead parking improvements, pickleball courts, basketball court repairs, park expansions and facility replacements.
Around 2035. Utah law requires voters to reauthorize a recreation, arts and parks tax every ten years, and the ballot language approved on 4 November 2025 renewed it for ten additional years. That built in sunset is the point of the instrument rather than a quirk of it: the tax has to be justified to the people paying it on a fixed clock, and anyone buying a home here now will very likely be voting on it once during a normal length of ownership.
No, and they behave nothing alike. The RAP tax is a sales tax of a tenth of one per cent, voted on by residents, restricted to parks and recreation, and paid partly by visitors. The proposal that went to an August 2026 Truth in Taxation hearing concerns the city's own property tax levy, which the city proposed moving from .001392 to approximately .002079, generating about 994,249 dollars more, which the city describes as a 46.4 per cent increase in its property tax revenue, for the stated purpose of paying a portion of the bond payments on the city hall and Hogan Park project. Whether it was adopted is not confirmed here.
The city names categories rather than projects, so the honest answer is that no individual park should be credited to the tax without the city saying so. Woods Cross takes pavilion reservations at exactly three parks, Mills Park at 1850 South 1200 West, Mountain View Park on the west side, and Hogan Park at 750 West 1500 South, and that reservation list is the only park list the city publishes. Confirm anything about a specific park's amenities on 801-292-4421, because the city publishes no per park detail page.
A tax with a sunset on it, and a city that has to ask again in about ten years.
The parks tax is the small, clean, checkable part of a Woods Cross tax picture that also includes a proposed change to the city's own property tax levy, a school district, a county, a fire district and a recreation district on the same notice. None of that decides whether a house is right, and all of it is worth understanding before an offer rather than after the first notice arrives. Tell me what you are weighing and I will put you with a Davis County partner agent who reads these notices every year, and stay on the file for the financing side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.