Home / Tooele case study / Research
We organize our work around the questions taxpayers ask, not government accounting categories. A finding is a research question until the evidence answers it.
A category-by-category look at a decade of district spending: how much each category changed in nominal and inflation-adjusted dollars, how that compares with enrollment growth, and how Tooele’s pattern compares with Iron, Cache, and Box Elder.
See the spending categories →Progress
Each question links to the page where its evidence is collected.
Local, state, and federal sources, and how the mix has shifted.
Explore → SpendingEvery $100 of spending by category.
Explore → In progressGrowth by category, adjusted for inflation and enrollment.
Explore → DebtPrincipal, interest, and the levy that repays them.
Explore → CompareSide by side with Iron, Cache, and Box Elder.
Explore → AdministrationSchool and district administration over ten years.
Explore → CapitalBond-funded projects, budgets, and final costs.
Explore → This yearThe newest budget against last year’s actual results.
Explore →Independent reviews are a starting point for our work. We are extracting every finding and recommendation into a structured dataset, along with the district’s response and current implementation status.
An independent examination of the district’s governance, student achievement, coordination between departments, policy adherence, accountability, education service providers, and operational processes. The report includes peer-district comparison metrics.
Read the audit (district site) →The district’s audit committee reports that an outside firm, BDO, analyzed vendor information, duplicate transactions, spending by department and by individual, and purchase-card activity. The report noted limitations in the transaction data, including the lack of a required business-purpose description for every transaction.
View the audit committee page →| ID | Source | Category | Finding | Recommendation | District response | Status | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No findings entered yet. Each row will quote the source report and cite its page. | |||||||
Our standing research agenda. We look for rapid growth, large differences from peers, unexplained changes, unusual transfers, persistent budget variances, and differences between public statements and financial records.
Each published analysis — for Tooele now, and for any Utah district as the statewide dataset grows — follows the same structure, so readers always know where to find the evidence, the limits, and the sources.
We don’t write
“District wastes millions”
We write
“Administrative spending increased X% over ten years. What changed?”