I hope that didn't come across as cutting, I was just pointing out another way to look at it.
This is perhaps side-stepping the problem, but we use VIPM packages for all of our reuse code, which installs to vi.lib and doesn't get versioned with project code. Instead, we version a VIPC file which lists all the reuse code the project needs and what versions of the reuse package. This might be a useful workflow change for you to consider.
If you'd like to solve the problem in SVN exclusive, I'm afraid I don't use tagging in depth enough to be more helpful. Can you simply not select the utility folder when doing the tag, or are the utility VIs versioned per applicaion? Maybe a folder structure diagram could help clarify?