City Council · 2019-04-30

We appreciate having everyone here. Welcome to our work session. We'll start out with a presentation on our survey results by Y2 Analytics, and we appreciate having Corinne Gibb here. I guess you're our sole representative of Y2 today?

For the day, yes, I am. My colleagues send their apologies. They are in the thick of grading at BYU, so—

Oh, okay. I can understand that.

Tough week.

Yes, it is rough timing.

Well, Mark's here now.

We can get started.

Yes, we were waiting on Mark. My technical difficulties. Let's, let's go with that. I appreciate the benefit of the doubt. All right, so to just dive right in here, we conducted a survey among our resident panelists.

Which is 1,200 people?

So our panel is actually significantly larger than 1,200. Last time we refreshed the panel, we had about 3,000 residents respond. So our panel base is quite large, and we wanted to make sure that we incorporated a balance of panelists from last time around and previous panelists.

So how large is your panel and how many responded?

So our panel— we sent out about 4,000 email invitations to the entire panel. Our survey sample was more than 1,400. I believe our final respondent count was 1,478 respondents.

Give or take.

Give or take.

And a, what, 500 response rate is plus or minus 5%? Plus or minus 6%?

Yes, so at this response rate, we are at about a 3 percentage point margin of error. So brief overview of survey methodology here. Again, our sampling frame was existing Orem City panelists Those panelists were recruited from a representative, randomly selected sample of the city. So not every resident received a survey invitation, but our panel at its base is representative of the city as a whole. So the response— responses that we gathered were weighted to make sure that they reflect the demographics of the city at large according to age, gender, and homeownership. So all of these things are things that we take into account with every survey that we conduct. This is not your typical banner ad online survey that anyone can click into and participate. We take statistical, random scientific sampling very seriously because we are committed to making sure that the data that we give you represents the city at large rather than just a particularly interested subset of residents. So, as I mentioned, we sent just shy of 4,000 invitations. Our response rate was about 37%, which is phenomenal. Better than what we see on telephone surveys and significantly better even than what we usually see from our resident panelists here in Orem. So that was really good news. And that was before the article in the Herald was released. That was prior to a lot of the attention in the media that this proposal has gathered. But all of those things are worth noting. And again, as I mentioned, just shy of 3 percentage point margin of error, so 2.58 percentage points there in the city of Orem's size. A few highlights before we dive into details. So overall, Orem's quality of life rating is consistently high. So we haven't seen a lot of movement on some of these satisfaction with the city as a whole measures since we've been conducting these public opinion surveys starting in 2015. Compared to March of last year, residents are slightly more likely to say that the city is headed in the right direction today. More than half of our residents say that they support the potential tax increase regardless of the dollar amount proposed. So we conducted a survey experiment where respondents were randomly assigned to see one of 3 dollar amounts for a potential tax increase And a corresponding number of officers that could be added to the Orem Police Department given that tax increase amount. We found majority support across all of these conditions. There's slightly higher support for the $6 a year and 2 officers condition, but even at the highest household impact amount, we see a majority of residents support the idea of a public safety-directed tax increase. Thank you. Property tax increase. Residents tend to support this proposal because they place a high priority on public safety and supporting the Orem Police Department. So we'll go into a little bit more detail as to some of the things that residents had to say, the responses that they volunteered, and their reactions to some of the information that we presented to them as well. And after they evaluated a series of messages about, you know, sort of the state of the police department and conditions in Orem for public safety, and some of the motivations for this proposal, that support for the proposed tax increase grows significantly. And the most compelling messages address the current demands on each officer in the public— in the Oregon Police Department. So, quickly looking at city direction and perceptions.

Yes, sir.

Excuse me, when you said the 2 were the same, the $6 was no tax increase. increase, but a shift, or was it a straw—

was it a raw—

both were more tax increases? So this would keep the essentially the mill rate the same. The 6 or the 13 did that?

The 6.

And the 13 would have bumped it a little bit, but basically there was not a discernible difference whether you're bumping me a little bit or keeping it the same.

Thank you.

Correct, yes. So looking at again the direction of the city overall, this— about this time last year, residents were Still leaning heavily in favor of the city headed in the right direction, but we can see we're up to 50% of residents in this year's poll saying that the city is headed in the right direction. 23% say the city is headed in the wrong direction, 27% are unsure.

That's interesting, the wrong direction has stayed the same.

Very constant.

I think the ones that are saying unsure generally are saying, I haven't lived here that long.

Yes.

So I think it kind of shows that those, as they live here long enough, they start to Move and develop an opinion.

That's correct. We, we've looked at the subgroups here in the past and found that most of those residents who are expressing that they're unsure, it's because they are newer residents to the city. So looking at the average quality of life rating in the city, 92% of residents say that their overall quality of life is above 50. You can see Sort of the distribution of all of those scores on the 0 to 100 scale here. The citywide average is 77 on that 0 to 100 scale, which is quite high. And that has been consistent since we started polling in Orem. So you can see our first data point back in 2015, all the way through this survey in 2019. Scores have fluctuated from 74 to 80. That's a really healthy range. And a positive evaluation of the city overall. When we asked residents how they believe the mayor and city council are handling their jobs, more than 70% of our respondents approved. So that's a significantly higher approval rating than I think we're used to seeing for elected bodies at large. So congratulations.

What do you typically see?

For a collective body, Usually the approval rating, if it's doing well and other indicators in the city are healthy, they're lucky to get over 50% approval. So especially when you're dealing with not just a single entity but all of the elected officials in a city, it's hard to get a rating that high. It would be unfair to compare yourself to the governor, for example, but to compare yourselves collectively to the state legislature, you're looking really good.

That's a pretty low bar.

I don't think we want to make that comparison either.

I was just with Brad Wilson. I'll text him and let him know that.

Okay, sounds good. When we look at the city now compared to 5 years ago, we also have this data point tracked over time, and I'm sorry the PDF seems to have shifted some of the visual here, but Opinions have been pretty constant on this question. So about a third of residents say that the city has gotten better, about a third say that it's gotten some degree worse, about a quarter in the middle say that the city has stayed about the same, and then we have 10% lingering that say they don't know, they really haven't been here that long. So overall, pretty consistent results here, and residents are a little bit split on how they feel the city is changing and developing over time. But most are likely to recommend Orem as a great place to live. So we have 80% of residents here say that they are likely to recommend the city to others. We also asked residents to evaluate city services, and the one that I wanted to pull up here because it relates directly to the proposal is residents' evaluation of public safety. Or police and crime prevention services in the city. You can see here, 46% of residents are very satisfied with the performance of police service, and 36% are somewhat satisfied. 82% total satisfaction with police and crime prevention services in the city.

That's pretty high.

That is quite high, yes. And as we've tracked city services over time, the things that we consistently see at the top of the list are police and crime prevention services, fire and emergency medical services, and garbage collection. So to see a score like this is not surprising, but is heartening to know that residents are, are happy with the way that the police department has been performing in the city. So diving into the tax increase, as I mentioned, we conducted a survey experiment here. So We drafted the question so that respondents would see one of 3 potential tax increase amounts and one of 3 potential corresponding number of officers added to the police department. So those amounts were $5.98 with 2 new officers added to the police department, $9.33 with 3 new officers added to the police department, $12.85 with 4 new officers added to the police department. With some details around whether the tax rate would be maintained for that $5.98 per year on the average household increase, or if the tax rate itself would increase, and as property values increase as well, that would cause the corresponding tax increases we outlined here. So the ultimate question was whether residents supported or opposed a proposal to increase property taxes by one of these given amounts for the average household in Orem and to add a certain number of officers to the police department. And as you can see here, all 3 options gained majority support. With our overall response rate to this survey, we had about 400 to 450 respondents in each So even within each of these survey experiment components, we have a margin of error of about 5%, and we still have a healthy majority of residents saying that they would strongly or somewhat support this proposal in each condition.

So it's interesting to note that the mill rate has actually gone down about 1.5% over the last 8 years, and of course that occurs as your house price goes up with inflation. How the legislature has set up how property taxes are paid, because they offset each other. But the reality is our mill rate has gone down.

Interesting.

So I'm not sure— I don't want to speculate too much on whether the average resident understands how those rates function. I'm gonna guess that most don't. But the dollar per household impact, I think the thing that really hits home for most residents. And looking at any of these potential increases, that dollar amount didn't cause a lot of alarm.

So you're really looking at 50 cents per month per house to a dollar per month per house.

And that is another question that we asked, so I'll show you how residents reacted to that as well. But first, I want to look at a couple of the volunteered responses that residents gave for why they would support or oppose a proposal like this. So a couple that jumped out to me: safety is a main priority to maintain lifestyle that Orem enjoys.

Right.

Families need to feel safe in Orem wherever they go. Cost of living is always increasing. Officers need to be paid. New officers need to be added at times. So just a very pragmatic look at the need to grow the police force. A few comments about the rate at which the city is growing and has grown over the past several years as So I think a broad recognition of a need was sort of the underlying theme for support. For opposition, I don't think there were a lot of surprises here. Some pretty general just anti-tax sentiments among those residents who said that they would oppose a tax increase, a lack of trust in the efficiency or the way that city resources are currently being managed. Again, I don't think any of this is particularly surprising, especially that we just went through all of the bond work and saw all of the comments people had against that as well.

I like the one in the middle, that traffic enforcement is not a priority.

Yeah, we had a little chuckle about that one. So when we, when we presented Right. Residents with arguments in favor of this proposal or information that sort of motivates this tax proposal. We asked whether several statements would make residents more or less likely to support a tax increase for public safety funding, or if it would have no effect on their decision. The statements or messages that resonated most with Oregon residents were those that focused on the impacts of the current sort of status quo on individual officers in the Orem Police Department. So the number of calls per officer having increased over the past several years was one that was really compelling. So 45% of residents said that after hearing about those effects of the calls per officer and the volume of work that each officer on the Orem Police Department is is dealing with. Forty-five percent said that they would be much more likely to support a tax increase after reading that. Forty-one percent of residents said that they would be much more likely to support a tax increase if they knew that the revenue would be exclusively dedicated to the Orem Police Department. So this tax increase is just going to fund public safety, and we're adding new officers to the Orem Police Department, and that is the exclusive. Use of that tax increase, that's something that was really compelling to residents. The change in the number of officers in the police department or the impacts that the high workload have had on turnover in the police force was also a compelling message. The one thing that wasn't particularly compelling to residents was the statement that Orem has not raised property taxes by city council vote in in 41 years. Just knowing that the city hasn't done this in the past wasn't enough on its own to motivate residents to be supportive here. Really, they want to know what's justifying this decision. Why would the city want to raise property taxes now? And reading some of those statements, again, was compelling for a majority of residents. And then you alluded to the monthly cost per officer and the household impact there. So we did have a message there that sort of broke down what the police department would have to spend for adding officers to the police department and what that looks like for each average household in Orem at an annual and per-month basis. So, as you mentioned, Mayor, about 50 cents per month for that $5.98 price tag, 78 cents per month if the police department were to add 3 new officers and the tax was Yeah. So the price of a gallon of gasoline was increased about $9.33 a year, or about $1.07 for that $12.85 tax increase. And again, not a lot of variance here in levels of support. So more than a third of respondents saying that they would be much more likely to support the tax increase after reading this message with all of the corresponding price and additional officer And then after we had them read and evaluate all of these messages and indicate to us whether each of these statements would make them more or less likely to support a tax increase, we asked them again whether they would support or oppose that proposal. And we— you can see support increases significantly. So, I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? So for the lowest sort of price point here in terms of household impact, 50% of residents after reading all of these motivating arguments for a tax increase say that they would strongly support the proposal. And even at, again, that $1,285 per year per average household line item, we see 42% of residents say that they would strongly support that proposal. And then more than another quarter of respondents in that somewhat support category. This is a really solid baseline. We should note that we didn't present residents with any messages opposing a potential tax increase. I think while most residents can come up with enough reasons on their own to oppose something like this, or anti-tax sentiments are really accessible. Some of the facts that motivate a council or an elected body in general to decide to raise taxes and some of the details here that we shared with residents in the survey are a little bit less accessible or less well-known. So this isn't to represent a full public discourse by any means. We, I think, would be lucky to be in a scenario where we never had any opposition. And so this is definitely a rose-colored glasses view of a ballot measure, but I think it's safe to say that given the information in front of them, residents of Orem would be strongly supportive of a tax increase that funded public safety improvements, specifically adding new officers to the Orem Police Department. And then the last slide I have is just a recap of our key findings. So I'm happy to answer any questions about the survey data that this has prompted. Yes?

Did you look at any demographics as far as were people on fixed incomes, you know, more concerned about income— I mean, a tax increase? Or is there kind of a young, the median, and the older at all?

We can certainly look more closely at that. The thing that stood out to me that was particularly surprising was that there wasn't a lot of variation in support levels. So I'm happy to dive into income levels specifically, but when we look across age and gender and different parts of the city, there was— the support levels for a potential increase were pretty consistent. Because one of the arguments against is always the person on a fixed income that would affect the most. So I'd be interested to see I'm happy to follow up on that. Any other questions?

Any comments or questions? I think that's a very attractive finding, and I think it supports what we've seen in the past, that most of the residents have a high quality of life and appreciate the services that the city offers and renders. Also, I think to the major point is that I believe the residents support our police and want to see them perform at a level that is beneficial, and if they need additional help to do that, they want to support that.

Question for Jamie and maybe for Mark, who were here, and Brent to some degree, you were on the council then. Last time there was a taxing Proposed tax increase, some members of the public geared it as though it was for one item, which indeed it was not for that.

It was for general funding.

This one isn't for general funding. It is indeed geared. And can we guarantee to voters that it would be earmarked as an increase to the police department budget? Yeah, I mean, we're tying specific people and resources and assets to it, so yes. I mean, it's, it's money that would go directly to the hiring of personnel, but for the tax increase, we wouldn't— we wouldn't have.

And it's— we're essentially accountable to that specific number.

Rarely—

or trying to hold ourselves accountable—

do we have one specific number that we can point to and say, yes, we've added this many officers, you know, at this time.

I think there's more accountability Yeah, but I mean, I also think too that that number is going to continue to grow because we're taking a point in time, we're saying, yeah, it covers it.

Yeah.

But prospectively, it may not. It's not going to cover it because the cost of doing business increases, the cost of retirement increases, health insurance increases, employees get raises, that increases. So yes, At a point in time, you can represent with full confidence that 100% of the money will go towards law enforcement and these personnel. But in the future, I will also represent that the cost of keeping those same 2 or 4 or 6 officers over time is going to increase.

Yeah. So, and basically by doing this, we're holding the mill levy Steady and actually increasing it a little bit. And the reality is our portion of the property tax that a resident sees is only 15% of the total property tax bill.

So maybe to speak to what, what we have tentatively done as part of the city manager's budget that we will be presenting to you, our recommendation in the budget includes keeping the mill rate At the current amount, which will fund 2 police officers and associated resources necessary to put them out on the street.

And the mill levy could actually, if we weren't doing that, could actually tick down just barely to stay steady with the increase in the prices of homes.

So if you were to choose to do anything different or Or if your mindset right now is, well, let's not do 2, let's do 3, or let's not do 2, let's do 1, then I would appreciate that direction. We can come to you next council meeting with the budget that is in alignment with your wishes. In either case, we have to discuss Truth in taxation, whether we keep it flat or not. Now, if, if you were to choose not to fund a tax increase, then there's no need for a truth in taxation hearing. If you choose to do 2, if you choose to do 3, if you choose to do 4, it's the same process that we would go through. It looks like, give or take, 70% of our people want us to do this. That's, that's what the data suggests.

Yes, friend.

As far as commercial property tax, how do those numbers fall in line with that?

Is it the same?

So the rate obviously is applied a little different. It's applied to 100% of assessed valuation versus 55% of assessed valuation, but the same rate would apply to all commercial businesses. Same mill rate. Yeah.

And if I—

so I guess what I'm representing to you is our go-forward plan as of now includes keeping the mill rate at the same level next year as it is this year, thereby adding 2 additional police officers with that, with that money. If you would like to suggest something otherwise, we can amend the budget. I would like to suggest that we amend the budget. budget, if that's at your discretion. That's not something you have to make a decision on today. But I just want to make you aware of the fact that it is something, at least based on the information we've collected from our residents, our residents are somewhat open and responsive to. And what would happen the year after next year?

What does the mill—

what does the mill rate—

So The mill rate would adjust again, and there is a potential that it would decrease again, but we would have that additional amount of base in there.

It'd be decreasing from the level we set this year.

Yeah.

So it would stay constant.

So the dollar amounts we're showing here, that covers both the ongoing costs and the one-time cost to outfit them with the vehicles?

Correct.

If we were to add 4 new officers and cover just the ongoing costs with this tax increase and cover the rest with one-time funds or part of our capital budget, what would that bring the dollar amount to? If we— because I guess part of my concern is if we're talking about this property tax increase going forward, this is an ongoing change. So I would think that we would cover the ongoing additional cost of the officers, but I'm wondering if we don't need, in other words, to add 4 officers, if we only need to raise property taxes, say $9 a month, and cover the remainder with— Well, I mean, I'll represent to you that every expense we spend on law enforcement is generally an ongoing expense. It may not be, for example, the cost of the vehicle we could amortize across 5 to 7 years, but that cost never goes away. The cost for training that's above and beyond the wage never goes away. The cost for additional equipment, uniforms, all those things don't go away. But I—

so I blew up, sorry. I, I do think this number does reflect the need that we won't be buying a car every single year, so we did adjust that.

So let's amortize it over— I think the one-time costs were $53,000, so I guess what is the average annual cost that we would be putting towards those one-time? And let's build it off of that as opposed to saying we're paying that full one-time cost every year.

$102,000.

$102,000.

And that's, I believe, what we did represent in the survey. So this survey represents what we asked.

But if you have a car and you buy it now, it depreciates out.

Correct.

And during that time, then another car needs to be purchased. And so it's— We call it a one-time purchase right now, but in reality, it's used up over time and has to be replaced.

Yeah, so we did—

it's really an ongoing—

we basically advertise the cost of some of that into this rate.

Yeah, and clothes the same way.

Correct.

Body cameras, they wear out, etc.

I guess the other thing that I just want to qualify is, in the cost of— in the course of this conversation, the last number of weeks that we've been doing this, you may have heard from For example, employees or others, well, what about this department, or what about that department? Why are we focusing exclusively on the police department today? The response I would, I would provide is there are different tools we can use within, obviously, the tool set that we have. In our estimation, as it related to police and funding new officers, This seemed like the best route to take. And so that's the path that we followed. In the case of, for example, the fire department, when we talk about adding one firefighter on shift, we're not talking about adding one person. We're actually talking about adding 3 people. And when we talk about adding 2, we're not talking about 2, we're talking about 6. And so, you know, we have to look at that when we talk about adding additional public works employees. For example, we're probably not going to come to you and say, "Well, we need general fund property tax money to do that." We have other resources that are available through other taxes, through other fees that we can use to support and hire additional personnel. For our streets department, or our water department, or our development services department. It just seemed in this particular situation that it made sense to fund these officers with property tax. And at the same time, we fund departments in different ways on an annual basis, and It's difficult for us, for example, to keep score, so to speak, to make sure that everybody is held harmless every year and everybody gets kind of an even-steven amount. I'll give you the example of, for example, the fire department. In the last 4 years, we funded about $3.25 million in apparatus. Well, what could we do for $3.25 million at the police department? We could buy all new cars for all of our police officers in one year with $3.25 million. But obviously we're not going to do that. It doesn't make practical sense. So we have to kind of think about this on a kind of long-term basis. And when we look about— when we look at our long-term need for law enforcement, look at the sustainable nature of property tax We unfortunately look at the fact that crime doesn't seem to be a service that is on the decline. It seems like it makes sense to align law enforcement services with the property tax.

Sam?

I did have somebody ask me, well, to guarantee that this does go to police, why not set up a line item on your utility bill so that, you know, this much goes toward police or public safety.

And I'm not even sure if that's possible, but my concern in doing that would be there's overhead involved.

Like when we were going through that discussion with the— Richard here.

Yep.

Well, with the utility fee, essentially a portion of those funds that are raised from that would go toward the administration of utility billing process.

And it would also—

it would spread it more across our residents as opposed to the property tax. It's actually a little softer on the residents, a little bit harsher on the commercial properties because they're paying the full tax rate. But frankly, I think we get a higher rate of calls to our commercial properties than we do our residents. So I think that's probably a more appropriate way of doing it. Just in general, is that even— Well, I mean, frankly, we could double our property tax and it still wouldn't be sufficient to cover 100% of police services. So, you know, that's why I with such confidence can guarantee you that all this money is going to go to public safety, because we're not even funding, uh, we're not even funding 50% of our police department with 100% Isn't that fair to say though, that if we, if we tried to add it as like a utility fee on our utility bill, that there would be kind of like some overhead that would get taken out of that?

You could easily say there would be to not do it, but it gets dicey with utility bill because we do have the hammer of you can shut your water off.

Say the bill was $75 and $2 of that belonged to lease, so you only paid $73, and eventually are we going to shut your water off because you didn't pay your $2?

Please think to your imagination. Legally, I think we might have a problem. We have to be careful about what gets on there.

And I believe the residents will trust us to do what we say, that we brought this up for this particular reason. The other thing is, is property tax is a stable tax where some of our other revenues go up and down, as we've seen over the last 15, 20 years. And so this brings stability and adding members to our police force. And it's probably good to note that even with that, we're still below the national average of amount of police officers per 1,000 residents, but this brings us closer, and I think our police force does an excellent job. And we certainly appreciate Chief Giles and all the efforts he puts forth and our police force. So, uh, any other questions or comments?

I'll just say, tied to that though, over this— these many years, we've tried really hard to Make sure that the enterprise funds or the water and sewer funds are meant to just cover the cost of the water and the sewer. So when you start adding additional features or additional expenses in with those utility bills, that gets— to me, it starts to cross the line a little bit as far as what's the appropriate nature of the utility fees. So I think the property tax allows you to clearly put it in the right bucket where it needs to be.

Thank you.

As opposed to trying to tag it along with water fund or sewer. A user fee versus a general fee.

Yeah, police are not a user fee.

Police are— you hope you never have to use the police, but the benefit is that having an appropriate-sized police force allows the entire city to be safe.

And I think this survey speaks to the fact that the residents agree that this is an important service, an important benefit, and safety is one of the most highly sought-after things in a city, and we are— I think we were numbered the 17th safest city in one of the last surveys that I had seen in the United States. And so we want to keep it that way. So thank you for your efforts.

Appreciate it, Mayor. So is it our next council meeting that you're bringing the tentative budget?

Yes.

So I would be in favor of adding 4 officers Ideally, and you know, Stephen, I know you said that this already incorporates kind of that amortized, so it's not the full one-time cost. But if there is any wiggle room to bring that down to, let's say, $12 a year, so it's an average of you know, I just want to make sure that we've exhausted every avenue to try to minimize that impact there. But in general, I would be in favor of adding four new officers. So even if your proposal isn't that, I'd at least like to have you bring. So outside, if I may, outside of what we're discussing today, there is included in the budget the, uh, the addition of one additional police officer as for our mental health unit. So we are adding one additional police officer independent of this. So for example, if you said let's add and go with option 3, the 20 Sure.

And I would also look at that. I think a dollar a month, um, it's not unreasonable. I know in my neighborhood we had that murder, and when we got texts that we had to lock everything, I think adding that extra layer of security with another cop on there would not I don't think a dollar would be— I wouldn't get any pushback in my neighborhood.

Okay. I don't think 85 cents is gonna break anybody.

All right.

No. I, I guess I'm sorry, but—

Go ahead.

Am I hearing general consensus for a number or for 4 officers?

I would go for 4 officers.

All right, Mark?

5.

So that with the additional 4 that's already included?

5.

So 4 of your 6.

I think that's a good amount.

I think this is a good— okay, good move. All right, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Happy to help.

And we'll— Mayor and Council, we'll make this available as well.

Yes, obviously, the public document, and we'll make sure that you have copies.

All right, we'll move on now to our Warren City parking study, and our presenter is Reed Ewing from Dallas?

From Dallas?

No, not from Dallas.

Isn't that your family? Salt Lake City.

I'm sorry, I'm not dressed for this, but someone else is.

One of our visiting assistant professors, David Proffitt, is going to present. He and I worked together on the study, and he'll present on you already. And he looks better than I do today, so he's going to present.

That's great.

All right, well, just to introduce myself, my name is Emily Gutten, and I'm one of the new long-range planners with the City of Orem. And for today's second work session item, we'll be hearing from Dr. Reed and Mr. David Proffitt about an extensive parking study that was completed over the past year. To introduce the authors, Dr. Regehring is a distinguished professor at the University of Utah, and he's also the director of the Metropolitan Research Center at the University of Utah and a pioneer of the land use and transportation planning field. Mr. Proffitt is a visiting professor at the University of Utah and is a lead contributor to the study and to the Metropolitan Research Center as well. To tell you a little bit about the background of the study, it was initiated a year ago in the spring of 2018. And it was due to some concerns about the parking— current parking standards that we have in our code. The first concern was related to the fact that we have over 60 standards regulating parking in our current code, which is a lot of standards. So one of the goals was to see if we could condense these standards down to one single standard. And the second concern was related to spillover parking issues for multifamily developments on neighboring streets. Several residents have expressed interest in understanding the relationship between parking supply and demand to see if there's a lack of supply of parking in these developments. So with that, I'll hand it over to Mr. Proffitt to talk about the study.

Hello. We were here last summer in August, I believe, telling you what we were going to do. So Now we're here to tell you what we did and what we found. Just our goal with the whole study is, as Emily just said, to provide you all evidence so that you can review the city's parking standards for new development. And the whole, the whole study from start to finish is designed to give accurate information about the supply and the demand for parking here in Oracle. To do this, we looked at 10 sites around the city. 6 multifamily residential developments, 3 of which are student-oriented. 3 of the others are farther away from UVU, so they're not student-oriented. We looked at 2 commercial sites, 1 office site, and 1 mixed-use site.

So, question for you.

Yeah.

It doesn't look like it, but was any studies done of the parking along 800 South and 400 West in that region and the neighborhoods? Not so much an apartment complex, but the neighborhoods where the students would park.

We will get to that.

Toss him a softball.

Here you go.

We will get to that, yeah. So just— those are the sites we looked at. Also, as Emily just said, we started by looking at the existing codes here. If you were wondering, you have more than 60 different codes that relate to minimum parking standards throughout all of the city codes, including 25 planned development. Codes, each with their own parking standard in it. So in general, um, we've got the range there. Um, we kind of just— to show the range of all these codes that are here in Orem for multi-family housing, it ranges from 0.65 parking spots per unit to 2.5 parking spots per unit. Plus some extra for guest parking depending on the code. The ITE is the Institute of Transportation Engineers Manual. That's really the national guide for setting parking standards. They're often criticized, or they're known for setting standards on the high side because they set them specifically for suburban areas with no transit and very little ability to— for people to walk or bicycle or anything like that. Along the Wasatch Front, we have information about a dozen other cities here. So the regional high was in line with Orem, though Orem's highest codes are higher than the regional high. And the regional low in Tomahawk Springs is 1 per bedroom or 2 per unit, whichever is lower. So just the general takeaway from this is that overall parking standards are relatively high.

Does attached include anything from a duplex up to townhouses?

Yes.

Okay.

And triplexes and that— yeah, everything, that sort of thing.

Do single-family homes have any restrictions, or you didn't—

or parking?

But you didn't study that part?

No.

Thank you. That is in our report, which you can see, but that wasn't the focus of what we were doing.

Thank you.

So we, on one day in September, we went to all 10 of these sites. Overall, it was about a 16-hour day. We hired 61 students from U, from BYU, and from UVU to basically stand at the entrances. This one happens to be University Crossing. It was the biggest site. So there was somebody everywhere you see a little circle. There was somebody standing there with a clipboard, and they would count how many vehicles entered and left, and they Did this all throughout the day for 14 hours, most of it. And they tracked how many people were in the car. They counted people walking onto the site, people bicycling, et cetera. And they did this for every single site.

Nobody offered them money as they drove in?

If they did, they didn't tell us about that.

No, they didn't.

It was a long day, so I wouldn't begrudge them a little spare change. We had another group of students who would walk around throughout this time, and they counted, when they first got there, the total number of parking stalls that were at each site. So that's the total supply. And then every 2 hours, they would go around and count how many of them were occupied. So we have a percentage of occupied parking spots for each site. They also did intercept surveys with people People who were walking around, which basically just means they walked up to random people they saw and asked them 4 questions. What was their trip purpose? So work, recreation, visiting a friend, whatever. How did they get there? So what mode of transportation? And maybe it was 3 questions.

3 questions.

It was in September. And they also asked them where they parked, if they parked on-site, and if they parked off-site, they said— if they said they parked on the street, they asked them why. So I'll get into that in a sec. So this compares Wheram's— the supply of parking, so the number of parking spots at each site compared to what was recommended in this— in these national standards from the Institute of Transportation Engineers. The orange is ITE, the blue is OREM. You can see they kind of go back and forth.

And the blue is based on the count of potential parking, not the number of spots.

The number of spots, thank you. Yes, so it's the actual observed supply. This one is— if you pay attention to nothing else in this entire presentation, look at this slide. These are the ratio of parking demand to supply. So the one on the left in each chart— these are different colors for some reason— the blue one is the observed supply and The right-hand one, the red or the green, is the observed peak demand. So that was the number, the proportion of occupied parking spots at its highest point throughout the day that we were there. You can see that at none of the properties, neither the residential ones or the commercial, which includes the office development, And we split out the mixed— the residential and the commercial in the mixed-use development. None of them came close to— the demand never came close to the supply. We did look at— we did an additional count where we looked at on-street parking at these 4 residential developments. I believe these are the places where you all have heard some complaints. So we arrived— we had counters who arrived at 5 PM, and they sat on a corner until 9 or 9:30, and they counted the number of cars that were there when they arrived that were parked on the street, and then counted the number of cars that came and parked on the street, and then the proportion of those—

5 PM?

where the driver or passengers got out and went into multifamily development, as opposed to somewhere else. So, in this case, the blue lines on the top are the total number of cars parked on the street at each property during this period, and the orange lines that are lower are the number of vehicles that were parked that had passengers passengers or the driver or someone get out and go into the development or come out of the development and get into a car park on the street. So again, some of them had a decent proportion. At Monteval, most of the cars that parked on the street were in fact going in and out of the development, but at the same time, there were—

I'm sorry, go ahead.

At the highest count, 9 cars parked on the street total. 7 of those were going in and out of development. A higher number at Promenade, which is, I think, one of the ones you were talking about, 800 South, if I recall. But about half of them were going in and out of development.

So there, if there was a spillover vehicle that the resident was just parked there all day long, I guess they wouldn't necessarily be flagged as a spillover. True. But I mean, you're doing the best you can in the time that you're there, right? I'm just trying to understand.

That's why we counted both. So you can see how many cars are parked on the street. But you're right, if they park their car for 48 hours and go in and out while we were there, you know.

And if there were 41 cars parked on the street, do we know if the space at empty parking spots would They could have parked on property, but maybe they didn't because there's a charge for parking on property. Did you do that or not?

We asked people about that during the surveys during our big count day. Nicely anticipated one of the next slides. In fact, the next slide.

This one.

Thank you. So we had 529 people. Who were asked these 3, sometimes 4 questions, 24 of those in total said that they had parked offsite, so on a street rather than onsite. Of those 24, most of them said that they parked on the street because they either didn't have a pass, which was the most common answer, 13 of the 24 said that.

And are those residents?

We didn't ask them if they lived there. They were just there.

Okay.

We, yeah, we very deliberately didn't ask anyone in the surveys for anything identifiable about themselves.

Didn't ask who sealed the weapons with?

Exactly.

So we, we don't know who they are, where they live, just where they parked. 6 of the 24 said that they parked on the street because the lot was full, and I'll revisit that in just a sec. 5 of the 24 said that the street parking was just closer to their ultimate destination within the development, and that was mostly at— Yeah, at Midtown 360. So it's— I'm sure you're familiar with it. It's quite large. So they would park on State Street or wherever just because it was closer to the shop they were visiting.

So it's interesting, Canyon Crossing seems to be very high with a lot being full.

So we realized afterward that the question was not entirely clear. It could have been full, just the visitor spots. Were all full.

Okay.

Because at no point was the entire lot full.

Okay.

So if we had it to do over again, we would have asked specifically about that. Are you a resident? Are you visiting? Is it just the visitor lot that's full? Unfortunately, we can say that's probably what was going on, but—

It just looks Starkly different from the rest, that's why.

Yeah.

Do most of these properties have reserved parking? Like, if you have an apartment there, you have 1 or 2 reserved spaces? Yes.

Yeah.

A visitor can come and take that? As far as I know, they all have separate— you know, they have reserved spots for residents and then separate spots for visitors. So I Visitors. I think that's probably what's reflected in this answer. These are visitors. The number of vehicle and trip counts, the person trips are higher because some people didn't take a car or some people came with multiple people in one car. Interestingly, these are fairly high in the report. We compare that to the ITE standards and their predictions. So there are a lot of people going in and out of all of these properties. Nonetheless, they're still not taking up even remotely close to the whole supply of parking that's there. We also asked them about the mode share during the surveys. And so we found a pretty big difference. The office development and the 2 commercial developments were almost entirely automobiles versus some of the residential areas over by UVU were more than half walking or transit.

Interesting.

Interestingly, Midtown and And even Canyon Crossing had significant amounts of transit use— or walking, sorry. Though that could have been also some overflow with transit. We asked the people how they'd gotten there that day, but, you know, if somebody says, oh, well, I got off the bus and I walked over here— anyway, they could have both answers.

So for Promenade, where it's an other, do we know what— was it like a longboard or like what? I'm just curious what the other—

Yeah, you know, I think it was a skateboard.

Okay.

So it was either a skateboard or a scooter. Okay, thank you. So what do you do with this? From what we saw, there is a lot of extra parking in Orem, and the standards require a lot of parking that doesn't get used. This can be a problem because obviously it makes development more expensive, so it makes it harder to walk.

So a question, you said your workers were there 14 hours a day?

Yes.

So that's from when to when?

They started at 7 and they worked until 9, so we have Full counts.

So you are covering the nighttime area pretty much?

What we did was after they— almost everyone left and quit at 9, but some people stayed and did another parking occupancy count around 11 PM.

Yeah, because that's—

if I could.

Yeah, I was one of those people who went around and we were working until about 11 o'clock.

That's when you really see what the parking demands are.

Right.

During the day, they're coming and going, you can't really tell.

Yeah.

Yeah, so we— our final counts were at 11.

Our standard has been, we've done this kind of study before, and we sometimes will wait until midnight and do the final count. In this case, it was 11 o'clock, and you're right, people were coming back to their apartment. complexes as late as 11 o'clock.

And in the report that I believe you all have, there's a chart that shows— that tracks the occupancy rates of the parking lots throughout the day. And at the residential ones, it peaks later in the day, around 11, 12 PM, or 11 PM, 12 AM. But in the commercial ones, it'll peak— it has a peak around lunchtime and then another kind of smaller peak post-work in the evening. And that, that's all— that all went as expected. So, um, interesting. So looking at some of the single-family attached, so the townhomes, etc., um, we think you could get by with one per bedroom. Maybe 2 per unit on the higher end, which is more in line with what the standards are now, though slightly lower. Residential multifamily, a little less than 1 per bedroom or 2 per unit, whichever is lower. Slightly higher version, go 1 per bedroom, then add some extra Yeah. So, you're paying extra for guest parking. Commercial office, you could reduce that to 2 to 3 per 1,000 square feet of gross leasable floor area. Mixed use, which currently the only example in Orem is Midtown 360, but their shared parking worked pretty well. And even though it's got a lot of parking there, So there's a lot of shops, and then there's a decent number of apartments as well. It also was never, never full.

It has, you know, 2 stories of parking underground, so— and then you share with Pepperidge.

Actually, 3 stories.

I think there's 2.

It was late at night when I was driving through, so it's possible.

I've walked it, and I believe there's only 2.

And then TOD, which would be— there are not current examples, but now that the BRT is open, you know, I'm sure you're interested in seeing more of that. Based on other research that we have done at TOD, transit-oriented developments around the country, we see— I'm sorry, what's TOD? About 50% less demand for parking at transit-oriented developments.

Yeah, they're very, very successful because they're using the transit, and that's why, like, they like to live there.

And a lot of times people can, you know, there's what we call internal capture. So people who live there don't have to leave to do some of their errands. So they don't, they don't need to make a long trip. They just walk down.

They have a work, live, and play environment there.

Exactly. 2 questions. So first of all, if you have, let's say, a 3-bedroom townhouse on that first row for single-family attached, are you saying we should have 3 spaces, one for each bedroom, or just 2 for that unit? Because in that case, the low would actually be higher than the high.

So I'm just trying to make sense. Yeah, that would probably be the smart way to go. I believe the report says that. It should say that. Yeah, I mean, obviously—

I think that question might be best directed to Emily. I think that that was a staff consensus for—

you're talking about for the single-family tax.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's here.

I am still here.

Yeah, do you want to answer that?

Yeah, I think what we would do is do one per bedroom, one per unit, whichever is lower, similar to the residential multifamily.

And it might be helpful just if that's how we feel about it to actually document that in the report just so that if somebody comes and applies and says, well, hey, no, this is what the report I just, I want to be consistent that we're reflecting that in the report. The other question is on the bottom for TOD, would the low versus the high, would that—

would the low be more if it was next to, let's say, a BRT stop or the Frontrunner station, whereas the 75% might be more if you're close to a bus stop that connects to one of those or something? We're presenting these 2 standards. suggestions for standards as kind of a range. So the standard would be either end or somewhere in the middle. So, but you would apply it to a TOD, which would be next to a BRT.

Yeah, and the ones we've studied, and pardon me for interrupting, but the ones we've studied are literally adjacent—

these are stations. They're adjacent to stations.

And these stations are either light rail stations or BRT stations or in some cases heavy rail stations. So you get off the train and you cross the platform and you walk down the flight of stairs and you're in the TOD.

Right.

There's essentially no— what traffic engineers refer to as impedance associated with access or egress.

It's right there.

And if you read the literature, the work, for example, that was done by Robert Silvero, who's well known for this work and is a personal friend of ours, they will talk about a quarter mile around a transit station.

We—

I personally don't agree with that.

I think the—

these low standards should be applied to adjacent TOD that's adjacent to a station, not a quarter mile away, because I don't think it has the same impact on people's parking decisions to walk—

if they have to walk a quarter mile to a station versus— Yeah.

Go down the elevator or cross—

Across the parking lot, they're there.

This is the definition that we've put in the report for that, and it's 1,000 feet from the station to the platform.

And it's just from essentially BRT or greater, standard run-of-the-mill bus?

Correct. So in other words, with the exception of the intersection of University Parkway, the whole way along State Street, this wouldn't really apply to that itself?

Correct.

I wanted to make one point about the distinction of defining these by bedrooms rather than units. We did notice that there were a few of the developments that have kind of an unusually high number of larger individual units with 3, 4, even 5 bedrooms. And so if you look at those by unit, you come to a very different conclusion than if you look at it by bedroom. So those tended to be the student-oriented developments that were around UVU where we assume they had an individual in each bedroom, probably someone with a car. But so if you set your Standards by bedroom instead of by unit, you end up with something that seems to more closely match the number of people who are living there.

Is this being—

in addition to that, do you need some additional for visitors, or does this wrap the visitors into that number?

So you can see that on the kind of on the higher end, we recommended having some for visitors. The idea is that it's usually better if they don't— if the properties don't necessarily divvy that out or reserve it specifically for visitors or residents or everybody. You just have parking and people who drive in can park there. If I have a sticker in my window or if my license plate If my license plate is registered and Dave comes to visit me and his isn't, does he get a ticket? Well, that— yeah, that is up to the individual properties, but the best practice that we're arguing for is that it's shared among residents and visitors so that maybe— I don't know, maybe you have an overnight thing, but the idea is that these numbers would provide enough spaces total for all Residents and visitors.

Because then you don't end up with, well, the lot's full, so I'm parking out on the street, when there's actually 20 spaces available. It's just those are reserved spots.

Exactly.

It allows, it allows for more efficient use of the parking infrastructure that's there.

So the student housing we just approved on Campus Drive pretty well matches your standard high there. So we have 125 possible spaces for guest parking, and I think we averaged 2 per unit.

Are you talking about the green?

Yes. Didn't we approve 0.8 parking per unit, per bedroom?

Per bed.

Per bed.

Per bed.

Plus guest parking.

Visitor parking.

Yes.

Okay, visitor parking was 125.

We did visitor, but we're below the low as far as the standard for 0.8 per bedroom. Well, they're recommending 0.75 for student housing. Okay, thank you. So 0.8 is right.

So we're right.

0.8 is more than 0.75?

Thank you.

Teach me later, okay? Well, plus we're talking about bedrooms versus beds. And a lot of student housing, you have one bedroom with 2 or more students in there, so. Yeah.

I think the report itself, it shows for student housing 0.75 per occupant plus the—

Our standard right now is 0.8. That's something we want to stick with. Right.

It's close.

They wanted to lower it down to 0.67, I believe. We stuck with 0.8.

The challenge is being able to see into the future. You know, we had a bunch of PAR that got approved some time ago at 0.65, I think. Jason, you can help me. And then they're parking on the street whether they need to or whether it's a cost because they don't want to buy things you didn't get into. We don't know.

Mm-hmm.

But as soon as we allow too few, then the neighbors around us complain. As soon as we require too many, the developers are saying, what? This is crazy. I don't want to have to do a stacked parking.

I don't want—

whatever, because they're trying to maximize the land value. And, um, we don't know how to really pre-guess the future.

Right. And I will say that even in the places where there was— there were people parking on the street, again, at no point was the street full.

Right.

There were plenty of open spaces to park on the street for anyone and everyone who wanted to come by, even at the highest peak.

Sure.

Numbers, you know. People don't like it when someone parks in front of their house.

Well, even as a single family, some areas don't like you parking on the street. You don't provide off-street parking.

So I think this study kind of confirms that I think actually we're doing a pretty good job for what we require for parking and what's actually happening out there. The ones that I'm really concerned about, again, are the homes around UVU and how many non-stickered cars are out there at midnight parking that shouldn't be there?

Well, we did not—

I know that's not part of the study.

We didn't see a lot around these apartment buildings.

No, the apartments I think look good.

Yeah, so Okay, do you have any more questions? Okay, thank you all.

This is not an open meeting, but we have a lot of people here concerned. Can we just hear from some of them, Mayor?

Do we have time?

I don't know what you have on the agenda.

So I don't know.

We have a couple developers here, I'm sure, who would have an opinion on this.

Anybody want to make a comment?

Sure.

Um, and tell us who you are. Yep, sure.

My name is Thorne Halliday, and I work with Tag Development. So we're— I'm the Chief Investment Officer at Tag Development, and we actually—

you guys know us from the UVU project.

We also own Sienna Villas, which is down the street, beautiful multi-family property. It's got 81 units. And so we, you know, in the end, we're looking at potentially doing other developments in Orem. We understand and we applaud your efforts on On identifying and locating specific locations for multifamily development.

We think that's been a great step forward in what you're doing. So, you know, our concern as developers, just like Tom was talking about, was number one, there is a significant cost in providing parking.

And we have—

we're seeing right now, trying to go underground with your parking, depending on the shoring, the amount of shoring that you have to do and the amount that you go down, it can be anywhere from $17,000 to $40,000 a stall.

So it is a— it's an impact. Um, you know, at Sienna Villas, which is one of the only properties that we actually own, we were required to put in 2.25 stalls per unit. And right now we're parking—

How many people are— how many bedrooms?

So the main one, half of them are 2 bedrooms and half Customers.

Customers.

So we have, we have, we've done counts in 2012, in 2016, at the end of '16 and '17, and we're doing another count right now. And especially looking at the busy times, the later evenings and the early mornings, and we're seeing for our property that we're actually maximum, we're parking about 1.4 3, 5 stalls per unit. So we have a massive sea of open space that's just not being used. And so, you know, I think the city is doing a great job of trying to think through this properly and trying to be cognizant of what we're doing. I appreciate the parking study. I think that kind of falls in line with what we're seeing as well in other properties.

Urban properties versus transit-oriented properties versus more suburban properties are all a little bit different. So I think looking at specifically what is adjacent to the property helps out as far as bus stops.

We actually see that we have some of our residents don't have cars. They actually just take the bus.

It's a little bit of a walk to the bus stop there.

And are you seeing more of that?

We're seeing, you know, since 2012 to now, Our parking ratio is about the same.

So max—

actually, its maximum is 1.35 on our 4-ish.

On average, we're probably about like a 1.2 or so on maximum.

So, um, you know, that's something that we're obviously the developers again just have, you know, we don't want to overpark because it can take away from a lot of the property opportunity and the opportunity Sure, thanks.

Anyone else?

Okay, say what?

Sure, go ahead.

Hi, I am not a developer.

My name is David Halliday.

I'm a civil engineering graduate from BYU, and I don't have much to add to methodology of your study. Sounds very thorough.

The only thing I'd like to add is.

As a person who lived in Provo for the past 4 years, I love that city a lot, but I did not appreciate the parking situation.

So whatever you do, whatever your decision, don't do what they did. They've got a very interesting parking situation. You've got— if you can handle 2 inches behind you and 2 inches in front of you, you got a parking situation.

Sure, Mayor.

Sure.

I run Angry Commercial and Multifamily. We have obviously the University Mall development co-developed with Woodberries, which you know well. We have Monteval, and we've planned an expansion for Monteval. We've been waiting for the results of the moratorium parking study for over 2 and a half years, so I'm hopeful you can get to a fairly quick resolution so that we can either proceed or decide to move I do appreciate the idea of getting analytics behind this so that we avoid conjecture. So the study is very much appreciated. Let me give you some heuristics that we use. First of all, as a developer, the worst thing I can do is have dissatisfied residents. We don't call them tenants, we call them residents. We create communities, I don't have properties. So we take this very seriously. If you look at our Google scores, our Facebook scores, If you look at our credit scores, etc., you'll find that they're higher than any multifamily community in the state. We have over 3,500 units, another 1,500 under construction in the state. So I think we're a credible developer and we take very seriously what we do. Heuristics that we use for suburban areas: 1.5 to 1.75 stalls per unit usually equates to about 1 per bedroom, and that includes That includes the guest parking. We have a senior project, 1.2 per unit. Why? Seniors have fewer cars and fewer visitors. Okay, that's 55 and above. Students, about 0.75 per unit. That includes guest parking. We've done many of these surveys, etc. In fact, we've done 2, I think, for your city because we had a couple of complaints about street parking. I took pictures for 7 days. every 2 hours on the street to completely rebut false claims by residents. Now that's the kind of weaponry I'm happy to provide to you simply because someone has some kind of an axe to grind, etc. So what I do is, is just be available to answer any questions, show you what we do at any of our communities. Just to give you an idea, our University Mall project, we have 478 units currently, another 2 200 under construction. It's parked at 1.5 per unit. It does very well. We don't have any complaints there, etc. It parks at 1.45 and you built how many? No, so we built 1.5.

Okay.

And we actually have a surplus of parking.

Okay, that's what I thought.

So let me, let me just tell you one other thing that we're gearing for. Real estate is a long-line business. What we're targeting is much less utility from our parking Structures over the next 30 years. Why? Automated driving and Uber. If you look at what creates a lot of these trips, it's students using Uber, it's delivery of food, but it's not on-site parking. Our actual parking requirements are going down per person, per unit, per bedroom, per setup. And that'll happen in Orem even though it is suburbia. Thank you. Because that is what is demanded by lifestyle renters. That's who we target. And there's a sea change. Utah used to be at 27% rental, 73% homeownership. We're above 42% now on rental. Part of it is pricing, but a large part of it is personal preference and lifestyle preference. People like a maintenance-free lifestyle where I can offer a complete package of Fitness services, office services, laundry that gets delivered to them, automated access, no snow removal, no lawn maintenance, etc. And so we need to be cognizant of those trends even as seniors are aging in place and have a home and don't see the trends that the next generation will see. So that's all I have. Thank you for letting me share a few minutes.

Jamie, could we have that part Parking study sent to the council.

Hey, Mayor, let me say, Chris Watson, just a bunch of— the current, you know, you see their study and they looked at it and there's a surplus in all the projects they surveyed when it comes to multifamily. And so you can see it's being parked adequately. You still have some, in some cases, some issues with some parking on the street, but current new ordinance that came out with these new, these new developments in these key areas of the city at 2.25 per unit, it's very difficult because you do have a mix of units. And so if you have, you know, a 50% mix of, you know, 1-bedroom versus 2-bedroom, it makes it very excessive. So the way they've approached it, I think, is more of an appropriate way where they're recommending, you know, 1 stall per bedroom and then some guest parking. It more correlates with what the parking, you know, needs are as you're seeing as they've done this study. And so I just encourage you to look at that because just the blanket 2.25 per unit doesn't really address the way these things are being developed and used, and I think the study reflects that. So I just encourage you to take a look at that as you guys get further into detail.

Okay, anyone else?

So, Mayor, last night it was through email sent to the parking service, so we do have the draft.

Once we get the final, we'll resend it.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Appreciate the study.

Let's go ahead and move on then to our discussion on major grant and facility presentations on CARE. Steve Downs is our presenter.

Mayor, Council, we've done this the last few years. We have representatives from the Sarah and the Hale here. I have not met Steven Carter.

Steven Carter?

Okay, perfect. We've talked on the phone.

Steve Davis.

Representing the Utah Metropolitan Ballet. So we— what we want to do is just kind of go over the reports that are being submitted. As you know, for our major grant recipients, we ask them to submit 2 reports a year, an interim report showing how they are halfway through the year, Final report showing how they did over, over the entire year, and then we close it for the same fiscal year. So obviously the only final reports we have are through June 30th, 2018. The year we're in, we have an interim report which we'll show a little bit of, but most of this is based on our last year full-year report which ended again in 2018. I'll go through each of them. I've asked each of them just to have a couple minutes just to talk about what's exciting this year, what's what's happening and kind of give you an opportunity to ask any questions. So we'll start with HAIL, and their request this year is $1,142,282. That matches the 35% limit that they're allowed to ask. And the SARA has used that same privilege, and the Utah Metropolitan does not ask for that.

Steven, are you looking to— Oh, I forgot to—

I didn't want to Yeah, sorry.

So this is, this is, uh, so this is their report.

So the first line you'll see, obviously, the amount they've requested in previous years, um, $500,000, $995,000, $898,000, um, $645,000. And anyways, you can see that. I think the only thing I will say is the $500,000 wasn't representative of the 35%. There was one year, and you can probably speak to this, where they were— the year prior, they were just kind of asked point blank, why are you asking for so much? You shouldn't be asking for that much.

They came down—

It was by a novice city council person who was just on.

Who remains unnamed.

We'll leave him unnamed.

Leave him unnamed.

Thank you.

You have a good memory of that instance, though.

Is there— Yeah, I was watching, David.

Yeah.

So I guess I will just represent that that wasn't representative of 35%. They are growing at that kind of rate, but you will see the growth obviously represented in the request. Below that is the amount given in the prior years. And then we look at the participants year over year for the last few full years and then the interim report. So the first 6 months of 2017 compared to the first— Yeah, anyways, July 1st To December 30th of '17 to July 1st, December 30th of '18.

That's the interim report that shows that increase. So in summary, they could ask for near a million bucks, $900,000 or so, and they've been funded in the $300,000 to $350,000 range the last several years.

Correct.

The achievements that they've listed, again, for sake of time, I won't— I'll leave these up for a minute so you can look over them. I won't read each one because I want to make sure there's time for them to speak to it.

But they talk about their sellout rates, what their shows were, season ticket holders and such.

And then their attendance breakdown, percent increase or decrease, you'll see in the attendance and different types of shows. And then how they spent the $315,000. Again, they've been given $340,000 this year, but we're not complete, so we don't have that final report. We'll have that in July.

So I'm going to go ahead and This is the report through the end of 2000— June 30th, 2018.

So I've got a question for him.

Yep, please.

Tony and Jeff right behind you.

Sure. The costume customers, why the difference?

The costume customers?

Yeah.

Which number are you referring to?

So this shows 135% increase up there.

Yeah, that mainly has to do with the idea that, uh, as we're looking at the schools that are being hosted, they have schools that are actually renting an entire show. So they'll have students that come in.

So you're reaching out to the schools?

Correct.

Right. And then we actually have all the people come in for fittings and then come back again. So there's quite a few more travel-wise issues. Okay.

Um, and then again, they're asked this year their application summary, and I'm happy of course to send this all out so you can have it look over a little before. But let me, let me, let me just— oh, please, Mayor.

No, I just said please do.

I was gonna say let's have Jeff and Cody just speak to this upcoming year and specifically kind of the application, if there's anything out of anything that they want to highlight as to what the future holds. Great, thank you.

I just of course want to express our appreciation For this, you know, for the state and the city being supportive of the arts. We really couldn't do what we're doing without the support of the CARES Act, so it's very, very important to us. We've got an exciting year coming up, and in this latest playbill that Jeff's putting out here, it announces our 2019 season. We're some fantastic shows, one of which we're super excited to do is called Million Dollar Quartet. It's a show that was, of course, it was on Broadway and it toured, but we are the regional premiere, or at least the northern Utah premiere of the show. We've got some professionals coming in to do it, and it's the story of Johnny Cash and Elvis and Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Jerry Lee Lewis.

Yeah, it's a fantastic show, so we're really looking forward to doing that one and being the premier in this area to do that.

That's—

we're just getting ready to start rehearsals on that.

And you'll see a number of other really great shows that are coming up. Our education department is It's thriving. We're doing more classes than ever. This summer we've got a great lineup planned with new instructors that are qualified, that have degrees and experience in teaching education. So lots of great things happening.

One of the—

of course, you know, one of the most exciting things that's happening is our announcement to build a new theater at University Place. And things are going along well with that. We're grateful to University Place and to the City of Orem for collaborating with us and to help us with the means to make it happen.

The city staff and council, you all know what's What's going on with that, so I don't need to explain too much about that.

But we're—

that's one of the most exciting things going on, and feedback that we are getting is fantastic. We've heard no negative comments at all regarding the move over there.

People are ecstatic about it.

As far as the CARES tax goes, we depend on it.

And it is a necessary thing.

We're finding as our quality goes up, of course the expenses go up right along with it.

And we're trying as hard as we can to keep our ticket prices affordable.

So the caretax really helps offset the rising costs.

And we are appreciative for it and thank you for considering this.

Any questions?

Anything you want to add?

No, in fact, actually just on page 19 in the booklet, it's the 2020 season that we've just announced. So this show, Tuck Everlasting, that you'll see, that you have the playbill for, opened in previews last night.

So that's how hot off the presses.

Cody was there running the lights. It's fun.

I work in an environment where these guys are actually creative artists and experts that also run the show.

It's pretty neat to see that. So Cody was there last night. Tonight at the lighting board and opening the show, uh, right after we finished the board meeting. I saw that in your sister theater up in Sandy last year.

That was a great show.

Okay, so we just finished Newsies, which was a huge hit, did really well.

For those of you that we saw at the theater, thank you for your support.

And this one, as I mentioned, has the 2020 season in it, which is fun as well.

We get to see a lot of you guys in the community and being at our facility, and we appreciate that.

And that's about it.

So thank you.

Thanks.

Yeah.

Your programs that are targeted towards your youth, any idea how many people participate? And we're always looking at opportunities for Orem. Orem, is it up there?

Yes.

So we have a significant amount of youth in our programs. And one of the things that Cody mentioned is we have professionals that also oversee the programs. So we have some teachers that They're teaching kids that have PhDs. A couple of them, 2 or 3, are on the— what's the new name of the choir? It's not the Tabernacle Choir, it's the—

Tabernacle Choir.

Yeah, anyway, that one. Amazing ones. So some of our teachers are on that choir and they teach our students.

So you're talking hundreds of kids, a couple thousands?

We're actually talking about thousands. And so they'll come through the program in a variety of different levels, maybe take Maybe taking voice lessons, maybe taking acting, maybe in the youth productions itself, and so on. And that number's up here, 26,642.

7 points. So that looks like there's a big increase. Yeah, well, that's the amount of times that child interacted with—

Oh yeah.

Oh yes, yes, yes, yes.

That's right.

So is that attendance of people who came and saw these junior plays, or those are the people that actually participated?

Those are people that participated.

Okay, thank you.

So any other— I want to make sure we keep— well, there'll be obviously continued opportunities for questions. Let's go on to the, the Sierra.

Thanks.

The Sierra has a request for $703,362. Again, you can see the amount that they've requested over the years on the top and then the amount that we've given on the bottom, just below that. Their participant level, you can see the percentage increase. In the, uh, in, in the last full-year reports as well as the interim reports of the first 6 months of this year compared to the first 6 months of last year, fiscal year. And then achievements, again, they, um, a large number of people served, about 47% of those from Orem. And then they have their concerts, their indoor and outdoor series that they do each year, as well as their live theater productions and their outdoor movies. Art, uh, art, obviously the art education programs are a big part of their portfolio as well as the, the Orem Heritage Museum. And again, I will send this out so there'll be an opportunity to look at it a little further. Here's their attendance breakdown for the different types of, um, the different types of events that they do.

If I scroll up a little bit, you can see both.

So then the cost breakdown for how they spent the $525,000, which And then the rest is their application. But Adam's here, and so I'd like to obviously give him a couple minutes to talk about this coming year and anything he'd like to share with the council. Adam?

Thank you. So we're, we're gearing up for the 35th anniversary at the Shell with Newsies, Peter Pan, Beauty and the Beast. And of course, we're teaming up with the city on Memorial Day with John Michael Montgomery, Josh Grayson, and hopefully some other surprises between now and then if we're able to secure it. But yeah, and then we've got other concerts. I was hoping to have the brochure. It's at the printer as we speak. It was proofed last week, and I— they just didn't—

Hudson didn't get it down in time.

But, um, we'll get that to you, and you'll all get it at home as well. Uh, and then we We'll start our 86th season this September inside. We continue to see an increase with both the youth programs, the adult programs, the senior programs, and attendance. The biggest negative you see up there is live theater. That's simply because we didn't do Education Week at BYU, so you're seeing the number of the week that we didn't do, but we're back on track there. They just had a special Relief Society program or something that year in the Dion. But anyway, we're very excited. We think that— I want to echo a little bit what they said, you know, that the care really does allow these organizations, CIRA, to thrive, not just survive. And I recently spoke to the Chamber of Commerce on the last Friday Forum and talked about the return on investment and a number of those things that Rana wanted to really focus on. And it was interesting from the— what the national On a national scene, the entire NEA budget is the equivalent to one F-16. And so, you know, and then you trickle that down to states and counties and cities and others, but the ROI is still a very, very high number. 7 to 1 is the average nationally, and I think even if you took a conservative spin on that, because we live in the conservative such a conservative area, it's still triple or more to one ROI. And I think it's a huge investment.

We have it—

we, of course, everything's through zip codes.

That's where we get our percentages. We're serving a large portion of our community, and I think it adds a lot. The Hale and the ballet and so many other organizations to really the quality of life we enjoy here in Orem, and it's a wonderful thing. Thank you for your support. Adam, a question for you. I noticed the first-run films are up 22%. Any idea why? Strictly subjective. You know, is it a Harry Potter, Star Wars year, or is it an Avengers year? Sure, I didn't know it was that specific. It's, you know, our attendance is going up. You know, it increases year over year over year. But it is, I mean, everything we do is subjective. You guys know this. You can produce the greatest event at University Place this Saturday. It costs the same amount of money to do it, the same amount of effort and organization to do it, and you can have 2 people or 20,000 people show up. You just have no idea, right?

Yes.

I was just wondering, Although I do applaud getting the word out. A lot of people, frankly, don't even know. When they think of the movie theaters, they go to the standards, right, that they can buy on Fandango or something and buy it.

You're not there, right? You can't buy your ticket on Fandango, or can you?

We're on Fandango, but you can't buy it on Fandango.

Okay.

So people just don't even think about it, and you'll have a nice first-run movie and people I think you're doing something to get the word out, and I just encourage you to continue to do that.

Thank you. We enjoyed almost 3 sellouts of Avengers this last weekend. It is the biggest screen. It is the biggest screen. It's a neat experience to see a movie with so many people.

But you market that on Facebook and other social media. Right, you market that on various social medias, that it's a big screen and you can normally get a seat.

And you have some money left after you leave the concession stand.

This is true.

Sorry.

Is it bigger than the IMAX?

No, IMAXs are 1870. That is a 1570 size screen.

What are the special events that's your second biggest, 33,000?

What types of events does that include?

You scrolled past it now, Steven.

I know, I was trying to see if you'd listed that one, but yep.

Oh, I see.

That could be, co-produced things like we've done. It could be, I know in the past, like when we've hosted Storytelling Festival, that's been in special events.

I mean, I don't, I can look up the breakdown exactly, but those are fireside.

Fireside would be a good special event that's strictly intended.

I know one of the other big ones is the, like this last year at the SARA, you had the Price of Freedom for the 4th of July.

Yeah, so those are SARA-sponsored These are things that CERA's involved in in some way, shape, or form that have tenants.

They could be paid or they could be free, but they're— those are things that don't fit into another category necessarily that's strictly CERA.

Any other questions? Well, thank you, Andy.

Appreciate it very much.

Utah Metropolitan Ballet, uh, $75,000 request last year.

As the same, you'll see the amount they requested in previous years and the amount that they've been given in previous years, the number of participants year over year, and then with the interim report as well. Can I make a clarification?

Yeah, please.

On that interim number, so I'm new at this, I've only been involved with this for couple months.

So I believe that was forecasted and not to date at the time the interim was put in.

So I apologize for kind of the discontinuity of apples and oranges here. Thank you.

Again, some of the achievements they talked about last year when they came— this newly designed Nutcracker with James Christensen and his daughter Cassandra Barney.

And Steve, maybe I could just mention something. The costumes, the backgrounds are outstanding, and they're completely new. They're beautiful and brilliant colors. So they've really put on a great show. This Nutcracker this year is the best I've ever seen, so this past Christmas.

I've found that as well, having gone to both.

the Ballet West as well as the UMB's version of The Nutcracker, and it was—

yeah, you can't tell the difference between the two, really. Of those participants, how many of those would be unique participants versus people that would see all the performances?

I have no way of answering that.

Partly, Because the participants also include our school outreach and things, so there's going to be turnover in who comes in and who comes out.

But, you know, the participants come from our schools, they come from members of the community, they come from families and relatives of the dancers who were in the show at the time.

I would hate to put a guesstimate on that.

Steve mentioned about the elementary schools and kind of the hours they do in there. And then they do this for every year, they do a show for children, families affected by autism.

Correct.

Kind of a—

maybe the same rules don't apply for the audience.

They're allowed to kind of, you know, anyways, it's a different experience. Yeah, if I can speak a little to that.

So one of the things that you really likes to do is serve all members of our community.

And families who've had family members who are affected by autism or other developmental challenges, they find it—

I don't want to say hard, but it's a little bit—

they're a little bit more aware of how people can act during a show where you're supposed to kind of be quiet and sit So we put on this show every year. We reach out to all the different autism groups. We work with the Utah Autism Council. This year in May, we're doing our Cinderella show, which will be at the Scarah.

And it will—

it's also—

we also got a partnership with Vivint Smart Home and their Vivint Gives Back charity wing that likes to help out with autism.

So, causes as well. So we reach out to all the different groups, and for the Peter Pan show alone last year, I think we had over 700 participants in that show. And the dancers love it, the audience loves it.

They can—

they know that they're within a safe space where people can't— you know, if someone's gonna have an outburst, no one cares because they're all—

they've all walked in those shoes.

And it's a really great It's a great experience.

And then they have a meet and greet with the dancers afterwards.

So they, um, there's, there's a really strict rule about leaving the dressing area with the costumes, at least for the, for the dancers.

You're not allowed to do that.

So when a show's over, uh, under normal circumstances, the dancers can't come out and take pictures in their costumes and whatever. It's like, it's, it's one of those cardinal rules that they can't break. This is the only exception.

where they get to come out after the show with the audience members, take pictures, answer questions, talk with the kids who are there.

It's just a really great event for everyone. And so our autism show this year will be our Cinderella show in May, and we're also planning another show for December, Nutcracker, which will be split between the Covey Center and the The new theater at UVU. I think it's called the, the Norda, right?

Yeah.

Uh, so we're actually gonna be, we're actually gonna be splitting our Nutcracker to have more, half of the shows in Orem instead of all of them at the Covey Center this year.

Great.

So there's the kind of cost breakdown on how they spent it. Yep.

Any, any questions for Steve?

Okay, well, thank you.

Appreciate it.

Any other questions for any of our majors before we get into the facility requests?

Okay, there is a request this year for some funding for the library auditorium.

Obviously, this is the year that we build, and I'll get right into it.

One of the things that we've had a request, and Charlene's here and can speak to it, or Brent or any others. But one of the requests we've had from a number of city council members is let's, let's open this the right way and let's make sure that when it's open it's functioning and it's able to be used by those that it was intended to be used for. The bids that we're receiving, that we're in the process of receiving, don't take into account FF&Es. It doesn't take into account projection systems or sound systems or pianos or any of those types of things. That will have to be funded outside of the Outside of that construction budget. And so there's a request for $200,000, and there's the line item for what those things would entail. Obviously, most of this just is to ensure that when we open, that again, it's, it's ready to be used. And for those that it was intended to be used for, that they're able to perform on that, on that stage in the way that we would like.

I just have a question.

Are these numbers that you I mean, $34,000, are these things you've checked on? I mean, how realistic are these costs?

I'll turn to Char.

So we have worked with the theater engineers and experts at Method Studio to help us narrow in on some costs that would actually reflect the purchase of that. They've provided in some cases recommendations on equipment. We haven't got an example of the acoustic sound shell. In a written form, but they have looked at one that would be appropriate for our space and that they would recommend in terms of setup and storage and things like that.

So it's kind of a mix, but we definitely consulted with all of Method Studio.

We consulted with IT regarding the lobby monitors. We haven't selected any lobby furniture yet, so I mean, that one is definitely going to be more open once we start to talk about, you know, should we incorporate some color or what types of finishes there. But we have definitely worked with some experts to get some advice on the other areas.

So is this conservative? Do you feel like it's conservative, or do you think— I mean, I guess I'm wondering, $200,000 this year, maybe is this realistic? Or next year, are you going to need another $50,000, $100,000? I'm just trying to guess how realistic this is.

I feel like it's I feel like it's pretty realistic. I mean, the sky's the limit on all kinds of equipment, but they've looked at kind of our needs based on size and different other components that factor into that decision-making, and I feel like there is potential here to, you know, do great work. We have some furniture money in our current budget that we would be asking to roll forward for this purpose. Because $20,000 may or may not get it all done, but they, they had a larger number for the FF&E on the classroom furniture and the lobby furniture. We already have very good MightyLite chairs that we will use in the classroom environment that we'll just be repurposing from the library. We will need to purchase some tables.

We're talking about Some sponsorships and things like that, but I feel like this is a pretty realistic—

But I think for this to be a turnkey facility, this is probably reasonable.

So what is a thrust stage?

That's what gives you out. And so, you know, you have your standard rectangular stage.

It comes out.

Yes.

And then a projector and a projection screen, that's for video display.

There's a lot of presenters that'll come and present.

Do you play movies?

Yeah, we do actually.

You can play movies in the auditorium?

I mean, we don't first do it every day, but yeah. They're not first run, they're not adventures or stuff, but yeah, we do that.

Generally based around like a documentary theme. This month we're just finishing up 5 Fridays of documentaries, different things like that. The attendance is, you know, very mixed depending on what it is and whether it's families who want to come out. We often get a family showing that we have on a Saturday.

Sometimes it's a lesser-known family film or a foreign film or something like that.

More people would come if they had the space to spread out.

The media auditorium is very tight.

So it's a little bit—

These are things we already do.

And how is the fundraising going?

It's still going. We're talking to folks all the time.

Do you have a number of what you've raised so far?

What we've raised so far, $250,000.

In addition to the million dollars?

That's in—

That's in the construction. All of that money is budgeted for the construction of the facility. I'm going to keep beating this dead horse. Where are we at with seating, like for the actual auditorium. Yeah, so quality of the seating and the number of the seats.

So what type of seating?

So the project was bid with plastic-backed chairs.

Yeah, so there is an option to change that in a contractor's bid for sure.

I, I think it's just what your preference is at this point. So part of it is I haven't necessarily gotten a straight answer on if we If we upgrade it to wooden back or whatever's going to be the least expensive and time-consuming to maintain over time, will last longest, because I think the seats that we're talking about were comfortable enough.

How much extra would that add on to 500 seats?

Just about $35,000.

So if I remember right, it wasn't the bids here, and if we went plastic, it was $34,000 underneath that.

No.

And if we went wood, it was another $18,000 above it. But I thought the spread was closer to $40,000 to $45,000. Total.

Brian's looking at it. I'm trying to find it.

I've got an email.

Just—

we can come back to it.

Is it— I guess if we met this request, would that enable us to do that? Or we're still— in other words, I would prioritize that over these items here. As nice as it would be to have a I think that's valuable.

I would rather have really high-quality seating over that.

Well, the grand piano you could buy next year. The flats you either do when you're putting them in or you don't. It's kind of an A/B at that point. So you could raise money for a grand piano 2 years down the road.

Right. It's $18,300 to go from Maytex to wood-backed chairs. Okay. It's how much?

$18,300.

Is that what the contractor bid, or is that what their estimate was? That is the option in the bid from the number 2 bidder.

Perfect.

But then anything additional raised, is that going to go into this, or is it going to go into construction? Well, we still have a shortfall then. So we have a budget. amount that we were targeting with the library hall, and right now the second bidder, the second lowest bidder, has come in above that. So we still have a delta in the cost of construction.

And how much is that delta?

Well, right now it's probably $300,000, $400,000, which frankly, and I think I represented this to you, is kind of encouraging actually.

Yeah.

Because the architect was coming back and we thought the number would be north of 7, but the bid came back, the lowest bid we have some issues with, and I think I've shared that with you. The second lowest bid is a little above $6.5 million.

So, Tom?

Yeah, I realize I stepped out and I apologize. Is it possible to do what the state legislators do and say, hey, we'll fund half of this this year and half next year out of CARES Act so you know you have it? Is that a doable deal or do we— Well, I mean, I think there's certain— like for example, the grand piano. I don't think there's a— An immediate need for the grand piano, right? And you could probably raise some money for that in the future. But things like furniture and mixer racks and projectors, that kind of stuff, I think is— Let's say I switched out the grand piano for the backs that Sam brings up, but I said, but I don't have $200 grand, we want to fund it this year and next year.

When's the timing? Can we float them with other money knowing we'll get paid back?

Is that possible, legal, whatever? I mean, the answer is yes. Okay, thank you. We won't make a decision on that, but I just wanted to know if that was an option.

As far as the backs go, I like the wood backs. My only concern is 8, 9 years from now, are we going to have to refinish them? And is that going to be a cost? And is that something to consider? I don't know what that costs to do, but Obviously there's also—

there's $33,000 still sitting in this facility contingency fund too that we've talked about using as well.

So next time we meet, we'll obviously go over this. The next one scheduled is the deliberation, really an opportunity to talk about this. And we want—

and then the next council meeting is when we would bring this forward for adoption. The only other point of emphasis I would make is that, you know, you've given us direction to make sure that we're starting off on the right foot. With the fitness center as it relates to FF&E, sort of the same kind of principle or philosophy we're taking here with the Lightlin Hall to do it.

Start off on the right foot as it relates to furniture, fixtures, and hardware.

And I think too there is some consideration that we need to extend to some of these gifts. They're not immediate. So for example, like a gift we're receiving from one corporate sponsor for the fitness over the course of 15 years. So, you know, we have to work those things. I know, having talked to the representatives from the Ashton family, that the million-dollar pledge gift is not going to be something that's going to arrive day one. So we're going to have to work that in.

Yeah.

So yeah, I do think we're going to have to be— I won't say creative because I don't want to give you the impression we're doing anything inappropriate, But we're going to have to be strategic in how we fundraise. Actually, as part of the fundraising— like, I'm just going to use the grand piano as an example because it's just easier to talk about. Have we, as part of our fundraising efforts, are we reaching out to piano dealers, for example, and asking, you know, would you be willing to donate that? Because it would be cheaper for them to donate the piano, you know, and be able to write that off as a— as opposed to selling it and then donating cash or something like that. So is that part of our efforts?

Yes, and we've actually talked to some of our partners who are anxious to use that facility and anxious to use a piano in that facility who have relationships with people who sell pianos that they could maybe open some doors.

I might shed a little light on that.

Just from a piano standpoint, I know a number of theaters, we are one of them, that has made a deal with a piano store and they've let us use their pianos.

They've donated the pianos to us in exchange for that ad on the back.

I see it every time I go. And then they swap those pianos out every couple years and then they sell them as a used service.

That's a great idea. And, uh, maybe we can tag team that one.

So all you're doing today is informing us.

These are just the applications that have been made.

What do we think the CARES tax is going to be?

Uh, so on the ARC side, $1,132,000, plus, plus there's $33,000 sitting in the facility. It's a— obviously, you— there was a budget amendment made last year. $100,000 was rolled over because we came in under budget, uh, or revenues came above— yeah, over budget. And, uh, so that, that obviously is all being pushed into this.

So it's a, it's a health— it's a healthier that I'd represent that there's opportunities to do to, I think, meet the needs of most all the applications.

So, okay, okay, thank you.

All right, appreciate it. Um, seeing as how we have no food here, we'll go ahead and—

No, it is.

He just was waiting to come in.

Okay, well, why don't we, uh, have a prayer on the food and then we'll go to our fitness center rebuild area. Is everyone good time-wise on that?

All right.

Um, and Brent, could we have you give us a prayer on the food?

As soon as they stop.

Our kind and eternal Heavenly Father, we're deeply grateful for the opportunity we have to gather together as council and staff and citizens of Orem, that we—

the things we discuss will be beneficial to those members of our community.

And Father, please bless this food that may nourish, turn our bodies to the good we need, and We're indeed thankful for all our blessings. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Amen.

Wren, are you coming? Wren, are you coming?

We're going to start.

Hey, Wren, go ahead.

All right, Mayor and Council, tonight I'm joined by representatives from Big D Construction and Method Studio. I have, uh, just throw them down and make sure I don't miss anyone.

Joe Smith from Method Studio, our lead architect on our project.

We have John Giles, Brent Baker, they are from Big D and are estimators, and then Spencer Stevens is our project manager for Big D on the end there. As the Big D team has come on board and we've started to look at the feasibility of construction with the fitness center and the associated budget, some developments have become quite apparent in this investigation. Number one, keeping the existing gym facility and building around it has costs associated with it and also impacts to building layout and functionality. And keeping the swimming pools open for a period of time also has costs associated with it. So we have asked Big D to look at 4 different options, and you'll see— and I'll allow Joe and to explain, but they will show you 4 different options of what we can do with the facility and what those fiscal impacts will be to our budget and our bottom line. So with that, I'll turn it over to Joe and I'll let him take it from here.

Great, thank you, Ryan. So as Ryan mentioned, we're going to show you 4 different scenarios kind of focused around just the sequencing constructability with the 2 variables of Looking at the gym, whether it stays or it goes and gets rebuilt, and then the swimming pools themselves and how long they stay open, will they stay open the entire time versus closing. So Big D has done some cost evaluations, we've worked through some phasing scenarios, and so these first floor concepts or phasing diagrams if you want to call them Or ideas. I'll run you through those, then we'll have Big D also help us talk through their cost evaluation of the 4 scenarios and show you the 4 scenarios with the cost side by side with the plan, if that makes some sense. So, uh, option number 1— better stand, sit?

I don't want to get in anyone's way. Let me ask you one question. How much square How much square footage do we have right there right now in that facility?

The entire facility?

Do you know that? 109,000.

Yeah, it's 109,000. Okay. With the— we're targeting the final facility in the range of about 125,000 square feet.

Okay.

So, and then, you know, the initial project was intended to not do much, if anything, to the pools themselves. Right, but keeping those pools open when we're impacting mechanical systems, electrical systems, and boilers and chillers and all those things are requiring a kind of a hard—

We can swap them out on a Sunday when it's not as cold.

Yeah, I guess you can do that, right?

And Mayor and Council, that 125,000 square footage is consistent with what we've looked at all along.

So this first scenario says If we were to demo everything that you see in green here, we'd have to phase the mechanical zone to some degree in order to maintain the pool area and keep it open. So that causes some selective demolition, keeping the jamb intact, keeping the pool intact, and then building everything in green, and then during the process finding ways window of time to switch over the mechanical system, build new mechanical systems, replace them. So there may be a brief shutdown period while that occurs. So that's a little bit of a tricky item in this scenario.

Now the mechanical systems you're talking about are for the center, not for the pool?

Yeah, correct, but there's— most of it is shared.

Okay.

a lot of it is on its last legs. We've had a number of failures already on the boilers.

We had 4 boilers that serviced the whole facility and we're down to 1.

Did we put in any new mechanical facilities for the children's pool? Did we put that in?

It has its own.

It has its own.

Okay, so that would not be taken there.

Yeah, so this piece up here is the Only part of it.

So the water, it has its own hot water heater for the water itself, but not air handling, sewer, not electrical. All of that's integrated.

Good clarification.

And I might point out, you can see the orange space here. This is, this is where those major mechanical areas are in the building. And although it has a separate mechanical space for the leisure pool up in this This little zone here, the main electrical still is shared and it comes out of the same zone, so it's a little bit challenging. At some point the electrical and mechanical is going to have to be shut down and have another system online to quickly exchange over, and there's some risks and real challenges with that.

The other thing you'll notice here is that the aperture, the opening there, if that piece is kept online to keep the system for that And if the gym stays open, your aperture with an entry on the north side coming down into the building is actually relatively pretty small. So we're just taking a look at that as a, as a kind of one of the constraints that we're from the design round if this were to go forward with this option. So if that orange area you have to close down, are you looking at months or like maybe like during It's probably, in this scenario, it's probably a few weeks, I would think, to switch over. So we would have to build a new mechanical room somewhere in the green area, probably right adjacent, and switch it over and then tie everything back to the point of origin, in particular for the pool area. So that's one consideration for this. The other consideration is the use of the locker rooms. So if we demo all the locker rooms, At least as part of this scenario. We want to keep the pools open in Option 1. It's bringing in temporary locker room and restroom facilities and bringing in all the utilities, temporary utilities to run those for— in this scenario, it would be for a 15-month, I think, period of time.

So to keep the pools open for Now, I was just going to mention, we— it may come to that point that we can't do that.

Right.

But when we did go out for the bond, we had mentioned one of our pieces of literature said pool will be open the whole time. Another one said it'll be open most of the time.

Anyway.

Okay, good to know. Option 2 says— and there's cost implications to So I'm just going to do an overview of each of the options and then we'll talk about the cost impact because there's a pretty good variance in terms of the cost impact. Option 2 says is if you can close down the pool for the whole time and then just demo all this and demo that mechanical, replace it all. So in essence, you shut down the building for construction and then rebuild, keep, keep those pieces but not actually operate So you're keeping the gym and the weight room in that scenario? In this scenario, yeah. So option number 3 says, in essence, the same thing, but tearing down the gym to allow us to relocate it, redo it, to move it in a more prime location so it doesn't pinch down and be crowded. Such a design challenge really to access the rest of the building. So they've evaluated the cost of that and sort of back and forth of what that would be.

One thing you'll note here is over on kind of the left side, you don't see the bright pink kind of temporary facilities like we had in the first option. The first option, we would need to bring those in in order to immediately start working on the new mechanical systems while the pool is still running. In this case, what we're looking at is the shutdown of the pool completely, well, the whole facility for the pools for 15 months because what we're suggesting is we would shut them down in July. You would miss the upcoming swim season, but we would have it online for the following season. For the public, it means a total shutdown. For the students that swim here, it means them missing one of their swim seasons or having to move them to some other place for one swim season. This is by far the, I would say, simplest approach because we're basically taking one structure, demoing everything next to it, and building a brand new facility next to it.

Do you think you'll save money that way?

Well, we'll talk about the cost. We'll get right into that.

So yeah.

Joe?

Yes.

Maybe one—

the idea of taking down the gym isn't just a design factor, it's also constructability.

Yeah, so we had a seismic analysis done of the whole facility, and the seismic analysis on the gym itself indicated that we cannot use the gym walls or the gym structure to support any of the other New construction going around it. So in essence, anything we build near that, we're going to have another structural wall.

So you couldn't build a track around it?

You could build the track around it, but it's going to have to have its own structure.

Okay.

And then we would have to retrofit this, this volume itself to bring all the connections of the roof trusses to how they connect to the wall.

Right.

So there's some seismic retrofit that needs to occur. And then any holes we wanted to penetrate into that volume also have code implications. Can be done, but it ends up being quite expensive because this is not— it's quite outdated in terms of current seismic code. So there was some cost in the evaluation and seismic analysis that And then as DP has evaluated the constructability of these things, building new facilities around it, it also starts to constrain if you're building in between the buildings, getting heavy equipment and phasing and construction occurring around that volume. There's some challenges that cause a sort of—

So the racquetball court and the building around it, the site we Yeah, the whole building seismic-wise is not correct.

So can it be fixed? It can be fixed for a cost.

So Joe, just for— I think in all 4 of these scenarios, the racquetball courts are taken down and rebuilt.

We've been evaluating it that way. And the purposes of this study Right now it's just looking at gym and pool, keeping them open.

And I think that really with the racquetball courts, they're such a large space and they're a 2-story volume that it really begins to limit your ability to bring other programs into the square footage that we have available.

So option 4 is somewhat of a hybrid. It says if we did take down the gym and we demo everything in green, but we try to keep operational the locker room zone, and if you're going to do that, the structure over the locker room actually extends over to here. So you have this kind of orange zone that needs to be untouched while those lockers are—

It goes from, yeah, 80 feet down to 40 feet.

Yeah, so all this zone right here needs to be in essence untouched while you keep the pools open. What it buys you is that other green magenta box that's sitting right there, which was the temporary facilities, that you wouldn't need those. You still are needing to shut down the pools for, I think it was an 8-month period of time. Again, during that 8-month period of time, while the pools are shut down, you would rebuild the locker And then reopen for the swim season.

And that 8-month period is the shutdown of when the Alpine School District swim season is not occurring. So it would be in February of 2020 until October of 2020.

So this option kind of meets in the middle. It's not a full shutdown, it's not a fully open pool operation. It's somewhere in the middle. You kind of shut it down between the 2 school swimming seasons.

Tell me the dates again it'd likely close?

This would likely close from February of 2020 until October of 2020. So that 8-month period it would be shut down, but from July when the job were to start up until February, it would be kept open and functional using the current locker rooms. There is some risk there, there's some challenges to work around, there's some demolished structures that are all kind of interconnected, but that would be the approach, would be to keep those locker rooms open. What the pink area indicates up there is a new entrance. We would make a temporary entrance into the pool space from the west side, and so there would be no patron access anywhere on the east of the pools. It would really just be from west side only to keep the public safe that would be going in there during the project.

And I think too we contemplated access to the outdoor pool as part of that conversation. So our existing patrons, yes, it would be a shutdown after the school swim season, but there would be access to the outdoor pool during the summer months, right? That's correct.

That was going to be my question.

So, uh, in terms of constructability, the challenge is, is that you're building this, and then when this shuts down and is made available to the contractor for those 8 months, they have to come back and more surgically demo and build that with this already happening.

So when you're doing this, where would you stage at?

Yeah, just probably the parking lot part south, south, and then actually into the north. One thing to realize is too, is this extends your overall construction duration by about 2 months. So yeah, you get things open, keep stuff, but it also extends your duration if you want to.

Sounds like the I-15 freeways.

So that phasing, that sort of multiplicity of the phases causes, you know, a sequence into a period that extends your schedule a couple months and extends the contractor's involvement on the project longer.

So during that period when, if we went with Option 4, the full shutdown for those, did you say it was 7 or 8 months, would essentially the entire facility facility be shut down to the public then?

Yes, yes, during those 8 months. So, um, Joe?

Yeah?

On Option 1, uh, how, how much longer does that make the total construction?

So yeah, we could, we could if you—

So we have schedules and costs together.

Um, yeah, let's look at it together.

Yeah, if you want to pull up the other sheet.

So we have some of this information put together in a matrix, but we've also got it kind of separated with each phase as we talk. Maybe zoom in a little further. Can everyone see this okay?

No, zoom in further.

That's good.

So you can kind of see— I'm going to move this way. We, you know, there's 2 really kind of key things we need to figure out. One is, as we mentioned, how are we handling the shutdown of the pool and are we building a new gym or not? So I've— we've organized the sheet. These costs kind of in this first subtotal relate to schedule-driven costs related to the shutdown of the pool. This section down here are costs related to building of the new gym.

Okay.

So with Option 1, you know, you can see kind of the key factors that we're considering with each option. As it relates to the gym, in Option 1, we're, we're keeping the existing. We have a very brief shutdown to exchange over the mechanical systems. There's at least 2 phases of construction in this and a project schedule that would go from July of this year probably through April of 2021. That's a total of 22 months.

So that's a 22-month project?

Months.

This is by far the longest option to try to keep that pool open without any shutdown and to keep the gym. That's from a schedule perspective the longest and also has some other costs that we'll discuss. Option 2, if you remember, is to keep the existing gym but to provide a pretty extended shutdown period for the pool of roughly 15 months. That's a roughly a 19.5-month schedule. This would have us finishing up in February of 2021. Option 3, which was basically shutting down the pool and knocking down really everything to the east of the pools and rebuilding, has the shortest overall schedule duration of 17 months, which would have us finishing up in November of 2010—

I mean, 2020.

And Option 4, which we discussed, that's kind of the hybrid, is about a 19-month schedule, so it adds about 2 months as John mentioned. And this would have us finishing up basically January— through January of 2021 from a, you know, from a schedule standpoint.

So, um, and if I'm right— Yeah, sorry, Jamie, if I'm right, for the 3 or 4 of those 8 months we could be using the syrup pool, right?

Aren't they—

it's the summer months, right?

Really Memorial Day through Labor Day. So that seems to be kind of the least— I mean, I'm just reading Predictably Irrational, right? And this is the option you kind of get led to logically is number 4 in my opinion.

So can you move that screen up?

Yeah, if you can slide a little bit so we can see this full.

I mean, I think from— and obviously these are the construction experts, but from a functionality perspective, too, we see a real benefit to taking down the gym and putting it somewhere different than where it currently is. So that provides us, I think, some added— Because it wasn't meant to be the front door. Now it's gonna be the front door. Yeah. So it's a far more, I guess you could say, I'm not sure if they Efficient is the right word, but it's a better flow if the gym is not there.

So maybe I could ask Big D and Jill as well, if you forgot about the time and you forgot about the cost, and both of those are really important, what gives us the best product long-term? So forgetting about If we don't worry about this right now, after the project's done, for the long term, what's going to give us the best product?

I think it's option 3.

There's no question option 3, but that's ignoring costs.

No, I know. I just wanted to hear your thoughts.

It does get you— get it done the fastest, and it is the— you know, you look at your sub-silo, that's your baseline.

I mean, 20 years from now, nobody's going to remember the time that it was down. And we're looking at it for the long term, and we want a really quality product.

I do want to kind of at least explain what this is.

When we talk cost though, this is not an exercise of figuring out total cost for this project. What we're trying to do is find comparative cost between these options. So with these 4 different phases, what we looked at is What are your temporary measures that are required to fulfill each of these different scenarios or options? If we were to keep a pool open the entire time, that would require bringing in temporary locker rooms and facilities. So what we've done is, is we've basically got pricing and quantified that. There's a— there's temporary electrical, meaning generators and other things like that, temporary modifications electrically to the infrastructure of the existing building to make that work, temporary locker rooms. You see some of these numbers are quite large. And then, you know, this last item here is, you know, it's kind of the delta in your schedule.

It's your—

you're paying for the contractor to be on site for several months longer, and there's a cost associated with that that you pay extra for. So when you look at temporary costs, these are not costs that go back into These aren't costs that are going into permanent improvements in their building. They're costs that you're spending just to build it, right? So, you know, this first option has about $500,000 of just temporary measures just to make that option work.

Money that doesn't make your— you don't get any money into your building. It's just temporary stuff that just gets thrown away essentially.

But it does, yeah, keeps your pool open the whole time. In Option 2, which was to keep the gym but have a pretty extended shutdown, really the only conditions you have that you're working with are a little bit longer schedule and some, you know, we're getting into the winter months a little later in the construction, so you have some additional winter costs associated with that. We're calling Option 3 kind of the baseline because from a From a temporary cost standpoint, there really aren't a bunch of temporary costs because we're just shutting down and knocking the building out. So this is a zero value right now for this comparative study. And Option 4, we've got a little over $100,000 of cost to temporarily keep it open for those months, you know, before and after the shutdown.

To have a usable pool.

$100 grand to have a usable pool for 10 months or whatever it is.

Right?

Correct. Shut down for 8 out of the 19?

Yes.

And really, most of those—

11 months worth of functionality, that's what we're buying for that $100 grand?

Yes. But that number is really $155,000. Oh yeah, there are some other costs. So it's $150,000 to $160,000 to have a functional pool for 8, 11 months?

Only 4 months, because we're only keeping it open through the swim season. It's going to be shut down for the rest of The rest of the the year. year until we reopen the next swim season in October.

But we're closing it late.

This isn't administrative costs at all. This is just— I mean, I don't know what it costs to run your facility and your water costs and your energy costs, but that's— we're not factoring any of that in. Um, what I did is I put a variance down here just so you could see a quick comparison in math. This option 3 ends up kind of becoming the baseline, and this, you know, Option 4 would be $150,000 more. This would be a savings of $200,000. You know, from a cost perspective, Option 2 is the least expensive to keep that gym.

But it has some risk.

But it has a lot of risks associated with keeping that gym. We may find out that we get into it and structurally we end up having to do massive upgrades to that structure.

But to build it, it's $350,000 basically.

Yeah, so what we're saying is the added cost The difference in cost to just build a gym new versus keep that old gym and renovate it is an additional cost to your project of about $344,000. And this is taking into account some inefficiencies, you know, to work around that gym. You know, demolition costs for your whole structure are much more expensive when you're trying to work around a space rather than just leveling it.

But what it doesn't take into account is unforeseen conditions. If you came in there and something happened, then you're paying that plus to tear down the facility and start over again. So unforeseen conditions of keeping the existing structure. Yeah, you just don't know what's in those walls.

Sam has a question.

Are there elements of the current gym that could be reused? In other words, the floor, for example, can that be moved to a new location, or would that—

Generally what we find is Some of those things can be looked at, but by the time you look at the cost to disassemble the floor, reuse it in a different dimension, sand it down, refinish it, you're pretty much not going to gain anything. There's very few things I would say that would be worth it.

You do have the standards, but reality is if you're building a new gym, you want new standards.

Light fixtures were just upgraded from 3s, light fixtures and some of those new elements. Is the floor on panels? Like, I know at the UCCU Center, for example, they have panels, but it's all— This isn't done in the panel system, so it's nailed to the floor. She'd be pulling 10 nails out of the floor. Yeah, okay, that answers the question for me. Just a question, just a question about, uh, Option 4. If we, for example, were to proceed with Option 4, understanding that there's that essentially gateway between the two, that then marries us also to certain things in that section. So for example, the locker rooms, things like that. We may, we may say, well, it's not, not the ideal spot for a locker room or a changing room. But because we have the setup that we do, we have to put it there. I think, are we okay for—

I think Option 4, and Joe, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I, I really think Option 4 doesn't necessarily dictate how we lay out the building.

A little bit.

It may—

I think Jamie's correct in that it does put some constraints in this zone, but we have a lot more flexibility than the others because we're still coming in and demoing this. It's just after this has started, and during that 8-month So we gotta, we gotta kind of build this back in a hurry.

I mean, that's where we would want the locker rooms anyway, right?

Next to the pool.

Yeah, I'm just, I'm just wondering, so do we limit ourselves to a very significant degree by that option?

On option 3, you're 17 months, and option 1, you're 22 months. That's almost a 20 to 22% difference. And, you know, if you're shut down pool-wise for half of that period, you're actually picking up those 5 months or so, which is pretty beneficial.

So, yeah, I was—

if you go back to the slide, what was it, 4?

I was just going to point out one other thing. What we've done is actually just copied the information relative to this option only and put it out in the slide. The real risk with this kind of center— Another risk with kind of this center zone of kind of keeping it functional for the first part of the project and then jumping in later is we really have to somehow during the construction in this area while the pool is still open, we've got to find a way to get the mechanical systems and electrical systems feeding all this new space and then quickly make it, you know, jump over and flip to doing this area and having it They all tie in together. So as we talked, we didn't really touch it on the first slide where the matrix was, but really we've kind of identified some risks from medium to low risk or high risk. That's one of the kind of risks of this option here is there's risks related to that mechanical interaction.

And if you're doing it during January and February, it could be high risk.

Jamie, I think you told me there was a potential door 5 where we might be able to access another facility somewhere in the town. Are you prepared to talk about that or not? Well, that was something that they were just preliminarily looking at. I'm just talking about the—

I told Tom, I don't know how much you want to make the public facility.

I don't know if Lissy's had any answers yet.

We don't have an answer yet, but we've brainstormed and probably have. All the cities, BYU, VASA, UVU was just given the Sebastian, it has a pool. We don't know the condition of that. We're still— we don't have answers in all those areas.

But we feel like there potentially are options.

Yeah, I think there are options.

For the school, for their 4-month season.

And a couple more things if I can throw in with keeping the pools open through another potential winter. Our boiler, the one existing boiler, I'm nervous. So I'm putting that out there.

You keep that pool pretty cool anyway.

I know, but if you keep it running that much longer, you never know.

I mean, if that boiler goes out, I don't know what happens.

Well, if we're trying to keep the pool online and then the boiler goes out, we're kind of starting with a different approach, right? We've got to just— we might as well, you know, disconnect the existing mechanical systems and get new systems in right off the gate.

She's trying to throw fear into us.

Another factor with this option 4 is definitely a staffing issue with the lifeguards, of laying all the guard staff off and then having to try and find new guards for the summer. Laying them off, having them come back online could be a little bit challenging.

And Lucy, don't you have like 100 lifeguards?

For the summer only, at the outdoor pool only, that we have 100, and then about 50 or 60 for the indoor pool. So it's challenging.

Operationally, it has qualifications. And if we were to, you know, find some arrangement with, you know, VASA's old site or something, could we just employ them at that new location as their office?

We're looking at potentially even renting lanes at the VASA down by Coles, which they would have their own staff. At the 800, we would lease them, which we provide our own bathroom house, provide our own How big is the pool at the Bastions?

I—

we don't have any— I'm running off 25-year information when I was a security guard, so I don't— I know it's got a roof.

And the 2 bosses are 25 yards.

The pool at the Bastions is like a little bit smaller than a typical family pool. Okay, so I just walked through that about a month ago.

So it's not a big pool.

It is compared to most of us that don't have an indoor pool, right?

The 8th North faucet timing-wise may work out great because they're building their new facility on 1600 North. We're waiting to hear back from the Dowell family on our request that they'd be willing to work with us.

When do you think you'll hear back?

Um, I talked to him last Thursday, so he's usually pretty quick to respond.

Okay, keep going.

We're—

well, that's actually it. It's those 4 scenarios, those 4 options. We're hoping to get a decision or a direction unless you need more data.

Now, the cost on the construction on everything else is So they, they haven't evaluated that?

We're waiting on this decision here to be able to move forward.

We really, at this stage, we're very conceptual with the new design, so we really, we don't have very much specific information to start pricing, and we don't know very much yet about the existing facility. So as the architectural team gets into it, we'll start pricing.

Do you see the pricing being higher having to retrofit the old with the new versus just wiping it clean and having just new?

So if you go back to slide number— the first slide, again, these are comparative costs, but you can kind of see the deltas. What we say— what we think is ultimately going to cost the most is an option like number 1 where we We try to keep that pool open the whole time and we keep the gym. We think that's going to be more at the end of the day overall than any of the other options. The least expensive option, just based on the information we have now, we think is option 2, but there's some risks associated.

But I mean, what I'm saying is I understand what these costs are, but when you build the rest, you build new, Are you going to have additional costs there with each one of these options that could be different?

So this is attempted to account for some of that.

The more we can tear down, the easier and potentially more economical it is just to rebuild.

That's what I'm asking.

And to get the design that you guys want. It doesn't impede any sort of design.

I mean, if you're building and you're having to build around this and build around that versus definitely having greenfield and you put it wherever you want, then—

If I could add, Mayor, if the gym were to stay, you're building a brand new facility on 3 sides of a gym built in the 1970s, and also you're eliminating our options to go vertical with a second floor and possibly even a third where we can maximize We're able to maximize more square footage at a lower cost building vertical than horizontal. Is that correct, Joe? Reducing some of that structural footings and foundation, and we're able to go more with a larger vertical space by moving the gymnasium. Sure. I think from a staff perspective, we're kind of embracing the idea of rebuilding the gym, but when we had this initial discussion last week, Yes. As to, do we keep it open, do we keep it— how long do we keep it open, so on and so forth. It was at that point we said, well, this is a significant policy discussion that really requires your input and feedback. If it's a straight dollars and cents discussion, well, I think we have the answer, but there's a lot more to this project than just the bottom line.

So to me, I would just like to say, when I look at it, I'd like to have the best product at the end of the day, 10 years from now. And it looks to me like option 3 is the way to go. That makes the most sense to me.

However, I don't think the bond would have passed if we had told them we were tearing it down. So I think option 4 makes the most sense to me. Well, and I think it might hinge largely on can we find some alternative solutions. So VASA, for example, on 8th North, would we just be going for the pool, or could we potentially use their workout area and their studio and the tennis courts?

I mean, there's a lot to that facility.

We looked at a lot of options to move to another location. The prices were just through the roof. And so it If we did that, the $500,000 I think would be peanuts.

So, let me ask you, when we did the pool, we put in the, the, the new children's pool, and that took a period of time. But when we redid the large lap pool, how long were we down when we did that?

Just a couple weeks. The longest time we were down was during the construction.

During the construction of the leisure pool, we did shut the lap pool down for 3 months. And that was when we had to remember we had to—

Yeah, get the blue to the white.

Yeah, so 3 months was the longest that we had no pool.

Okay.

What year was that? 2014.

Early, like—

So if it was 3 months there and we're looking at maybe 8 months here in our best case scenario, so we're not too much different, but I'd be interested to hear what the rest of the council thinks.

Excellent.

I like option 3 personally.

Mark?

I'm leaning more towards the option 4. My first question, it looks like there's a lot of unknowns.

Is this going to be ready to break ground in July?

Is that this July?

I think that's This decision is really what will drive that. If this decision is made quickly and the design can continue, then that's what we're working towards.

If we had to go back and do, you know, another option 5, 6, and 7, come back a month later, that just ties Joe's hands up being— I mean, he's already gonna have to put it in turbo to finish design by July anyway.

All our early studies had the gym staying in place.

What do you recommend?

I would go option I think July is challenging right now based on all that's already been discovered. But our intent was to do an early bid package, site utilities, maybe some footings and foundation to get the contractor started, and then have follow-up bid packages that give us more design time. So that's the only way to make July work.

We need to be clear about option 3.

Because if that's running into November 2020, best case, potentially longer, then we're running into 2 high school seasons and closing for 2 seasons. Correct.

I think an option—

now correct me if I'm wrong— I think on an option 3, our intent would be if we can get started in July to try to have the pool areas and the locker rooms up and running a little in advance In advance of the rest of the building so that we could turn that over first.

We focus on the locker rooms, get those up and complete, and get the pools back online. Yeah, and of course the rest of the facility might follow.

And it may not— the public may not be in there, but the high school swim team probably more than likely would, even if they had to use their own locker room in the high school next door.

And we're only $150,000 difference between option 3 and 4 up here on that sheet. Debbie, what is your thought?

Well, if we can secure a place like the Vaso or something, I want to have an option for someone to say, you know, you can come and do this.

So if you could secure some sort of agreement with someone, I could go for 3. If you can't, then I would go with 4.

What do you think the chances are of secure—

of really securing that the next—

When you're talking securing, are you talking for the high school swimmers?

Swim team.

That's what we're talking about. I'm not so worried about the swim team, and I don't mean that rudely, but I want the average citizen who has an option to take their family somewhere.

As far as an option for the other patrons, I don't think we'll find one. As far as an option for the high school so they don't lose their season, there are opportunities. But that's up to the high school, not us.

Well, if it's not for our patrons, that's up to the school district.

We've had that discussion. We are just trying to get something.

But if we had passed, so we We could do both.

No, we said you couldn't use it for— I mean, like BYU, we are fighting tooth and nail to get the high school in there. We're not going to get our patrons.

Okay, but if we had, if we had 2 options, we could put patrons somewhere else.

The other cities, they'll surely take them, but they're going to make them pay.

Sure, they could do that there.

If I may, I would say at least at this point we've taken a partnership type of approach. approach with the school district. And I think that it's that spirit that they've appreciated that then resulted in them committing to participate in the cost of and the use of the parking lot and putting the entrance to that north side. And that's $175,000 hard cost contribution, you know, with this partnership. And I think that's a great example of how In addition to just the value of the land, the easement, to use their parking lot land.

Joe, could you put up what 3 looks like again and what 4 looks like on the building itself? So again, 3, close down the pool, you wipe everything off, start fresh.

Start fresh.

Okay.

It's the shortest time though, right?

Shortest time.

And 17 months.

The lowest risk.

The lowest risk.

Mayor, I'm a little concerned what Carl said.

The patrons are—

Yeah, we're— no, we—

I agree.

We have to find—

I understood from the beginning we could do something. Yes, and, and that is the most expensive. There is an option that, that is that. That is the most expensive option and the longest. So that's, that's why we brought that option to you, is that that price tag is large and the time frame is big on that. These others provide us some other options for those, but as far as finding a satellite location for our patrons to go, we will recommend them to the other cities. They may give them a discount. BYU, no way. At Vasa and that, I don't want them to join a membership. Right now we're trying to find a place that will let the high school in. You're the expert, but I think you're losing some ground here. I, I don't know. If this was an easy decision, we wouldn't bring it to you.

Once they've lost their membership.

Yeah, but once they join, we may never get them back is what you're saying. That's right, that's right.

And again, we'll be the newest, most beautiful facility.

They'll come back.

Some. I don't know about that.

So let me ask you, Joe, when— and Big D, when are you trying to get a decision from us? The sooner the better. Next week?

We're sort of taking a little bit of risk in my office by— we shifted our studies from studying with the court in place, uh, to start anything without it in place. So you're talking about—

would you like an answer in 10 days, a week?

It'd be great to have one today.

You did get the answer about the gymnasium today, so that gives you some leeway to start.

That is huge for us if we can get an answer on the gymnasium today.

So can we give them that?

Yeah, we can give them that. I think everybody's pretty much I mean, we did have 4 votes for 3.

Well, but if I may though, Mayor, I think Debbie's, Debbie's vote was qualified on whether or not patron access is available at VOSTA.

Well, and I wasn't— I wasn't putting that down as a final vote. What I was saying is I think we have 4 that would like to do it that way, but what I really want to do is hear back What options are, if we could get an answer sometime this week, what are our options? And we can let the council know.

But if we can do that, but if I may, if your concern is the high school, then we're going to be waiting for an answer relative to the high school. My sense is your concern is not about the high school, it's about everyday Orem patrons.

Correct.

So, and That decision is not contingent on what Carl hears back from VASA. Your message for everybody is if you're a swimmer, you go join VASA and use their pool. What I'm saying is— Or go to one of the other cities if you're a patron. We're trying to find time for a swim program. Like Brent said, we partner with them.

So going back to the 3 months that was closed down for the lap pool, what did you see occur during that time?

Nothing major. We gave people a 3-month extension on their passes.

3 months is different than a year and a half, but we're talking 8 months as a possibility if we go with the option.

But 3 of those months you can go to the Sierra, so you're really only talking another 5-month period.

You're talking 2 or 3 months, then you go to the CIRA, then you have 2 more.

So that was my question, is what happened? How many did we lose? What kind of problems did we have?

Well, they came back in droves. Okay. Yeah. So I—

Mayor, I don't think option 3 isn't the pool being closed for 8 months. That's the pool being closed the entire year. Number 4 is the 8 months. Yeah. Option 2 is the 8 months.

17 months is option 3 as a total.

Correct.

And would the pool be closed for all 17?

Yes.

Well, we think we can turn it over earlier, so it'd be about 15 months.

Okay.

All right.

So, Brad, I guess what I wanted to say was, for you as a city council, really your consideration is, are you comfortable with a 15 to 18 month shutdown of the entire The entire facility, or are you comfortable with up to— taking into account those 15 to 18 months the Sierra pool will be available in the summer for patrons, just like it would be under option number 4? But this is really a closure for 15 to 18 months versus closure for 8 months.

Okay.

That's the decision.

But if you take a—

you do the same analogy of the Sierra Pool, you're 6 months, so basically you're really closed 9 months.

Right, so—

You know, the one thing that bothers me about 4 is I don't really like the risk, and I really don't like the construction going on that close to the patrons, and what could possibly be liabilities there from a construction— We're no closer than we are here.

And I think we've probably—

I think the public gets upset. Noise and other things, you know, that would be going on while your patrons were in there too.

I have a question for Big D. A scenario that's kind of thrown in my head is somewhat of a hybrid between 4 and 3. Could we not do 3 but expedite the locker room zone To get it done, you know, maybe 8 to 10 months and then open up the pools. So you expedite the—

do it just like we're doing before.

I think we're already expediting with, with 4 to 8 months. It's— you're not going to get it done much faster than the 4 months, so you're kind of already doing that if you were to shave off a month off of there.

Are you saying do it in a different sequence though?

Well, I'm leaning to 3, but I still don't like the answer on the patrons.

Where do they go?

Okay, and I'm just trying to find out how he got his— are you a 3 or a 4?

I'm a 4. Debbie?

I'm 3 with the patient— I mean, patrons having somewhere to go.

So you're an unanswered 3. You're an unanswered 3.

Well, I'll agree with 3 in like 30 seconds.

Yeah, so you have 2 3s, 3 4s, and 2 3s if things worked out.

We don't have a consensus yet, but we're trying to get answers.

So you don't have 43?

Let me emphasize, I can't— I didn't say no options for our patrons during the shutdown. That is, if you're worried about the patrons, whether it's 8 months or 15 months, I don't have an option for them. If they're swimmers, they can go to the other cities, go to Provo, go to Vasa.

And on their own expense, no fee.

On their own expense. Whether it's 8 or 15, I don't have an answer for that. I can only possibly find an answer for the schools. And the only caveat to that being the Sierra Pool. The Sierra Pool while it's open, yes, on that. And it is appropriate and it does match up with the other shut. And frankly too, folks who want to want to benefit from the leisure pool, they're not really going to be— that option is not going to be necessarily available for us. The water aerobics people and stuff, the ladies, the lap swimmers, that's probably— they just put their head down, they don't care.

Yeah.

And so what I'm trying to say is, if you're worried about our patrons, then I would, I would move you both to 4. I mean, that's when we're impacting Joe, you were looking it up.

Yeah, I mean, I was saying, could you do option 3 and expedite the construction of that zone? So you tear it all down, right, just put it into the rise of beginnings, and then expedite that and build that in months.

So now the entrance on the west side—

You still have an entrance over here.

But no temporary toilets or I'm comfortable with that.

Yeah, that could be a good question.

It's okay.

We have to find a way with the code officials to allow—

so basically, temporary occupancy to parts of the building.

So basically, I might also add on that option, you know, you're turning over the locker rooms early, which, you know, you're gonna have 8 months of use or whatever the months of use after. But the other thing is we got to keep in mind is you're gonna have patrons in the building all of the time while we're building right next to it, which isn't— doesn't mean we're expecting a problem with an accident or something, but it does put patrons right in the thick of it.

That's a good point.

It's a construction where we just want to be— we just need to be very careful with that.

So I missed your latest direct— your modification.

I mean, it's taking like a hybrid between 4 and 3. So it's saying do option 3, tear all this down that's shown in green, and then construction activities focus on building this section first.

Which helps the patrons, but it doesn't help the school.

Right, it doesn't help the school because you lose your swim season.

That option does help the patrons. It gets it back and open, but we still lose one season. And they've built that— patrons are the priority with this.

8 months.

But if you lose one season and you, and you do find a place for the school—

We are, we are working diligently to find a place.

And then you open the pools up with use of that zone.

And if we did that, that wouldn't change the, like, baseline estimate of cost or the risk factors or anything like that?

That's essentially just saying we're going to do this part first?

It's super similar to 4 in terms of risk factor, I think.

I think it's actually a little better than 4 from a cost perspective. Just, we go to 4.

Yeah, because you can get all your structural steel to come in.

Where we do have some additional cost is on this demo premium to keep those locker rooms open and kind of work around them because we've got to kind of, when we're demoing around those, we've got to be very careful. In this case, we'd probably save a little of that. We could just blow it out. So there's a little advantage there potentially.

So my vote's 3.5.

3.5.

I'm 3.5.

3.5.

In your sequencing as well, so your concrete, you know, come in and pour all the slabs instead of having them coming one When they come in the second time, they're having to come in through your building that you just built.

I agree with everyone, I think it's a good option, but I have to go back with what Carl says, is you lose an entire swim season.

It seems like we're going to lose an entire swim season almost no matter what.

You wouldn't with 4.

We wouldn't with 4.

Yeah, you wouldn't with 4. You wouldn't with 4, but assuming all goes to plan. So at least you know that 1 and 2 are out.

So now we have 3 and 4.

Well, and he's going to try to provide us a 3.5.

That sounds great. How many swim seasons they did, and ultimately they're, they're back and running. And yeah, it was income for the high schools, but— and I'm, I'm not wanting to not be a partner with the school district, but at the same time, what's the revenue How much revenue do we generate from the school district for this? $30,000. So we're going to spend $30,000—

we're going to spend half a million dollars to garner $30,000 worth of revenue.

And I will say there are about 50 kids total in that CTE right now between all 3 schools.

So I mean, I— this is just my personal opinion, but I think, I think the relationship you— we have with our Day-to-day or impatience supersedes the responsibility and obligation we should feel to the school district. They're a wonderful partner, but they're not paying annual family members.

So at this point, we need to go ahead and conclude our meeting, but at least, you know, 1 and 2 are out. We're looking at 3 and 4, 3.5, and I think maybe we can kind of—

I'm saying, uh, I'm saying I'm using a hybrid 3.5. Let's do the hybrid. And I'm trying to accelerate it because time is money.

Is that okay with you?

Yeah, I mean, the gem is the critical component.

Yeah, we're okay with that.

There is some factors on the rest of it that have to weigh more into our design environment.

Can we make one more comment?

No.

Can we just one more comment?

Go ahead.

Yeah, so in 3.5, you really could keep the tool closed until Labor Day, right, when you close the outbuildings.

That gives us not just that 8 months, but it gives us more time to get—

it's less risk to get that number of block rooms up and running before.

So if we look at an Option 3.5, we may consider that because the SARA approval is open, we may extend that first expedited period a little longer before we open up Phase 1.

So can you give us a written thing back?

We'll update this. We'll update these options with an option 3.5.

And you'll work with Jamie on that.

Right.

She's writing it.

Laura can write and get that together for you.

Like, he shouldn't be in your neighborhood, you know. But, uh, but yeah, it's, it's not too bad, I think.

Take precautions.

Yeah.

China used to be the biggest city in the world. Yeah, right now it's number 2.

It's only slightly behind Tokyo.

I just thought that seems like a hidden, missed sign.

Yeah, so it says, yeah, the area, the metropolitan area is 21.2 million people.

That's crazy.

Wow.

Probably after the earthquake.

If we could have the council come forward and so we can get started. The rest of the council could come forward so we could go ahead and start our meeting.

The Hall speakers.

The A. 5, 6, 5, 7.

Mark, uh, can you come in?

Debbie, we're waiting for you.

We would like to welcome everyone out to our City Council meeting this evening and would like to call this meeting to order. We'd like to begin with a prayer by Vance Arnoldson, after which a Pledge of Allegiance by Alan Arnoldson together with the Orem Police Color Guard. So if we could have Vance come forward to the podium there. That's fine.

Yes.

Heavenly Father, we're grateful to be here tonight for this City Council meeting and grateful to be citizens of Orem and live in this great place.

And we're grateful for our leaders and those who help run the city and take care of things for us.

And we ask you to bless them and that this will be a productive meeting and We ask for these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Amen.

Forward march. Colors post. Colors post. Present arms.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Order arms.

Mark time, march. Colors, turn. Forward march.

The audience may be seated.

Thank you to the Arnoldson family and to the Orem Police Color Guard. We appreciate that. We would like to begin by going over upcoming items that will be occurring in our city. On May 2nd, we have the American Freedom Festival, Orem Summerfest, National Day of Prayer at 7 PM at the St. Francis Catholic Church at 500 North 65 East in Orem. On May 3rd, we have the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce First Friday Forum at the Regional Water Treatment Plant at 8:00 a.m. On May 4th, we have the City of Orem Centennial Birthday Party from 5:00 p.m. to dusk at the Orchard University Place. Everyone will want to be there. We're going to have cupcakes, live music, games. It's going to be a lot of fun. And the weather is supposed to hold and be good for that. So just to let you know. On May 11th, we have the Miss Orem Organization Scholarship Pageant at 7 PM at the Sierra Center for the Arts. May 14th, we have the Fresnius Kidney Care of Utah Valley ribbon cutting at 4 PM. May 16th, we have the City of Orem Police Suncrest Police Picnic at the community park, 5:30 PM. May 23rd, we have Geneva Elementary Celebrating 70 years at that school from 5:30 to 7 PM. May the 23rd, we have the City of Orem Planning Division neighborhood plans for Stonewood, Lake Ridge, and Orem Sharon Hillcrest at 6:30 PM here at the City Council Chambers. May the 27th, we have the City of Orem Heritage Advisory Commission Memorial Day program, 9 AM at the Orem Cemetery. June 1st, we have our Mayor's Centennial Ball at 5:30 PM at the UVU Sorensen Center Ballroom. June 20th, we have the City of Orem Police Hillcrest Picnic at 5:30 PM at the Hillcrest Park. And June 21st, we have the Canyon Park Tech Center grand opening at 10:30 AM.

Thank you.

Yes.

And Summerfest Parade is on June 15th at 7 PM. We now have time for personal appearances, and we would ask that those who wish to appear hold their comments to 3 minutes and give us your name, and we'll go down through the list the way it's written. We'll start with Dan Hallett first, followed by Paul Stoddard.

My name is Dan Hallett. I'm a retired Orem police officer and currently an NRA-certified range safety officer with the rec center, and I'm here requesting that we keep the range We have a— I kind of did a rough guesstimate on how many people visit that, and I came up with about 2,500 people per year. A large part of those are youth groups, and they can't afford to pay $10, $15 to go to a commercial range. And, you know, they're able to come to our range at $5— I guess it's less than $5.

$5.

Uh-huh.

Have a supervised safety, safe environment to do some shooting in and have a good activity.

The alternative is that they go out in the hills and it's totally uncontrolled.

They burn down mountainsides and, you know, I've just seen a lot of dangerous situations where people are out shooting in uncontrolled environments. And compared to when they come to our range, We have a professional firearms safety officer there to guide them in all they do.

The cost to redo the range is gonna be fairly expensive because there's a lot of lead issues in the environment, other environmental issues, and so on. And so I'm hoping that we can keep the range, and if we can't keep it open for all calibers of handguns, guns, that we keep it at least for .22s, which are going to be a lot less environmentally harmful and a lot less chance of any kind of serious injury. Another alternative is to allow air guns, and that's an upcoming sport now. And of course, there's no gunpowder, very little lead involved in that situation. One of the arguments against it is that the guns going through the rec center.

There's an exterior door 10 feet on the southeast corner of the building that they can bring their guns into the range. They could check their guns in, go up and pay, come back and shoot.

We've won a number of awards for the involvement that The gun ranges in the community, Hunter Safety, has given us an award. They bring lots and lots of people every year.

And of course, the youth, they—

it's just a great opportunity for them to come and learn and be in a safe environment where they're learning good firearm safety skills and techniques. And we have professionals there to make sure that they do that.

So I would again request that you allow the pistol range to stay in some form or other that can be used by the public. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Paul Stoddard, and I kind of have the same credentials as Dan does. I am also concerned. I would like to keep the range for a whole bunch of reasons, but I think probably the 2 best and one that I feel pretty passionate about is just liberties. I know I spent 2 years in England, and while that's a free country, it doesn't feel anywhere near as free as we are. A major portion of that was the ability to or access to firearms. For me, and I and I've seen how where they've gone because you know they've got rid of firearms along with went hunting along with it. Now they're talking about knife legislation. They're talking about you know, and I think we can erode it. ICS, you know, getting rid of the gun range is part of that erosion of that liberty and that freedom. And I think we ought to keep it there. Just for that value in itself. The other thing that I thought about that would be really important is mass shootings. I know I looked at it back when the post office started banning guns in post offices. My prediction back at that point was that would be an inviting target. If you get rid of the guns inside the post office, you make an inviting target for mass shooters. I think we do the same thing at the rec center. Well, and one other point I'd like to make is, is every mass shooting that I can think of, save one, has happened in a gun-free zone. The problem with the rec center is it's a gun-free zone by activity. Not many people carry a gun to play racquetball or lift weights or go swimming. And having a range there, I think, limits the possibility of having an event like that happen at the range because there's guns there and ways to prevent it. And that's kind of all I had to say. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

We'll now hear from David Pawley, after which Kurt Walker.

David Pawley is the name, and I appreciate your time to going over the various considerations of people who would like to see the racquetball courts stay in place. I have a big question associated with that. This is just observing the working session that just took place. It looks like it's a done deal relative to demolishing the area of the racquetball courts. And my question is, is there been a real cost comparison between the two of reinforcing what needs to be reinforced in the current status of the structure or the building. And what is going to happen if it is taken down as proposed in proposal number 3, which is taking it down? It seems to me that there hasn't been, as far as I can tell based on input, that there's been an actual cost consideration of demolishing versus not demolishing that area of the racquetball courts. And the next point that I'd like to make is, is that in the consideration of courts, my career has been involved heavily in broadcasting nationwide, being the former VP of marketing at ABC in New York, it was very— it behooved us to listen to the public. We had methods to do that, i.e., Nielsen reports or Arbitron reports, et cetera. And it appears to me, based on all the input that I've been receiving from various people, that there's this de facto standard of there's going to be 4 courts, and that's about it. And listening to your own staff at the rec center, the people who've been in charge of the racquetball events for the last 17 to 20 years have all stated very emphatically that 8 courts is the minimum that is necessary for running a good program. And the fact that there's 14 courts and 3 have been eliminated, the rec director Overacker Ball said she had a hard time finding a reason to get rid of another court. And it says to me that then 10 courts is the ideal number, if that's the case. And so my question is, are you listening to your own staff about what is the necessary structure for the new building? If it's torn down— if that green area, number 3, is torn down, What is, what is the proposal other than I've just heard the number 4 time and time again to go to 10 or to 8, which seems to be the recommendation of your own staff, not me or the public, which all the people here are going to give their, you know, their views towards that. But why aren't you listening to your own staff who is suggesting that 8 to 10 is the more ideal number. And, you know, I don't know if this is the environment to hear answers on that, but I clearly, based on all the input, again, is that I don't hear anything different than 4.

So if you could send me an email with what you just said, I'd appreciate it.

You bet. And thank you for your time.

Thank you.

And I certainly understand the considerations of how difficult difficult your task is to making these decisions with money and everything. And so I appreciate your respectful consideration to what I just said.

Thank you. Now I have Curt Walker.

Hi, my name is Curt Walker. I don't know that I opened the door to that rec center, but if I wasn't the first one in, I was right there. I have the distinction with this pudgy little body of having won the first racquetball tournament in that center.

I don't know how many thousand games I have played.

I played in Michigan, including at the University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan, many courts and many facilities. Played in Boston for a couple years, same scenario. I have never played in courts that have the construction style of those that are any better. In fact, most composite courts are lousy. The worst thing you can do in a racquetball court is put a glass end on that court. I know they look pretty, but They're terrible. Every racquetball player will tell you that. I come— everybody tonight's probably going to talk to you about costs. I want to talk to you about another cost. In the morning, I'm in kind of the early morning group. We start showing up around 6 o'clock, maybe 5:30, and we're done by about 8:30. There's— I just put on the paper tonight the names I can— we know everybody by first name. We're trusting. There's never any bad calls. You always just Play it again. No bad feelings. We leave our phones out. Nobody steals. We're just a good group of men and women. But one of the costs we will lose, and it's a definite cost to us, some of the most fun times I have are when you're cooling down for that 5 or 10 or 15 minutes afterwards and you're sitting on the chair and taking off your shoes and commencing with everybody there. That is a joy to me and it has been for the last 40-plus years. I would hate to see us drop to a minimal number of courts where nobody feels like they can come anymore because now they're going to have to call for a reservation. We always have 5 or 6 courts filled every morning. 4 won't do it, folks. I'll lose that camaraderie. And if you build composite courts or anything of that ilk, people simply won't come. This is supposed to be for the community. Everybody else tonight is going to talk to you about the cost of construction or seismic renovation or so forth, but I want to just address that cost. To me, that would be a huge cost for my interaction with other members of the community. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. We'll now hear from Holly Robbins, after which Bill Burgie.

Hi, I'm Holly Robbins. I apologize for my dress. I'm actually headed to racquetball league tonight. I just wanted to reiterate what Kurt said. It has been such a joy to be able to have these spontaneous community activities with random people that would really never have any other cause to get together. I'm a flaming atheist. Most of the people that play have their own different religious beliefs. They have their different ages.

Thank you.

And it provides an opportunity for us to get together that we would never have really otherwise. It has built incredible camaraderie, and I think it's super important to have at least 8 courts because that's the only way we can maintain the tournaments. And they do bring in a lot of people from out of state. I know that's a lot to ask. My, my main question to you is, what can I do? What can we do to get our 8 courts? What would we have to do? What would be that bottom line?

Well, there's a lot to consider. Again, if you'd want to send an email, we can respond to it.

Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

You bet.

Bill Burgie.

My name is Bill Burgie.

I moved to Orem a few years ago and Recently moved to 2 blocks away.

One of the main reasons was because of the racquetball courts.

I play 4 or 5 times a week and enjoy it.

It's a sport you can play your whole life.

And to cut the courts down 70%— you're looking at 14 down to 4— it's not going to cut it, especially when we have tournaments. You draw people from—

we draw people now from Saratoga Springs and from even from Payson come up here. Thank you.

to play racquetball several times a week. I encourage you highly to look at at least 8 courts for members.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now hear from, uh, Kat Latimer and then Mike Harrison.

I'm Kat Latimer. Um, I have been a forum rec racquetball junkie for about— probably about 15 years since I moved here from Vegas back in '96. That first little bit, I didn't really play racquetball, and then I just kind of got into it, and I've been a junkie ever since. I have won many tournaments at the Orem Rec Center. and in Utah. I've had several surgeries in the last 3 years, and before my first major surgery, I took 3rd place in the Utah State Women's Open Division. Now I've got a bum foot that doesn't let me sprint anymore or other things, and I just had major shoulder surgery less than 3 months ago, and I'm already playing racquetball. Racquetball is one of the few sports that you can play by yourself and still enjoy it when you're injured. Playing basketball— I've played sports my entire life. I went to college on a volleyball scholarship. I played basketball, water polo all through high school, soccer. And the group of people that we've got in racquetball, I have never felt that closeness ever. When I was out for For months, I'd get text messages, how you doing? How's your recovery? When are you coming back? All my years playing basketball, co-ed, when I was single, I never got a phone call, how are you doing? We haven't seen you for a while. What's going on? Volleyball, same thing. How you doing? What's going on? Haven't seen you for a season. And these guys here, I'm out for 2 weeks or 3 weeks, What's going on? How you doing? If those racquetball courts are cut, you will lose revenue. You will lose people because they're going to go someplace else. They're not going to come back once they pay another year membership to another rec center. They will not come back. And that's why I'm afraid I am going to be put. I love the courts.

at Orem.

I've played at the Provo courts. I have played up in Salt Lake. I have played out in Herriman. And those courts are horrible. They are. The glass courts, you lose the ball when you turn around. It's not good. It's just really important listening to actual racquetball players. And not just statistics from reports. Get to know the players that are coming and find out why they're coming. They're coming because the courts are good. They're great to play off of. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Now hear from Mike Harrison.

Since we moved to Orem 15 or so years ago, I've been a regular user of the city's racquetball courts.

The only downside I can see to, to my use of those courts is getting beat occasionally by Cat. I came late today, and so I don't want to risk repeating some of the things that have been discussed, so I'll just be I'll take a couple of general comments. From my perspective, if there's one thing that sets off our fitness center from other fitness centers in the county, it's probably the racquetball courts.

It's not, it's not the gym or the weight room, because other fitness centers have those.

It's not the pool area because other fitness centers have bigger and better and nicer pool areas than the one I understand we're keeping as we consider a remake of our current fitness center. And so the one thing that makes us a little different than any other facility in the county are these racquetball courts.

And yet it seems that it's those very courts that, uh, face the risk of, of being downsized.

And so I would just hope the city would continue to consider all the data and the facts, and as I know you're doing, and make a decision that, uh, that will best accommodate all of us. If, if And I know that's not always easy.

For some, for me, I guess, and I think others of us, one of the major benefits of living in Orem are those racquetball courts. And I echo the sentiments that have been stated earlier.

I feel the same way, and I think all of us have come regularly and used the courts.

Do as well, and just thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, appreciate it very much. Well, now go ahead and close the personal appearance portion of our meeting, and we'll go on to some consent items. We have 3 items. The first is to approve the meeting minutes of April 9th, 2019 City Council meeting. The second is an ordinance amending Chapter 7 of the Orem City Code pertaining to building, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, fire, and abatement codes. The third is a resolution of the City Council authorizing the chief administrative officer to enter into an interlocal cooperation agreement between Utah County and Orem City for the administration of the 2019 municipal elections. These items were all listed in our agenda packets. And is there any desire by anyone to put these items onto our scheduled items? If not, I would accept a motion to go ahead and move forward with these consent items.

I move that we approve.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Okay. We'll start with Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Consent items are approved. We'll move on to our scheduled items. The first is a public hearing. amending a portion of Appendix A of the Orem City Code pertaining to Standard Land Use Code 6371, climate-controlled storage units, 6372, personal storage units, 6377, vault security storage units, by changing the uses from permitted to not permitted in the M-1 zone. And our presenter is Jason Bench.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. As was stated, we're here to request that these uses be taken out of the M-1 zone. They still would be permitted in the M-2 zones and also by the climate control in the CM and the vault storage in the CM as well. So we're just simply asking that they be taken out of the, the M-1. Just a little bit of background of why we're requesting that. We've done an internal review of our current storage facilities and discovered that we have a significant amount of space based on the population of Orem. We have about 14, almost 15 square feet of storage space per person in Orem based on a national average of 5.4. So we're housing a lot of space, I think, for the county and realized that we may not want to have that going forward. The M-1 zones that we're talking about, there's 3 properties that are currently zoned M-1. One is in the west of— well, they're all west of I-15. And then we do have a specific location, the annexation that we've recently done. A lot of that is currently slated as light industrial in the General Plan, which would be designated as M-1. So we do have a significant amount of property that could be rezoned to M-1, and we would like to request that that not be converted to storage units going forward. So we— the Planning Commission has reviewed it and recommended the council approve it as proposed. So any questions that I can address?

I was just curious, what initiated the desire for this change?

We've had a couple new storage facilities coming in.

We've had a new one there on Chipper Road.

Yes. And then we've had a couple suggestions of—

And another one on State Street.

And then a couple of developers have come in, or property owners have come in, and wanting to put storage units on the southwest area. And so that would kind of trigger us to— let's see what we actually do have and see if we can eliminate that out of that M-1 zone.

So...

Okay.

Any questions from anyone else? Sam? Question on—

you had the per capita per square footage. Do you have that per unit as well? And the reason I asked that is I wonder if you compared Orem to, you know, something that's in a really urban environment and maybe the storage units are smaller because they're not storing as many vehicles or boats or, you know, that type of thing. Do we have what the comparison is for Orem versus the U.S. by unit?

You know, I don't know that we've done that, actually.

I mean, I'm sure we're still well above average, but I was just curious. How that factors in with the size of the unit that we tend to have here.

Any other comments or questions from the council? So this is a public hearing. We'll go ahead and open it up to the public. Anyone who would like to come and speak to this ordinance, please do so and give us your name and hold your comments to 3 minutes. Seeing as how no one's coming forward, we'll go ahead and bring back the discussion to the council and close the public comment portion of our public hearing. Any other comments or questions? I have one more.

Have we ever had a request to put storage units in the M-1 zone in recent history that you're aware of?

Not currently.

Well, yeah, we have actually. So the prop— well, Storage Warehouse, I guess. The property that was just rezoned by the council down in the southwest area, where they're actually putting Storage Warehouse. Not storage specifically, but we've had a couple of requests or considerations to rezone properties down in that area to M-1 for the purpose of putting storage units. There's not a whole lot of— as you can see on the map to the left, there's not a whole lot of property actually zoned M-1.

Right.

But the potential in that southwest area is significant, and that's why we're worried.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, I'd like to go ahead and make a motion that we amend a portion of Appendix A of the Orem City Code.

Public hearing, Mayor.

I've already closed public hearing.

Oh, sorry.

We've already had it.

Sorry.

I snoozed.

I'm sorry.

I think you were sleeping during that. But anyway, I'd like to make a motion amending a portion of Appendix A of the Orem City Code pertaining to standard land use codes 6371 climate-controlled storage units, 6372 personal storage units, and 6377 vault security storage units by changing the uses from permitted to not permitted in the M-1 zone. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember Lentz.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the ordinance passed. We have no further items. We'll go to our city manager. Do you have any items, Jamie? Okay, I will make a motion then that we adjourn. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

We are adjourned. Thank you very much for being here.