City Council · 2019-05-14

Heart and Soul was also another one that, um, for people to go to care centers, facilities where people don't get out, the elderly, and perform. And so they were going to be doing several shows in our area. So just a few highlights.

On that Heart and Soul, is that all in Orem, or is that—

They were, they were going to be care facilities here in Orem, all of them.

Yeah.

And so whatever we gave them would be how many shows they were going to be in. In my mind, it was $100 a show? I can't remember.

I believe, yeah.

Something like that. So I think that was going to buy us like 30 shows or something. And these were, you know, more of a guitarist singing, going performing, small groups, things like that. So I don't know if there are any specific questions, but— I can say that the discussion was very good. There were 5 women and 1 man, and so they were— they all had great opinions. I felt like the discussion was good. You know, how these awards— you know, some of them I would have probably given them a little more or less, but I was comfortable with the awards at the end that they recommended. So, Steve, did you have anything?

And it was just unanimous support from the commission on this recommendation.

Yeah.

What's the Garden Valley Pipe Band?

They are a group of bagpipers that are starting up in our community. And do you remember what they were using the money for?

Performances.

Performances, yeah.

So it was, um, locals that they brought several bagpipers that were from Orem, and they performed for us, and they were relatively good, I thought. So we just teaching and performances here.

Some of the ones— we started a couple years ago doing a reimbursement policy for many of the majors. Some of them, for the amount of money they were receiving, didn't feel like it was worth it when they had to go to a reimbursement center just to check. And so that's why you see some people that haven't applied. And many of these organizations are done by volunteers, and sometimes they have that capacity in a given year to really execute on something like this, and other years— for example, I know the Utah Civic Ballet Have received for a lot of years, and this year the daughter moved away, and so the mom didn't have the help, and so she just felt like she couldn't execute this year.

So sometimes those things happen.

So that that is the recommendation: sixty obviously just under the seventy thousand for that. So with the With the remaining money, we have an opportunity to fund some of our major grants that have been— we've funded for the last few years. Hale Center Foundation for the Arts, Utah Metropolitan Ballet, the Sierra for the Arts, and then also there's a request for the library auditorium. I don't know if Utah Metropolitan Ballet is here, but we do have representatives for the Hale and Sierra if you have any specific questions for them. We've had an opportunity to hear presentations from all these organizations and from the city.

on the library auditorium.

But this is an opportunity for you to discuss amongst your council, as a council, some of the, some of the thoughts you have, some of the priorities you have, for obviously Councilwoman Larray, who's been in these, to shed any thoughts and opinions as well.

I can kind of just give you a starting point, but what my thinking was, um, I felt last time we met the library auditorium, there was a lot of consensus Um, with the only discussion was the piano, if I remember correctly, and we wanted the wooden seats. And if I remember correctly, it was $18,000 for those seats, if that's correct.

Yes.

So what I was thinking is with the $33,000, that's a contingency, and the $200,000 ask, to give them the full $200,000, pulling some from our contingency as well. So, um, it would be like $166,000 plus the previous year, with the idea that the piano may come next year during the ask.

I mean, I think the piano discussion was to see if you could get a donation or—

Right.

On a cycle, because I think Adam doesn't—

Oh, that's true. Maybe it's a rental or—

Yeah, Cody brought it down.

So the piano to me was something that we can talk about, but I think, I don't think it's Councilman Lentz really liked the idea of the wooden chairs, and I think that's—

I think I echoed Councilman Lentz. And weren't we going to check on the maintenance of that compared to the— what it would cost maybe to grow the fiberglass?

Well, we've had conversations with the project team, and from a maintenance perspective, they will require some additional maintenance and, you know, repair and replacement probably 7 to 10 years into So there is an ongoing cost associated with wood back. Is it cost prohibitive? No, but there would be some costs associated.

Do we know what—

I mean, there would be maintenance on the alternative.

Yeah, I mean, I just— you're essentially increasing the standard of appearance within the center.

So you ask yourself, or within the hall, and so you ask yourself, is it worth that additional money to upscale or to improve the appearance of the facility? My thought was, listening to you, that that was the consensus. Yeah, I'm fine with that too.

I will qualify though by saying that, you know, when we talk about the added cost, there is obviously that's the raw cost, and then there's a contractor charge, and then there's— so it's not just to even $18,000. It'd probably be north of $20,000 to even do that.

But my understanding and thought was that you were amenable and wanted to do that.

Yes, I would anticipate additional costs above and beyond the plastic bags.

One thing I'd like to say about the—

So the mayor shut up about that.

Yeah, well, no, I have to leave again. I'm only here for about 10 10 minutes and I have to go. But I was going to say, I've looked at the wood backs over at the new Nordis Center, and I've looked at the wood backs at some of the other auditoriums and the plastic backs. And personally, I actually like the wood backs. I realize they'd take a little more maintenance, but I think they'd be a really nice touch for it if we had the $20,000 to do it. I would be in favor of doing that.

Thank you.

So I think you're running the show, right? You're leading the discussion, but Debbie brought up something with a recommendation versus the request. Do you have recommendations for all of these? You made a recommendation on the library, and I don't know, is that being passed around or is that a discussion?

So she brought that today to discuss, and I can plug that in, and I— she gave me those numbers ahead, so I have that spreadsheet if you want me to.

A spreadsheet showing kind of where you're expecting to spend the money?

I think people understand—

Well, I went through and realizing that, you know—

And when you say I, you're echoing the committee, correct?

I listened to what you guys said.

Not us, the committee.

Oh, no, the committee did the $70,000.

Sorry.

But she's looking at the full amount.

I'm looking at the full amount.

So now Debbie's just given her thoughts for a starting point discussion. Discussion on the rest of it.

I'm not sure what the committee did. $70,000, what's that?

Oh, the top. The top. Yep, the base.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm sorry I took the labor of the fight, but just real quick on the seats. Would the wood hold up better over time as far as resistance to like tears or scratches or anything like that? Do you think the plastic would hold up as well?

Yeah, plastic holds up great. But it's like driving a Chevy versus a Ford.

I wouldn't put it that far.

So I put Debbie's rec— this is again, Debbie had come to me today and said, just to get the conversation started, can we just—

can I—

So her recommendation is on the right there.

Yeah, yeah.

So this is, this is just where she's plugged that in. And what she's— what she kind of alluded to was the idea of funding the library auditorium below the $200,000. And then just allocating the remainder of that facility contingency since that's really the only facility we've identified as one that has kind of a plan for upgrades.

And to Charlene's request, it gets her the $200,000, we just take some out of the kitty that has been hiding there.

Right.

Yeah, is that right everybody?

Debbie and—

Yeah, that's exactly what I did. Now you're welcome to leave some. It's my understanding that the things at the Sierra have been completed and so it is available We've completed the sprinkler project as well as the restroom remodel.

One other thing to kind of put in the mix, and it doesn't really help us a great amount, but we do have some donations that we feel like are going to come in for the library that are not here yet. One is Zion's Bank, and we have 2 or 3 others. And so For sure.

What I know from—

no, Jamie, please.

I, and I will just, Mayor, if I could qualify also that while we have a bid specific for the library right now for the project, we still have a very open-ended fitness center project where we don't know where exactly we're going to land. So any additional money we will garner through Through grants, donations, or the like, I would anticipate that those monies would— even though they're dedicated to, let's say, the library, then we would funnel existing library budget or part of the existing project budget we've set aside for the library, we'd send it over to the fitness center.

Yeah.

I think from what— now, from my understanding, maybe Debbie, if I'm misrepresenting what you've kind of said earlier was the same conversation with the fitness center of we really want to open this facility and have it open the right way. The same conversation, I guess, for auditorium. We're talking about using additional CARE money into the future for the rec center as well.

We are. This is that same discussion on the library side is really what we're talking about.

And then if you look at the Hill Center, the Metropolitan Valley, I went back 2 years and that was my starting point. The $315,000, the $320,000, and the $525,000. And I just took the difference between what we still had left in the kitty and bumped Hale up to $330,000. I went to $21,000 to the valet, and then Sarah to $545,000. Now you're welcome to—

And this was on the—

this is the discussion was, and as a council to both the Hale and the Sarah, who got a large amount last year, but the message was treat that as one.

This is a—

is our centennial year, you're getting a one-time big bump. But don't—

that is not the new standard that we're going to start building off of.

And that was what we're working on.

You know, as I recall, the soft commitment we made, because we cannot commit future councils, was that HALT would stay at or above 300.

Correct.

And the SEER would stay at or above 500.

That's correct.

And we're meeting that in spades every year. So I feel like we've met not only the spirit of what we've said, we've accelerated that.

Right.

So you are welcome to up and down those, but I just went back 2 years. That's my starting point, knowing that the minimums were $300 and $500. I gave a little bit more to the ballet because we did have a little bit of bump, a little more money. We didn't give them any more last, last year. It was an extra $1,000, but you're welcome to cut that back.

And now with the Norden, they're actually performing in O'Hara. One of the issues has always been that we give them the money to do the performance at the Cubby Center, but now—

So Debbie, again, what is your recommendation for those?

3:30 right here. So I went to 3:30 to the Hale, 21 to the ballet, and 5:45 to the Sarah. Um, and like I said, I went back 2 years ago and then just took the extra money and redistributed it between those groups. Um, like I said, you're welcome to go up or down a little bit with those.

I've got a question. I mean, do we have to fund the library auditorium 10% this year at the full amount? I mean, you have—

I don't know. I guess that's the question.

If we didn't, what would you put it towards? I'd give it to the Hill and the Sound.

Well, I think the anticipated opening of the facility would be within this next fiscal year. So I would assume that a majority of the monies would be needed for—

It's going to be open July 1st or something.

But with that said, you would not see that same amount Necessary for next year.

Next year.

So there would be more monies next year.

And we, you know, we— when Brandon's here, we see our sales tax slowing. I mean, this— these years may not be here every year. Uh, there was an abundance from last year's, uh, coming in over budget, but whether that money is there to do that next year, we don't know.

But $200,000 would not need to go out next year because we're trying to get it this year?

Correct. Correct.

Yeah, I mean, I'm good with what numbers have been suggested here. I think that's as fair as it could be, and we've already kind of hashed out the emotional debates of where we have our priorities and things. I don't necessarily want to reopen old wounds and things like that, but I think this is a reasonable compromise.

And Debbie, what are you recommending on the library then?

The full $200,000, but taking $33,000 from the slashers contingency, pulling that So that they get the money they need. And that would include doing the wood chairs. So I think doing that and then the piano would be something that we would look at either renting.

And if we can't do it, we have money next year to consider.

That's true.

There would probably be some.

And is this based on a projection of next year's or is this this year's?

Well, we're out— okay, we project a couple months, May and June, you know, because we don't have those in yet, but Basically, we're projecting— we estimated a 3% increase, I believe, about. And anyways, we're coming in like 2.9%, so we think we're right.

And are we conservative? In other words, is it likely or possible that it'll come in a little bit higher, and so maybe we wouldn't need to dip into the contingency as much as we think?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So to Sam's point, first of all, Sam's point, I agree with you. Feel good about these numbers. And thank you for the time Debbie and others have dedicated. And I'm not— with Sam, I don't want to open up old scabs for $1,000 one way or the other. I feel good that even with the library, we were able to meet and exceed by a fairly substantial amount. About 10% are kind of our minimum commit to the Hale and the Seara. And I— and if we have additional monies come in, I think that would be contingency for the next year.

It would be allocated in the next year's cycle for sure.

Yeah, so I feel great about moving forward.

Mark, please. I'd agree. And you know, when you, when you show the, the history, what's interesting to me was I remember back with the recreation that in that early part of the discussion we kind of landed on a, on a number every year. We said plan on about $500,000 and we did it. So now I'm rethinking our assumption that we can't kind of give that baseline commitment that we did, whereas we did that before with the recreation. I wonder if that's something we can still go back. I think there is really a lot of benefit with these organizations knowing that there's a certain level that has been established or indicated as at least a minimum.

Well, I think we're meeting that, so.

Yeah.

Any other thoughts on the art side? I have the recreation side to show as well. I'll let Dave kind of— because Dave, you're in the recreation Advisory commission.

So please speak to that.

Dave, any— yeah, any— anybody else? Dave or Brent or the mayor? Brent, any thoughts on that?

On this?

Yeah, Debbie's proposal. Yeah, I'm just thinking here. I, I'm going to go way back. And Mark, you can maybe add to this, but when we did the buckets for the library, or the Center for Story, there was a lot of debate, a lot of, you know, a lot of misinformation, a lot of controversy. And it was decided, I don't think it was one vote, It was basically decided by the council. And I thought the library as well, that when we're done with this bucket of CARE money, no more would be given to the library. It'd all be donations. Now I'm, you know, I'm okay with that, but, you know, that was said. Some 8 or 9 years ago. And I, I don't know, maybe Mark can add to it. I think it's true. I think, I think, I think at least with that, that round of first round of caretakers, the idea was we'll pair up this center per story. And that once that's done, I think it ended then pretty well. Yeah. And then it'll all be donations. I don't know if that, if that was applied for this next round as much, but at least in that first round. But I understand this council can't be held for what decided some 8 or 9 years ago, or 10, I don't know, a long time ago.

Yeah, 40 years ago when the rec center was built, it was promised they would never dip into the general fund ever. So I, I just don't know how you predict the future. The people who— I mean, my father-in-law was mayor. He said when they built that, they said they would never need any money from the general fund. It'd be self-sustaining. All I'm saying is things change. And we've received phenomenal donations, a couple hundred thousand that we just talked about, that we're putting towards the building of it. So anyway, I feel good about this.

I'm just saying, you know, I don't mind this, but I I'm just saying what I promised at that time, being a member of the council.

Yeah, exactly.

Either near there.

And I think it's also relevant that the cost of that project, even though we've actually scaled back the scope of it a little bit, is almost double what it was back then.

So it's—

I don't think that has anything to do with the SAM, but that's fine. I do.

So question remains. So Debbie, these are your recommendations?

Yeah, feel free to tweak them. I just felt like I had a starting point.

Yeah, I think we have, Sandy, mostly because we— Yeah, Mayor, Dave, I don't know if you have any other thoughts.

I think we've heard from most, because I want to know—

this is, this is, from what I'm hearing now, this is what I will bring forward in a couple weeks as the ordinance to adopt for this round of care.

I mean, you can always give a little less to the library and try to fundraise the difference and give more to the—

Well, where are we at?

I think they're definitely trying to fundraise new stuff.

I don't know.

Well, from what I understand, we're still trying to fund on the capital construction.

So on the library, we'll know on One or two of them in probably 2 to 3 weeks.

And again, we're funding still to construct it, not— this is money to open it up with the amenities inside, the equipment to function the way that we'd like.

I guess if we don't have to spend it today because we get a donation in, then that will just be more money for the future.

Well, I think if it comes in, it will go to the building of Rexham. I think we have to understand the nature of some of these contributions. Some of these contributions are one-time.

Yeah.

Other contributions are a specific amount over a term, 15 years, for example. So while, for example, somebody may make a very generous contribution, and we've had several, we can't anticipate all of that money on dates specific in this given fiscal year. So we have to work through that too.

Mark? Yeah, you know, I was just— my thought after thinking through what you mentioned, Jamie, that if we get additional fundraising, we can redirect it to the rec center. I don't know that I feel good about that.

I can, I can see us saying if the fundraising comes in strong, we can look at putting some of the CARES tax funds back in the CARES tax fund and then reallocating that, as opposed to saying we're You're going to divert something to the rec center?

I guess what I've been— what I want to represent is in this fundraising effort, we have collectively invited donors to participate in either the fitness center or the library hall. So in some cases they've said, yeah, we're interested in the library, and I've recreation.

Recreation.

So there's not, you know, several of these groups, we went into a conversation thinking one facility would really resonate with them, and we walked out with a contribution to the other facility. So I guess there's some limited predictability as to which way, for example, an organization may turn. We have one donor who, for example, is a very strong contributor to the arts throughout the state. So we anticipate that that organization is probably going to lean towards the library. We have another donor that we're talking to who's very engaged in sports and athletics in the state. We're anticipating that they're going to lean the other way, but we don't know.

But I think the $200,000 could be a little bit and say, okay, we're willing to make that commitment, but if things come in better, we can go back and relook at that, relook at a later allocation.

Yes, we can.

And that's my thought as well.

I agree with that.

You know, if you recall, some of the things that we're looking to fund with this money are, for example, a sound shell. The piano is kind of the focal point, but the sound shell, projectors, A soundboard, some of these other things that are not permanently attached to the facility but are attached to.

So might I say that if some donations came in that were designated towards the library and it helped to pay for some of the things we're talking about, that would allow for some additional money to go for some of those on the grants.

Yes.

But I, if I may too, I will qualify too though That if it's a general donation, there's greater flexibility in allocating that money than contributing it back into, for example, the care fund and having that money be exclusively directed to one or the other. The moment we put it into the care fund, resubmit it to the care fund, then we, then we kind of tie our hands.

And, and the vote on this will be in 2 weeks. 2 weeks.

Okay.

So I'm, I'm okay with this the way it sits right now, and I have to leave for about an hour.

Yep.

Any other thoughts there? I'm gonna go to recreation unless there's any other—

Debbie Wilson.

Yeah.

Did you guys do the rec too?

There's the recreation.

No, I wasn't— I'm not on that side.

So the Recreation Advisory Commission is making this recommendation, and who from here, right?

Dave.

Thanks, Dave.

So here's— this is a little interesting. We've had some projects over the years that have come in under budget, amazingly. I guess if you allocate enough money, there's something coming in under budget. But here's the resources we're looking at. The $1,132,000— I didn't add the 1, but the $1 million we've talked about giving to the fitness center. The amount then that comes in over that $1 million is this $332,000. $132,000 had just been what we project as revenue. We've been saving up some money over, over the years at different times projects have come under. We've kind of pooled all that together for this $125,000. So these are projects that were built a while ago, came in under budget, have been sitting in accounts. A handful of years ago we allocated some money to to enhance our already funded care projects. This would be like adding shade over some of the All Together playground, or we used this money to add shade at the dog park. We'd already constructed it, but then we wanted to add some shade. We purchased some land down by Lakeside. Lakeside—

this is the amount of money that's left over after we made that purchase.

And then the splash pad came in $18,000 under budget. You add all of that together, and what you have is the $1 million plus The $332,000. So $1,332,648 is the total for our recreation side of care. What the Recreation Advisory Commission— Dave, if you want to speak to this or would you like me to go through it?

You can go through it.

Okay.

Was to put the million dollars to our fitness center to continue that commitment. After this, we would have one more year of that million dollars. And then we decide what we want to do, if we want to continue to put CARE money towards that. Our co-sponsor groups, we began last year, we funded them $30,000 to help offset some of the costs with recreation. And I don't know, David, did they have an opportunity to discuss how they've used that money this year or how they plan to?

No, it was the— they didn't meet.

Oh, okay.

The groups didn't come and meet, so.

Okay.

Do you have any idea on some of Have the you spoken with some of them?

So far, all of them have recommended that they were going to raise their prices this year and that they are not going to raise it and use this money to offset that cost. We've asked them to be a little bit more specific in the next year, but the money that they're getting, the discount they're getting this year, that's where they've all been, is the prices would have gone up and this is keeping the prices down.

Okay, so that's the co-sponsor groups. Our futsal project, we have— we're, we're in the bid process right now. We know we'll need some additional resources. $87,648, that's just obviously kind of scrapping up the change. We want to shade— put shade over the Altogether Playground. We've talked about that for quite a few years, um, and this $125,000 we feel like can do a pretty good amount of the shade. We hope, we hope we can fund Shade everything we feel like we need to. But then toddler structures— some of the playgrounds we've built in the past, there's been kind of some feedback from the neighborhood that they'd like to see more toddler-oriented equipment there.

Is that the 0 to below 5 years old?

Yeah, yeah, kind of your pre-kindergarten age. So $50,000, we hope can add that to 2 different playgrounds, namely the community in Bonneville, which we've recently built to add some additional play structures for the youth. A handful of months ago, or a handful of weeks ago, we came with this proposal about the Sarah Playground to take that north playground and turn it into sand volleyball courts. I know some of you heard about that, and we, and we did as well. So we've gone back to the drawing board and really reconsidered and spoke, spoke with some parents of that area, and what we've decided to do And Chris can speak probably to the logistics of this, is start saving some money to do a much— a dedicated toddler playground, new and improved, in that same spot. We don't have all the money to do it this year, but what we would do is take the parts that are kind of— aren't really functioning right now. We're replacing a couple playgrounds. We feel like, am I accurate, Chris, we can piece some together, keep this playground functioning for another year or two while we save up. to do a really special dedicated toddler playground at Sarah Park.

So is it going to be in this— you're saying in the same spot?

Correct.

The current playground?

We wouldn't do the sand volleyball. Instead, we would just replace it with this. That, that $40,000 then would just start creating a sinking fund that we would use in the future to build. $100,000— that is the full allocation of the recreation money that's available for CARES tax.

And is there a plan at some point future to include like a sand volleyball court at one of our parks, or is that just completely off the table?

No, you want both.

Well, I know I'm kind of at the center of some of this, but I'm just wondering, is that kind of like in the queue of one of the amenities that we'll consider the next time we're doing a project? Like, I'm not saying it has to happen this year.

I mean, Chris could probably speak to that. I think honestly, as we started speaking about the operation of operating a sand volleyball court, There's some challenges with just the operations of them. The cats love them.

They're certainly a lot less expensive than a playground, which is going to be around $130,000 to $150,000.

The maintenance of them isn't terribly difficult or challenging, but the demand for them is questioned, I think, overall. The master plan suggests that you need to have one for every 10,000 people, but it does allow you to make adjustments on a case-by-case, city-by-city basis—

demand, weather, so forth, climate.

We probably need to look at that in a little more detail, I would suggest.

The plan though for the North Sarah Park though is to scavenge from Windsor Park when that's replaced this year, as well as Westport Park, and shut down aspects of it that need to be and And then continue to extend the life of it for at least another year until they can budget for it and do it right.

Any other—

are you saying that we already have some?

We have a sand volleyball court at Cascade and it doesn't get a lot of use.

The dogs and cats really like it.

Any other questions or thoughts about the recreation side of this?

Do we still have the frisbee golf thing in the circle?

Yeah, frisbee golf. In fact, they'll be putting it back up in the next couple weeks.

What was that?

The frisbee golf.

We had it down while we were doing this big project, but we'll be putting it back in here soon.

Does that get used, and is that still somewhat disruptive to the park?

What's our latest on that? It gets a lot of use.

It gets quite a bit of use.

There's a lot of lunchtime use.

Weather is disruptive.

I'm getting less complaints once we rotated the course.

We changed it around, made it a little different. It is a very popular lunchtime activity during the summer for people to spend lunch out there.

They play our Any other questions?

Again, if not, this is, this is what I'll bring forward for the ordinance in a couple weeks to have the city council decide. Okay, that's all I got.

Okay, thanks, David. Yep. All right, so we'll have an update on the Geneva Road area, uh, presented by Jason Bench. So, Katie Rose, you want to sit down?

So we've reached the final destination of our Geneva Road area-wide plan.

Katie Rose from BRS is here to present the final draft of what we've accomplished. We are in the process of submitting it to the EPA for approval based on the draft plan.

Thank you.

Based on the EPA grant that we received. We're also going to process it through and actually amend our general plan to attach this as part of that general plan coming in July.

Council will review that as well. So I'm going to turn it over to Katie Rose to give a highlight of what we've accomplished in the last year or so.

Each of you should have received a copy of this proposed plan.

We'll talk about it over the next couple months as well.

I'm sorry, give me just one moment to pull up the presentation.

Oh, we thought it was over already.

Wouldn't that be nice?

I forgot to clean my glasses.

Hey, Steven, while she's pulling that up, have we reached out to that, like, the group that was concerned about what happened later on?

We reached out to kind of share—

In fact, we specifically reached out to those neighborhoods by way of surveying in a targeted response.

We received 146 responses.

We showed them 4 options as to this is what we're thinking, this is kind of the play system that is Geared to the over-5 crowd and the under-5 crowd, and we asked them for their specific input, and they provided feedback as to, out of the 4, this is the one we prefer. We also shared those playground options, I believe, with the Rec Advisory Commission, and they too agreed with the same, uh, concept.

that was—

that the citizens group agreed with. And interestingly enough, it's the same company that installed the playground systems in Community Park, as well as Bonneville Park. So—

I think you're speaking of Windsor Park.

Oh, excuse me.

Yep, yep. This is the Windsor Park.

So I think we've landed on a On a vendor that people really like. Yeah, it's just a matter of now trying to essentially build amenities for the different strata of youth.

And if we have some chance in between, I actually have some of those renderings. Like Jamie said, same vendor, more emphasis on the younger, younger children stuff.

It's pretty, pretty cool.

Yeah, I mean, if we're not talking about this year, there's not as much. But yeah, for Sarah, if we want to do Kind of that same kind of effort. Yeah, see if they land on the same type of feedback.

I think that'd be helpful.

I do think that there is some—

and Reed can speak to this—

but there is some benefit in trying to, to some degree, stay with the same vendor so that we can have continuity in parts and things like that. So we were encouraged when we saw the citizen feedback suggest that they liked this one.

And we would anticipate trying to move forward with them into the future, future projects. Correct.

All right, well, my name is Katie Rosenbriano. I have been before you all before to talk about the plan for Geneva Road, and I appreciate you all giving me your time again this afternoon. I'm here with good news, which is that we've actually reached the end of the planning And we have a final Brownfield area-wide plan that will be submitted to the EPA and will— and I'll talk a little bit about more about this later in the presentation— but will be included as part of a general plan update in July. So I appreciate your support throughout this entire process. And I want to give you a brief overview of where we've been with this project. Some of our accomplishments and where we are right now and where we hope to go in the future. So where we've been. As you all know, this project was funded by a grant from the U.S. EPA. It was awarded in 2017, and over the past year we have been working collectively with the Warren Planning Department on a community-driven plan for the brownfield sites on Geneva Road. And as you all know, brownfield sites— we're talking about sites that have some sort of contamination or suspicion of contamination, and that may be impeding their future development, or it will impede the property owner from realizing the full value and benefit of their property. So through this process, we have been engaging our community members. And when I say community, I mean that very broadly. That is everybody from residents to property owners, business owners, employees, institutional stakeholders, and of course you all here that are— that represent members of the area. We also did a very thorough review of existing plans that have been done for this area and throughout the city to make sure that we're not recreating the wheel but really building on visions that have already been established. We did an inventory of the sites that we believed to be contaminated, reviewed environmental data on them, what we had, what was available from the state. We did a very robust study of the real estate market. We interviewed developers, we interviewed real estate professionals to get a sense of what were some of the obstacles to people wanting to move their business or keep their business underneath the road. What was the perception of the area? And unfortunately, in a lot of cases, it was viewed as blighted. It is viewed as blighted. We did an analysis of the infrastructure that was there and would be needed to support new development. And we are— we did a preliminary zoning analysis, but one of the things that we're going to be doing after the This plan is amended as part of the General Plan is to do a more thorough recommendation about the zoning changes that are needed to realize the vision that's laid out in this plan. So where we are today, this was our project timeline. It's always a great feeling to finally make it to the end. So we have finished the plan for Geneva Road, and again, as I said, Yes. And as I said before, it will be submitted to EPA later this month. The final plan document, I described a little bit about it in December when I was before you, and you do have the final plan document in your meeting materials. It incorporates information that we assembled throughout all of our background research, through all of our public meetings. We had 2 public meetings, numerous steering committee meetings with our partners. We presented to you all. We did site visits with our property owners. We had a property owner-specific workshop. So it involved all of that information. It lays out a roadmap for how to implement the recommendations in the plan. So not that this plan would just sit on a shelf and collect dust, but really we're laying out what are the steps needed to really have a strategy for how we're going to improve upon the main road. Um, And then it identifies what are things we can do in the short term, what are things we can do in the long term, how are we going to pay for them, those kind of things. So I'm going to go through this briefly. In the last meeting that we had with y'all, we talked about what are some of the goals of the plan. They're the same as when we started. We want to stimulate economic development of the Geneva Road corridor, make sure that we're reusing existing infrastructure, protecting our valuable commercial and industrial Industrial properties, because as you all know, this is the only part of Orem that has industrially zoned property, and industrial— industrially zoned property has some of the lowest vacancy rates and the highest prices per square foot in the entire Utah County region. So we really want to make sure that we protect that asset. And of course, increasing sustainable and equitable development opportunities.

We—

the final plan contains 3 districts. Like State Street that has— that's developed along the district concept, there's 3 districts identified for Geneva Road. They all propose a mix of commercial and industrial. There is no residential proposed. So going back to what I was saying before about making sure that we're protecting this really important resource for our business community and also for the city as a whole when we think about our tax base. The 3 districts are at the northernmost part, south of the Williams Farm property, that's the Gateway District. In the middle is Geneva Crossing, and the bottom along the intersection of Geneva and Center Street is called the Geneva Center District. The areas highlighted in blue are the sites that we identified as being brownfield sites. So as you can see, there's quite a bit of contamination in these areas. And some of them represent properties like at the bottom just north of District 3, you see a lot of blue. That's Geneva Rock and Geneva Pipe. They're not included in a district because we'd have— they are good property owners, they're major employers, we have no desire to change what they're doing, but we did identify that they have known issues with contamination, but so long as they intend to stay there, it's, it's not really impeding their growth or operations. So again, these are just a zoomed-in version of the 3 district plans.

Go ahead, sir.

It's Katie, right?

Yes.

Katie, tell me what the responsibility of the landowner is on brownfield.

My understanding, you can go back in the beginning of time and sue former landowners and get them to pay to fix this.

So it's something called the, the liability for site is something called the response or the responsible party or the RP. It doesn't typically come into play except for 2 situations. One is if you're doing something that is contaminating an adjacent property, whether it's through the media of groundwater, soil, or potentially air pollution. The other is when the property changes hands. What we're seeing more and more is that Banks are looking to see that you've done Phase 1, which is the first level of assessment, before that they'll be willing to issue a mortgage. So it's not something that if they're continuing to operate, they're not impacting the properties around it, that there would necessarily be any enforcement actions. So these 3 district scenarios behind me again are the 3 that I described before. They're illustrating land use, and typically the, the pink-red colors show non-residential uses. So this is a concept. Another really critical part of the Geneva Road plan is making sure that whatever development is proposed fits into existing plans for improvements to the transportation network. And we did a transportation network map that identifies the planned alignment and access points along Geneva Road. Again, these are really going to be critical as there's continued capital investments in Geneva Road and as additional development comes to make sure that there are no conflicts. And we, as I said before, we detailed the entire transportation network All the modes that people use along this corridor such that we understand how proposed development fits into the larger picture of transportation investments. So that's what was in the plan, and where do we go from here now that the plan is done? It is the desire of the Planning Department to adopt the recommendations or to adopt the Geneva Road plan as part of a general plan update this summer. That will lay the framework or lay the groundwork to be able to have those conversations about how we might change the zoning, the current zoning, to support desired uses in the Geneva Road area. Right now, the entire corridor with very little exception is zoned heavy industrial, and the zoning districts that Orem has are Are ones that were put into place many decades ago, so they may not have the same performance standards that are applicable to 2019 and beyond. So we'd like to take a deeper dive and do an analysis of whether the zoning districts that are there really fit the city's vision for the industrial uses going forward and whether there's ways that we can improve upon them. So that will be coming after the General Plan update this summer. This is a graphic of the current zoning. You can see that blue or indigo area, that's M-2, that's your heavy industrial. Technically the plan area does include the residential areas east of 15, but we really didn't make any recommendations for those areas. It's just that was the whole area that was awarded grant funding. So you can see again this whole area is Heavy industrial. And then the City of Orem applied for another round of grant funding to support implementation of this plan. Specifically, it's to access funding to conduct those Phase 1s. The idea behind that is that we would work with property owners who are thinking about transacting their properties and maybe other situations to help them conduct a Phase 1 Such that they have a better understanding of what they're working with and we can put together a plan for how that could be remedied. The grant announcement is expected anytime this month, and we understand that it's very likely that the city will get it based on their performance of this current grant funding. So actually, this is just kind of technical, but it just shows that the area-wide planning is the first process of pre-development. We talk about what do you do if you want to develop a brownfield site. And then the next step, which you see is the Phase 1, is what the city has applied for funding for. And that's all I have for you today. Can I take any questions?

You talked a little long.

You're supposed to talk for 45 minutes.

Oh, I'm sorry, really?

Oh, okay. Try the suit again.

Okay, you want to hear it again?

So one question I have is, um, what do you foresee as the potential points of controversy with it, like as far as public input and things? I'm guessing some of the stuff is probably just a slam dunk that everybody agreed, okay, yeah, that makes sense. But what are the points where you think there might be pushback or resistance from the public or business owners?

Right, so I'll start with the good. Which is that brownfield development is typically seen as something that has a triple bottom line. Good for business, good for the environment, and it's definitely good for increasing your tax base. So everybody seems— it can be a win-win-win for everybody. What we've experienced throughout this plan process has been that there are some property owners that are suspicious of the reason for the city wanting to do this. Involved or develop a plan for this area, but I will say that with very limited exceptions, we have put a huge emphasis on engaging the community, the property owners, and all the stakeholders that have, have a stake in this area from the beginning, such that we limit the amount of suspicion about what the intent of this process is and explain what is the benefit for people to participate in this process. Different people are going to gain different benefits from this process. For a resident, you're eliminating blight, you're eliminating potential environment— pathways for environmental contamination. It's a public health win. For a property owner, you may be suspicious, as this gentleman asked before, that somehow an enforcement action is going to come down on them, and that certainly not what we want. We really want to emphasize the places where this type of planning can benefit the property owner and that we can explain what kind of resources are available. But to answer your question, I think the biggest challenge that we've had is just, um, doing a really deep and dedicated dive with property owners about why this process is a win-win for them.

So So kind of tying into Tom's question, if the area has been designated as having some brownfield issues, the current property owner doesn't have to do anything to remedy those, but if they were to develop part of it, would there then be some requirement for the remedy of the brownfield?

So technically there is not. The biggest motivator, whether we want to say I think that's a great point. I think the reason why I say it's a carrot or a stick is really when it comes to redevelopment financing or development financing, which is that they're very unlikely to obtain capital for the purchaser to buy their property unless a Phase 1 has been conducted. Now, all cash sales are totally a possibility, and they do happen, but that's really where the rubber meets the road in terms of them unlocking their property value and then A follow-up question to that one is, if part of the area does have the designated brownfield scenario, are there certain uses then that need to be specifically zoned out or restricted in that particular area? I think that's a great question. It's not about state or local law related to that, though there are state standards of how a brownfield site needs to be remediated in order to support different types of development. Where the local land use law related to zoning comes into effect is really about what this community thinks are uses that should be adjacent to one another, and that's not really something about environmental law or state law or federal That's really about the city's vision for adjacent uses. It really hits the heart to the heart of why we zoning was amended in the first place was to prevent smokestacks from being next to houses, and I think that there are a lot of factors to consider, such as preserving industrial space. How close do you want residents to active industrial users? The other thing too is that. We have a lot of great industrial users and we don't want to impede their operations because they now have residents next to them. So there's a lot of questions that we have to unpack there.

So tied into that, along part of that corridor, the Geneva Road corridor, is operations that use farming or Cook's Nursery, for example, uses a lot of land.

Yes.

There's various small industrial sites.

There's not much housing, but there could be requests for housing from that standpoint.

Are any of those somewhat dependent or usages that would be concerning if it were in a brownfield?

I'm glad you brought up Cook's because they did come to the property owner meeting, so they've been engaged. I think that I'm trying to think of the areas along the corridor, really, except for the Williams Farm site, which is a planned development, and I do believe that it permits residential. That's really the only part of this corridor where you can see residential coming in. I think that the improvements that will be made to this Yes. Based on this plan, whether it's implemented, especially in the northernmost district, which is the Gateway District, which will face that planned development zone, I think will only benefit because that will help to create a little bit of a buffer between the existing industrial uses at that— on 1600 North and what could be planned for the Williams Farm side. There's some pretty— I mean, I know that they put in the self-storage right at that intersection and that really doesn't have much impact, but there's some other uses up there that if we could get them cleaned up and moved to a more light industrial use would benefit whatever residential is going in on the Williams Farm site.

Thank you. Councilmember Spencer, may I make a comment? Sure.

Just maybe speaking to that point, We've had conversations with adjacent municipalities to the north, and of course Provo to the south, and they envision a much different corridor in the future than today. And they're anxious to essentially change the nature of the corridor, even to the point in Provo now where they're talking about the future of the Geneva Road corridor corridor in a way much different than a number of years ago when we proceeded with the expansion of that road. You remember the discussion was, well, we're going to maintain the width of Geneva Road until we get to the parkway, and then we're not really sure we can do much thereafter given historic structures and the nature of the agricultural nature of that property and so on and so forth. Well, now the conversation is turning turning a little bit and they're saying, well, if you look at the TransPlan 2050 plan, we're coming to the realization that we need something more than I-15 in terms of north-south, and we need to find an alternative to I-15 in Geneva, potentially through Orem, and Provo can serve in part as A transportation corridor, but we don't necessarily want it to be a highway. We want it to be something that our community can benefit from and that is going to complement, you know, offer complementary uses on both the east side and the west side. And so the timing of this, I think, is, is really important. And some of the stuff that we've been doing in terms of having conversations about land uses and connectivity to the west and how, for example, what we're doing is going to work with Vineyard and what they're doing and the Vineyard Connector and so on and so forth. I think these are all real critical conversations to, to help us vision the future of that corridor because we're not the only one who see it as something much different than what it is today. Fuzzy Grove sees it that way.

way.

Linden sees it that way. Provo also sees it that way. And of course, Provo has had a little bit of a paradigm shift with the relocation of the high school and some of what is happening on the west side today that wasn't happening 5 years ago. So I think the timing of the conversations is excellent.

I'm just curious, did we have, whether it was city staff for property owners from some of these neighborhoods, like Vineyard, for example? Did we have them coming to some of the public outreach meetings that we had?

Yes, yes, they were providing input. Our stakeholder committee included a lot of the surrounding communities, as well as all of the ETA, UDOT, all those were invited, and they all attended. Okay.

We had great participation out of Vineyard. I was very pleased with their openness and willingness to come to some of the meetings.

Because really the success of the program It doesn't happen unless there's mutual participation.

If I could add to this, the plan's garnered a little attention.

Jason, maybe you could speak to your trip to Denver for the EPA conference and what you were able to do there and maybe share with council what you participated in.

In 29 minutes or less.

I had an opportunity a couple weeks ago to go to EPA's Region 8 seminar where we talked about—

I had an opportunity to present what we did, kind of what Katie Rose said, as far as what we are doing and working with the state individual that works with—

Bill Reeves.

Bill Reeves, thank you. Indicated that the city of Orem has By adopting this as a general plan, that's something that's unique.

Not necessarily unique, but something cities don't always do. When they do an EPA assessment or a plan, they don't always adopt it as part of the city. So we're actually working hard to actually implement this as part of our general plan and then also now implement it as part of Arizona so that we can take what the work that we've done here and actually implement it for the city.

I had an opportunity to present up there at the seminar and actually had a lot of opportunities to discuss with other participants in the region. There are probably 75 participants throughout the region that have these types of grants, assessment grants for funding. So we had a good opportunity to present that. I think it's well known that we're in the process of making those changes. So anyway, a lot of opportunities we have.

I just want to commend Jason and his staff and Katie for their work on this. They've just been Doing some really neat things. On a side note, many of you may have seen the article in the Daily Herald. Jason received an award for the Planning Division out in San Francisco from the National American Planning Association, recognizing their work on the State Street Districts and more specifically the VR technology that they implemented and shared with the residents. And the technical committee— is that correct? The director of the technical committee who granted you that award, who selected you.

Sorry. I just wanted to give him a call out. Another thing I'd like to think about is the fact that we had a lot of participation in this.

I don't know how a lot of you attended city meetings.

We had a tea box for school out in the city room. We had a city center public works facility where we invited Geneverock and others to bring their heavy equipment.

We had a lot of families come out.

The thing that we found on State Street and the Geneva Road process is when we invited the families out for more than just cookies and milk, we actually invited them to have dinner, we had those types of things and had activities for the families, we really had a lot more participation. This Geneva Road process, we probably really had hundreds at each of these meetings.

It was really a positive, for me at least, to see People are engaged and involved in the city processes.

So I think as we proceed to the planning commission, to Sam's point, I think we will see a lot of support. There's always going to be a few that are not—

that will be suspect of what we're doing with BPA and why we're doing it. But I think it's all trying to benefit the corridor as a whole as we move forward in development. So anyway, it was very positive. So also, maybe, Ryan, you could maybe You sent us an update on the Golden Corral, the dark house. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit. Yeah, they have to. Stake is not downfield.

So we probably need to, if I can, we probably need to qualify that conversation by saying we're meeting in a formal city council work session. And so your action in the evening will be as a redevelopment agency. However, we thought it might be helpful for you just as members of the City Council to learn about and to be updated as to what may happen this evening in the RDA meeting.

So—

And to that point, may I just add the dotting of that i and crossing that t? Part of the challenge that as I look at considering this as an RDA member, I think If the state is going to yank sales tax, no one's going to do these kind of deals. If it's just going to be population-based, why would we do this? And that's something that I'm sure the Utah League of Cities and Towns is fighting.

Yes.

But this is—

this does—

it just doesn't motivate an RDA to do that if it doesn't come to the taxing entity that's doing all the hard work. and incurring the economic exposure.

Yes.

Just on that same note, at ULCT when they had the caucus for cities of our size, I asked that question and I actually wasn't that pleased with the response because they basically said, well, we don't see evidence that cities are factoring that into their decisions when it comes to economic development. And I think we really have. over the years. And so that it shocked me that they don't see the evidence, and maybe we're an exception, but I look at things like the RDA and the CDA and things that really have helped us not necessarily try to get big wins to increase sales tax revenue, but if nothing else, to at least protect and defend that tax base that we have.

If I could just add to that, If I may, I was not in attendance at that caucus meeting, but I do know that there are communities that are very, very concerned about this and about the split. And really what we have in our state right now is a system of economic development that is inconsistent at the state level versus the local level, where the focus of the state is job creation and generation of income, whereas we're focused in on sales tax and the generation of retail sales. And part of, I believe, the interim conversation that will be had here in the next number of months as it relates to tax reform, and you've probably seen that the state, both the Senate and the House have put together a tax reform committee that will review this. I have great confidence that sales tax allocation is going to be a topic, but the League and cities like us have said, look, that's a completely separate conversation. If you want to talk about tax reform, the primary conversation is about broadening the tax base.

That's their job.

It's not about— you want to kind of lump in sales tax reallocation as part of the conversation. Let's get the tax reform broadening the base discussion kind of squared away before, if ever, we tackle the tax— sales tax allocation. So I'm not dismissing what you're saying because I definitely think that there are some who are motivated to want to have the sales tax allocation discussion, but they're trying to throw that in with everything else. And there are other legislators and the League itself is saying, well, let's have it one discussion at a time.

Let's not lump everything together.

And You know, from a sales tax perspective, we believe, you know, we can only essentially work off, you know, past is a good indication of future. Our hope is that we will continue to benefit from retail sales. There's no guarantee that the formula will stay the same. But frankly, The moment anybody starts tweaking and reallocating— well, you get a piece of the sales tax, you get a piece of the property tax— there's always a group who's going to end up upset.

Winners and losers.

I mean, if, if we start saying, okay, well, if you want to reallocate, then give us a piece of the property tax, well, then you're going to have the school districts up in arms, and you're going to have others up.

And okay, well, then we won't touch Property tax. Property tax.

Let's touch income tax. Well, then you have the state up in arms because that's what fuels education, that's what fuels transportation, so on and so forth. So to Tom's point, there will always be winners and losers. And some of the biggest losers as it relates to sales tax allocation are some of the biggest communities in the state, including the capital city, which would lose the most if a reallocation were to take place. So while it may not have been the focus in that caucus meeting, I do believe there are a number of cities that are very much focused on the conversation.

And just to clarify, when I said they, I was referring to the ULCT staff that were researching this. So they're kind of a mini task force that was looking. So there were other cities that were very much in the same boat.

Yeah.

I think might come out winners. I think we're just hesitant to have that conversation about reallocating and—

Okay, I see what you're saying.

So it was the ULCT staff that were looking at that, and in their minds, they didn't believe that cities were making their decision, like their economic development decisions, based off of trying to generate more sales tax revenue, which I, I don't necessarily agree with, but I'm not sure what their methodology was.

Yeah, and that's, that's a good question to have with Cameron.

That's something I'm happy to follow up on. Sorry.

You're fine.

I don't know how much detail you want right now. Maybe I'll just talk through the bones of the project.

Yeah, that would be great.

Okay, so 6 or 7 years ago when I took over economic development, one of the first things Jamie asked me to do is figure out how to strengthen our new car dealerships. We kind of were given a gift in a way when the Audi Porsche dealership moved to Lehigh because it created room for the Honda and VW to trade. Brent Brown, they were able to pick up property next door and expand, so that's left us Nissan. Developed this idea— oh, now it's gone. It was there 2 minutes ago.

Let's see if it comes back up.

Came up with this plan that we knew we had a house here, kind of a lone straggler that was left behind when all this developed. We had a restaurant here that was, um, not performing at levels that are typical.

That's the sushi, right?

That's the Sushi Restaurant.

Okay.

Um, the restaurant became available on the market. It passed from 3 different real estate holding companies in a matter of years. One of them was, um, I think it was like General Electric Capital or something. But basically these land holding companies just owned like hundreds and hundreds of restaurant sites and leased them out. And it changed hands a couple times. Uh, one of those holding companies ended up with it and they started liquidating these restaurants they had own and they put it on the market. So we came in and made an offer on it and ended up owning it with the redevelopment agencies, as all of you are well aware. We also were able to pick up the house after negotiating with those homeowners for about 3 years. We actually made them an offer and they went away, and then they came back and said, we're moving back to Richfield, would you like to buy it? So we ended up with the house.

Has the house been gone— has it been razed?

No, it has not. The police have been training in it ever since we boned it. And in fact, I had a complaint from the neighbors that there must be drug activity there because the cops are always there.

Provo, Orem.

So it's not just Orem that's been using it, but other cities have been working on it too. So the idea was Central Utah, the time wasn't going anywhere, and we had talked to Central Utah We were looking at a property in Draper, Utah, and they wanted way too much money for their property. Now it's ended up in hands that want even more money. So we reached out to Golden Corral with this idea that we could flip their restaurant and end up with a piece of their property and basically increase the area of that dealership. Golden Corral's general manager, owner of the actual restaurant, would never call me back. He's like, why is the city calling me? Don't bother me. About 3 years later, he contacted me and said, hey, would you guys be interested in doing a project? I said, I've been trying to get a hold of you for 3 years. Anyways, here we are today. So the land for Golden Corral is owned by a couple of gentlemen that developed all the Golden Corrals in the Salt Lake area 20 years ago. Bill Linson was their general manager. He has since taken over ownership of all the restaurants, but they still retain ownership of the land. And we have come to an agreement that we'll flip this, tear down Sakura, build a brand new Golden Corral, end up with the remainder property that we call the Hatchet, which looks like the shape of a hatchet axe. And then we would sell that land, including the land with the house, to the golf dealership. So the original concept plan that we met with all the parties with and showed them was this kind of a layout, which provides intersection improvements for us, increases stacking distance and safety with vehicles crossing in an east-west manner. Another problem with the current site is—

Is the red line the ownership line?

This, this is the proposed boundary as it wraps around between what would be Garth and Gold So Ryan, a question.

Is the Golden Corral under pressure from corporate to update their facility?

They are.

They're reaching the end of their 20-year operating agreement, which is in February of next year. At that time, they either have to redevelop their whole entire building, possibly scrape it and rebuild, or a major remodel. They went through a major remodel 10 years ago, but From what I understand, with the 20-year, it's a significant investment.

And how old is that building? 20 years old?

It is— will be 20 years old. So with this plan, they'll have a new operating agreement with corporate for another 20 years. One of the challenges with the old site, if I go back to that, is GARP has access right here to the light and up on top. People fly through here. And they've almost had customers and employees hit by Garth patrons. This layout gets rid of all of that, and Garth's access is directly off the light now and doesn't cross through Golden Corral's side. Golden Corral has their own side without any cross traffic except for on the northern portion. This represents the hatchet piece that Garth would end up with. What is so nice about this layout is Golden Corral has basically given up all of their prime frontage, and the dealership will now have that prime frontage to display additional vehicles on the parkway. They're anticipating that that frontage, along with an additional 180 parking stalls— which, this is in a normal parking lot, that doesn't account for when they do this, they can fit far and above 180 vehicles if they They stack them like they do in the back. They're anticipating a 3% annual sales increase.

3% year over year continually.

And what is their annual sales right now?

I can't divulge that by state law, unfortunately. That's why I'm talking in very general terms. We're finding increases. And this is the preliminary layout that Golden Corral's engineer has come up with. They've come in and submitted their fees and application. I think, Jason, have their plans— have they come in this week yet? Their engineer's getting really close on having it ready to go.

And they need that many parking stalls?

They do, and they, they'll only pick up about 11 stalls over their old site.

And will their building be larger than the existing one?

I believe it's It's the largest prototype Golden Corral does, but I— it's very similar to the one they're in now. They're anticipating a 15% increase in year 1.

You said they're picking up how many parking shops?

I believe it's 11.

Okay.

These are, uh, the photos of the new prototype.

This is one back east they went and toured, and it'd be a major upgrade.

Those are 2 pictures they've taken, and the picture on the bottom is from An article written about the new prototype. But the new buildings are designed in a manner that if Golden Corral were to fail and go away, the building can be repurposed, more so than their current design, which has the high-pitched roof and kind of looks a little more traditional.

This looks more— much more modern inside.

Yeah, if you go to—

they have a new Golden Corral in Cedar City, if you ever frequent Cedar City. They have this new prototype. I'm used to doing 7 miles an hour fast here, so you fill up it pretty good.

I'm just saying, if you have catering for Golden Corral, maybe we could have our next work session down there.

Retreat.

Or just get them to cater, just deliver here.

You can buy it by the pound, I think.

So our investment to date, the home purchase, And associated costs were about $215,000. The restaurant was gone just under $1.5 million. Since that time, we've received $300,000 in lease revenue, and we sold a piece of the frontage off to the UVX project. So investment to date is $1.3 million once you deduct the revenue we've received.

You ignore any carry cost, I take it?

That's correct.

Because the purpose of this was to redevelop the project and not necessarily for us to make a return on our money. I'm not talking about a return on money.

I'm talking about breaking even.

Oh, breaking even.

Yeah. Because we don't have any cost of ownership.

That's correct. On that project, we don't have any cost of ownership. They've been paying the property taxes.

No, we don't have any cost of investing a million-plus bucks and holding it and earning nothing on it.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, no holding cost. Good point.

Brian, how long— um, do you have a month-by-month lease with Sakura still, or how?

It's a month-by-month lease. They'll be out at the end of this month. So they're almost—

Do we know where they're relocating now?

They are not.

We've not been successful in finding them somewhere to go. We've tried multiple times.

Yeah, you sent all the emails back and forth.

We had them look at Midtown Village before True Religion went in. They could have had that spot and they weren't interested.

I thought I saw a hiring sign.

I thought I was surprised.

Um, yeah, they— well, I don't, I don't want to talk about their business operations in a public meeting.

Okay.

To respect their privacy, if that's okay.

We can talk about everything as long as no details are mentioned.

I just thought it was odd that there was a now hiring sign.

Then we were— the RDA would participate in demolition of all 3 structures and in the intersection improvements because they all benefit. And then, Tom, to your point, this is the breakdown of the current site versus the new site, the 11 additional parking stalls. Yes, Golden Corral does end up with significant square footage, 25,542 square feet more than their current site.

Not a building, of land.

Of land. That is land. But of that, a good chunk of it, 19,000, is encumbered by that Entrance, teardrop entrance, and frontage road.

So the usable land is a 10% increase.

Yeah, so they pick up another 8,500 square feet, but they're getting 11 parking stalls out of it essentially as their gain. So over a 20-year period, based on the money that we have put into the project, we have a $152,000 deficit. That does not account for any increase in garage sales. It doesn't account for that difference in the land amount. But we ran 3 different scenarios trying to project a break-even point for the city. The top one is if Nissan had an increase in 1 year similar to what we've seen Honda and Toyota do, we would have a 14-year break-even. That's if they just have a 1-year increase and then flat. They don't have any year-over-year increases after that. Very conservative estimate. The middle one is if they were able to return to their 2017 sale levels from 2 years ago, they'd break even— we'd break even in 4 years. That one I don't think is very likely because they have since, on the bottom one, provided us their forecast, which is a 3 3% annual increase, and that break-even point would be year 7 of when we would equal out based on sales tax revenues.

But what you're doing is you're securing a great sales tax revenue generator for many years to come, and that will— that would be a huge help to the city.

And my guess is the contract would say that very thing there, right? If you leave early, you're, you know, you can't just do that, right?

But it doesn't speak I guess, Tom, to your question, what if the future changes the application?

Is any of this relevant? Yeah. No. Yeah.

And that's— there's no guarantee.

An unanswered question and a control and an issue we don't control.

Correct. Okay.

So what you said is exactly why we're involved in this project or else Trust me, I would rather work on something else.

So, the other thing is, it not only strengthens Nissan, but it actually strengthens the other dealerships.

It does.

Because people see this as a center for auto sales, and they come here accordingly.

And Nissan can use some of that parking for the other 2 dealerships that they own, if needed.

Sure.

Which they have indicated they may do so.

And it's always good, I think, to work closely with the Garfield They're one of the largest in the state, and for future potential, there's a lot there.

By the way, thank you for answering. When I saw 2 or 3 other people answering, asking questions, I was grateful to get your feedback but didn't chime in.

But I was surprised, though, Tom, that you were—

I was reading carefully.

Brian, is there any update on the Central Utah Water property then?

Other than it's still just being marketed.

Now, what kind of—

do you know what they paid for it or what it got sold for initially? Because I know what they're asking for it now.

I don't know. Jamie might know better than I do.

$6 or $7 million, right?

$6.5 million.

Yeah, I'd heard $6.5 million. I've heard $7.5 million, but I know they're asking $10 million.

What I recall is that somebody asked $7.5 million, and supposedly they received full ask. Oh, that's right.

I believe the higher figure. It actually includes some additional land.

But what's interesting, at least, and Jason can confirm this, we really haven't had a lot of conversation with any potential developers as to, you know, what the existing zoning is, what they think could happen on that site. As the cost of that property increases, Have to, to some degree, surmise that they want to put residential density on that piece of property. But, you know, we haven't had a lot of conversation. I'm sorry, how's it graded?

R-8, residential.

And speaking of that, uh, Brian, any word on the Middle Gold property? I mean, I know somebody supposedly has bought it.

Um, they are waiting on us for Parking standards to see if we're going to modify our district parking standards.

And so—

So they can put in what, a mixed-use facility?

As per the code requirement, yeah, they'll have to meet the code. And it's not just Meadowgold, we have 4 other developers waiting to see what we'll do on that also, and we're working on that as staff.

Is one of those the one south of Montebello?

Correct, yep.

Okay, so we're working Jason's team's working on coming back with a proposal that we think we can support as staff, and that fits within the guidelines of the parking study that was presented a couple weeks ago.

So those are 2 really big projects, the railroad and Montevideo.

Yeah, 8th North is also in play, the VASA side of 8th North.

Right.

And have you talked to the owners of that property?

I mean, are they—

Yeah, we've had discussions.

And what are they—

A year ago.

Um, it depends on which developer they end up with.

There's a couple developers working, but either way, they want to go with a mixed-use facility.

They have to.

They're all in the red district, so they'll have to.

I don't think—

I mean, if they're going to rebuild, my question was, are they going to try to get somebody else in there?

No, they're all trying to do redevelopment.

And I think it's fair to say that none of them really like the idea of quote-unquote mixed use.

Not at all.

Sure.

Does this— I mean, at one time we thought that the car dealership could just buy a piece of water district. This provides them all the land they need. They're not landlocked here. We think at their current operations for the next whatever, They think 7 years break even, but 15 or 20 years there.

I mean, the developers looking at that piece of property have been, again, for mixed use, I believe. You could tell me otherwise.

That's the rumors we've heard, but you're right, Councilman McDonald. From what I understand, Garf is very excited about this, and I think it's going to meet their needs for quite some time.

Perfect. And they will be—

Tony Fratz will be here tonight, as well as the Golden Corral ownership group to answer any questions you might have.

With a group from Cedar City or from the world?

Oh, I didn't ask for anything.

So if this gets approved, so then Golden Corral actually is going to demolish everything and we're going to pay them?

We're going to reimburse them, so they'll handle the bidding.

And they will start that?

Not up to that. We've asked them to secure 3 bids as we would do.

But they would want to start that in a couple Months then on the—

Yes, because they're on a deadline with corporate franchise requirements.

Right.

And again, per our request, looks like you're doing it. They're going to extend the fence along the back to the standards of the Nissan dealership and not the Sakura part?

Yes, along 14 South, the fence is in the agreement and both parties have agreed to do so.

Okay, good.

So far.

Okay, well, thank you. It looks like our food is here, so why don't we go ahead and—

Boy, we got great interns now. Not like when you're delivering food, Peter. It's here on time.

Yeah, they do it with style.

Yeah, they do.

Maybe I emailed you a picture of each of them from their signing day, but Nate and Heidi are going to be interning with us for the next little while.

We're glad to have them.

How does that work?

They come for a number of months, or—

It's just like you were doing.

Do you want to speak to Yeah, so usually we do a full calendar year, so they'll kind of work a lot of hours during the summer and then part-time through the year.

We—

back in October is when we hired. Every city starts moving it up and up to get the best. So anyways, we're gonna start doing it before they begin the program, I think.

So are you already in the MBA program, and is it a 2-year program? So you take the summer off and we work you like a dog through the summer and then working part-time.

And then we—

if you're really good, we can give her to Steven and hire one of you.

Really good.

I mean, really, really good.

Yeah, like about a year. Disrespectful. There was a reason in the email I said this whole respect thing.

But all right, before it gets too deep, let's go ahead and—

well, let me just really quick just finish introducing him.

Hi.

So Heidi will be at the next couple months.

Heidi's expecting their first child at the beginning of July. We're excited for her, but we're glad that she can still spend these first 2 months with us. And when she finishes, Amy, who interned with Fletcher, is actually going to come back. She'll be getting married at the end of June, so the timing works out. She'll finish kind of that last year, and then Nate will stay with us through the end of next year. And Heidi may work on some projects here and there after she kind of—

And Nate was in my class a year and a half ago.

And I heard this favorite professor dialogue.

Yeah, well, he only had one safe answer.

I drug it out.

There's no other professors in here. Thanks.

So, Mark, could we have you give us a prayer?

Sure. Father in heaven, we're grateful for this chance we have to be together, responsibility to be here. Leadership. Grateful for the opportunity we have to work in such a great city and to embark on such exciting projects. We pray for the food. We ask you to bless it, to strengthen the bodies of those who need it, as we pray for them in Jesus Christ's name. Amen.

We got, um, we got a handful of salads, and then there's, um, number 7 is just turkey, and then number 8 and 9 are our club kind Or if you decide to go a whole hour and a half, you can dial back in later.

Well, why don't we go ahead and get started on our agenda?

It seems like Everybody's halfway through their food anyway. So the first thing we have coming up tonight is upcoming events. Let me just read some of those. We have the City of Orem Police Suncrest Police Picnic at the community park.

They actually did have to cancel after some scheduling reasons. We've notified the neighborhood, so we'll get that rescheduled.

Okay, we have Geneva Elementary celebrating 70 years, 5:30 PM on May 23rd. City of Orem Planning Division, City Council Chambers, neighborhood plans for Stonewood, Lake Ridge, Orem, Sharon, and Hillcrest. 27th, we have the Heritage Advisory Commission Memorial Day program at the Orem Cemetery, 9 AM. June 1st, we have the City of Orem Mayor's Centennial Ball at the UVU Sorensen Center Ballroom. The 20th, we have the City of Orem Police Hillcrest Police Picnic at the Hillcrest Park. And on June 21st, we have the Canyon Park Technology Center grand opening.

Thank you. What was the date of that again?

So that will be on June 21st at 10:30 AM at the Canyon Park Technology Center. Then we have a report from the Heritage Advisory Commission this evening, a presentation from the Orem Centennial 100 Kind We have 3 winners, I guess, and Lori Thomas, our new Miss Orem, will be presenter. So we do have new royalty that was just crowned this last weekend. And a really good program. Personal appearance, 15 minutes. Consent items, approval of meeting minutes, City Council meeting April 30th. Motion to cancel June 11th, 2019 City Council meeting. And a resolution authorizing the Orem City Police Department to appropriate personal property for public interest use. Uh, everybody okay with those 3?

Yes.

Okay, scheduled items. We have a public hearing, uh, resolution on the CDBG projected use of funds. And this is a public hearing.

So Ken will take care of that. Just as a heads up, we did receive $20,000 less than what we had been projecting.

Okay, they did—

Provo received less as well. Utah County received, but it's just the— with the population growth across the country, more cities are becoming entitlement communities. Because they're hitting that $50,000 mark. But the $3.3 billion for CDBG hasn't changed. And so that's what the reduction is for. But what we did is we just reduced it on one project rather than— we reduced the public services by the same percentage. And then in the bigger projects, we reduced one rather than shortchanging a handful of them.

Okay.

And we have a public hearing on our Landscaping code and data.

So the Planning Commission just went into a 7-0 for approval. We had a couple of people from the neighborhood, the city I guess, come out of the Planning Commission, but for the most part it's very positive.

Sure, I would hope it would be.

I think it's a good move.

I was at planning and one thing is that they, they thought they could even go more than the 50%. or something like that.

It didn't go far enough.

Yeah, something like that. So that was the feedback that they gave publicly.

Okay, next one's a public hearing on a resolution to accept the budget. Uh, Brandon and Richard.

It won't be until August unless you call us off tonight.

But we will come back in 2 weeks for the final on RDA and special officers.

But we'll have the tentative passed then.

Yes.

And allow you to operate. Right. Okay. I mean, just be sure about that.

Just In adopting a tentative budget this evening, the assumption I think that we are making is that the big rocks within that budget you're comfortable with and you are okay proceeding. So for example, within that there are compensation adjustments for our employees. We have historically and typically Given those adjustments on July 1st, I would ask for your consideration to continue down that path and not necessarily wait until the final budget is adopted in August based on the date that the tax—

You don't have a problem doing it that way?

Yeah, we don't. We can operate that way under the tentative budget. But if, for example, you had some concerns and you said, Well, I'm uncomfortable with what you're recommending from a compensation perspective. You need to kind of pull back. The hope would be that that conversation would be had tonight, because if we don't and we've approved the tentative budget, I would like to proceed— we would like to proceed with that change from July 1st in the same way we would like to proceed with other recommendations that are included in the budget. What we would essentially steer clear from is the hiring of those police personnel until we got your final go-ahead and approval in August.

When you're talking about compensation, talking about the 4% of total merit?

Correct. Yeah, correct.

But you know, there's also monies that we being included there effective July 1st to purchase equipment or to begin a capital project or something like that, playground replacement or something like that. The thought is, and I guess the mindset that we are approaching it is, if you're comfortable with the tentative budget, then for all intents and purposes, you're comfortable with these type of Programs proceeding, with the exception of the police personnel addition.

So do we have a date for the Truth in Taxation?

No, we don't. We actually have to communicate with the county and say it's our intent to go through Truth in Taxation, and the county will actually give us a date. So they'll tell us when the meeting will be.

I was thinking we had started that process. We won't start that process until— Brandon, sorry.

No, I can't do that until they finish their tax rolls, which doesn't occur until the first part of June.

Okay.

So we're actually waiting on them.

Correct.

But if we were to proceed in August passing that, that would take effect in like the November property tax bill.

Yeah.

And it wouldn't be prorated, it would be the full amount.

Correct.

Everybody okay at the moment with the tentative budget? We've gone over quite a bit, so. Okay, um, then— so you have any information items you want to say now, or you want to wait?

Just if I may, and this is, uh, some feedback that Carl provided to, to me before the meeting. We continue to have conversations with folks who have some concerns about the future of the recreation center and the fitness center, and specifically what we are looking to include in the fitness center. I think the voices that you have heard and probably will— may hear tonight as well are the racquetball proponents as well as the gun range proponents. The decision as to what we do prospectively as it relates to that center is really at your discretion. So if you were to come back and to say, you know, we feel very strongly about the gun range, we feel like we should add the gun range, we as staff will include that piece of the puzzle into the facility itself. However, we will do it with the limited pie that we have. So really what I'm saying is if we move forward with the gun range, something else would drop off and we would have to scale back something different.

What is the cost of the gun range?

Oh, it's in excess of $1 million. So, uh, you know, a racquetball court— when we talked with Joe from Method Studio, his suggestion is a racquetball court is anywhere from $225,000 to $275,000 per court. So we can add 2 courts, we can add 4 courts, but you add 4 courts, 4 times $200,000 $1.5 million.

$1.5 million, let's say, is $1 million.

So the pie is only so big. What drops out of the conversation? The suggestion is, well, we're not necessarily listening. I think we have been listening from the perspective of we have— we've surveyed the community, we've asked them in the past what they're most interested in. We've had conversations obviously with you. We've had conversations with the Recreation Advisory Committee—

Commission.

We've had conversations with the architect and recreation professionals who say these are kind of the emerging activities. These are the activities that have had historical strength, but they're on the way down. We've talked to some of our peers, Provo and Springville and others, who have said if we could do it all over again, we would do this versus this, or this is something we wish we had more of, this is something we had less of. So we feel like we have done quite a bit of research, but there always will be, I believe, some who will suggest that we could do more. In some specific area. I don't disagree, we could do more, but all of that comes at an opportunity cost. And so I know several of you, for example, have met and been on site with, for example, the racquetball community and have gone and visited with them or even played with them and have a good understanding I think it's a positive deal. As a management team, we're not anti-racquetball, but we are looking at it from the perspective of, okay, what does racquetball cost? What is the level of participation? What kind of revenue can we generate from racquetball versus spin or gymnastics or yoga or Zumba or whatever? And so we're trying to make decisions based not just on who's essentially voicing the loudest voice of opposition or support, but what is the industry telling us and what are some things that we should be looking to based on what our peers are telling us are really popular and frankly is going to help us sustain us into the future.

So what else can you use a Volleyball.

And, but you can do exercise in there, you can do playground in there. 3 of our racquetball courts are not being used as racquetball courts right now.

But if you use, for example, a space, let's say for yoga, now you've got a racquetball space that is 2 stories tall. That really is underutilized. You don't have ideal acoustics, you don't have ideal spacing for other types of activities, and because of the nature of the court and because of the rigidity of the walls, you can't tear down the wall and just blow out the space and convert 2 or 3 racquetball courts into a spin studio or a gymnastics space or, or whatnot. So you are kind of limiting yourself to what you can and can't do when you make certain decisions, just in the same way you couldn't take a gun range and easily turn it into a swimming pool.

You're limited.

So one thing I was going to say, I sent out an email and I think everybody got that, but I would recommend that we not proceed down the line of another gun range. I don't think that makes sense in a recreation center. I didn't like it to begin with. And that the racquetball courts have cement walls, concrete walls. Provost has wall panels. They're terrible to play on. I would request that ours be cement walls tilled up, and that if the group that wants more racquetball courts can raise the funds, it sounds like they could.

Thank you.

be set up where they could add another court if they paid for it. So that would be my suggestion. But Steve, for this evening, I'm wondering if you could be back there where the personnel sign-up sheet is. I'd like to hold it to 15 people, to what we have on our list.

Okay.

And you'll probably have more than that, but if you could ask them— there are a lot, a lot of them are going to say the same thing— and ask them if they could kind of consolidate and figure out who's going to say what.

Yep.

And so we can hold it to the 15 people.

Yep. Maybe.

Yeah, 15 minutes.

I'm sorry, 15 minutes. But how many people are—

how many?

That's 5 people.

That'd be 5 people. And I know, I know.

How many is on the list?

I will, I will kind of just caution. I don't, I don't— I completely agree with you, Mary. But I think there are some who will question whether or not it's appropriate if somebody wants to make a public comment to say, well, you don't have an opportunity.

We've had this discussion before.

Yeah.

How many are on the list?

No, no, how many spaces?

How many lines?

Mayor, one option is to do first 5 now and save the rest for the end of the meeting.

And then, but who wants to speak, speak.

We're going to have 2 other meetings afterwards. So we're going— well, we're going to adjourn our meeting into an RDA and a special item district.

Right.

And then we're going to be adjourned after that.

And because those are scheduled, then you need to address the business at hand with those, but then you can leave time at the end.

But we adjourned, we actually adjourned out of our meeting. Won't be in the meeting unless we reconvene it, and we haven't, we haven't noticed for that. How many spaces?

Uh, currently 25, but what I think what we're gonna have is just have it redone and then say we're limiting. And how long?

I'm good for like a half hour, like if you have 10 spaces.

Okay, so just cross off the bottom 15.

If you could just limit it to 10, and like I say, we've done it before. I think it's more where if 5 are all saying the same thing, if they can get together and have one speak for the 5. If they're all saying something different, then that's a different story. But we are adjourned, so we're not back into our meeting.

I just want to say on the lack of all boards, I talked to Joseph a little bit a few minutes ago, and he— I was At first I started saying, you know, you leave the cement courts the way they are. She says, no, we'll use the standard, whatever that is, 9601 National. Looked at all the standard specs, walls and stacks and that, but that's not what they want.

So I don't understand what you're saying.

Well, they want the same Cement, the way it is now.

Okay, and what's Joseph saying?

And Joseph's saying they have to tear them down, right?

Yes.

And then to reconstruction—

reconstruct them, it's a, it's the standard that they use nationally, which is not a cement wall.

So, so then I, I wasn't aware of that. I talked to Joseph and I said we'd like concrete walls.

He said, I think that'll work.

And he's going to discuss it in our city.

But I think their concrete walls nationally are different than what we've got now.

So I, I don't know. I mean, like I say, Provo has panels. I don't know what the difference is between concrete and concrete.

And then they don't want, they don't want a glass front, which is—

That's not negotiable.

Well, I'm just—

For safety purposes, that's not negotiable.

I'm just saying I'm not sure we can replace them.

But that's the dilemma is, for example, we had this conversation with Joe and his staff and he said, we believe within the budget we can build concrete potentially in— to build concrete walls.

But they tear down like sand.

Yeah, but he didn't qualify that by saying, but the concrete's not going to be the same as the concrete we currently have. I didn't, I didn't know that, and we can pursue that conversation.

Well, maybe you better check with him.

He said they'd use what they use nationally.

Okay, we'll look at that. I don't know, I wasn't— I thought concrete was concrete.

Okay, I will check.

So, question, do we have consensus on the council that we're not going to go above 4 courts. The reason I ask that is not that I'm unwilling to listen to this group, but I also don't want to give them false hope if we already know in our minds that, you know, we're going to stick with 4, that's the end of it. I just, I don't want them to waste all their time focusing their energy on that aspect, and let's talk about the construction.

Well, it just comes down to money. So do you want to find another quarter of a million, or do you want to take a quarter of a million from someplace else?

Opportunity to expand. The opportunity to expand, is that 1, 2, 3, 4 ports if it's there down the road? Or what is it?

What's—

how much room do we have?

Well, again, we're not, we're not at the point yet where we've specifically cited ports. We have talked about 4. We've talked about a general location for the 4.

In terms of expansion, I think there's a possibility Some of the options that we've looked at have them in a position to where in the future it would be easier.

There are locations that it would be very difficult. There are places that it would be easier.

It's never going to be cheap. No.

But there are ways.

I mean, our expansion, is it 2 more courts in reality with the expansion? There would be space to go 2, 4, 6, 8.

I mean, we talked about originally, for example, the last time we had a discussion with the architect, the racquetball courts were originally placed on the east side of the facility. Well, there's really no room to expand to the east.

Right. So we talked about shifting to the south so that there was potentially room for expansion.

But like Carl said, It could be accommodated, but it's not, it's not a turnkey thing.

It's not like you just drop additional courts into place.

And I'm less concerned with the specific cost to construct the court because if we build something else, there's going to be a cost to that as well. For me, it's just about the opportunity cost of how can we best utilize that space because we can't just, you know, I'm not going to suggest we buy homes and expand east or anything like that.

that.

So we kind of— we're fixed in that sense. So I just— I'm not comfortable going above 4 because we don't have data to suggest that it's needed, whereas we do have data indicating that these other uses that are more— it serves a much greater number of people.

I think the plan is 4. I haven't heard anybody coming and saying we're going to put in more.

But I'm saying instead of having them come every meeting and sock customers 50 minutes about make it 6 courts. If we've already decided that it's 4, let's be clear with them about that.

I would be interested in looking at 6.

I guess what I would suggest is we need to—

you—

we need to look at it from the perspective of how does 4 fit in with our overall budget? What does 6 look like? What would we need to cut to accommodate the 6? Do we need to cut a lane out of the elevated track? Are you comfortable with only a 2-lane track versus a 3-lane track?

The thing is, we don't know that.

That's what I mean.

And so to say we're not going to consider possibilities because we want to lock in on 4, I'm saying I would be open to look at 6, but I would like to know But I can also, but I can also see Councilmember Lentz's perspective of saying we don't want to give them false hope. And I guess to some degree that's why I'm suggesting, we're suggesting 4 is probably a good starting point, because right now we don't believe we can afford 6 without cutting something else. Frankly, we're not even sure we can afford what we envision in the budget.

I think Provo has 7.

6.

6?

Yeah.

Okay.

But I think the expansion question is something you say, if we can afford 4, and that's what the plan was, in 10 years we might have 6 if we can afford it. At least you have an option or an opportunity to expand. At least we're thinking 4 instead of none.

Well, I'm all for having a discussion with them. Our plan calls for 4 right now. The idea that we could expand later if it was positioned properly.

So, it comes down to money.

They want 8 or 10.

Tell them to come out and write it down.

No, they want 10 so they can have competitions here.

But we've even had conversations with Provo, for example, and said, you know, a tournament requires 10 courts, are you open to having a joint— oh yeah, we would love that.

Complementarily.

Yeah, but then the conversation turns from addressing the tournament question to addressing the quality of the court, and it seems like we're working with a group that is To Brent's point, is never going to be pleased with whatever solution you develop.

All right, well, let's keep going. Um, we are going to adjourn to a Redevelopment Agency meeting this evening. We're looking at approving the minutes and going over the Garf property ORM agreement and tentatively adopting the RDA budget and then adjourning to the special Special Service Lighting District, approving the minutes again, adopting the budget, and then we will adjourn. So at that point, we move on to city council reports. And Sam, you have a report for us?

So the 3 commissions I work with are the UCCU Center Board, which which frankly I don't necessarily have a lot to report on. The big ticket item there is still figuring out how we get better seating in the UCCU Center, and we just don't have the budget for that. And so it'll be a matter of can we ever get funding at the state level to support that. I'll move on to the NRSC, Natural Resources Stewardship Committee. Currently they have 2 of 5 seats open, so it's already a fairly fairly small committee to begin with, but now 2 had to leave for health reasons, and so they all need to be there in order to have a quorum.

So there—

I think the development services is working on interviews right now. So Jason, I'm not sure if you want to provide that.

We have 6 applicants that we're going to probably interview.

The resource committee is going to look and see if they have—

Where did the applicants come from?

Just on the dashboard.

So yeah, usually we advertise through Sure.

Um, xeriscaping ordinance, obviously that's something we've been discussing, but I just wanted to again thank the committee for the work that they did to help us balance the— and along with the Beautification Commission to make sure that we're still preserving the beauty of our neighborhoods but also, you know, being water-wise and giving people a little bit more flexibility.

So was there a discussion in that committee on a 30% versus a 50%?

It did come up, and I even expressed to some of them that I'd be more open to doing, you know, 30 or 40%. And even down at the St. George ULCT conference, the, you know, water districts were talking about how in our climate and topography and everything, 30% is kind of the sweet spot for that. The concern was we don't necessarily want to swing the pendulum too far. And the NRC specifically, one thing I hadn't thought of, they mentioned the cooling effect that vegetation can provide. You know, if you think about a lawn, you know, or a tree with a canopy, the cooling effect that can provide to the property and the surrounding area. Whereas if you're just doing, you know, rocks or AstroTurf or something like that, you're not going to get that same kind of benefit. So my take is that we can talk about We can talk about this tonight as well, that if we enact this tonight, not everybody's going to rush out and start xeriscaping their lawns right off the bat. You know, we might get a small fraction of the city that starts taking this on, because there is, especially if you're— you've already landscaped your yard, there's a pretty significant cost to retrofit, you know, to put— take out grass to put in xeriscaping and things. But anyway, we can discuss that more. So we Another thing that they're discussing right now is trying to get more bike racks at Summerfest. So we've been talking to Reed a little bit about, you know, are there— we just discovered, are there places that rent bike racks for something?

We haven't found any. I talked with Sarah and trying to see what we can find.

So the thought there was if we had bike racks to Encourage more people to use active transportation to get to Summerfest. It might help alleviate some of the parking concerns and things. We could have one side of the rack with a sign, you know, thank you from the NRSC for deciding to bike to Summerfest. On the other side, you know, we could do something to say advertise that you've been to our new bike skills park out at—

not to Pinocchio's Park—

kind of advertise that.

So I look at it where people have to park far away. As being beneficial for heart rates and exercise.

Not the kind of action tracks you see.

Unintended consequences actually beneficial.

Just tell them to walk in the parade and then they'll get the full—

You don't want your passenger to get the harshness.

They're also discussing, and this is still kind of in the early stages, the possibility of an anti-idling ordinance. The state permits this, and right now the commission is talking to different cities that have tried it just to see, you know, has it become a burden on the police department. And they've actually— oh yeah, so they've been meeting with Chief Giles to discuss how do we do this in a way that it doesn't become a burden to the police or MPU. And really, they want the focus to be on education Rather than on enforcement and fining people and things. And really, their goal would be only to actually enforce it if there's somebody who's just, you know, egregiously running their car in protest for hours on end, you know, something like that. But just so that even if it's not about the police enforcing it, I think there's something to be said if, you know, you see somebody who's left their car on for 10 or 15 minutes, you can just kind of mention them. Just so you know, we have an anti-idling ordinance in this city.

To that end, I would love to have the committee look at the fact that most of our fast food restaurants are built so they have a drive-through. And as busy as Orem is, most of our drive-throughs end up having 5 to 10 cars. So it'd be interesting to see them address that topic.

Most of the ordinances are exempt. Those are exempt.

Okay, but I'm just saying if there's a place for idling, that's one of the big offenders.

Most of the big things like police cars, cruisers, fire trucks, all those are exempted. So you're really looking at those that are just on purpose, you know, idling in the car because they want to.

Warming your car up in the winter is also exempted. So it just depends on— there's a few things that would narrow those.

And Chief Giles did mention that the police department is actually emphasizing trying to discourage that type of thing with their police cruisers. For example, they might think, I need to go into the store to talk to somebody and it's only going to be 2 minutes, but that might end up turning into a 45-minute conversation. And so all this time, if they've left their cruiser running, it's been idling for all that time. So I think it's something that they're trying to lead by example in that sense. But again, I think that committee is going to work really well with the police department to make sure, again, it's about education and not A burden from an enforcement standpoint. Another item is the HB 411, the Community Renewables Energy Act. So this is where the state basically gave cities permission to declare ourselves a renewable energy city, which would mean if we did that, our residents would essentially be opted into having 100% sustainable energy by the year, I think it's 2030. Now, residents would have the option to opt out of that if they didn't want it because the rates might be a little higher. We're still waiting on the PSC to decide how rates will be impacted. In other words, if Forum— if we declared ourselves a renewable energy city, does that mean rates for homeowners would go up 5%? Would they go up 50%? So we just don't know what that difference is. And no matter what the percentage is, people still would have that option to opt out. They could opt out in the first 3 months without any kind of penalty, and then after that there's discussion of having some kind of nominal fee if you want to opt out after that. And the reason for that— a company like Rocky Mountain Power, for example, wants to be able to forecast what kinds of capital investments do we need to make in putting in, you know, solar panels or wind mills or whatever it is, and so they need to build that into their capital finance plan. But we're kind of waiting on the PSC to make those decisions before the NRC can do that.

There's a lot to look at there. I'd want to see that information.

And then we're discussing this at our next work session, so I won't go into too much depth, but just the rooftop solar conversation. And so The legislative committee is excited to discuss that and just kind of see what, what we can come up with, but that's on hold until we can discuss as a group what our priorities are. Okay, main event. So this is what I've been hoping to share for many, many years, and I'm excited to be able to announce this now. We actually have the full build-out schedule from Utopia, so we know You know, when each neighborhood is going to be finished with construction. Granted, this is— it's still a tentative schedule.

Where is that found?

They're publishing on the website this week. I can share it, Steven. So what I did is I took the map that they provided back in August, and I just kind of superimposed some annotations so that we see, you know, this neighborhood will be ready by February of this year and so on. And there's, there's 3 Minor updates that I'll make tonight, and I'll share that, you know, I can email that out to everybody and put it on social media.

But total build-out is by what date?

Um, August of '23?

Yeah, for the most part it will be by 2023. There are 2 footprints that are technically Linden footprints in the kind of the northern middle of the city along State Street. There's kind of an offshoot from that Linden footprint. That one's currently set for 2023. And honestly, the reason for that is UIA's strategy has been to address construction in cities that are current on their OPEX payments first, which Orem now, as of a year or two ago, is one of those cities. Lynden is not, but they'll kind of get it on the end of that. So for the most part, we'll be done by 2022.

So for Question there. What about our rocky environment in Northeast Orem? They've always said that's a problem for them to complete. Have they addressed that?

Yeah, I mean, that's all part of their engineering.

Because I know the cost of the fiber.

But they also believe that take rates in those neighborhoods will be higher as well.

That's fine, I just—

Yeah, so in finding out what's the return on investment, investment for each neighborhood. There's a number of factors that go into that, but the 2 primary ones are—

Right now the plan is to go into those neighborhoods with bad roads?

Yeah, throughout the whole city within essentially the next 3 to 4 years. So, um, so I'll— again, I'll email this out once I update those. And in fact, you can even see the bottom left, that's, um, is that Orem 32? I had a note on there that that was going to be Q4 of '22. That was as of last August, I think, when they shared that. That is now going to be July of '22.

So can we put that on our city website?

Yeah, yeah, we've been in coordination with them.

And, you know, I've kind of done this myself just to make these annotations. I'm not sure if you want to get something that's a little bit more polished from Utopia directly or something like that, but I do know that within this week they're planning to have that build-out schedule on Utopia's own website.

So how's State Street businesses?

As far as like take rate availability or— pretty much any business along State Street that is willing to sign up, they'll make it happen. So even if the fiber's not right next to them, honestly, the return on investment to get a business customer on board is great enough that They've been willing to kind of stretch the limits of what they consider is available in the area, so they'll just build the fiber out to get them in there. And then just— I'm happy to discuss more on this if you want later, but just a couple other things to know. They're averaging adding about 400 new customers every month. Their combined monthly recurring revenue is now over $1.8 million. Which, just for context, just 5 years ago it was only about 40% of that number. So it's a pretty dramatic uptick, not only in construction but also in revenue that they're generating from that. So I mentioned this in the email a couple weeks ago, but UIA's finances are doing well enough that the dividend that they were going to pay out to cities That would essentially cover that 2% increase on the Utopia debt side. They're actually increasing that a little bit for cities like Orem that they're repaying us that OPEX assessment that we had made good on a couple years ago. We've been paying the longest.

Yeah, so— Plus interest.

Yes.

Yep.

So we'll be repaid from that within, I think it's about 2022, but they're trying to make it uniform. Right, yeah, 'cause there's some cities that have made those payments, some cities that haven't. Almost everybody has that 2% increase, so they're trying to take, you know, whatever is the best case scenario for your city, whether it's to go by that 2% increase or to go by that operating payment, they're just giving you whichever is the greater of those. So in Orem's case—

But I mean, legally, they're supposed to be paying back the loan plus the interest.

So there's a promissory— Yeah.

So once we reach that build-out stage, there— what I would say is a conservative estimate is that the— that dividend amount would essentially equate to about 30% or more of the Utopia debt payment on an ongoing basis. So that'll take a pretty good chunk out of that. And then just again, we've mentioned some of these in emails, but latent Woodland Hills, Morgan City, Payson— 4 Utah cities where each city kind of has their own unique setup, but essentially each city is backing their own build-out. So Layton is doing something very similar to what we were talking about a little over a year ago. They're actually— their construction's ahead of schedule, their take rate is better than they had planned on, and so I think they'll actually be getting You know, the equivalent of that dividend in quite a bit greater scale as a result of that profit sharing arrangement. Woodland Hills was unique in that they essentially just paid in cash for their network. So Woodland Hills actually owns their network, and then they have, instead of charging that $30 a month, they have their own kind of formula that they use to decide how much residents would pay to get the fiber at their place. But their take rates there are already at about 50%. So they're, you know, they're doing very well. The excess revenues in a case like that will still remain with UIA generally. So because they're not, you know, one of the original pledging UIA cities, they don't get the profit sharing that a city like Layton would, for example. And Morgan is similar, except with Morgan, they're backing a UIA bond. So again, there's no risk to the city because that's on Morgan's books essentially to back that with their pledge. It's a relatively small— it's like the equivalent of one Warren footprint, so there's not going to be a dramatic impact on the overall build-out schedule. Mayor, were you going to say something?

Yeah, it's okay.

So that would cover up to 500 subscribers. And Payson was one of the original UIA members, but they didn't actually make the pledge towards the UIA bond. So they're a very unique case, but they're backing a Payson-specific bond to finish the city. But again, they won't have the benefits of the profit sharing that the other members will. a city like Lakewood where they were one of the original budget cities. And then I'll just briefly mention Idaho Falls. We have an agreement with them where Utopia is just providing consulting services, so we're not up there doing any construction or anything like that. We're just advising them on how to go about it in an efficient and effective way. But that again raises, you know, revenue to help us with future rounds of bonding to finish out the And if anybody has questions about when are you going to get in my neighborhood, I'm happy to answer.

Yeah, if we could put that up on the board too.

Just—

this is, uh, our development services staff met with Utopia a couple weeks ago now, I think.

Last week.

Last week. Because this is really the first time that we're looking to build in 2 separate footprints at once. So the growth of the network this summer is happening not just in one neighborhood, but in multiple neighborhoods.

They're actually building currently in Tom's neighborhood, and I think I need to instruct them to just take out 50% of the vegetation so that he can xeriscape his property once it's done.

Have you seen any change on the legislative attitude, or before they were still anti- Have they softened now to where they're being more supportive or less?

No, I mean, I don't think it's really been—

Less interfering?

I think there's— I think there's growing consensus that this is necessary infrastructure. So these communities like Morgan, for example, they don't have access to anything. So Utopia is a very attractive solution to them, and it's obviously they're not historically part of the network, UIA or Utopia, but the arrangement we have with them is they have access to the service and all the revenue that's generated, all the net revenue that's generated from something like that is reinvested in the existing Utopia cities, UIA cities. So, you know, the model that— while I've had some concerns with it, the model is, look, these new additions to the network can actually fund and help offset the debt costs of existing UIA Utopia members. So I think that's been a positive thing. At the same time, I think you are looking at companies like Google Fiber, and they're struggling to figure out what their future is.

But Utopia seems to be gaining.

Have we heard what Google Fiber is going to do when their 7 years are up in Provo?

No.

In fact, from what I understand, Provo—

Another year from now.

Provo has requested a meeting with Google to try and better understand what their plan is.

Because Google Fiber has stopped their expansion in many cities. All right, thank you.

Thanks, Sam.

Anything from anybody else?

Mayor, if anyone wanted a shovel, there are some there that have been rinsed off the council chambers.

We had 20 children.

That was an I think we had 25 chapeaux.

25?

Do you have any pitchforks for the personal appearance of this group?

Anyway, let's go ahead and close and go over to our city council meeting.

You want to treat him nicely.

It's all right. Impressive, a lot of them.

Welcome to Shore Telecom Group.

Please enter your access code, then press pound. You are the only person on this conference.

Please stay on the line. Let me see if I get your name on one side.

I know where it's at.

Yes and no.

Like, it's always fun to like do something completely different, but, uh, like literally that is what I plan on doing. Okay, I get this because I fill out my notes and like I'll be like, by the way, so yeah.

I feel official handing out this. Yeah, it's great.

Where'd he go?

I have no idea. We would like to welcome everyone out to our city council meeting this evening and I would like to call this meeting to order. We would begin— like to begin with an invocation by Jennifer Asplund, after which the Pledge of Allegiance will be given by John Asplund.

Thank you for inviting me today. I thought I'd share a couple quotes by people that I feel inspirational.

The first is Arthur C.

Brooks, who spoke at the BYU commencement. To his national audience, he says, we need—

One second.

We're going to have to cut off that phone so we can hear the meeting. Okay, move ahead, Jennifer.

Okay.

But what are we getting instead from many of our leaders in media, politics, entertainment, and academia?

Across the political spectrum, people in positions of power and influence are setting us against one another.

They tell us our neighbors who disagree with us politically are ruining our country, that ideological differences aren't a matter of differing opinions but reflect moral turpitude. That our side must utterly vanquish the other, even if it leaves our neighbors without a voice.

In the very moment in which America most needs to come together as a nation, we are being torn apart thoughtlessly and needlessly. We are living in a culture of contempt. And finally, We talk a lot about our right to freedom of expression, but we need to talk more about our responsibility to freedom of expression. We all want to be heard, but let's acknowledge the difference between speaking up with intention and speaking up for attention. And that was by Monica Lewinsky.

Thank you. Now I have the Pledge of Allegiance by John. Right here. The flag is in the back. 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. With liberty and justice for all. So Pete, do we have Tom on the phone or not? Okay, so Tom McDonald is excused and might be calling in. We would like to move up to our upcoming events. So we have a Geneva Elementary celebrating 70 years celebration on May the 21st. On May 23rd, we have the City of Orem Planning Division neighborhood plans here at the City Council Chambers. May 27th, we have the City of Orem Heritage Advisory Commission Memorial Day program at the Orem Cemetery at 9:00 AM. June 1st, we have the City of Orem Mayor's Centennial Ball at UVU. On June 20th, we have the City of Orem Hillcrest Police Picnic at 5:30 PM at the Hillcrest Park. On June the 21st, we have the Canyon Park Technology Center opening ceremony at 10:30 AM. And on June the 29th, we have the Cycle Fest at the Mount Tipanogos Park with the mayor and city council at 7 AM and 9 AM.

Thank you.

We now would like to turn some time over to our Heritage Advisory Commission. We'd like to ask Kelly Kirkpatrick, our Advisory Commission Chair, to come up and give us a report. And Kelly, are you by yourself or do you have anybody with you?

I am.

Okay, great.

I am.

Good to have you here.

We do have 6 or 7 other committee members.

Yes.

The Honorable Mayor Brunstad, distinguished city officials, and those within the sound of my voice. I am Technical— Tech Sergeant, United States Air Force, Keller Kirkpatrick. I'm American Legion Post 72 here in Orem, Vice Commander. I speak to you tonight as the Chairman of the Orem Heritage Commission. I'm here to personally invite all of you to our celebration at the Orem City Cemetery, 9 AM Monday morning, May 27th. Some of the things we'll be doing: I've arranged for a vintage World War II flyover by 4 aircraft. We will have a World War II veteran speak to us. His name is Ken Baldridge. We have a bright young man named Joseph Wendt who is our youth speaker. He has participated in the, uh, oratorical contest for the American Legion. He is a very bright young man. And we have our own Miss Orem, Jessie Craig, who will favor us with 2 musical—

Miss Utah.

Yep.

The American Legion will do the flag exchange as we do twice a year, once on Memorial Day, once on Veterans Day. We take the old flags down, replace them with new ones. This year we've involved both the Utah Valley University Army ROTC and the Brigham Young University Air Force ROTC on the program. So we're glad to have that happen. We'd like to have all of you come to participate. It will take approximately 1 hour. I'm here to say you won't regret coming. It's just thoroughly enjoyable, all of it. So thank you, all of you.

Thank you. Always a wonderful program. Appreciate your hard work, Kelly. Uh, we'd like to move over to our Orem Centennial 100 Kind Acts Scholarships, um, and Glory Thomas, uh, who helped to start this program and was crowned last weekend as our new Miss Orem, is our presenter, if she'd like to come forward. Thank you.

I'm so excited to be here. Timonogos Regional Medical Center is the donor of 3 $333 scholarships, one per high school in Orem, for seniors this year. And the theme for the Orem Centennial 100 Kind Acts Committee for May is actually Be Kind to Teens. So if I could have the scholarship recipients come up, Mark Jeffs, from Orem High School, Eliza Lawyer from Mountain View High School, and Alyssa Hutchins from Timpanogos High School. And I am sort of going to put them on the spot and ask them to tell briefly about what they wrote about in their essays.

So what I wrote about was just a couple things I've done as some service things. Um, one that I did was a thing I did for refugees. I found this organization called the International Rescue Committee or Center in Salt Lake, and I did a little clothing drive and I collected winter clothes for them, and that's what I wrote about.

It was really cool.

Um, so I wrote about a project that I did for Turn Community Services, where I gathered instruments and gathered money to buy instruments for the kids with special needs at Turn Community Services so that they could do musical therapy because it really helps connect the kids to learning. That's what I wrote about.

I was also able to help out with special needs.

I had The opportunity to serve at Special Needs Mutual in my community, where we just put on activities and be friends to those who have special needs and make sure they feel loved and that they're a part of our own community too.

So if you can stay there, I would like to get a picture with you. Afterwards, I'd like to have you shake the hands of all the council members. Thank you, Glory. We appreciate that. And thank you to Mark and Eliza and Allie. That was wonderful. We'll now go on to our personal appearance part of our program. And we ask each one of you to keep your comments to 3 minutes. Give us your name when you come forward. And we'll start first with Scott Searson, afterwards Sylvia Sawyer.

That's Scott Ciarroso.

Sorry.

We're going to practice some Italian.

Yes.

A little bit later.

I'll work on it.

That's, that's not a problem. Mayor, thank you so much for the opportunity. Council members, thank you for allowing each of us 3 minutes. So there's probably 10 to 12 that are here in relation to the new fitness center, the design, the concept, bond, and a lot of other things related to that. And they volunteered me to be first. So lucky me. My role here is simply to be another voice that is a newer voice, simply because I moved back to Orem within the past few months.

I used to live here. I was—

I became married and had 2 of our 4 children in Orem. Then we moved northward to American Fork and Cedar Hills and I'm coming back. So—

Good for you.

I have a business here, my brother also, and so we like being here in Orem. So the main point that I'd like to make with regard to the fitness center is that in my limited experience and time looking at and talking with individuals, whether they're government officials within the city or those that are enthusiasts at the fitness center, specifically racquetball, but also others including firemen. I've come to understand at least a little bit about some of the concerns that I think are out there. And I know that it's a little bit late in the game. There's a lot of things that have already been pretty well decided but not maybe finalized. But I don't think it's too late in it. And that's why all these good people within Orem primarily are here to speak about different topics related to the fitness center. And one of the major concerns that I'm seeing in my, again, limited experience is that I still don't understand why only 4 racquetball courts. I look at the limited data that has been supplied from the city, and it's very limited so far, and there's nothing other than people's opinions.

I'm sorry.

There's nothing other than their own conclusions based on data that I've never seen, and most of the people in this audience have not seen, that has concluded that 4 is appropriate. Now, 40 years ago, I think it is, there was a decision that 14 should be the number. And I haven't been able to find out why 14 was the number either. I think it was based on the But the fact that we're moving to 4, I'm not sure why. And, and I'm inviting the council members and the mayor to be that advocate for the public, for all of us in the audience and beyond, to understand more about how decisions are being made with regard to the facilities at the new fitness center. So that's what I'd like to invite us to be more open and transparent, providing more information. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I'm Sylvia Sawyer. I hope I can see you over this podium. My main purpose for being here is to point out the necessity of having at least 12 racquetball courts instead of the 4 that is bantered around at the moment. And I'd like to give you a woman's point of view. I've been involved with racquetball at the Orem Fitness Center since the inception of the center, which is close to 40 years ago, or a little bit more or less, which I might say is half my life. So I first taught women's racquetball leagues there, and they were well received. The women loved the racquetball leagues, and they have continued to talk to me about them throughout all of these years. And women are social in nature, and they need something like this. If we only had 4 courts, we wouldn't be able to have a larger group. We need more courts for that and to encourage the women to make it a lifelong sport. It only takes one other person to go with a woman Whether it be a male or a female, to have a game of racquetball. Most other sports, you have to get an entire team to do that. So it's important that we have racquetball. It's important that the women love it enough that they will take their own children, one child or others, or their husbands and go play. I might add that they love to play competitively with other men or women. or in mixed doubles. The high school being right next door to the Orm Fitness Center is the perfect thing to get people interested in racquetball and to promote it. And there is a need for at least 8 to 12 courts For the classes that they come in and teach in racquetball. So it's important that they have that many courts. And it's also important that we have activities for women and other people in the wintertime around here, because how else are you going to recreate other than to just one-on-one or run around the track or something? So it is a very social and fun sport. I just want to convince you that 4 courts would not serve the needs of this community. We need at least 12. And I would also like to encourage you, um, that we also need a racquetball specialist at the Orem Fitness Center that would promote this type of thing. I thank you for your time.

Thank you. Okay, we'll now hear from Rob Burr and afterwards Blair True.

My name is Rob Burr. I'm going to talk about 2 documents that I put on your desk. One is from someone that couldn't make it, and they actually— just the one thing I want to point out on that is they actually went online and looked at medical research in medical journals, and they found a document that talks about the value of racquetball For health, and it has better results than bicycling and a whole bunch of other sports that are used in the rec center. So it really is a valuable sport.

Okay?

The other one is the document that I wrote, and I'm just going to talk about it quickly and let you read the details on your own for time and just because it's written completely here. Racquetball, the sport in general, is what I'd like to talk about. In order to— well, I gave you, I think, 5 categories of different types of activities done in racquetball. Things like tournaments, leagues, traveling leagues, casual play. Everything from super high competition to just a beginner going in, hitting a ball around, and not even knowing the rules. And out of those, I guess, what, 6 things, only 2 can be done with few courts. It will absolutely kill Racquetball in this side of the point of the mountain. We have no tournaments other than one tournament sponsored by the BYU tournament. UVU has taken out their courts. The Voss has gone down from four to two courts. You can't. You have to have a group to do things like a league. We've gone to the Provo Rec Center and we've asked them to help us out, and they're willing to give us two courts, which is very kind of them, but they don't want to give more than that because. They they want for their patrons. But just as you read this, just I've given an explanation of why each activity cannot be done without more courts. The Orm Rec Center. Bottom line: Orm Rec Center Fitness Center is one of the most important buildings in the state for racquetball. It is the most important building for the entire South. 5th, 6th of the state. Everything from Sandy down. Salt Lake, they have a couple clubs. They have some that have quite a few clubs. You got Sports Mall, and they have a community. This fitness center connects this whole side of the state with that group. We have people come up from St. George often for all of our tournaments. We have people playing from Nephi and Santaquin in our leagues. If we don't put the right amount of courts back in this, it will— and this sounds sort of dramatic, but it pretty much will kill racquetball in Utah other than Salt Lake. That's my main point. Thank you.

Thank you.

Blair True. Been a resident of Orem about 30 years and a member of the fitness center for a good share of those years on and off.

I travel quite a bit, so my participation at the rec center is kind of sporadic.

But one of the reasons that I play racquetball is that I have confidence that there will be a court available when I show up. Now, there's a lot of numbers that have been maybe shared, and all I have is some anecdotal numbers, but specifically from my own experience, I can go down there on any given day, Monday through Friday, even Saturdays included, and I know that there's going to be a group of men and women that I can play with.

It doesn't matter who's there, I can just jump right in.

When I lived in Long Beach many years ago, we had 8 courts and they reduced that number to 4. And I can tell you that what it did was it killed the sport because people who were coming in from great distances to enjoy racquetball now didn't have the confidence to travel and they just simply stopped coming. So what I would like to express is not only When I voted for the bond, I was not aware that this closure was imminent. I just assumed that things were going to be upgraded. I perhaps maybe would have rethought that. I think it's a wonderful idea to have this. I mean, that's a foregone conclusion that's going to happen.

But the closure of the gun range as well is something that I'm concerned about.

I've taught all of my children, each— all 4 of them, gun safety there. It's an inexpensive place to go. And so I do want to express that.

Thank you.

to you as well.

But I also want to share with, with the voices of others that I'm concerned about the reduction to 4.

I just think—

I do agree, and I feel strongly that that will in essence kill the sport, especially as we've seen other courts' numbers reduced, at VASA for example. So I hope that what happened in Long Beach doesn't happen here.

I hope we can keep this sport alive and vibrant here.

Because for me personally, it's been the greatest— I can't get on a bike and I won't exercise unless I'm chasing a ball. So I'm thrilled to have this opportunity. Thanks for taking the time to listen to our concerns.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Now hear from Sandy Gibson, after which Kelly Kirkpatrick again. Maybe he just signed in for the thing. Okay, we'll hear from Roger Flick after Sandy Gibson.

Your Honor, can I stand in for Sandy Gibson?

Her—

Sure.

Having troubles with her voice. My name is Jay Stonehawker. We live and play with them racquetball. We're here to support the request for more courts. Originally, my wife and I— I'm from Canada, and in enjoyed playing the sport up there. We relocated to Highland, Utah, and we had access to 8 courts in American Fork Recreation Center, and we enjoyed that. And they have reduced those subsequently down to 4.

Very, very difficult to get a court in that facility now.

We relocated here to Orem, and our have really enjoyed being members of the recreation center. My wife and I have had the privilege to play racquetball together competitively, and we represent the city as we go down to the Huntsman Senior Games. And we are concerned with the reduction of the courts and the ability to come and prepare for representing the city in other places, as has been mentioned previously. We are grateful for a—

as I mentioned, and I want to share something about this special flag of this country.

As I learned the Pledge of Allegiance, And as I look at that flag and I shared that with the Boy Scouts of America, it did something to my heart that my O Canada could never do. And I pray that we might stand strong and strive to serve the people that we represent. And I appreciate this time.

Thank you.

Thank you. Now hear from Roger Flick.

I'm going to talk about some of the things that happen on the grunt level in racquetball.

I've had a chance to conduct the leagues at the Orem Fitness Center for a long time, before 2000. And I made one proposal here about about the current courts and how they can be addressed as far as fixing them up and so on.

But I'd like to tell you a little bit about league play.

And I'm sure some of you have a favorite sport, golf or bowling or whatever it is, and you look forward to that sport. Because if you don't have a sport that allows you to continue to Vent your frustrations and improve your health, you need to get one. Racquetball's a good one for that. For years, we just had one league at the Orem Fitness Center, and the league has grown a little bit over the years. It hasn't decreased.

We had to cap off our enrollment in our league at 24 players, and they allowed us only 7 courts.

Think about that.

7 courts, 24 players.

How do you handle that?

Well, sometimes it's a nightmare, especially if all, all the players want to play singles.

But we've had some very delightful players who have wanted to play doubles and cutthroat and so on. We really appreciate those players. And then we added another league later on in the same evening, on Tuesday evening. But most of the morning and daytime racquetball players are really not in our league.

We have quite a number of racquetball players that play during the day.

League play allows competitive and recreational play with a high degree of sociality, and particularly with the doubles play. I might add that the sociality among the players is very good. It's some of the best I've seen. And I've traveled around the country, especially with the BYU racquetball team, And we played in a lot of different places there. But the sociality is just wonderful here. As far as fitness is concerned, my feeling is that 4 courts would provide less opportunity overall for additional fitness. And this could be said about any recreational activity when facilities are not available. Racquetball is a year-round sport, and unfortunately, it's a sport with very low visibility. And depending on the level of play, it often provides both aerobic and anaerobic activity. We've noticed a few families that have come to play on the courts, and we've noticed that it's a kind of a one-shot deal. Once the parents find that the kids have a hard time chasing the ball around and knowing what to do with it, it's not overly important to them. Thank you.

Hey, thank you. Appreciate it. Now hear from Blaine Harmon, after which Sean Heaton.

Hello, my name is Blaine Harmon. I've been in Orem since I was born, except for maybe 10 years, of course, a mission and 7 years down in Arizona. Um, my parents have been here.

They—

we were one of the first people to get a, a, uh, a pass at the rec center back in the day, and back when they had bleachers in the, in the basketball court.

And then they took that out and they put in, uh, the aerobic center, or the—

and then they've, they've done a lot of changes.

But the one thing that's been staying— actually, 2 things that have been staying with the rec center that I really find unique, and that is that there have been a ton of racquetball courts, and then there's also been the 50-meter pool. Those 2 things make it very unique.

Thank you.

In this area.

And I've been a swimmer, and I was through high school, that was my sport. And it was only until 2017, November, when I got my job back in Orem, that I was able to pick up racquetball.

And since then, I've played with my neighbor. I've brought my boss.

He lives up in American Fork, and he drives down so that he can play.

He—

and he, of course, our business is in on 800 North.

I've met half the guys back here, and I probably will meet the other half after After this. But, um, it's a great social sport.

It's a great sport that doesn't require the, the high physical movement or even the body checking or the—

it just takes patience and skill that you can learn.

And I'm still learning. Um, I've I don't see how we could do it with just 4 courts. I agree with everybody that it will kill the sport.

This is something that, to me, it's a, it's a growing sport, and I plan on bringing more people into it.

If it's about courts, you know, maybe one of them we can put some ping pong tables in there that are mobile that we can move in and out.

So there's so things that we can do that will keep the courts there and being, being used without the necessity of taking them out.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, you can feel some of the passion that we've got for this sport. I really appreciate an opportunity. This is our 3rd time now, and I think everybody's different. has spoken except for Roger and me. And it's not necessarily planned. There's just different people can come different nights, but there's a lot of passion. Surprisingly enough, I want everybody to know that we had a Joseph Smith came and talked to the racquetball courts people the other day. Not the Joseph Smith, but another Joseph Smith. And I thought, wait a second, we have the wrong people talking. He come and visited with us. And I want to personally thank Debbie for coming and talking to us. That means a lot to us, doesn't it, guys? It really does. And we want people— just don't come down and count courts and people. We want you to come and talk to us. We appreciate Carl actually picking up a racquetball and coming and playing with us. That's what we're looking for, someone who gets in and the nitty-gritty and see what we do, see how we feel. Now, I'm coming from a little bit different perspective tonight. You've heard the old saying between perception and reality. I think we have a perception problem with the bond issue. I really do. Now, I'm going to speak for the perception of many of us here and reality. I think the truth somewhere lies in the middle. Okay, this bond issue came out with with wording that said nothing about reduction of racquetball courts. It said nothing about the potential of shutting down the swimming pool. I don't know if that's going to happen or not, but I heard that might be a possibility. There's some reasons behind that. Nothing was said about shutting down the gun range. So I think that you're much better prepared right now to present the same bond issue. And if you could— maybe some of you could backtrack. You'd like to say Public, we are now ready to present the bond issue with better information. We know now better, we are better prepared to present to you because right now many of us would not have voted for it if now that we know what we know now. The gun range people, the racquetball people, possibly the swimming people if we find out that it's going to be shut down. Again, I don't know if that's— I hope that— let's find out if that's going to happen. So, okay, covered that point and that point. Yeah, got it. I want to ask my people here— we want to promote racquetball in Orem. We really do. How many of our racquetball players here would volunteer their time to teach for free on their time the skill of racquetball to young kids? How many here would do that? A lot of our racquetball community, and there's a whole bunch of people that were here, we would do that. We would do that. I heard in a meeting that we held one time that said, hey, it's kind of your guys' fault that this is here, that we're not going to have that many. We're glad to help promote. Let's get a racquetball specialist. Let's put it on the wall. Let's promote this sport. We love it. I love the guys behind me. They've accepted me into their community.

Thank you.

But let's let the public actually know what's going on because it's a perception, there's a bait and switch.

Thank you, Sean.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. Now hear from Debbie Jackson and then David Pauley.

Hello.

This is the first time I've ever done this. So I'm a mother, a grandmother. I'm a full-time employee at BYU. I enjoy doing genealogy, cooking, reading, I'm active in my church, but that's not why I'm here today. I'm here today because I am passionate about the proposed closing of the gun range. I'm an NRA instructor. I'm a U.S. CCA instructor. I'm an FFL. I have my Utah concealed carry instructor. I'm a gun owner and an enthusiast, and I love recreational shooting. I also own a firearms training business, and I teach firearm training. And safety classes to men, women, and children. I'm the leader of the Well-Armed Woman in Utah County, which is a nationwide nonprofit organization for women that shoot. And many of the women I see at my classes and meetings have been in abusive relationships, and my focus is helping them to get the education and the training they need to be able to protect themselves and their families. But they need a place to practice. Yes, there are a lot of privately owned shooting ranges in Utah County, but they're expensive. They're not very family-friendly. There are a lot of people in Utah County that shoot, that enjoy shooting as a hobby, that— but they need a place to practice. This is the only indoor shooting range around which is completely kid and family-friendly as well as affordable. And we need to have a respectable community facility to provide training and safe practices. That can help reduce gun violence and public fear due to ignorance. I work also as a range safety officer up at the Provo Shooting Sports Park, and it's sometimes so crowded up there that there's no place to shoot and there's no place to park and there are lines. And besides that, it's outdoors. It's cold in the winter. It's hot in the summer. We need an inexpensive, family-friendly place that's well-supervised, a safe place where families can go and shoot together. The closure of the range will force families to drive into the hills and shoot at cans and bottles, and it's so much better and safer for our children to learn shooting sports in a venue that's supervised and safe. I believe that the job of the city government is to serve all citizens and their varied interests for the greater good of the community, and this range serves an important section of the population of Utah County. As we teach people about firearm safety, shooting sports, and self-defense, accessible and affordable ranges are so important. Please hear us. I am passionate about this. It's so important. Please, please, please don't close the range.

Thank you. Now hear from David.

I'm David Polai. I'm 76 years old, and my only form of good exercise is racquetball. I'm a full-time caregiver of a disabled wife, and the sanity that I get from playing racquetball is It leaves me speechless and it's beyond value. A doctor just asked me today why don't I get some help from other people, other caregivers or whatever, and the answer is that I don't need it because I play racquetball. Now I'd like to shift gears a little bit and show you a magic trick. Here's a quarter. And I sit there and I sit there and I go like this and I blow it and it's gone, right? So what have I done? I've tried to draw your attention to where I want you to think it is, but in reality, you know this simple magic trick, it's right here in my other hand. Well, the same kind of games have been played relative to statistics associated with the racquetball courts. Like utilization factors and how many people per hour kind of a scenario. But the statistics have been pointed the wrong direction, just like I pointed here to get your attention to go to where I want you to go. Your staff and other people have taken the same kind of approach, whether it's prejudice or whatever, or lack of understanding about the sport. They have taken your eye off the ball. How many people play racquetball on a daily basis at the Orem Rec Center? The average varies between 100 and— depending on the month, varies between 141 and 183. Do you know how many people attend the Orem Rec Center on a daily basis? Right now, it's 675 people. That is 21% or greater attendees are racquetball players on a daily basis. That is important. And it is being ignored in the decision-making process of going forward. So I'm going to shift gears one more time. 12 courts seems to be an ideal number. The idea has been obfuscated about the idea that courts could be— could have multiple use. Drawdown sound barriers, even drawdown mirrors kind of thing out of the ceiling, could turn a racquetball court into a Zumba class or another type of class. Even the suggestion earlier of ping pong. All different types of usage for a court. 12 courts seems to be ignored entirely because of cost. Well, the cost factor seems to be also ignored from the standpoint of these courts are great and you could actually use glass. You could take the current courts and substitute, that is to say, saw down the back walls, put the glass which everybody wants because of safety reasons, Put those, those up in the same place where the cement back walls are with glass so you can see through. And to satisfy the needs of racquetball players, it could be opaque on the inside so the racquetball players—

Well, we'll have to have you stop, so.

So thank you very much for your time, and hopefully we can be your advocate in making good decisions here.

Thank you. Our last 2 are Penny and Holly. Penny Rainier? Not here. Okay. Holly Robin?

Thank you so much for having me again, and also I apologize for my dress because I am going straight to racquetball after this. Just quickly here, I'd like to apologize to my fellow racquetball players and to you, the City Council, for coming in here 2 weeks ago Basically begging and in fear, clinging to what is clearly a thing of the past that my buddies and I have been afraid of seeing slip away, as if we could somehow mitigate the tide of progress. But most of all, I need to apologize to the people who aren't here, namely most of the youth of Utah County. The racquetball gang's desire to keep what we have hasn't been just short-sighted; it has also been selfish and a frivolous waste of time. And I'm here to suggest that our considering eight. courts is also incredibly shortsighted and folly.

Great—

let's see.

Oh.

Each of us personally knows young people who are psychologically plastered to their mind-numbing electronic devices through which they're effectively divorced not only from the present but even more dangerously from their past and their future. Instead of meekly groveling like last time, I'd like to suggest that maybe all of us have been looking at this thing totally in the wrong way. And what I'm hoping we can do is replace the debate with a common vision that instead prepares our youth for competition and cooperation in the world and propels our great city joyfully forward, not only into the next 5 decades, but into the consciousness of the entire American public. I have a vision, and I see, I see this very City Council making the bold and decisive move to put in 14 beautiful beautiful, brand-new, cutting-edge racquetball courts, reinventing and reviving this sport within the national consciousness and inviting the entire world. I see a movement starting with my buddies and this legislative body and me to recruit the new generation of angsty young people into this fabulous sport where their cost to engage is a cheap racquet, some tennis shoes, and a month pass. I see the passion and aggression of Orem's youth embraced by by ORMS veteran racquetball players and mentors and channeled into real-life victories, with the thought of inane and disempowering virtual victories taking a back seat, if not ousted altogether. I see young people mingling easily and naturally with older players selfishly because they love the mentoring, they love the overwhelming acceptance, they love the fierce competition, and they love the camaraderie that we are thrilled to share with them. I see these courts chock-full of the nation's greatest competitors and competitions drawing in huge revenue from all over the country, sparking terrific growth in Orem businesses and generating economic prosperity and progress throughout all of Utah County. I see a city council using racquetball for the purpose of using— uniting our diverse community, community actively and proactively bringing people of all ages, ethnicities, races, and religious persuasions and life philosophies into both competition and cooperation and effectively uniting our entire community. May I finish?

Um, one more minute.

Okay. I see racism transcended. I see verbal language taking a backseat to athleticism and sportsmanship, and superficial barriers based on irrelevant character traits melting completely away in the heat of this revival of careful and wisely placed that is the sport of racquetball itself. I see Orem City as the racquetball capital of the United States of America. I see relationships and racquetball revived, and this very City Council chamber as its epicenter. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. We'll now go ahead and close the personal appearance part of our meeting this evening and move on to our consent items. We have 3 items: approval of meeting minutes from City Council meeting April 30th, 2019, canceling the June 11th, 2019 City Council meeting, and resolution authorizing the Orem City Police Department to appropriate personal property to public interest use. Is there anyone on the council who would like to move any of these items to a scheduled item? Seeing none, I would like to move that we go ahead and approve these items, consent items. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember Seestrand.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Consent items are approved. We'll move on to our scheduled items. First one is a public hearing on a resolution to receive public comment on the Community Development Block Grant Projected Use of Funds for Fiscal Year 2019 and 2020. Our presenter is Kenna Matthews and Ken Ransom. You need help?

No.

Okay. And your microphone, if you can turn that on.

Well, it's coming up. Just a moment.

Is it updating? I don't know. It's, it's like updating. Don't fall asleep on me.

Well, sorry about that. Looks like we have— my computer looks like it's decided to update all of a sudden, so I apologize for that. But thank you, Mayor and Council, for hearing us tonight. As you know, I have been running the CDBG program for about 9 months now. It's been a great opportunity. I have Ken here. Ken Ransom is the chair of our CDBG Commission. And we also have some other commission members with us. I think Matt Mathias is here. Is there anyone else here? It's been great working with these people, and we're at 15%, so we'll just wing it. How's that?

Of course.

So sorry about that. We'll use Steven's.

He's not updating at the moment, huh?

Apparently not. Okay. Sorry about that. So our commission members are Ken, Chris Bennett, Vicki Johnson, Barbara Ann Jones, Giovanni, Elisa, Nate Edward Evans, and Matt Mathias as well. So we are here for our second public hearing. It's required that we have 2 public hearings. This is our second public hearing. We're not going to go through everything tonight like we did last public hearing, but you can ask any questions that you might have. So just a little bit about the Community Development Block Grant program. Communities with population over 50,000 can apply to become an entitlement community. So we are one of for entitlement communities here in our— in Utah County. Historically, allocations have been approximately between $600,000 and $700,000. This year, our funding total is about $846,080, and that comes through 3 different areas. Last time, we did not know what our HUD allocation was going to be. We have learned that we got a little bit less than we expected. We got about $20,000 less. So we're at $686,080 for our HUD allocation, $10,000 in program income that includes home rehab loans that have paid off, things like that, and also about $150,000 in rollover income, income that hadn't been used before. And this year we have made no recommendations under $5,000 for our recommendations.

Thank you.

And Ken's going to explain a few things.

Hello, Mayor and—

hello, Mayor and council members. Our recommendations have changed slightly from our last meeting because, as I kind of mentioned, our— the grant that is coming from HUD has decreased by approximately 3%. So we've had to make some adjustments to our recommendations. And the number there, $20,506 less than expected. And also, the City of Orem has received the final amortization schedule for the Section 108 loan refinance, and the payment was $2,451.60 higher than was expected. To adjust for these unexpected changes, the commission has— we've made some modifications. And again, as Ken mentioned, we made a decision not to make any recommendations for less than $5,000 to simplify for these entities and agencies for their reporting, for their oversight that needs to be done for them and all that— all of those things that go with this funding. To keep it simpler, we recommended that— we recommend no allocation be under $5,000. So we made the decision to keep the non-public service recommendations intact and reduce funding for the neighborhood preservation program only. And additional funding will be secured for this program.

Just to be clear, not for neighborhood preservation.

We'll keep the NPU funding their code enforcement.

It's neighborhood revitalization.

Neighborhood revitalization.

I apologize for that. So the public service recommendations are 15% of that HUD allocation. which is $102,912. And as you can see before you, this is our— these are our recommended allocation amounts for each of the applicants for the program. So Community Action Services and Food Bank, we recommend $12,125. For the Friends of the Food and Care Coalition, we recommend $8,129. For Mountainlands Community Health Center, we recommend $5,000.

Thank you.

For the Family Support and Treatment Center, we recommend $10,670. For Kids on the Move, we recommend $5,000. For the Community Health Connect, we recommend $9,700. For People Helping People, we recommend no grant for them at this— for this funding cycle. For PERC, we recommend $5,000. For Friends of the Utah County Justice Center, We recommend $19,400. And for Center for Women and Children in Crisis, we recommend $27,867. And for Mary Elliott and Boys and Girls Club, we do not recommend an allocation in this funding cycle.

So, Ken, one thing I wanted to mention on this list, it's good to note that there are many other contributors to these organizations. Different cities, other funding groups, etc. So we're part and parcel, but these funds are very heavily needed by these groups.

Yes, it is. So one of the things that we did this year is we tried to look at some of the public services that were applying for all 3 entities. So that's Utah County, the City of Provo, and the City of Orem. Lehi did not participate this year, and we asked them a couple of them to just apply to one agency or one entity instead of all 3 of us, and then we would fund them at a greater amount. So that would help lessen the amount of people we had to fund and lessen the amount of paperwork that had to be done by those entities. So some of those we funded this year were the Center for Women and Children in Crisis and Community Health Connect, where Provo did some others and Utah County did some others. So Many of these are receiving funds from other entities as well. Some are receiving from all 3, some 2, some 1, but all of them are receiving money, or most of them are receiving money.

Okay, thank you.

Mayor, question on that.

Yes.

Are we providing any recommendations or guidance to them to say you might want to apply in Provo, or you might want to apply Utah County? In other words, if we just say apply to one, Do we have a lot of them that just apply to Utah County specifically, and then they're inundated with all these requests while the others aren't? How do we balance that out?

So this year what we did is we did a pre-application process. And so everyone made application— whoever was going to make application made a pre-application to everybody that they wanted to apply to. And then we did site visits, and we talked to each of the entities and discussed, you know, some of our processes and things like that. And then we helped them make that determination what was going to be best for them. So like Community Action might apply for 3 different programs through 3 different areas, where one might just apply for one area. So we were able to guide them and direct them in that, that way as well.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Any other questions on public services? Okay, let's talk about non-public services. So for that, we had $743,160. And this is what we decided to do, like Ken said. In the public service realm, we just reduced it by the percentage of— mostly reduced them by the percentage of the amount that we did not receive from HUD. But in the nonpublic services allocation, we decided to leave most of our recommendations intact and just take it through our— from our new neighborhood revitalization program. So NeighborWorks this year, we are recommending zero. And we hope to work with them in the future, however. For our collaborative effort, many of you know that this year we partnered with the other entitlements to do some capital improvements for 2 nonprofits, the House of Hope and Family Support. So our portion of that is $94,050. For our critical home repair program, we are recommending $70,000. Our neighborhood revitalization got cut quite a bit, down to about $60,000. $1,500. But we— I think we can make that up in other ways through corporate giving and foundation support. Code enforcement, which includes our neighborhood preservation unit, we left that at $155,000. Administrative and— administration and planning. So this year and this next year, we have to do a consolidated plan again for HUD. And so we have to do some plans and impediment plan. So we had to raise that a little bit to be able to afford that plan with the other entitlements. So our $135,000, and we're hoping to do some renovations at Westmore Park at $200,000. And then our Section 108 loan repayment, it did go down from where it was, but it was a little more than we thought. So it's around $87,000. So the total recommended allocation this year is—

$846,080.

So thank you. Do you have any questions?

Any comments? Okay, we'd like to go ahead and open this up to the public for anyone who would like to make a comment concerning these allocations. And please give us your name and hold your comments to 3 minutes.

Thank you. My name is Karen McCandless, and I'm the executive director of Community Action Services and Food Bank in Provo.

when I was walking in, Mr. Manning asked me if I was here to comment on the budget.

And I said, I'm only here to comment on $12,125 of the budget. And I just want to express my appreciation to the CDBG committee. I know you have a tough job with lots of requests and not as much money to spread that out. And appreciate your consideration of the money that we will be using if we receive this funding to help Orem residents obtain stability by having their food needs being met. So I want to just thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Janelle Christensen.

I'm the executive director of the Family Support and Treatment Center here in Orem and just want to reiterate Karen's comments.

That we're so grateful for the consideration, the time spent by the CDBG Commission, the citizens. So grateful for Kenneth's time, for our partnership with CDBG in the past and visits that have been made to our agency, for the opportunity to provide services to the citizens as far as mental health services and our therapy program, as well as this very exciting partnership and the collaborative funds to be able to make these updates— updated renovations on our building.

There are projects that have been needed for decades that are finally going to be happening that will enable us to create a more welcoming and hopeful and beautiful space for the people who are coming to make these very needed changes in their lives. So we're appreciative of any funds that we are able to receive and for being able to provide these services in the past and hope to be able to continue to provide them in the future.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Dennis Hanson from the Center for Women and Children in Crisis. July 1st, I'll start my 24th year at the center, and we have had a partnership for many years with OREM CDBG, and we Really appreciate it. We have a double-fold challenge this year to maintain the shelter and the running of it as we also begin a substantial effort to build a new shelter. Our shelter has 25 beds, which equates to one bed for every 27,000 residents of Utah and Juab Counties combined, where the state average for shelter is. 5,500 residents for every bed. We're woefully undersized, and Utah County is growing substantially. We'll eventually be as large or larger than Salt Lake, and people don't believe that, but it's— the projections are there.

It might be—

well, it won't be while I'm there, that's for sure, but we might be coming back for one of those collaborative efforts. not to build the entire project. But we really do appreciate the many years of both the coordinators, the council—

the, I mean, the committee, and also the council and mayor.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Matthias Westwood, and I'm very grateful for the privilege this year of serving on the CDG I would like to thank the council for giving me that opportunity and thank Kenna and Stephen for all of their work leading the commission and providing us with the information that we needed, especially regarding the different requirements that come with that funding. And I want you on the council to know the work and attention that they and we as commission members put into really understanding the applications and understanding the work that these organizations do in order to make recommendations to you based on the needs in our community.

And my eyes have definitely been opened.

I was aware of these organizations and of a lot of the work that they do, but participating in the site visits and, you know, getting more involved in the nitty-gritty of the needs that they address has really shown me the significant impact that they make and how much they they're, you know, they're required to stretch funds in order to make that impact.

And so I'm grateful for the insight that this participation in the commission has given me, and I wish you the best in, in making these decisions regarding funding.

Thank you, Matt, for your efforts on the committee.

Appreciate it.

Any other one who would like to make a comment? If not, we'll go ahead and close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any comments from the council? Okay, I would like to make a motion that the city adopt the— and the council adopt the recommendations of the CDBG Citizen Advisory Commission with regards to the distribution of funds. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, Councilmember Seestrand?

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay. Passes. Thank you very much. I'd like to move on to our next item, which is a public hearing for an ordinance amending, uh, many sections. I will not go through them, but they are written. And Appendix— and enacting Appendix VV of the Orem City Code by updating the landscaping requirements. And Jason Bench is our presenter.

Thank you, Mayor. Just so you know, Mickey Cochran from our Planning Commission went through meticulously each section as he made the motion just to make sure that he got everybody in. So anyway, it's been about 10 minutes reading the motion, so I understand why you don't want to read that. I appreciate you allowing me to come tonight. It's been about 18 months in the works to get this landscaping before you.

We've had many opportunities I think we lost you.

There we go. For some reason, it got pushed. Many opportunities to not only do online surveys and neighborhood meetings, but we had an opportunity to meet with several commissions— the Beautification Commission, the Natural Resources Commission. And we also had Mark Velasquez from Landmark Design also review this as a— As a private reviewer to make sure that this meets our intent as we move forward. Just by way of why we have so many sections listed tonight is because it's impacting the entire city. We're affecting anybody that— anything that relates to this landscaping ordinance we're modifying at this time so that it all matches and is consistent as we go forward. So that's why we have so many sections.

Thank you.

Sure.

The main issue that we're proposing is to take the landscaping requirements from 70%, which is the current requirement, to 50%. And what that means is that 50% of your front yard or street side yard or the front yard in a commercial zone or anything that's required to be landscaped, 50% of that has to be covered with some type of living material. It does not have to be grass. It can be shrubs. It can be trees. It can It can be any living material, but 50% of that area has to be landscaped. And the other 50%, which was 30%, now is 50%, can be decorative rocks, bricks, boulders, gravel. And now we're introducing synthetic turf as part of that 50% as well. The main things that we're outlining is the contiguous area of a section. So if you look at, on this map, number 4, for example, that is a contiguous area. So of that area, 50% has to be landscaped. The other 50% of that specific area could be rocks, boulders, or it can be a combination of the entire thing being rock with landscaping, you know, within those rocks. So the 50% of that area is landscaped. In addition to that, it has to be a deliberate landscaping plan. It can't just be rocks thrown out in helter-skelter type of thing. It has to be deliberate and not a natural or neglected state. So there is some rhyme or reason for landscaping of your yard. We have some landscape— our language clarifications. We are proposing that this ordinance support our limited resources, water being the main one. So in the ability to do xeriscaping or water-wise landscaping, you're being able to reduce the amount of water that you need for your landscape. We've also built in an exception if A property owner wants to add an additional tree— say they add 3 or more trees— they can reduce that 50% down to 45%. In addition to that, we're enacting Appendix VV, which outlines— which you have a copy in your staff reports— outlines not an inclusive list, but a list of drought-tolerant trees, shrubs, and other plants that a property owner can look at and plant in their yard that, once Once they are established, they can require very minimum watering over time. What this is not is a requirement that a property owner has to landscape 100% of their yard with grass, right? It allows them the flexibility. It allows them alternatives, whether they choose to do 100% grass or they choose to do 100% xeriscape or water-wise. This ordinance allows for them To do that. So it's more at the discretion of the property owner. This is an example of what this ordinance requires. Any front yard or required commercial is required to be landscaped. Any rear yards or side yards that are not adjacent to a street is not required to be landscaped, and it is at the discretion of the property owner. These pictures are part of the ordinance that you've seen in the In the packet. But these are just examples of different options, different ways to landscape your properties. These are in no means the example of what you have to do, but it just gives property owners the ideas behind the reasons why we're changing or allowing flexibility in landscaping. Just as a last picture, this is artificial turf. Along with the other areas of 50% of that area. So the— if you look at the rest of the area, it's all gravel with shrubs and things within that gravel that would meet the 50% requirement. So we're not requiring grass. We do allow flexibility, like I say, to the property owners. With that, the Planning Commission did make a recommendation that the council approve it, and the staff definitely supports the recommendation.

Thank you.

So be glad to address any questions.

So a couple of questions. This covers businesses as well as homes?

It does.

Okay. And then backyard as well as front yard?

Simply the front yard.

Only front yard?

Or a street-side yard. Those are the only 2 that are required by—

Backyard, we're not requiring any requirements?

Correct.

They don't currently require—

so we're not—

It's not currently required.

There's nothing required?

Correct.

Councilmember Lurie has a question.

So some of the feedback when I was at planning was that it didn't go far enough, that 50% was probably— it could be lowered to even zero. I guess my question is, do you feel like this is a good first step, or would we revisit this, say let's take it down to 30%? I mean, what's your feeling about the 50% versus even less?

As we did the surveys at the mall, we had some intercept surveys at the mall with a BYU class, We did some surveys at the water conservancy district when we had that. And the consensus— I mean, there was some on the lower end, there were some on the higher end, but the 50% was the reasonable conclusion that we came to. As you look at trying to enforce 50%, it's very easy to know where— when a glass is half full than a third of the way full. So I think this is a good first step. In working with government where you have minimum standards, not everybody— majority of the people will do more than the minimum. But when you lower your minimum to a 20% or 30%, you'll get some that will do the exact minimum. And so 50%, I think, is a compromise where you're going to allow people to do a lot of— a lot of—

wow—

conservative efforts. I mean, somebody could, like I say, still do a 100% xeriscape. If they do drip irrigation, they will reduce their landscaping to— or water usage by at least 80% if they go full xeriscape. So I think 50% is a way to, to start, and then we can always, you know, come back and look at it again.

Thank you.

I, I was going to mention with regards to what Debbie just said, um, you do have in there that with 3 or more trees, it can go down to 45%.

Correct.

Councilmember Lentz.

I guess just more of a procedural question. If we are open to the idea of revisiting this down the road to, say, reducing it to 40% or 30%. Rather than having to go back and reviewing each section of this code again, could we put that in the appendix and then just refer to that number that's in the appendix in one place, as opposed to having to update that in this mouthful of sections of code?

A lot of these relate to PD zones, and we have about 40 of those PD zones. So a lot of these sections relating to specific PD zones, which is why we've gone through and done that. So—

I think you would need these in all the codes.

The actual ordinance that we're— that basically affects residential and all is in one place. But because we have it— we individually, you know, develop the PD zones on an individual basis.

Somebody looks at one zone, may not look at all the rest, and needs to see this in there. So I think it needs to be in each So why—

yeah, unfortunately, if we revisit again, we'll have these numbers already and we'll just be able to redo it again.

And I will say, I do appreciate both the Natural Resources Stewardship Committee and the Beautification Advisory Commission that looked at this and tried to find that appropriate balance. And I think that this is a good starting point. I would be willing to entertain the idea of going lower than that, realizing that if we approve this today, not everybody is going to start xeriscaping from day one. In fact, it would probably be a small fraction of the city realizing that most of our yards are already landscaped, and so the cost to take out the lawn or whatever's there to replace it with xeriscape— there's a pretty big upfront cost in some of those cases. So I like the idea of giving people more flexibility, and I'd be willing to go further, but if we're only comfortable going to 50%, I can live with that for now too.

Thank you.

Councilmember Seestrand.

Thank you.

I—

what one thought that I have is that anytime you make significant changes, and this, this is a significant change, you get most of the issues. I mean, it seems like this is going to cover 90% of what happens. It's that 10% that we don't anticipate. It's the unexpected consequences that come from this that I think leads to a little bit of We don't know what we're going to miss yet, and it'll be interesting to see what develops from this in terms of individuals' creativity and what they can come up with and a variety of things. So I think we certainly can keep, keep it open down the road as we start to see how this gets implemented, that if we need to or can change it further down the road, we have that opportunity to do that. I think this is a fantastic first step. I too would hope that in the process of learning and and seeing what's going on, we'd be able to find some other ways to even address or update or modify in a way that makes it even more water-friendly as well as maintaining the beautiful landscaping. And to address the 90% that we may not anticipate, one— a couple of the thoughts that come up that originated some of the concern with this was that while this covers the front yard of somebody with an What about a vacant lot that is next to it and they want to develop that vacant lot in so it's a nice spot for the neighborhood to gather and kids to play? If they do any development in planting grass or anything on a vacant lot that's not— doesn't have a house on it, are there— do these requirements apply to that as well?

Landscaping, no, it's not. A vacant lot is not required, so they could do whatever landscaping.

So they can basically do whatever they want. They may not have the ability to hook up sprinklers to that lot unless—

I mean, if a next-door neighbor wanted to— we have a lot of those homes in the city that, you know, have 2 lots. They landscape one, build on the other, so they maintain the other one as part of it, and eventually they sell it and build a home or whatever. So as long as it's not a primary structure there, they wouldn't be applicable necessarily, but they could landscape it how they choose to.

Yeah, I think that'll be one of the interesting things is It's the people that have multiple lots or a couple of big ones, how that crosses multiple frontage, how that takes place. And then obviously, people would have an extra lot in the backyard. That wouldn't apply anyway because there's nothing that's designating the requirements of landscaping in the backyards, right?

Correct.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sumner?

Yeah, I was just wondering, with all these changes, Is this requiring any kind of permit?

And like myself, I'm not a landscaper. Who do I turn to to conform to a lot of these things? Do I come in and talk to you or—

So, yeah, a single-family homeowner could easily come into the city and we can sit down and chat with them, or if it's on their own, they can read the ordinance and plant it how they A commercial property is required to submit with their site plan a landscaping plan. So commercial properties will be treated a little bit different, whereas a residential is more of on your own. If there is an issue with, you know, they don't comply, then NPU or the zoning office would actually visit with them and try to get them to come into compliance.

So if you're not complying, is that open to our neighborhood preservation people? Are they going to Police this?

That would be part of their—

They've got their hands full now.

I guess they're already doing it now. This actually pulls back the restrictions that we currently have. So if anything, I would think this would mean less on their shoulders than we currently have.

It should help, I think, giving property owners some options to To come into compliance, yes.

In other words, there's nobody currently in compliance that this will put out of compliance, but there might be some that maybe they were aggressive and did some xeriscaping before we approved this, and maybe they would actually be fine now under this.

There are, there are a few homes in the city that have artificial turf. These, they would come into compliance with this ordinance because right now we currently don't allow artificial turf as a landscape material. Whereas this would allow 50% of your front yard to be artificial if you choose to.

I was going to say, this is our 100th year anniversary, and if you go back to 100, 120 years ago, what this area looked like, it was basically sagebrush, jackrabbits, and rattlesnakes. And this has turned into a beautiful valley and a beautiful We have a lot of wonderful trees that do great things for cleaning the air and producing air, and we have beautiful lawns, you know, beautiful neighborhoods. I always admire how many people in our city take good care of their yards. So I feel comfortable with a 50% figure. I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with the 30% figure, but I think you need to strike a balance where you're saving water, but Also, you can keep beautiful yards for families and their homes in our community. So this is a public hearing, so we would like to open it up to the public. Anyone who would like to make a comment, please give us your name and hold your comments to 3 minutes. Seeing as how there is none coming forward, we'll close the public comment portion of our public hearing. And any other comments from the council? Okay. Well, I would like to make a motion that we amend the sections that are listed in your presentation there on the different city codes, if that's acceptable to you. Okay. And enact Appendix V via the Orem City Code. And is there a second?

I'll second that on the condition that Jason keeps this file in case you need to copy and paste all of these ordinances into a revisit of the code later.

Okay, we'll go to Councilmember Seestrand first.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Okay, thank you, Jason. We now would like to go to a public hearing on a resolution to accept the tentative fiscal year 2019-20 tentative budget, and Richard Manning and Brandon Nelson are our presenters.

Mayor, members of the council, thank you. Seems like we do that every single year. This year's budget, we've— it will be $126 million when you put all the revenues in and all the funds, all the transfers. And as you know, transfers go and it beefs it up. And we'll get into how much revenue there really is in there. This will be done at a fairly high-level review. It is online for anyone who wants to go and see see it in its detail. The calendar that we've gone through so far, we began publicly working back in February, holding meetings, reviewing different components of the budget. Your retreat on the 1st of March has been factored in, and we've marched on from there. The highlights in this year's budget, for the first time since 19— well, I shouldn't say recommendations. There have been a few recommendations for property tax, but the city has not raised its property taxes for operational needs only since 1978. Tell you how long ago 1978 was, I had a full head of hair and it was fairly long. So it's been a while back. There's also We'll go over new revenue and a new source of street funding. There's some new—

And maybe we could mention that that's $2.2 to $2.5 million that's ongoing from this point forward.

Yeah, that'll be ongoing. Some operational expansion requests. Always there's fleet replacement and some capital projects. Here are the revenues, and you can see a 4-year history. The ongoing revenues are $104 million, almost $105 million. Transfers are $19 million going back and forth. And because we go as a pay-as-you-go process for our capital projects in the utilities, you should always expect to see some appropriation of surplus. We save the money in year— you know, in an earlier year Expended in a later year. So you should always be seeing that as long as we keep on that pay-as-you-go format. So I hope you're comfortable with seeing that we're not going broke. It's money's been saved up and we're making a cash payment. The city is broken into various funds, and these are the major funds that are there. And they cover— each fund is broken down, has very specific uses. The general fund is the big one. That's when most people think of when they think of the city. And as you can tell, it is by far the largest in revenue amount. And the other funds have specific purposes, like the road fund, for example, is the gas tax. The transportation sales tax is the new one the mayor just mentioned. And that is a portion of sales tax that's just gone into effect or will go into, and it's— it will be dedicated to road maintenance. And that will be ongoing. Then our utilities are all broken into their own funds, and everything is monitored and run as close to a business perspective as you can. In the general fund, there are $52 million in ongoing revenues, transfers coming in from the other funds, $6.8 million. There's a slight appropriation surplus in this fund, and we'll go into a little bit more why that is there this year. The sources of revenue in the general fund tax— the various taxes are by far the largest source of revenue. Charges for services, that's a specific area that's very high as a percentage-wise and a lot of revenue that comes in. And then 2.3% is fines, a lot of library fines. That's primarily across the way and in the court. Sales tax is our largest single source of revenue in the city. And it— every year, as you look year-to-date for prior years, we receive— have— are setting a record. We've never received more sales tax year-to-date in any of the past 5 years as we keep growing. The amount of growth is slowing down, and there's a couple of reasons for that. One, there's more competition. for sales tax around. Another one or 2 of them are state legislature actions to fund homeless shelters. Half of a percent has been taken away, and that slows down our growth a little bit. And then there's an exemption on manufacturing. Manufacturers have sales tax exemptions that's been granted, and that money has had a bigger impact than they anticipated. The legislature thought it would be offset by getting internet sales. That doesn't come close. So that is the biggest source of shrinking—

Richard, aren't we still waiting for the internet sales tax to flow through and to find out how much that really is going to be?

We have been receiving internet sales tax for years. Right, but I'm talking about the bigger portion of it that the state is now trying to Well, we're seeing the loss on the manufacturing, and I'm not sure when that kicks in, if what's going to be more, because as I have looked, it is amazing the sources of internet sales tax we're getting as far as the variety.

I just understood that they were working on getting more to us and enforcing it better.

I think, Mayor, if I may, you're speaking to the Supreme Court Wayfair decision. And how that might result and impact the city. I think what Richard is representing is while there has been an anticipation of an increase in sales tax, there are also additional exemptions and requirements that have placed— been placed upon us that have tempered that growth. So yes, while we have seen an increase, there's a, for example, approximate $180,000 responsibility I'm aware of that.

I'm just saying I'd understood that the legislature, and maybe it's the court, is working on getting us additional monies from the internet sales that are not currently coming forward.

We'd be happy to do some additional research to give you a definitive answer on that.

We'll take all the sales tax we can get.

Yes.

Property tax. Part of this—

we're—

part of this budget is proposed property tax increase of approximately $412,000. That would be to fund 4 police officers. And because of that, the final budget cannot be adopted until August. And this— the county will give us the date we can hold that public hearing because no one can have an overlapping public hearing. So the tentative budget tonight, if accepted, runs— it allows the city to function fully and completely up to that point in time. And the way we're proposing that, the only part of the budget that really it would be in question would be those 4 police officers that we'll discuss in a few moments.

Councilmember Lentz has a question.

Could you go back a slide, Richard? So when we talk about property Yes. And you mentioned property taxes not having been increased since 1978, but we see a little bit of variability there in year to year. Can you speak to what would actually cause that? And I know that somebody said, well, my property tax bill went up $200 or whatever it is, and OREM is just a small portion of that property tax, or roughly 15%. But even here with these numbers, can you just speak to what would impact the variability in that number?

And this property tax here is for Orem, not for the school district and all the other parts.

So this is just Orem's part. There are a couple of things that go into place. We get growth. So as a city in '78, I don't know what the population was. Let's say it was 50,000, if it was that big. It's now 100,000. All of that growth we would get. Through here, there's been— we did a refinanced a bond, GO bond, and we took the savings up front, and there was a— there'd be extra would have come in at that point. But by and large, it's growth that comes in.

That's—

Richard, it might be helpful to mention too that The way the law reads, we're trying to keep our property tax stable from year to year. So as your property goes up in value, your mill rate goes down. As your property value goes down, your mill rate goes up. Yes, the whole idea. And you can see it on that graph where it stays steady pretty much straight through.

So, and FYI, also, excuse me, if someone— if you have a year where a differing number of people are delinquent that will show up. Eventually we get the money, but from year to year you'll see— and, you know, we're what, 93% collection rate? And 93% on average is what we get on any given year of what's been assessed.

FY17, for example, it's not that the city shrunk or we had, you know, inverse development or anything like that, but it was that we had some delinquencies in that year that were probably made up in the following year thereafter.

We also have personal property tax, and those are due in May, the report for those. So a lot of the times also that fluctuates from when that's physically paid, whether—

That's like equipment in business.

Correct.

That may fall— they may make their payment in June, they may make it in July. They may make it in August. So again, some fluctuations in how those funds are received that can affect a given year as well.

And I've noticed in the reports that our collection rate actually has gone up, our delinquency rate has gone down, and we're much closer to achieving what we're trying to achieve.

And you would hope you'd see that obviously in a good economy, right?

Yes.

Generally is what happens when we have a good economy.

Next downturn?

We're not mentioning that at the moment.

Okay. It's a perfect game.

He's pitching a perfect game. Franchise tax, another fairly decent source of income for us. This is a stable source that once upon a time we thought would be ever-growing. As you can tell, it isn't. And a lot of the growth comes from ourselves because we assess a franchise tax on our own utilities. Cell phone bills are shrinking. Then there are also people don't have the number of phones they used to have, and all of that has eroded in. But as cell companies get more and more competitive and the bills are getting smaller, so does the 6%.

Okay.

But that's pretty impressive that you stayed pretty steady.

Yeah, and that's— a lot of it is due to us. Building fees, we treat all of these as one-time monies because that's what they truly are. Every building is a one-and-done, and we're very cautious on the amount we would roll into an ongoing operational amount, so we deliberately underestimate And I want to say the month of April, this April, they brought in more money than we budgeted in the next year. So we're just kind of— and that rolls over to the next year's CIP. Part of this, we have police and fire contracts with Vineyard and Lyndon. We anticipate that Coming up one of these years in the near term, there will be a fire— new fire station needed, and it will also service the Vineyard area. And the money that comes from Vineyard, we kind of set it aside so that when that leap comes, we can staff the fire station. Because a fire station, as opposed to policing, can add police officers very incrementally. You can't You cannot add firefighters that way. You have to bring them on for a station. That's 3 crews.

So that police station in Vineyard, I believe, Jamie, if I'm not wrong, is tied to their population increase when it hits a certain level. And I think Vineyard is going to be at 17,000 this year.

Mayor, it's tied to what we call ERUs, right, or equivalent residential units. So for every each door that is added to the town— the city of Vineyard, they draw closer to that ERU cap. So not cap, but that ERU expectation that they will be—

Requirement.

Expected to build a station. And that number is 5,500 units. And they are adding, for example, I think last year they added in excess of 1,000 So yes, they're fast approaching that, that number where the expectation will be that they will need to build an additional fire station.

Okay, now moving on to the expenditure side of the budget. Personnel citywide, 38.3% of the city's budget is for personnel. That's everything that's salary, the benefits that go with it, the seasonal help that we have, and everything. Operations were still pretty high to be at 42%. Now, the interesting thing is capital is a growing percentage of the budget, and that's primarily due to your foresight in adopting the master plans and the way to fund them.

We are—

Actually bucking a trend nationwide where we're expanding what we're doing on capital, and we will keep our utilities so they're functioning at a— at the same high level that we've all enjoyed on into the future.

What I've seen nationwide is that infrastructure is a big problem, trying— and cities and counties and states are trying to figure out How to fund that. But with what we have adopted, we're fairly aggressive in moving forward with planning for our infrastructure needs for the future, for those who will come after us to enjoy what we enjoy now, as you just mentioned.

Expenditures by fund— if you've been counting the pennies along the way, everything balances out. And if you have any questions as you look over that, we will hit each of these major funds, just highlight them very quickly going over. Each department has a stewardship on both revenue side and the expense side, and they're not necessarily tied to their departmental name. For example, administrative services has an abnormally large percentage of the budget than you would expect for HR and finance and risk management. Reason being, we manage the debt. And so, you know, it is a little bit larger because of that. We have a public works because of the utilities is the lion's share of the budget. And so on, you can see as we go on through here.

Thank you.

Now, these are the additions to the budget. We've gone over them before. UTA Transit Pass, forward-looking, you know, this would be, you know, taking— it's a drop in a bucket, but as it moves on down the line, then impacts can be made in how our roads function. air quality, etc. If more and more people will have access to and utilize transit, it makes the whole system work better. Brandon has been doing our comprehensive annual financial report pretty much on his own with Excel spreadsheets, and we're reaching the point where, you know, the software that does this is to a point he's comfortable saying, hey, let's give it a try and see if that's a little bit better. Indigent defense— we're a little bit behind on what we do. Adding $35,000 will hopefully get us more in the ballpark with that. As we move forward in everything being digitized, being able to submit plans, et cetera, like that will help out. We have a lot of wood in our parks. both in mulch and in structures. And this will be an investment to keep a process going where we can keep the wood well maintained. Some other quickly one-time additions— fingerprint reader. We've been doing— need to update our survey equipment. And we want to keep our cardiac monitors replace them all at once so they're standardized. And anyone who would ever have a heart attack would hope that if someone new is on the squad that day, they know how to use that monitor. The Reach 2 line, which I want to say is 400 East, a corrosion study to make sure everything's fine with that one.

And with the groundbreaking today, there's a main telephone trunk line that needs On that corrosion study, are they going to run a pig through it, a smart pig, or do you know what they're going to do?

Okay.

Turkey cam.

Okay.

Sure, Chris.

So this is a Bureau of Reclamation project. That was sponsored also by Orem and Central Utah Water Conservancy District back many years ago. And we have responsibility to operate and maintain that.

And part of that is it is a steel pipe. And so we'll be looking at any corrosion that may have occurred and perhaps even installing some cathodic protection for future protection.

I was just curious how you're going to do that, but—

We'll inspect it when it's down.

Okay.

So we can inspect the inside as well as—

So you're not going to run a pig through the system then?

We will not be pigging the system.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Now proposed new full-time positions. 4 police officer positions that would be contingent upon the sale— the property tax being hiked. And I'm going to skip forward a little bit right now and talk about here's where we sit right now with property tax with our peers and our neighbors. As you can see, the average city is a fair amount above us, and as we have looked at what this change would do, we wouldn't hardly move at all in how that, that is.

Richard, one thing I was going to say, over the last 10 years, I believe that our property tax for Orem's portion Has gone down 1.5% on the mill rate?

Since the budget or the economy started improving, yeah, it's dropped a fair amount.

And that's important, I think, for people to realize that it's actually gone down anyway.

I think we're at $10.001 right now.

Yeah, I mean, again, that's just a function of increasing value of property.

That's it.

Economy goes up, values goes up, the rate's going to go down.

But my recollection is pre-Great Recession, we're now lower than we were.

But you're presenting here tax rates.

Tax rates.

All we're talking about is the rate, and I'm just saying it's gone down.

And if I may too, you are comparing where we will potentially be with a tax increase to This is where we are. This is where we are.

Where we are.

Okay.

And not where we will be. That's— even as a budget guy.

Because I'm aware of a number of these communities and they're having the same conversations we are relative to property taxes and need to make adjustments to their rate.

Mayor, we mentioned in the work session that I— we can't officially do anything till the 1st of June. That's also when we actually know our actual property tax rate is that same timeframe. And so, so this is our best guess as to where we—

I think—

or last—

is it last year?

This is where— Councilmember Lentz has a question for you.

And knowing that you can't give us a specific number to update this for 2020, what is the percentage impact to— in other words, if my property tax bill to Orem today So if the budget today is X, next year is it X times 1 point what? We can't answer that yet?

Well, how much—

it's such a guess right now.

And as you're looking that up, the reason I'm asking is I'm guessing it's less than 10%.

Oh, yes.

It's, it's, that's not a 10%. So even if, you know, everybody else stayed the same and we made this increase, we actually wouldn't change in this lineup. We would still be lower than Linden's, would be my guess.

Yeah.

All part 5 to 6, 7%.

Yeah.

In the last work session, there was talked about, okay, the public responses. Police workload has since right around the time the recession hit, now it's been a 19% change. These next 2 slides are from the Y2 Analytics Yes. Survey showing that the community support and the arguments that, you know, because there is more workload and that this money would be dedicated to the, you know, police department, that there was a fair amount of support. As we looked, given where we're starting from, the 4 officers by About $1,285 per year for the average house, and we'll be able to fine-tune that when we get the numbers in June. Okay, in the budget, not contingent upon the property taxes, a mental health officer, which would bring us to complete their unit, and those officers will be housed in the basement of the court building. with the Division of Family Services, but they will be working for us, but their offices will physically be over there. There will be a crime analyst and a body camera specialist keeping everything up to date and helping see any trends. The city will be— hopes to be adding a division manager for building facilities, keeping our Physical infrastructure and buildings up to date and in the best possible working condition is— as they age, takes more and more time and planning and effort, and that would be a job to help out there. As we have added particularly the park space along the— like 800 North and Orem Boulevard, et cetera, where you have a park adjacent to a road, but it's very narrow and long and interrupted every block by a street. It's a hard area to maintain well, and adding someone that will be primarily dedicated to those spaces. And a— in stormwater, a public works crew leader. Now, a few non-benefited positions, trying to get the right mix on our internal custodial staff, adding a new person there, and A flexible employee, which is our term for someone that doesn't work full-time, has not benefited with traffic, and an intern in development services. We have a few positions that we would be adding to it. We have a part-time 311 agent we'd bring on full-time, and then there'd be a new deputy director in both development services And public works departments. As always, we have a significantly large fleet, and we— to keep it going so it doesn't cost too much in repairs, about $3 million in new fleet equipment. You can see the numbers there. Okay, from Fund 20, which is the gas tax, Yes. That has been dedicated for ongoing maintenance and as possible rebuilding of streets. And you can see how it's allocated. And recall that the plan is, as long as you keep maintaining streets along the way in an orderly fashion, you lengthen the lifespan of that road and you reduce its ultimate Well, you— by lengthening the life, when you still have— when you get to the point you have to rebuild it, you have put that number out there about half again as long as it would have been. And your overall cost at that point is going to be lowered. So it's kind of the Fram oil filter. Do a little bit of pay me now or pay me later. Invest ongoing and overall you'll spend a little Less money on your roads. This new tax, transportation dedication, we're putting in about $2.25 million in it, going to set it aside and not really allocate anything in this year's budget to begin with about what it would be used for. Same process as was done with CARE. You take a year, set it aside. You have a year in the bank, if you will, and then you can proceed forward, and any hiccups in collecting the money is not going to be a problem with completing a project. Debt service fund— this is where all the general obligation, our leases, things like Utopia pass through there. Community development, the CNS fund— we had the public hearing for CDBG allocations is run through this department. IT is run internally. People— various departments will contribute to it based upon their utilization of IT. And there's been a bit of a reallocation and, you know, truing up who's paying for what so that it's not unduly being borne by by one department over another. Now, getting into utilities, water fund, they've grown up to $21 million. As you look at that, their personnel is about a tenth of it, operations about a half, and capital is a significant portion of that. One of the biggest things they're doing is setting money aside for the future water tank. And then the big project that you'll see ongoing is the automatic meter reading that's being installed ongoing throughout the year. There is a continuing fee increase that's recommended. Tier 1 from $88 to $98, and you can see as it flows through from there. The 3/4-inch meters, the base rate is proposed to go from $18.70 to $20.20. All the other base rates will remain the same.

Thank you.

This putting our proposed increase in play and taking when we did the survey of the other communities, whether they knew what their proposed increases were going to be or not, this is how it shakes out. So truly, we would come out a little bit better when everyone passes their budgets, but we look very good when it comes to water rates compared Sorry, Richard, a question on that.

So are you saying that, like, West Jordan, for example, at 106, was that the same number when we voted on the master plan several years ago? Or you're saying—

No, this last fiscal year. Their last fiscal year.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, and whether or not the 106, they, they knew what they were going to go to, I, I can't answer.

So we are updating it each year.

Yes.

Just not— we can't predict.

We can't say on July 1st we will be exactly here.

Thank you.

Water Reclamation, they've grown to $12 million. Their personnel is actually larger than water. And their operations is a little bit less than the water side. Their capital is quite significant. 2 major projects they have for capital is— you see the compactor that fell through the road— is a hydrogen sulfide study to make sure we don't have that happen again. That was not a good day for the City of Orem. And a struvite elimination project, which will give us back some capacity in our plant. There's fee changes.

Yes.

So the rate changes proposed for the sewer, the base rate from $10.72 to $12.33, and the— as you know, a second door in the same unit is a dollar less. And then the sewage usage charge increased from $2.18 to $2.53 per 1,000 gallons. That's only measured in the winter, becomes applied every July 1st, runs A calendar year. And the automatic meter reading will make that assessment a lot easier. And while we're on this slide, stormwater has an increase from $7.10 to $7.35. How we stack up with our proposed increase with others on their sewer rates, we are above the average with that one. And—

Stormwater—

their major project this year is prepping for the elimination of the West Union Canal as a stormwater receptacle for the city, since that's being abandoned by the owners of the canal. Any questions on this one? OK. How we stack up with stormwater fees— that's a pretty tight range. with the exception of the top 2 there. But again, we're a little bit above the average on that one.

Sam, you have a comment?

Do you have any sense— and maybe this would be a better question for Chris— how many of these cities have the same approach as us as far as we're going to use pipes to transport this water versus canals or some other— because we've made a conscious decision we're going to use the pipes to transport the water to protect our water sources and I'm sure other reasons.

Right.

We have over 2,000 sumps or dry injection wells throughout the city and we're looking to eliminate those that are in our wellhead protection areas.

So we're taking a pretty progressive— an aggressive approach on that to protect our groundwater system, our groundwater quality.

Other communities are taking note as well and following suit where they have a significant injection system in their community.

I think Orem is a little more unique than most where we have a very good cobbly and granular soil in—

especially in the east side of Orem.

And it's really conducive for injection and taking care of that.

So we are looking to detain or retain as much water on-site in accordance with the stormwater guidelines. We're all under the same mandates under the EPA, under the new regulations that are coming out and pending in the next year.

So I would say we are very consistent with others and other communities.

Because we're so heavily developed, meaning we have a lot of asphalt and sidewalk and things compared to a more rural community, for example, where they have more permeable, you know, ground and soil and things like that. I would imagine that we need to transport more stormwater because it's not just getting absorbed into a farm or something.

That's correct, yes.

In layman's terms, as Mr. Shirkey was talking about, granular Granularity? Rocky.

It's rocky soil.

Just go dig a hole, you'll know. Recreation Fund, as you're well aware, hopefully in August they'll be closing down the fitness center to remodel it extensively, and with that will come a real loss in revenue along with a loss of expense. This is our best We've got forecasts on what that's going to do, and it's a moving target. But as you know, we come in and amend quarterly, and as things start to shake out, we'll amend it as appropriate. And that's where the appropriation of surplus from the general fund will be going, is to help bolster this up. And that number will move back and forth as— whatever is needed to cover their expenses. Thank you.

expenses on that.

Solid waste, it's grown to now just over $4 million. And, you know, their capital, if you will, is the Take Pride in Orem projects that primarily are— was been going on the last few weeks where people can go get rid of their junk.

So to that point, I was trying to think, Jamie. I think I heard 400 bends, or is it much higher than that? For our—

Yeah.

Christy has those specific numbers.

Okay.

It continues to increase.

That's pretty impressive.

In a pretty significant way.

Yeah.

I know we had almost surpassed last year With one week left to go still.

Okay, there will be an increase in here, and this is driven by, you know, the, the contracts we have. And as you can see, it's a small increase across the board. For those who are coming in new where the first can and recycling are our package, it'll go up to $15.10. Now here's where we stack up. With solid waste fees on just the first can because that's about the only thing that is a given across the board. And to have the widest thing you can, you know, sampling, that is the one thing everyone has. And as you can see, we're below the average with our increase. Now, all utilities together, this is how we stack out. Even with our increases, we're well below the average. And when it's your own, you know, personal home getting impacted, you'd just be glad you live here. Now, one other area you want to talk about, and then we're wrapped up here, is in the fees and charges, opening up the lower cemetery. There will be some fee differentials between the upper and the lower, and these are spelled out here. Any questions on that?

And what is the rationale on the 25% premium?

As best I recollect, and perhaps Mr. Shirkey or Price need to address that, where the upper one is filling up and People that want to maybe get their whole family grouped together.

All you have is single lots left in the upper.

So to—

in the lower, you have lots together.

You could get lots together and thinking people might want to transfer. And the philosophy has been we never want to be on the low end where someone is bargain shopping.

Sure.

Because the ground is all we have. And once that's gone, you know, an option's taken away from us. So we don't want to be on the low end. It still needs to be a defensible fee. And when you look at the long-term commitment the city is making to maintain those cemeteries, these fees don't even come close to covering it.

When I moved to Orem, I bought 6 lots at $250 each in the upper cemetery. It's changed a lot since then.

Any questions?

Haven't used them yet. Any questions from the council?

I have a couple from the book. Could I ask those real quick?

Go ahead, Councilman Sestrand.

On page 11 of the book, You have indicated there the recreation fees of $695,000. Is that with the assumptions of what's happening with the rec center this coming year? Okay, so what, what would that typically be with the rec center?

I don't think I heard the question, Mark. Would you mind repeating it?

Yeah, so just looking at the revenue assumptions on On page 11, under recreation, you have $695,000. My question was, is that— if that— is that with the assumption that the rec center may be closing for a significant time?

So this is actually a conversation that we initiated today with the direction to go to option 3.5. It is going to change the budget, and it is going to change obviously what will be required at the fitness center and the costs associated with the fitness center. The numbers that are included in this budget were predicated on the conversation that we had with the assumption that the wet facilities would stay open longer than what we are currently discussing now.

Okay.

So we do anticipate that there will be recalibration of this number, uh, prospectively. And, and that's something, in fact, that I communicated with Brannon and with Carl and Lissy today to say, with this Option 3.5, that is going to change the finances, uh, a little bit at the fitness center, and we've, we've got to work that number in. We just haven't had time to do it yet.

Curious what the number of last year was.

Yeah, so if you look on page 151 That's in the recreation fund section.

How did I miss that?

Yeah, I know, it's right there, right next to it. It shows you what the revenues were for, you know, fiscal '17-'18, and if you exclude the contributions from other funds line, that $402, $404, you get about $1.6 million. Comparative to that number you were looking at, that $600,000.

So you saw about a 40% decrease in terms—

Yeah, it's $1 million.

With just having the west side open. Okay, thank you. The next question I had was on the, on the next page, 12, the operational goal compared to our actual on the estimated fund balances. I know that it says 15% Is the operational goal. Do we need to specifically change that to the 25%? Is that, is that what our new operational goal is, to maintain a 25% fund balance in those?

The state cap is 25% within the general fund. I think the overall consensus with the City Council in recent years has been to keep that, that balance at 15% and to take the excess above and beyond 15% And transfer into capital projects. So the legislative— the historical legislative intent has been to keep it at 15, even though state law permits a 25% fund balance within the general fund.

So are you looking at a transfer of almost $11 million then to capital projects, or is that just something that may happen in the following year? Because I see the estimated fund balance of $29 million as opposed to the operational goal of $18 million.

$29 million is all funds. The 15%, the item at the bottom, is specifically related to the general fund.

Just the general fund. Okay, I'm just trying to understand. Our goal versus our actual is about 30%.

Anticipation would be the $12.6 million comparative to the $8.9 million, and we would anticipate approximately a $3 million—

And then the next year we'll take care of the difference if we want to get down to the operational side.

Correct.

And what about the other ones then where the actual estimated fund balance is significantly greater?

So those, the goal is an 6 months of operational expenses as opposed to what we expect the fund balance to be in relation to this whole pay-as-you-go concept. So we expect fund balance to be higher, and then obviously that difference between those 2—

As the water tank comes up and the funding is there.

Correct.

So we don't need to change the goal, we just need to—

Fund balance increase.

Well, and the operational goal is kind of more a target that is evaluated by way of the rating agencies that essentially rate our debt. So they like to see a certain amount of available balance.

Above and beyond the operation. Okay.

So that, that 6-month target kind of provides to us the maximum opportunity and benefit for a bond rating. Okay, so that's, that's what allows us, for example, the AAA bond rating that we have with our— is it our wastewater debt or our water debt? Water and wastewater debt. Is because we have that level of surplus available. If it was lower, then that chance for a AAA rating would, would decrease.

And is that future timing use of those water projects, things that we identified, is that identified somewhere in the budget for looking forward? Or would we just need to go back to some of the previous plans?

Back in the capital summary section, well, there's— it's in 2 places, but if you went to the water fund itself, and it doesn't have the total Total, but it shows you the remaining, you know, the 5-year projection.

So it does add the timing aspect in there.

Yeah, it just shows you what the— it doesn't tell you what the amount we've already saved, but it shows you what is left to be saved for those particular projects.

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Siserand, if I might, also in the master plans that you've adopted, it was suggested that we spend that down to that 6-month level and that we apply that money, whether we have excess money in those fund balances or not, towards the capital projects. And that we have that 6 months in there for a reserve in the event there's any significant catastrophic event with the utility. So that does provide that cushion for us as a utility and provides that coverage Thank you.

Which is why the rating agencies want it in case of an emergency, quite honestly.

No, I understand the value of— and I'm happy that Orem City has healthy balances on their funds, which means we're trying to be conservative and prepared and ready for what's going forward. I think the challenge, as I look at my own budget, is at what point do I have enough enough in savings to cover the emergencies? And if there's more, is it the appropriate time then to go and ask for an increase in taxes if the current funding sources seem to be adequate? And I think part of this is then the message to make sure that when somebody looks at those balances in the fund, there's part of the picture they're not seeing. And that is that as a pay-as-you-go strategy that we've adopted as a city to say those those funds are not available to be spent now because we're saving them to be spent on these major plans that we have coming up in the future. So that, that again helps us to set our perspective on the appropriate balance of what our spending is, what our revenue sources are, and the funding that we need to accomplish the capital improvements that we've already made the strategic decision to do. And, and so part of this is just making sure we've got a clear message That there's not a lot of extra money floating around, that we don't need to raise property taxes, that the reason we're raising property taxes is because those funds are earmarked for those critical projects, and that the property tax increase that's being requested is to make sure that we have a long-term source of funding for 4 additional officers, not just for 1 year but for ongoing, which is where that funding comes from, is from the property tax increase.

Thank you.

increase. That was a long statement, I'm sorry.

No, but if I may, I think you're exactly right. That expression of legislative intent is important because we don't want to send the message that we are hoarding cash, so to speak, for the sake of just gathering money, that there is a specific purpose in what we're doing. And frankly, that becomes a difficult conversation as we continue to grow those reserves And we face criticism there. And then when we spend those reserves, we also face criticism because there's such a significant drop in the amount of balance that we have. But provided we can explain and we can speak to that legislative intent, hopefully that smooths over some of the concern that people have relative to, to this conversation.

And, and maybe that's something to think about is as we make the statement of the report, making that concept very easy to see and understand instead of having to look deep to find out what the plan is. Maybe that's something we articulate close by in a summary statement that— just thinking out loud there.

And in addition to that, the obvious statement being we can't use water revenues to fund general operations. So regardless of whether we have a healthy water balance a balance in our water fund or not, that doesn't allow us the flexibility to take that water money typically and spend it on law enforcement services, for example.

Thank you.

All right, Debbie.

So one of the reasons that we were building a fitness center is that it's not self-sufficient anymore. So if I want to make sure I'm reading this right, if you're on page 151, Contributions from other funds is $404,000. Is that coming from the general fund? And so that's the amount that we're not covering by the daily admissions and the passes. So this— I don't know how long ago it was when they were sufficient and they had enough money. I know that it was—

It was around 2010. 2014, '15, somewhere.

Okay, so 5 years ago, say.

Well, they ran out of surplus.

When did the Provo fitness center open?

So you have— all you have to do is look at when Springville opened and Provo opened, and there's a direct influence on us.

But I, but I think it's important to note also that we were facing this challenge before Provo opened, but it accentuated the problem when Provo opened. Previous to 2014, we had rec fund reserves that were funding that shortfall, but we got to the point where those reserves were exhausted and we needed to turn to another source of revenue, and that's when we started—

I remember we were in an annual deficit of $100,000 to $200,000 a year, and now we're at $400,000.

Yes.

So it just speaks to the reason why we need a new fitness center. It's been 40 years, and this trajectory, if we keep going, it's going to get just worse. And so by taking the—

you know, the next few years are going to be difficult, but hopefully we'll recapture those people.

They'll come back, and hopefully the imbalance will flatten over time.

If I may, it also speaks to the need we have to really evaluate the programming that we have at the fitness center to try and maximize opportunities to garner a return on investment that is going to provide us with the best opportunity to quote-unquote break even. Because a perpetuation of current programs and a reliance on what worked in the past is not going to help us bridge the gap between the subsidy and where we need to be in the future.

All right, any other questions? Okay, this is a public hearing, so I would like to open it up to the public. Anyone who would like to make a comment, please come forward and hold your comments to 3 minutes and give us your name. Seeing as how no one's coming forward, we'll close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Anyone on the council wish to make a comment? Okay. Well, I would like to then move that we adopt the fiscal year 2019-2020 tentative budget as outlined. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. Councilmember Seestrand.

Just want to clarify. By voting to approve the tentative budget, are we also voting then to approve the progress or to go forward with the property tax increase request and truth in taxation hearing? Okay, so, so in saying yes to this budget, that by automate— that will automatically mean we're looking to proceed with that truth in taxation process? Okay, I vote aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Resolution passes. Thank you. Appreciate it, Richard and Brandon. We'll move on. Jamie, do you have any items? I do. I have one to share.

Okay.

Then I would move that we adjourn to a meeting of the Redevelopment Agency. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay. We are now in a Redevelopment Agency meeting and would call that to order. The first item of business is to approve the RDA meeting minutes from the last meeting of June 19th, 2018. I move that we approve those. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, as far as the scheduled item goes, we have 2 items. First one is a resolution on the Coral West properties and the Garf properties and Orem agreements. And our presenter is Ryan Clark. I think he went home, but I'm not sure.

That's not fair.

All right, good evening, Mayor and members of the council. I am joined here at the table by, uh, Cody Hill with Lewis— well, L-Y-R-B-R Financial Consultant. I can never remember all 4 names, but—

Lewis Young, etc., etc.

Yes. I, I'm also joined by Tony Kratz from the Garf Dealerships. He is in the audience. Bill Linson from Golden Corral. He is the owner of the Golden Corral restaurant on the Parkway. And Alex Carr, his business partner, who is of the ownership group that owns the land that the restaurant sits on. We're here tonight to bring to you a— 2 agreements associated with our redevelopment agency with a goal to help solidify our sales tax base in the city associated with our new car dealerships. So we're asking for your approval of a resolution supporting an agreement with the Corral West Properties, which is Golden Corral, and with Garf Properties, which is the Nissan dealership.

Thank you.

I'll quickly go through some background data knowing that it's getting late, but just to show the importance of sales tax revenue in the city. You just had the budget, so you're very well aware of that. 36.8% of our general fund comes from sales tax. In Orem, on an annual basis, $333 million in fiscal year 2018 was spent on motor vehicle and parts. In the city. A little bit mind-boggling when you think of that entire number. That's a 2% increase over 2017, and these, these numbers come directly from the Utah State Tax Commission. In Orem in 2018, there were total taxable sales of $2.54 billion. Probably $2.5 billion of that was at Costco, but maybe some other places too, if you've been there on a Saturday.

I was.

Again, $333 million was the motor vehicles and parts dealers in Orem. We received $24.36 million in sales tax, which includes CARE tax in that number. Of that amount, 14.2% came from vehicle sales, and of that 14.2%, half of it came from our new vehicle dealerships, which we have 5 of those in Orem. The Nissan dealership itself ranks as the 17th highest sales tax generator in Orem. One of our goals in our economic development strategic plan is to maintain the supremacy of Orem as the retail— regional retail hub and to ensure that our sales tax is maintained and that we remain a vibrant retail center. I've shared this— these next few slides with you many times as I've been here presenting agreements with Honda, VW, and Toyota. These are the 4 challenges that our new car dealerships face with relative market area, recruitment by other cities, manufacturers' requirements, and basically running out of space on some of our dealerships. Just a quick review on the relative market area. Back in 2015, the law was changed. The old law actually protected Orem a little bit we couldn't have a new car dealership within 15 miles of the ones located in our city or, or the county boundary. That was changed in 2015, which opened up basically Spanish Fork and Lehi to competing dealerships of the same, same manufacturers that we have right now, and most specifically the 5 that are identified there in the bottom right-hand corner. Also back around that time is when West Jordan got pretty excited with this change, and they went after other dealerships in Salt Lake County and started marketing to them. Draper was successful in attracting a couple dealerships away from Sandy. And Vineyard has been actively marketing a site down on their property as an auto mall. That site right now is actually going under cleanup by U.S. Steel. And we'd anticipate here in the next year that it's probably going to be cleaned up and be ready to come on the market. Dealers are always dealing with their manufacturer's requirements.

They—

if the dealer doesn't meet these requirements, their inventory will be reduced. There's a strong correlation between inventory and sales. The manufacturer kind of always controls the situation, even though state law requires and holds them back from demanding showroom upgrades every 10 years. Those manufacturers still find a way to get around that. This is a photo of our— of the Nissan dealership in Orem. This is actually a little bit of an improvement versus a few years ago when most of the west side that you see there in the picture actually was parked much more heavily than it is, as you can see in the south portion, how the vehicles are crammed in there a little bit more tightly. These are— this is an example of our past history with our dealerships. You can see that we have a legacy of working with our dealerships. We know the importance of what they bring to our community in terms of revenue and supporting our general fund so that we can provide services to our citizens. Most recently in 2017, we did 3 retention agreements with 3 dealerships, and preliminarily, as we look at some of those returns, they're performing very well, and, and we're excited by the numbers that we see, even though we can I cannot speak in specifics as per state law. We can talk in some generalities. This is the project we're proposing today. It's to strengthen the Garth Nissan dealership and also to facilitate a new— new construction of a new Golden Corral restaurant. I'm not able to use my mouse on the screen where you can see it, so I'll try to talk in general terms. But the white roof that you see is the Nissan dealership and kind of the faint blue lines are the property lines. Next to it on the right is a Golden Corral restaurant that has the pitched roof, and to the right of that is the Sakura Restaurant. South of the Golden Corral restaurant is the Nielsen Home. Over the last few years, the Redevelopment Agency has purchased the Nielsen Home. It's been used by police for training since that time. And the city has purchased the Sakura Restaurant while the Redevelopment Agency has purchased restaurant.

Over—

since then, the Sakura restaurant has had a month-to-month lease, and they will be ending their term there at the end of this month. We tried our best to relocate them to a new facility through multiple attempts. Unfortunately, we were not able to do so. We were really hoping for a win-win situation. But I will state that at the time we bought the restaurant, they also had an opportunity to buy the restaurant and did not make an attempt to do so. So once the new owner came on, their lease was converted to a month-to-month lease, and we kept them there for almost 2 years. So our goal here is to build a new Golden Corral restaurant where the Sakura restaurant sits. Then we would demolish the old Golden Corral restaurant once they move into the new one. They'd be able to stay in business the entire time and retain all of their employees, plus operations would continue, then the rest of that property would be sold to the Nissan dealership, and they would be able to expand their lot. This is an early concept plan showing how that— where that restaurant would be placed. It also shows improvements to the intersection. This is called a teardrop intersection, and we have worked with UDOT to gain preliminary approval for this. This increases our stacking distance at the intersection and provides safety by not allowing the east movement to go across the intersection. There will be a median there. This also addresses safety issues with 2 current access easements crossing Golden Corral into the Nissan dealership and where we've had some close pedestrian calls there with almost people getting hit. This now channelizes access directly into Nissan through the teardrop and avoids all of Golden Corral's— parking lot, and Golden Corral becomes a self-sustained lot at that point. This shows the new property that Garf would pick up and how the dealership would expand. We call it the hatchet piece as per the shape. The northern portion provides the dealership more frontage and visibility, and it's, it's been Great to work with Golden Corral because they've been willing to trade that frontage knowing the value of it. And now Garf can take advantage of that and increase the visibility of their inventory. They can also park 180 stalls on that side under a normal parking lot layout. But as you can see on the south, if they take advantage of how they can maximize that parking, they could exceed that vehicle inventory quite hopefully.

Ryan, I've got a question.

Yeah.

And maybe it's for the representative of the Garf Company. But are there any plans to put any buildings up on that property?

There are no plans at this time that I'm aware of. It would mostly be an expansion of their parking lot.

OK.

This is a concept of the Golden Corral site as provided by their engineer. You can see that it's very close to the early designs that we came up with. This— they're anticipating a 15% increase in sales in year 1. with an additional 25 employees. And the big benefit to them is they can stay open, like I mentioned before, and retain their employees. This site does pick up a little more property than they have now, about 8,200 square feet. But you'll notice that their frontage is not as— in as good a position as what they owned before. And there's also a frontage road there, plus half of the teardrop is on their site. And I'll kind of talk about those numbers in a moment.

So, Ryan, a couple questions.

Yeah.

How long will it take to put up the new building, and how does this change the signage for Golden Corral?

So Golden Corral's pull sign would relocate to the east side of the entrance. It would be a similar setback to what they have now. As for construction— and they're here and they can probably answer that better— but if I recall correctly, they're hoping to be open in spring of 2020. But maybe when I get through my presentation, if you have additional questions, we could have them come up. Would that work?

Yeah, that would be good. Councilmember Seestrand has a question.

Yeah, if you can go back to that slide. As I look at that with the traffic thruway with that jog off to the right to the health clinic, is that required to be there? I mean, is that a—

Yes, it was developed when the health clinic was constructed. There's also a frontage road in front of the health clinic, and so that is their access point to the parkway. So it's kind of like a half roundabout. So they'd come in and go around the teardrop and then over to the health facility.

But they can't go directly to the health facility without going to the round— through the little roundabout there?

There is an entrance further to the east, but I believe it's a ride-in and ride-out only. So this is the main entrance into that facility.

And is this, then, the best design we can come up with on handling that traffic?

Yes, we've looked at a number of different designs. This is what Paul Goodrich has determined is the best solution here.

OK, thanks.

This is a photo that Bill Linson provided on the left showing the new prototype. A photo on the top that he took from a site visit he completed. And the photo on the bottom right, I found in a news article from— discussing the new prototype. So this building is designed in a way that if Golden Corral were to ever decide to close or to shut down, the building could be repurposed easily, unlike the current building with its peaked roof on it. So the funding source for this project has been existing RDA funds to date. It fulfills the purposes of the project area and injects that money that's been collected in the area back into the area and improving the economic situation. This is a breakdown of the investment to date by the RDA— the residential home purchase, the purchase of the restaurant, lease revenue we have received back, a portion of the property sold to the UVX proper project, the bus rapid transit.

Thank you.

And to date, our investment is 1 point— a little over $1.3 million. We're anticipating participating in the demolition of both restaurants and the house and the intersection improvements for a net investment of $1.5 million.

We would—

we are proposing to do a land trade with Golden Corral. It would just be a land swap. There are conditions associated with it for both parties in the agreement. agreement that you've been provided. It nets Golden Corral 11 additional stalls, and you can see they do pick up an additional 8,500 in usable land. They pick— but they also pick up another 17,000 that's encumbered by accesses. So we feel that this is a fair trade. They, they're really only picking up 11 more parking stalls. They're losing a lot of their frontage and their visibility, but—

Thank you.

They are in favor of this because it allows them to stay in operation and not have to shut down for a 10-month period while they rebuild. With Garf, we're proposing to sell it for 1 point— just under $1.2 million. This is based on an appraised value associated with the UVX purchase, and when we started negotiating with them, it breaks out to about $21.40 a square foot. They would put $500,000 down, and then the RDA would finance the remaining amount for 15 years with a balloon payment at the end.

Thank you.

Cody has helped us with a cost-benefit analysis that shows— this is strictly based on RDA expenditures and revenues. We would come up with a $152,524 deficit at the end of a 20-year period. But what it doesn't take into account is increased sales at the Garth Nissan dealership. And it also does not take into account the imbalance in the land with Golden Corral. But we were able to generate 3 different scenarios and 3 different break-even points using very conservative projections. The first is taking some of the increase amounts we've seen in other dealerships that we've done these incentive deals with and they've expanded. We've applied that number to this situation, and just with a 1-year increase, and then if sales remain flat moving forward, we would have a break-even period of in year 14 where we would make up that deficit. If Nissan was able to return back to their sales levels of 2 years ago, their break-even point would be less than 4 years. But based on a projection that Nissan provided to us, their forecast would show us breaking even in year 7. So the advantages with this proposal here is it retains and protects our Nissan sales tax base.

base.

We reinforce the strength of this dealership. This does have a 15-year term, and so if Garf were to decide to shut down the dealership or leave, they have to pay off that loan. So it acts as a retention tool. It strengthens our dealership by increasing their acreage from 4.41 acres to 5.68, which is a much better size for a dealership and helps protect against recruiting by other municipalities. We also are replacing 2 20-year-old restaurants with 1 brand new one and improving the look of the corridor with these projects. The disadvantages are that, you know, revenue has to increase for us to realize a benefit, and the dealership could still move out of the city once they pay off the loan. So with that, this is a resolution again And we'd be happy to answer any questions as well as our— the businesses associated.

So on the loan, can it be paid off early?

Yes, they can pay it off early.

Okay. All right. Any questions from the council? Okay. Councilor Seestrand.

So the RDA funding that we're using is designated for this particular area, right? It's not something that would be transferred or used in other That's correct.

This is from RDA 8503, which represents the year it was created. And so this is money that has accumulated in that fund over that time and been built up from the properties within that area, including these businesses. Our property taxes have contributed to—

Well, the result of the original RDA, we've continued to gain even additional RDA funding, which is now becoming available to help this area. How much funding is available in the fund?

Right now, with the investments we've made, I think we're down to around about a $180,000 balance. Maybe it's $200,000. I'd have to double-check with—

And that's part of what— that includes what we've already paid for, for the house and for the other property stuff we've done?

And for the restaurant, correct. So, so any of the payments received by the dealership will go back into that fund?

Yep.

So far, everything we've done has come out of the RDA. and not out of city budgets from that standpoint?

You are correct.

Okay, thank you.

Any other comments or questions, Councilors?

Um, I just wanted to thank the staff and our consultants for kind of scrambling over the last few days because a number of us had peppered you with a bunch of questions by email, and can you tell us more about this or justify this, and it's already been built into this presentation. So I didn't want to kind of have this perception that we're just rubber stamping something if we approve it today. because we've already asked a lot of those questions, and it was part of, I guess you could say, the business case that was presented here and how this makes sense for the city and for everybody involved. So thank you for doing that.

You're welcome.

This is not a public hearing. This is just a resolution. There's no further comments. I would like to make a motion that Orem approve a land exchange and lease agreement with Coral West Properties LLC and a real property sale and financing agreement with Garf Properties Orem, LLC. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay.

Councilmember Seestrand?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Resolution passes. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'd like to move on to the second resolution under the RDA. This is tentatively adopting the RDA Budget for the Redevelopment Agency of the City of Orem, fiscal year 2019 and 2020, and our presenter is Brandon Nelson. And Brandon, you're a little— no, you're okay, never mind.

I am little, yeah.

You are little, yes. You're doing great.

Okay.

So I just want to focus on— if you have your budgets up by chance, page 1 is really the area I kind of wanted— 1 and 2 is to focus on initially here. In the current year, you know, we have our old RDA projects that are all coming to a close here in the near future. as far as receiving funds. Most of those are in 2021, fiscal year 2021, and then we have a few stragglers after that. But the biggest item in relation to the current 2020 budget is the addition of the University Place CDA and the funds related to down at University Place. And you can, you can see Up here on this slide, you can see what we've budgeted for that.

What—

we received funds in the current year, and we will be coming forward with a budget amendment in relation to those funds here in June. And then we have the 2020 budget of $1 million. And as with most of these RDAs, it's somewhat of a guesswork as to where those are— Property tax dollars are going to come in. And so, you know, we do our best estimate based on the information we have from the previous year and try to go forward for that. And that's why we always have obviously budget amendments every year in relation to this RDAs, because of the difficulty it is in estimating exactly the amount of money we're going to get each year. If you— as you go through each of the budget And I don't know if—

is that all we got on there?

Okay.

You know, an item of note in each one of the following pages specific to each project area, you know, we note the base year value when the RDA was created, and then you can see the marginal tax value and the increase in the value over the time the RDA has been in existence. And, you know, they're all just significant in relation to the value having been created. You know, there's always an argument of whether that would have occurred on its own or not, but obviously by helping in that regard, we've somewhat ensured that that value is going to be there.

I don't think those values would have occurred without this help.

I don't disagree, but You know, so anyway, I just wanted to point that out. The last item that I wanted to mention is, you know, in the very last page are the budget amendments that we— like I mentioned, that will be coming with you— to you in June to approve. You can look through those and be prepared, you know, for those things to come forward in June. So are there any questions in relation to the RDA budget?

An interesting phrase that's in, like, page 1 that refers to the haircut. Now, I know we're not into the hairstyling business as a city. Can you explain just what, what is a haircut as it relates to RDA tax funding?

You bet.

So back when these RDAs were created, they were allowed to have an additional property tax carved out of each of those businesses that were within that project area to pay for a sales tax bond that was to fund certain things in relation to that bond. And so these haircut dollars go to pay for that bond specifically. So, you know, earlier we talked about The tax increment dollars, the regular tax increment dollars that we receive. And as you can see from all of these project areas except one, we no longer receive any regular tax increment, regular property tax dollars. We only receive the dollars associated to pay off that sales tax bond. And the only remaining one is Project 9008, which I believe Expires in 2024. Is that clear enough?

I don't know, did that make it clear to you guys?

Yeah.

What a haircut is for—

Yeah, it was trimmed off. That's where the haircut came from. Don't let the name throw you, but tax value—

Of course you have all the hair anyway, so what the heck.

Good you didn't do a mustache trim. That would have been—

Councilman Lentz.

And it wouldn't have been as much.

And with the sales tax bond, did we ever have to dip into our sales tax revenues to pay a portion of that, or has this money always been available and sufficient to pay that bond?

No, early on in the RDA project areas, there was sales tax that did pay for that, so it was treated as a loan. And those RDAs, as they produced property tax, paid back some of that sales tax dollars. I'm not sure— there is, I believe, if I remember correctly, some of that sales tax dollars that potentially could still be paid back. But right now, there is no necessarily an intent to do so.

If I may, Councilmember Lentz, we have completed an evaluation in cooperation with Louis Young. And so we do have an accounting of what those loans are. And if there ever was an opportunity to do that, we could do that.

Do you have any kind of ballpark? Are we talking millions of dollars? Are we talking tens of thousands?

Or—

It's more in the thousands than the millions, and it's different according to each of the respective RDAs.

And it's not every one of the RDAs either?

No. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Okay.

I'd like to make a motion.

Oh, wait, wait, we need a public hearing.

So this does not say that we're holding a public hearing.

Hold up, the public hearing is in June.

I'm sorry, yes, on June 11th.

It's going to be June 18th.

And it's going to have to be a different—

Well, let's go May 28th.

We just canceled the June 11th meeting.

Go May 28th.

That's what I think the intent was, to schedule it on May 28th.

Oh, the next week. The next week. Okay, can I make a motion?

Sure.

Okay, I want to make a motion.

By resolution, the City Council tentatively adopting the RDA tentative budget for the Redevelopment Agency of the City of Orem, fiscal year 2019-2020.

And set a public hearing.

And set a public hearing for May 28th, 2019 at 6:10 PM.

To adopt the final budget.

To adopt the final budget.

Okay, I'll second that. Councilmember Seestrand.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Resolution passes. I would move to adjourn to a meeting of the Special Service Lighting District. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, we are now in a— starting a meeting of the Special Service Lighting District. We'd like to begin by approving the meeting minutes from the last meeting. I move to approve. May 22nd— you have to wait a second. May 22nd, 2018, for the Special Service Lighting District. Is there a motion?

Move to approve.

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, we have a scheduled item for resolution to adopt the Street Lighting Special Service District tentative budget for the Street Lighting Service District Agency of the City of Orem fiscal year 2019-2020, and we have Brandon Nelson as our presenter.

Thank you, Mayor. So as you can see on the presentation slide identifying the major revenues, the item identified as street lighting fees are associated with the fees charged to citizens and businesses within the city. And then the other large item being contributions, the $790,000, which consists of franchise taxes that are collected and then transferred to the street lighting fee as part of an agreement way back once upon a time when we increased the franchise tax from where it was to the maximum that was allowed. And so that has continued. As part of this budget, we recently changed— they expanded Expired. Some of the districts have begun expiring, and we have added a— or replaced the fee associated with some of those expiring districts with a, if you will, a maintenance fee in relation to the street lighting system. And you can see those fees on this schedule here, this slide.

So right now, even with that change, because it's early on, Your budget, you can estimate fairly similar to where it's been?

Correct.

And obviously, as we go forward, we'll be able to better adjust what that ends up being. And so you can see the current fee for the existing neighborhoods that started April 1st, and then the large number of neighborhoods that will come online July 1st. Their fee will go to $234 from the current $325 rate. And then you can see down below when the other neighborhoods in the city will go into effect in relation to that $234 fee.

Those are—

those are the—

oh, I have a question. Question.

So did Cherry Hill and Lakeview already get their lower fees?

Yes.

Is that effective April 1st? Okay, so it won't be something that they'll get a couple months worth of?

Already now.

Already done.

Okay, that's my question.

Yeah, you know, one of the biggest changes obviously was the relation to businesses, which would be paying their fee one time as part of their license renewal. They'll be paying all 12 months up front. So that was a rather large change in relation to theirs to look forward to.

So will you be notifying the businesses by letter that that will occur, or how will you be notifying them?

As the renewal letter goes out, they're notified. For many, many businesses, this will be a big reduction, and they'll look at— because everyone is assessed the $234 per month regardless of the size. So this will be a big change for them. And it's along the lines of we're broadening the base and simplifying.

Sometimes, though, when they see it all, the charge all at once, a bigger— they might— there might be some pushback. You may have to educate them.

Yeah.

I think—

It's explained in the letter of what's going on and that it's coming off their utility bill.

You're broadening the base and lowering the rate. I think Governor Herbert needs your help. So any other comments?

No, that's all I have unless you have any other comments or questions.

Okay. I'd like to make a motion. By resolution, the City Council tentatively adopting the Street Lighting Special Service District Tender Budget for the SSLD agency of the City of Orem fiscal year 2019-2020. And set a public hearing to adopt the final budget on May 28th, 2019 at 6:20 PM.

Second.

Okay. Councilmember Seestrand.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Resolution passes. I would accept a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Okay.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay.

We are adjourned. He was ready.

Woohoo!

So tomorrow?

Not quite, but getting close.

Okay.

Um, everyone on the council, I believe there is a shovel for you on the wall over there for any of you If you want to take a shovel home, you're welcome to do it.

Thanks, Mayor.