City Council · 2019-08-06

All right, it looks like it is now 4:30. We can go ahead and get started since that's the time we were noticed for. Appreciate everybody being here and appreciate everyone who participated in the Orm Fitness Center groundbreaking ceremony. That was very nice. Uh, let's go ahead and turn the time over to Jason Bench for a discussion on moderate-income housing.

Thank you, Mayor. So today Today's just going to be more of an informal discussion on things that we're looking forward to do. Just kind of give you some data points of things that we've discovered for the census and the data that we're— we've looked at. Emily from our office—

Jason, a quick question. When does the census take place and when does it come out, the results?

Do you know? See, May 1st is the actual, I think, census date.

Okay.

the data actually comes out. It's probably like a year later.

Okay.

So that'll be a while. We're actually— we have a census committee for the city that we're sponsoring. We're actually going to go to schools and different things to try to encourage people to take the census. The issues that they've had— this is off topic— but the issues they've had is people don't want to necessarily take it if you're illegal or you're thinking that you're going to get tracked down and booted out of The census is pretty tight as far as availability of any of the data in the census. In fact, they can go to prison if they leak any of that data. So it's really protected as far as what you put on that form is not released for, I think, 50 years or so. So it's pretty significantly protected. So that's our— part of our job is to, I think, educate the school and the public in general to take the data because that's really how the states get their money. based on the data that occurred in the census every 10 years. So it's a really big deal. People, I guess, should take it seriously. I'll get off my soapbox. Hey, can I ask you something?

Sure.

The one thing that was surprising when we did it was at the time we thought from the statistics that Orem was reaching 50,000, and the census came back in around 89,000. The result was we got a pretty significant reallocation of sales tax reduction because of population basis. I always wondered why, why we were off by that significant amount.

And how does the student population figure into that?

So the census is taken where you live at the time. So students or whoever should be taking the census where they live and not back at home.

But if it's being taken in May, then a lot of students may not be there.

It could be, depending on if you're absentee or you get it in the mail and you take it to school with you. It just depends on where you mark where you live is whether you get counted as being from that home. So if your parents live in Alpine and you're going to UVU, but you live at UVU, but you're saying you live in Alpine, it's going to skew the numbers a little bit. Our numbers are based on our population now, based on the average last 10 years because the census is only every 10 years, obviously. They also do data collection during that period. So we're kind of basing it on that. We're basing it on our building permits. We're basing it on different aspects. And so we're kind of an estimation between 10-year periods. We may be a little off. So our estimates may be high, they may be low. So when it comes in next year, we may be closer because we'll get a little more accuracy. in how we're predicting it, but it's still a guesstimation.

Question, as we're going to the local schools, are we also going to UVU and doing some kind of education there to get maybe a group involved in encouraging people to participate?

Yeah, so on our committee, we've actually— Steve Anderson from UVU is part of that committee, so we're going to work with him. We've worked with a member of Zions Bank. We're working with some other local nonprofits to try to see how we best can get the information out, come up with some flyers and different things and distribute it. As a city, we'll probably make the printed copies and then try to disseminate it throughout the city to get people geared up, at least excited, to be excited to take the census. So housing affordability is an issue that I think you're all aware of, not only in the state of Utah but nationwide. There's obviously an issue with Affordability basically means that you're spending about 30% of your income or less for housing costs. That includes utilities. So as you look at affordability of rental— renters, buying a home, if you're spending more than 30% on that mortgage, you're basically below that average and really it's not affordable based on the data that we see. So, I mean, affordable housing could be a lot of different things. Things. You've got single-family homes, you've got multi-family complexes, you've got medium density. This is a project up in Park City. The city's probably helped them. You can see they're a little smaller footprint. There are common areas. There's different things that they made these more affordable. And so it's about $192,000 to $280,000, which Park City is probably very low compared to what the normal rate is. So there are ways that people can look at Making properties more affordable, at least more reasonable.

So Jason, maybe to that point, they did a study as to what the average square footage was per person in a house over the last 50 years. So 50 years ago, 40 years ago, it was 415 square feet per person. Today the average is 1,150 So that goes a long ways towards making your housing not affordable.

Yes. And we've had, during our neighborhood plan processes, we've had people actually complain that we're requiring too small of lots, that they really want these larger lots. And just, it basically contradicts the fact that we're trying to make it more affordable. And not necessarily more affordable or cheap, we're trying to be more reasonable as far as Not 20,000 square foot lots, maybe 8,000 or maybe 7,000. So people can be more affordable getting a house, maybe not as big as this square foot per person, but at least down where people can actually afford it. A home like this in Park City is probably $190,000. It's pretty reasonable. It's out of character, right? But it fits into this area, I'm sure. So just gives us another option.

We don't currently have zoning that would allow that though, do we?

We have PRDs.

Okay.

But they're obviously right now, PRDs are being built at a high, very high standard.

And they're, yeah, they're building up, not as much down, well, single or double story like this, right?

Right, the cost, right. So the cost of— so I don't know if these guys are subsidized by Park City or some other method to bring the cost down.

Yeah.

In Orem, for example, a PRD, the cost of the land itself is so high, obviously, that they're not going to build something like this unless they get some type of help from whether that's OMAG or some other type of entity to help them bring the costs down, to help subsidize, I guess it's called. Or if you get a small enough lot or a small enough unit, then it makes sense for developers to do it without losing money.

So years ago, we approved a subdivision over off of Geneva Road, about 800 South, that was 6,000 square foot lots.

Yep.

And on those 6,000 square foot lots, they have 1,100, 1,500 square foot homes. Much more affordable than what most of the homes you see now that are being built, like Richmond Homes, et cetera. And, you know, we've not wanted to allow 6,000 square foot lots because they would impact the R-7.5, R-8 lots, and it would affect the value of their homes. But certainly there might be areas in the city to consider an R-6 and to maybe look at some restrictions on the— not the minimum, but the maximum size of the home.

Yeah, that's true. That's a good point.

You mentioned Richmond Homes, that we had a project in December 2016. I think it's more and more church that I think David and I were the only 2 to vote for, but that was, um, I think they were zoned for 25 homes. They were proposing 31 homes instead, but we had too many people voting against it because that was too dense.

So is that the one on 4th West?

Yep.

4th West.

I mean, as we're talking about affordable housing, if we're not willing to approve adding 6 more single-family homes because it's too dense, There's going to be a natural conflict there, so we have to reconcile that somehow.

I agree with that. I think it's important though, you have to look at the value of the homes around. So for example, Orem Orchards, one of the considerations we had was the R-7.5, R-8 lots around there and what that would do to the value of their lots. So I'm— I like the idea of an R-6, but in an area where it's not going I think there needs to be some, some type of standard that people build to.

I mean, the Antoinette Estates, I think that's what it's called that you're referring to, when it was built, it was an R-5 development. The R-5 was created for that project. When it went in, it was kind of maybe before its time, and everybody got scared and spooked when they got these smaller homes on these smaller streets and smaller setbacks, and basically took We don't allow that anymore.

Which one, where was that built?

This is the one on Geneva Road.

Geneva Road about 8 south.

There were small homes built on about 2nd East, I think, and 12 South. It's either 2nd East, I think it kind of goes through near— well, you know where that—

you know them.

There's little homes built right there. Do you know what I'm talking about, Jason, or not? 12 South, and I think 2nd East.

It could be Main. The affordable— or the senior housing? I didn't think they were senior, but they're a little—

it's surrounded by white vinyl fencing.

Recently done, a couple years ago. Yeah. How has that gone?

I voted against it. I think everyone was for it.

There was a large concern that it was too small.

Sold out.

Yeah.

And of course you have, if you go far enough back, the Geneva Homes over on the west side on 8th West. West and 4th North, 2nd North, so forth. Those are small lots and small homes, but they're affordable.

And part of that— we'll talk a little bit about that as we get forward— part of that, because the state's changed its law to require us now to do a little more master planning, a little more inclusion in our general plans on affordable housing, moderate-income housing, things like that. So those areas, whether we adopt that street or whatever, or Complete Street or something, go into these neighborhoods and actually help them increase the curb appeal so that people with homeownership and other things come into that neighborhood. If we don't do something like that, or at least encourage redevelopment, encourage not necessarily development, but improvements along that area, we're going to see some more gentrification and demo in the future if we don't help in that area.

In that development in Park City, you used the Are there homes around there where there's kind of that halo effect the mayor talked about where home values around there have gone down as a result of having affordable homes in the neighborhood?

I don't have the data, but I would scarcely say it has affected it at all. In fact, it probably helped because these are newer developments that are moving in. You get the complaint a lot that if you build these smaller homes, new homes next to my big giant mansion, it's going to reduce my cost of insurance.

Well, particularly if what was there before was dumpy, run-down places that they took down.

Any place in Park City is valuable.

Yeah, but if they replaced an old falling-down place with that, the neighbors would probably be happy. If it was an empty lot, maybe not so.

So it'd be interesting, you know, to maybe sometime look at programs the city could put in place to help some of these folks. Some of the older homeowners refurbish or whatever. We have that in place with businesses whereby if they're going to add some things, we can get them some paint or some siding or whatever. It might be interesting to look at doing that with some of the housing.

Part of our kind of this going forward is working with Canada to do some type of affordable housing charrette We sit down with some key stakeholders in the city and come up with ideas like that and say, okay, how can we borrow whatever funds we have within the CBG?

Sure.

Whatever monies we have available, we can help influence that. So that's something we're going to look forward to. So how is affordable housing— why does it matter? I mean, you probably know people that are struggling. Obviously, if you don't have a dual-income house, if you have a single-income house, it's kind of hard So one of our candidates running for office, his daughter has moved back to Utah from North Carolina, has 5 children, and can't find a place to live in Orem. So our— just this off— not in Orem, but our intern is getting married and moving to Salt Lake to go to the University of Utah. They're looking for a home in Draper because he's going to the Y and she's going to the U. So they're on a list, multiple lists of these apartment complexes that are available, and within 10 minutes they're gone. So see, they have not been able to find an apartment because as soon as it becomes available, it's gone immediately. So I mean, the housing crunch is a pretty serious issue that obviously there's not one solution, there's a lot of solutions. We're trying to help with that, but it's not a quick solution, quick solution. But it affects everybody that we know. I mean, nurses, public safety, everybody is affected if you're a single income. Unless you really have a well-to-do background, obviously you're struggling to afford living in Utah County and the state of Utah too. So These are kind of broken down into 4 different categories. One is a single individual living alone. Poverty level is if you're making less than $12,490, and that accommodates— accounts for about 6% of Guam's population makes below that amount as a single individual. As you go low-wage workers, that's below the $29,000. Low-income housing is a housing unit that makes less than $46,000. And moderate income, which is between $80,000 and $100,000. 120% of the median income of the county, $69,000. So if you take those average salaries and equate that to a monthly rent based on that 30%, the top 2 are pretty hard to come by. Try to find a rent that's $300 or $700 a month.

Could you go back a slide? I'm not sure if it was a typo in that last bullet point, but that's 22% at the bottom. One above it is 22%.

24%.

Should that be 32% at the bottom? Some other number?

Is it between 80% and 20%? Yeah, but—

oh, you're saying it— are you saying it's above 46 but below 69?

That's okay. Yep.

So that is not per person, that's for a household.

That's for a household. So it could be a, you know, could be houses One worker could be— so that's about 64% of our population are making our moderate income.

It might be good just to clarify that we're talking about in that last bullet point above the 46 number but below 60. In other words, in between, because I didn't catch that part.

I was confused initially. Yeah, that's what that is.

But you're right, there are no apartments out there for $700 a month.

I mean, Orem is in a decent position when the state's come out with all these different regulations now that we need to meet. We've had a lot in the '70s and '80s, we had a lot of fourplexes, a lot of duplexes, a lot of things were built that we see throughout the city that help us meet some of these lower demands. But even those rents, even as these new products come online, they fill up.

Well, rents are going up 5% a year.

And the rents are going up on what we would have assumed would backfill with lower rents, but that's not happening because the population is increasing.

So a lot of people who couldn't afford a home would typically rent a home, but now they're getting squeezed out of renting a home.

The key statistic that I think that you could take away today, even from the 1970s, From the '70s into the 2000s, we had more housing units available than we had created families, or the families that were created. And now you can see in 2011 to 2017, we have more families that are created, marriages and all those moving in or whatever from our own growth, than we do have the housing stock to do that.

Also, during the Great Recession, we were not building homes to keep up, and supposedly, according to Vision In Utah, we're 50,000 homes behind to get where we need to be.

Even if we're talking about the Hub student housing development that was being built, the county in general is about 15,000 student housing units, I believe that's what they were saying. So even with all these coming online, we're still well below what we need to meet the demand of just the current housing market. And if we're thinking of growing, well, We are going to grow, right, in the next 30, 40 years, double the size. The housing crunch is just going to get worse.

And I remember years ago we were considering some of the apartments that were coming in, like Canyon Crossing and so forth, and they were all saying they were building Class A apartments. And we said, how can you build Class A apartments and fill them when the guy just down 4 blocks is doing the same thing? And we asked them about their marketing studies, and they said that there's plenty of demand, there's no problem, and they've all filled.

Yeah, in talking to some of the developers of these Woodberries and all of them, they're at capacity, right? They're 96 or 95 plus, which is basically full, right? Because you always have to save 20%. It's an issue. We're not here to solve the problem necessarily tonight, but to let you know that we're working and trying to come up with some solutions. So some of the issues that we're having— just moving along here, plenty of time— some of the issues: the lack of funding, the cost and availability, current zoning. I mean, we've done a lot of work in the city to encourage. We've got the districts in place. We've got some student housing projects that we've approved. So different things. We do still have some neighborhood resistance in some of that. And the fact that We don't want to build necessarily low-income housing in all the neighborhoods because with the impression that if you build low-income or moderate-income housing next to me, my housing costs are going to go down, my property is going to go down in value, which I think we can show that that's not the case. That you can build new homes, smaller homes next to each other and still make it work.

But if someone bought a home in an R-8 or an R-12 or whatever and the property is zoned that, They bought in part believing that someone—

that that's what would be built. Absolutely.

And I think Mark has often talked about we have to have a reason to change it. And obviously this could be a reason, but the neighbors are saying, no, keep it R-8 or R-12 or R-7.5 because that's what we built and that's what we thought we would be surrounded by. So when we change the zoning, we do some disservice to the current residents.

Yeah, and I'm not here tonight to say we want to change all the residential zones. That's not hard to enter a point. But is to look at maybe a PRD, maybe looking at some different ways to do a PRD. Right now we have a minimum size of an acre and a half or above, you can do a PRD. But we're missing between the 20,000 square foot lot, which is the maximum size you can have now unless you have an ag type zone, between an acre and a half. So there's that gap in between there that we could probably make some mechanism where we could do some more between Homes or things like that that would fit within a single-family neighborhood, it would be just as reasonable or just as fit in, I guess, the neighborhood, what you get to see. Maybe a little smaller, but the look and the feel of the neighborhood I think would be the same. So some of the things that we've done, like we talked about, we've done student housing developments. We went to the groundbreaking on the Hub this last week. The— what is it called— the Green on Campus Drive, that's another student housing project that we've done. We're talking to a lot of developers on State Street to do some of the high-density housing, mixed-use developments. We do have 5 right now senior housing overlay projects that we've done for the seniors.

So Jason, you say we've done them, but how recent are those?

I guess we haven't done them, the developers have done them.

We have 5 projects in But I mean, is that ongoing right now?

The last one was about a year and a half ago.

So that's an active situation?

Yeah, we get inquiries probably monthly on where to build a senior— what can we do, what do we need to do to build a senior housing project. We do have, of course, the Orem Biennial Plan that we approved in September of 2018, which identifies some of the things which I'll get into. We do have the mandate now from the state that basically in addition to the biannual report, now we have to do a moderate-income housing portion of our general plan, which our biannual report includes part of that. By December 1st, 2020, we have to implement several of the items that they've outlined in their state code, which is 23 items, which actually I've identified I think we meet at least 5 of them. So we have to at least meet 3 and have to send an annual report yearly starting in 2020, how we're meeting that requirement. So the state is actually now looking at all cities to try to help resolve some of these issues, not just relying on Provos and Orem and other Salt Lakes. So some of the recommendations we want to bring forward in maybe just the next few minutes, maybe get some ideas from you if any of these Yeah. And we'll see if these resonate or if there's something we want to identify that's not here.

But update our—

and adopt our moderate-income housing plan, which we're going to work on. Host an affordable housing charrette. Consider inclusionary zoning, which is basically, do we want to require developers to include in their development the need to have a certain number of them or percentage of them be meeting that median income housing Do we want to partner with— do a private partnership with an agency to develop some moderate-income housing? Fast-track affordable housing, reduce the lot size, housing size, explore community land trusts, which Provo is kind of spearheading as well.

And just so you know, Senator Mike Lee is actually working on that for federal land. availability for a land trust for us in Utah County. And I've met with him twice on it, and he supposedly is going to be coming out with something in the next 3 to 4 months as a suggestion whereby the federal government could allow some of their land to be leased for $1 a year and somebody could build on it on a 99-year lease.

You're asking for money. I figured it was a 99-year lease deal.

And Senator Lee said that the most often thing he's questioned on is affordable housing in Utah.

Definitely is a component of housing that we're not meeting. I've heard stories, or the projection that we're on, trajectory I guess, is that we're going to be a San Francisco basically.

Yes.

If we don't do something about it, the housing costs in San Francisco will be the same as you see in Utah, in New Orleans, or any other area. Talking with a planner in San Francisco when I was there last year, basically it takes about 2 years to get any project through that city, which is a big hindrance for developers to come in. If you're expecting to spend 2 years just going through the bureaucracy getting something approved, the likelihood of getting anything developed is going to be far more difficult.

And their average rental for an apartment is $3,000 a month.

So anyway, there's a lot. I mean, we're fairly quick here, but I mean, there's some things that we could look at to help developers, to help—

I like all the items you have on there.

Just a comment on the second to last one with the middle, the missing middle housing. We had Bill Holderstrom come from United Way I think it was 3 years ago, talking about how the number one factor to reduce crime is how connected people feel with their community, with their neighbors, and things like that. And I think with that missing middle housing, not only does that help address the short-term affordability, but it also helps address long-term. Because if you have a condo or a townhouse or a smaller home where somebody can purchase it and own it, you're helping them work on that affordability long-term, where they're They're building equity. The money is going into their own asset as opposed to, you know, just paying somebody else rent. And I think as people own the property, it also helps with— they're more invested in their little community there, their neighbors, getting to know their, you know, the people next door, taking better care of their property if it's their asset kind of thing. So as far as how we address— I think all these are certainly worth consideration, but that's one of them. I think that's one area, if we're identifying this as one of our primary areas of focus as a council, I think that's one area where we can have a really direct impact to help people find, you know, the affordable home that I can actually buy and own and take care of for a longer period of time, as opposed to just finding a cheap place to rent for the next year.

A good example is the Colonies up on 8th North, who were built in the '80s, and they're very, very popular, kind of the colonial style. Townhouse type thing. But I mean, all those types have— they've been well maintained, yes, but they're very popular. You don't see a lot of them for rent or for sale. I mean, they're—

They go quick when they're up.

Yeah. Okay. Not to mention the shortage of housing, but it's well kept, right? So if we can encourage people to not only build those types of housing but then maintain them— and the homeownership is a big factor, I think.

But to that point, uh, the market's changed where it used to be 60% single-family residential and 40% rentals, and now it's 40% single-family residential, 60% rentals. So it's a pretty dramatic market change.

That's true. So the city, I think, can help in trying to facilitate whether that's code enforcement or a combination of all the above to get people to maintain, whether that's an absentee landlord or whatever, to maintain the neighborhood. so that we can keep the neighborhood overall. It doesn't matter if they're renting or buying it, I guess, necessarily. The fact is that we need to maintain our neighborhoods. So whether that's a good landlord type project or whatever it is, we need to look at doing that to help facilitate the city in general maintaining housing. Anyway, that's all I have. If there's any questions or comments. Last year or so, I think it was Salt Lake or West Jordan loosened their requirements On accessory apartments. I was just wondering if you've heard anything, how that's working out, or— I know they're still working out, I think, some of the details on that. I think they're a little more restrictive on what they allowed, so they kind of loosened up in other parts that didn't allow them. But you're getting more accessory apartments? Yes. I mean, the forum, for example, allows them anywhere, right? So I guess we could look at The requirements that we require now maybe soften those a little bit. We're only requiring 1 parking stall off-site for an accessory apartment. Other communities are requiring 2 and 3 parking stalls. So right now we're pretty limited on what we require, but it is expensive to separate your house into another unit because you've got to have the separate heating and cooling and stuff. So one option that we could consider too is having detached, but, you know, in Portland it's very popular in other communities where you actually have structure in the back like you see in Berkshire and other things. It's a lot larger scale, but I mean something smaller maybe doesn't have as expensive heating and cooling areas as they would do something detached. Pleasant Grove has that ordinance, but they don't have any detached yet. So that's something we can look at and see what communities have allowed it and see what the impacts are. So we're looking at all the solutions— or not all solutions, All ideas, we'll bring them forward. We may get shot down on some, but at least looking at the possibilities of different solutions to the road.

So I did ask Planning Commission if they would start looking at our accessory apartment ordinances and kind of get looking about the next few months if they could weigh in on that.

So look for something, I don't know, what do you think, by the end of the year maybe? I think we could do that. We have a study session to talk about that.

So we should have some good ideas from that.

Also, Provo has built some affordable housing down next to Frontrunner. They have several blocks where they have made the lots very small and the houses much more affordable and the apartments more affordable. And it'd be interesting to look at what they've done. They've got some good projects going on.

Housing Authority now. That's a good idea.

So as far as like the Imagine Orem program and the tools and resources you have there, I'm wondering if we could have some kind of campaign addressing rentals on a broader scale that could take in things like the accessory apartments. Like, you know, would it be a good idea to have a rental licensing program, and if so, what would that look like? And take in some of these Kind of rental topics, but open it up to the public so that we can get more input as opposed to, you know, just having the heads in the room trying to come up with, hey, we should do this and this and this.

Part of our charrette that we're going to propose, working with Kenna and others, is to actually try to reach out to the neighborhoods, try to invite all those that have participated with us in the past, the neighborhood plans and all that, to get them in the same room. This is our chance to— let's talk about solutions. They may all be— it may be some that are outlandish, And that's where we get the ideas to generate to say, hey, let's make a list of all these things and then we can vet them out as we move forward. So that's our idea, is to get to the public, invite all the public to participate.

I am starting to get a lot more questions or concerns related to Airbnbs and short-term rentals where somebody has a house next door to them that got turned into like a party house or almost a reception area where people have weddings and things. And so they'll just get slammed with dozens of cars, and then it's— we need some kind of, you know, more consistent strategic approach to how we address situations like that so it doesn't take over.

So just an example, Airbnb in Anaheim, California, we were looking at getting an Airbnb to go to Disneyland, right, with my family. And they were so restrictive that you cannot go outside after 10 o'clock. They forbid the family to go Outside. So if you have a pool, you can't swim. You can't go outside to watch the fireworks. You can't do anything or the police will come and potentially give you a ticket. And it's about a $2,600 fine.

That's why we had to bail you out, actually.

It was the city itself. In order to keep the peace with the neighbors that aren't part of Airbnb, they had to have so many restrictions that you can't park on the street. You can't have music. It was crazy to me. There's so many restrictions, but I mean, that's, that's what you have to deal with.

So Jason, one thing that maybe I'd encourage you to look at and maybe let us know is the Airbnb laws in Palm Springs, California. They've actually gone through the whole process and then revised all their laws and gone through it again, and they actually have a pretty good setup going. It's one that a lot of people are looking at. Palm Springs, California.

So are you guys interested in looking at Airbnb?

No, no, I'm not interested at all, but I'd like to have you look at that to stay ahead of the game.

I am interested in having that conversation.

By the way, I hope so. Okay, thank you.

All right, thanks.

Kind of a fun thing along these lines is one of the things we're doing in our program at UVU is we pick a social problem and we try to encourage students to do a little more in-depth study of the problem. This year we picked affordable housing as our emphasis.

Great.

So I'm really hopeful that as students see how this affects them, a lot of the students graduate with a degree to teach school or to be in various professions and their income's $35,000 to $45,000 and they realize They don't have any place they can live now that they're no longer students. It really— it could be really fun, I think, if we can utilize your information as well as the context to try to help students better understand the problem and then hopefully come up with some possible solutions. I'd be excited about the conversation. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Anything else coming up you want to inform us on, or are you okay?

Uh, for next time, yes. You want me to talk about it now?

Um, yeah, since you're right here.

I think I sent the email yesterday, right, about—

This man, the dinner is here.

Okay, okay. I saw it.

Yeah, he just—

yeah, okay.

Um, yeah, why don't we do that? So, fine. Dave, can we have you give us a word?

Our dear Heavenly Father, we bow our heads before you today with thankfulness and blessing for the opportunity to serve the citizens of Long Beach. Bless us that we might make the right decisions, that we might have a good evening, and bless us with food and nourishing bodies, and just what we need, that we might have a good evening. In Jesus Christ's name. Amen. Mayor, is it also—

it looks like that's going concurrently through the city Whatever is required, then if you'll send it in, we'll disseminate it out. The better we can tell people, it just kind of puts us in a rough spot. We get people complaining to us that we're not doing anything, and then we give them permission, and then the contractors say, well, they have permission.

It just—

that makes it so much—

So the way we're going to handle it, first, the contractors send us a request for permission.

When I'm bored, I shop.

All my grandkids are gone. They all went back to Hawaii.

My daughter moved to Texas. My other daughter's in California. There is no one in my house.

My house is spotless.

My yard, and I'm like, and so it's like, I'm your shopper.

I do have grandma funds, and I do have room funds, and I do have this, so I have budgets in my house. Cool.

I'm sorry to see you.

Tommy Charlie?

Tommy Charlie?

You tell me when you're ready, Jason. You tell me when you're ready.

If we could, we're going to go ahead and let Jason Tell us what you've got.

We have 5 items coming up next time on the 27th. One of them is Golden Corral. Planning Commission will hear them tomorrow night for their site plan. Everything looks really good. Ryan's excited to get that finally approved. But they'll be here— the PB-5 does require site plan approval through City Council.

Aren't we doing a groundbreaking before we have the site plan approved?

Not anymore.

Oh, okay, that's why.

Okay, thank you. Uh, the other one is an ordinance amendment to PD-22 zone, which is the WinCo area out there. There's a development that wants to come in and do a child care structure and have an outdoor play area. The fence requirement now is 4 feet between the street and the building. They want to increase it to 6 feet. Chain link currently is not allowed, so it'd have to be some type of wrought iron or something so it'd be a see-through. They would also have to meet the clear vision.

Is that on the land the church is selling, or is that on—

it's actually the one by Malagros, the vacant building. Okay, thank you. That would affect all the PD-22s. That's what they're affecting, 4-foot to 6-foot height. Chick-fil-A came in about a month A month or so ago and wanted to put some shade covers over the drive-through for the workers to stand out there and take our orders. We go there a lot, so I know. Right now the district doesn't allow for that type of thing, and so this amendment actually would allow for a minor amendment to a site plan for those types of amenities that don't add square footage but actually add some ability for them to run their business without needing a whole big My only question on that is sometimes we hear from residents that they—

they're awning on their patio or something like that. They might say, well, if you're not going to count that toward their setback, whatever, then I shouldn't have to in my house. So are we prepared to address that on a broader scale than just in the—

So it's not counting setback, it's counting because they're not any addition to anything within the district. as far as it would meet current standards. So this would meet all the setbacks. It's just adding additional covered area to their site plan, which is currently not allowed.

Okay.

So this doesn't affect necessarily setback. That's a good point. This is more of, can we add additional square footage— not square footage, but covered space that doesn't really have gross square usable space for the business?

Okay.

So that one's coming up. Also enacting the arts district for the U-board. We're hoping to have a couple projects coming in. Students want to get that together as far as discuss the art requirement.

Has Vasa come in to talk to you at all?

My name is North.

The owner of that property?

It's been about a year ago. Okay.

Yeah, I mean, they they don't want to do a swimming pool or a tennis club. They have both of those in that property. They they've said they want to tear it down and and move forward with a mixed-use facility.

Based on our last conversation, it was working with the developers to just do exactly that. And then the last one is actually we've been working at it for.

Quite a while.

Right now we have applications, some of them have been pending for many, many years. We want to put a cap on how long they can have an active application. If they're not really active, they pursue the application, but there's a timeline that starts that says you've got a year to make— be progressing to getting that approved, otherwise it expires.

So that's what these amendments would affect: preliminary plats, subdivisions, site plans, and then rezones, protection Do we have a list of items of if you do one of these things, then it extends you for another year? Like sometimes I'll get emails from an airline miles thing, hey, your miles are going to expire unless you do one of these 3 things, kind of thing. Is that kind of the approach we're using there?

It would have to be something active, actively pursuing it, meaning they're waiting for their engineer to give us the plans or something like that. It's something that, like a building inspector right now could come in I just want to have an inspector come out to my house and just do a walkthrough, and that extends the permit 6 months. I don't want to do something like that where it just— something minor extends it another 6 months, because right now we really need to either move off that because we have ordinances change all the time. We don't want them vested in 3-year-old ordinances that has changed now that they would have to meet these requirements. So it'd have to be something significant. Probably Ryan would have to make that determination. Anyway, those are the 5 items we have.

Also, south of Monteval on State Street, what's happening with that?

We did talk to ICOS, actively pursuing that. We've had conversations last week, and as of yesterday, I talked to them. They're trying to make it work with a commercial And Meadowgold, Reg Development is trying to make that— They're very active pursuing theirs as well. They're waiting for us to bring the amendment forward to reduce their parking.

So if you have Vasa and you have Monteval, and then, you know, you have Meadowgold, those are 3 very large projects in the city as far as apartments go, high density.

Based on what we're getting from developers, it's really the parking is kind of high for them. So if we can get that down to where it pencils for them, I think we'll see these projects move forward pretty quickly.

And then Central Utah Water on University Parkway, that's still in a matter of flux, trying to decide.

They want to be on the 27th. I'm not sure if we're going to take any hope there, but that's potentially the And that likewise would be a big project for us.

So my understanding with Montebello is not necessarily that they didn't plan on parking spaces, but that they started charging for parking and then people were just choosing, choosing to park in the neighborhood to avoid paying for the permit. So if they came with a proposal to add phase 2 or whatever you want to call it, could we retroactively say, for us to agree to this, you You can't charge for parking even on your original project?

Well, part of our amendment will actually include that statement that they cannot. It has to be all-inclusive in their rent, so they can't charge separately. I don't know about retroactively. I have something to speak to there.

Well, if you remember, they were parking on the street, and then we asked that the street be ripped, uh, curb, which is what the city did, and that helped to bring some of the parking in.

Yeah, they've already—

But a lot of it just got pushed Further back into the neighborhood.

So they did change the way they were doing it as well, so they kind of helped their issue that they had, stopped charging for some of those spaces. That's kind of— we built that in where they can't charge, they can't ask for parking reductions. So by us coming in and actually reducing the amount of parking, we've also eliminated the ability for them to ask for exceptions or different things as well.

How many parking—

what—

how many parking Per bed, are they looking at?

So right now we're proposing to go 1.75 per unit.

How many beds?

Regardless of whether it's a 1-bedroom, a studio, a 2-bedroom, or 3-bedroom, the average— well, it would be 1.75. So we're hoping the average, overall average, would meet that requirement. Right now we're requiring 2-bedroom or lower, 2.5. Over 3 bedrooms is 3.5. Which is just too high for them. On an average, we talked to several developers, average development— Ico was a good example. Their average on all their projects is 1.75.

If we look at what we just approved in the Peg project, it was 0.8-something per bed, right? I don't know how to equate that to 1.75 per unit if I don't know how many 3-bed, 2-bed, and 1-bed there are. So when that comes forward, I would like to know how many per bed that is to know if it's equivalent to what we just approved.

Count by beds, one bed or two?

Well, part of the issue they have is that 3-bedroom units right now are not leasing, are not renting because they're just too big. They're charging too much for them, and so they're getting the 2-bedrooms or one-bedroom or studio apartments are the ones that the market right now is absorbing very well. The 3-bedrooms, they're still building some of those, but they're not renting as heavily. And so what we've heard from developers is, yeah, they'll probably still build some 2-bedrooms, but it's going to be a 10% or 15% of our project. The other ones are going to be the studios, 1-bedrooms.

Yeah, we know the mix.

We can do the math. Right.

Okay. So we had a groundbreaking for a HUD this past week, and they're looking at 1,100 beds that they're building, and they also have purchased property just to the east of Wolverine Crossing, which was going to be the high-rise, 12-story hotel, etc. And they're looking at starting on that as well with 1,100 beds over there. So if all of these come through, it's going to be pretty intense.

I think, you know, potentially one of the challenges, if I'm right, is like the Monteval project Tom, is that they're not going to furnish it, so we won't know how many beds a particular family will choose to put in there.

Right.

It's going to be hard to get a number of beds. If they're renting it to a family, then you're going to assume that some of them are under 16 and their kids at home, right? So that's a little bit different than the Woodbury Pike project. Yep, yep, exactly, students. So we knew beds then, but I don't know if we'll know beds in the Monomah project. But again, if it's mom and dad and a couple kids, we're going to assume that it's not a car for every occupant.

And part of our discussion and part of our presentation will be how we've come up with the average and solution, and hopefully work out the details of how that 1.75 is going to work.

And that'll be a big thing because if we get it wrong, it's going to be a big problem.

And yeah, Ryan and I have had this discussion. If we build a project and this— it just doesn't work, then we'll be back in front of you saying we screwed up, we need to fix it. So, but hopefully based on our parking study the university completed and our information that we're going to provide, hopefully not convince, but at least help justify why we think 1.75 million. Okay, thank you.

Dave, did you have a report for us today?

Oh, before we leave, Jason, I didn't know you were there. I just I just want to, and I think all of you have done this via email, is compliment both Jason and Ryan on that new GoTo. You can see all the projects that are being built. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.

For everybody.

Yeah, for everybody.

Much appreciation to Julie in our office.

She's the one maintaining that, put it together.

Well, then I take back what I said about the two of you, and I'd like to direct that to We found her information and she does all the work. It's very good. Thank you to everyone involved.

Okay, so, um, I'm, uh, with the, uh, Beautification Commission, and, um, they had an entry in the float for Summerfest. Um, they've given out 25 beautification awards, 22 to homes and 3 to businesses so far this Do you know the businesses?

What's that?

Do you know the businesses?

Usually Aaron, I think. Yeah, if he's still—

yep, he's still there.

Um, and then now the commission members are writing an article in the newsletter, um, one about, uh, you know, helping bees by planting certain plants that help them. Um, some of the drive cell rolls is another one, and water So that's beautification on the rec commission.

Now Dave, were they—

they were really pushing for these new signs with Centennial when I was on the beautification. Are they happy with the ones we've done? Yeah, they're happy. So then the rec commission, we just got through with the groundbreaking at the rec center, the fitness center. So that was one of their big pushes. Carl, can you speak to the Sarah Pool, Sarah Park Pool, and the Senior Center transition?

Sarah Park Pool, it's a hot summer. We're having a great, having a great summer. We're making some money there. We, the first 2 weeks, we were really nervous, but yeah, we're having $4,000, $5,000, $6,000 days. People are using it. I think they're extending the hours a little bit to allow lap swimmers, lap swimmers, I believe, as we talked about. We're fully expecting to extend that into September and October, as long as weather will allow with that. So I think it's, I think it's been a good move there.

So are you sectioning off an area that's more for the lap swimmers?

Lap swim early.

Okay. 6 to 9.

From 6 to 9 in the morning, so we don't— they make sure to have their own space.

So, Carl, the people that were fitness center, you know, members were able to get a 25-punch pass.

Have those been being redeemed?

People are using them on that. They get the unlimited swimming in the morning also, but they are, they are using that. But we got a lot of people coming. I would encourage you to come over and take a look at the senior center. I think it turned out pretty well on that. It's, uh, people still have a mental issue about coming to a senior center, but I would encourage you to possibly—

Well, Brent and Tom don't, so.

I don't go to that.

I go to swimming, but I don't go to the rest of it. Check out the video I'm going to send you, Monty.

Okay. Oh, is that right?

Where's the video, Brett?

It's the livestream on the city's Facebook page. Brett's doing about 10 miles an hour on the treadmill.

I'm just really rocking.

We were hoping for a higher number of people using it. We're going to do a big push in September once everybody's back, ready to go to school. We were hoping to keep about 40% of our members. We're really down in the low 20s. So we're, uh, that has not been a successful keynote. We hope that now that we've got something to sell and something to show, we'll run a good sale. But, uh, it's been popular. We've worked through a lot of the boats. I don't think the seniors are afraid of us as much as they were. You know, we proved to them that they're not going to lose anything and it's all going to work out.

Mayor Fernandez, Kay had planned to buy a membership at some other club while we were closed, and I said, well, before you do that, go try it out. She came back and said, oh yeah, it's great. So thank you for what you've done there.

Everybody I've walked through the building says, I had no idea this building was this big and that it would be this nice. So I really think if we can get people in the door, we can sell passes for a while we're shut.

Our classes basically just moved over.

We didn't lose any, but what we did lose is the ones coming to the weight room and the cardio. If we can get them there, I think we can get them back.

Okay, and then maybe I'll ask Steve maybe just a little update on if it's solved.

Yeah, so that is They're looking at probably sometime early fall for, for completing that. All the concrete's poured. I think many of you know we received grants from RSL, from Rocky Mountain Power, Wells Fargo, Utah County, the U.S. Soccer Foundation are all helping to participate in that project. And at the same time, we're going to be replacing the playground. I sent all the renderings to everybody. It'll It'll be the first shaded playground that we have, so that'll be, that'll be exciting.

Looks really nice.

Yeah, it'll be, and it matches the colors of the court that you'll see there. So that project's coming, uh, underway. It came in under budget, so we're excited about how that will finish.

And then I think, uh, yeah, all abilities playground, um, it's definitely a lot of wear and tear, and talk to Steve about, uh, floor. Is coming up in certain places, so they're going to repair that.

Yeah, we—

and aren't we getting a little more shade there as well?

And we actually— I just got the quote today for shade, to shade a handful of parts of it: the toddler swings, the wheelchair swing, the merry-go-round. Um, I want to say— I think there's one other component, but yeah, adding shade there. And so the company that does the surfacing is a traveling company. They don't— there isn't enough business to just stay here locally. So we have to find them when they're coming through. What we understand is September is when they're going to be coming through. What Reed and his team is planning is to have somebody shadow them during that so that we're, we're able to make those fixes ourselves in the future and not wait for them to be coming through. It is warrantied for 8 years, and so we're 3 years into our 8-year warranty, but the use of it is just so heavy, and the tear is on those areas that are really high A lot of traffic, a lot of around the merry-go-round, underneath the tire swing, in those areas. So we, I mean, we know how to stop the tear, but that prevents people from coming. So we're just, we just need to find a better way to be able to patch it and kind of keep up with it.

But that's a good problem to have.

People still continue to come from out of town. Almost every time I'm there, there's people there that are first time and their friend has been there and they invited them. So it continues to be a huge, huge draw and asset to the community. Good.

Thanks, Steve.

That's all I got there.

Maybe just related to that, we're also looking at adding shade and additional kind of 2 to 5-year-old features like a long hill garden. And then from there, we'll maybe add something there.

Yeah, we met, you know, during the CARE process, you allocated money for shade and toddler structures. We met with some families in the Bonneville neighborhood to ask about where's the priority and where would they want additional toddler space. Should we take something out, add more? We got some really, really good feedback from these neighbors that will kind of help guide that decision.

That's the best way to do it.

Yeah, we've, you know, with all these recent parks— in fact, this is, uh, Reed's not in the room, but to Reed and Chris and his team, all these park improvements We've been using our email system that we have and targeting the neighborhoods specifically, surveying them. And we're getting hundreds and hundreds of responses, which, again, traditionally, an open house with cookies, 10 people show up. Most people prefer to do it from home. All the designs have been based off the feedback of these residents.

And these areas are their community.

Yeah.

So they should have input into it.

Yep. And so, again, props to Chris and his team for putting that together. But we're just— yeah, some things are really, really going well in the park here. We just demoed the courts at Bonneville. So those pickleball courts and the new tennis court with improved lighting.

What's the timetable?

Do you have the timetable on Bonneville?

Probably in 6 weeks.

They're pouring the concrete on the 12th.

It's the same team that's doing the futsal courts, same contractor.

So, yeah.

I've even heard from a lot of people that are like tennis people and just having like one really good court versus the 2 crummy courts that have been there, they're excited. So I was worried about, you know, are they going to be worried about losing an extra court? For the most part, it's been pretty positive.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. Sam had some questions about the internal Sure. And I wanted to bring a couple of things up to begin with. Uh, in talking with Greg Stevens, we discussed that he was going to call Sam today and discuss and go over any questions that Sam may have that are general questions. I'd like to bring up that on the other items that were discussed during the closed-door session should only be discussed in a closed-door session. And this is an ongoing investigation, so no information should be given out, no action taken, nothing should occur until the investigation is complete.

Sam? Sure.

And I, I had some questions that I had planned to ask in our closed session that we had scheduled, but I got overruled and that meeting got canceled. So I've tried to customize these questions a little bit to what Would be fitting in an open meeting, but Greg, if there's anything that you're not able to or it's just not appropriate to address that in this meeting, then we can table that for the time being. But first of all, I was wondering if we could just get an update on the investigation itself. Like who who's currently investigating the matter? What's the scope of what they're in other words does this include? Is it specific to past conduct, or is it specific to what we discussed in the closed meetings? Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Okay, I don't feel like it'd be appropriate to say anything about the substance of it. I think the council is aware of what materials were forwarded for review. I can say that at the council's direction, we have forwarded this It's currently with the Utah County Sheriff's Office.

Um, and at this point we don't know, like, what charges they're pursuing or researching or anything like that?

No, it's all— it's their review. They have the materials and will make those decisions.

And they don't—

they haven't provided any kind of estimate? as far as how long that will take or when we'll hear back next or anything along those lines. The questions I have for the most part just have to do with general Utah state law. First of all, is it, is it possible for an elected official to be placed on paid or unpaid administrative leave? Is that even a mechanism that's available in Utah?

It's not a provision that's included in state law. If you— if the city council would like us to research an issue like that, we'd be happy to do so. We'd probably then give you a little bit of a summary of the law on that.

I was reading up on, um, Herriman, where there was an issue where their mayor got caught up in something and They had asked for his resignation and he refused, but they took some steps to try to minimize his impact, I guess, on the council with, you know, stripping him of his board and committee assignments, dramatically reduced his salary, some of those types of things. Is that something that you've seen other cities do? Is that— is there like a state law that talks about if that's an appropriate way for a city to respond to a situation. I'm just— I'm trying to make sense of, is what Harriman did, like, legal or allowed under state law, or is that— are they just kind of hoping that nobody calls them out on it, I guess?

I'm not aware of any provision of state law that addresses that. Again, that would be another matter where if the city council directed us to do so, we would conduct some legal research on that.

Okay.

And I—

the only other question would be if, like, what are the situations where an elected official can be removed from office, and if they do or if they resign, What process is used to fill that opening?

Okay, so there are 2 state statutes related to removal from office. And again, I'm just speaking generally here, not to any specific circumstance. But one of the statutes states that an elected official can be removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors or malfeasance in office. The other one basically says the same thing about malfeasance in office and then also talks about willfully and corruptly oppressing, engaging in oppression, malconduct, misfeasance, malfeasance in office. Either way, it would require some type of judicial proceeding to do that, regardless of which statute. Regarding your question about vacancies in office, generally, the city council would give notice of the vacancy. They would interview candidates in an open meeting that were interested in filling the vacancy. Council then would choose somebody to fill the opening.

And then—

So, The length of the appointment depends on when in the term it occurs. So if it's at least 14 days before the deadline for filing for candidates for the next election, then it would be for a tentative— it would be an interim appointment and then an election to fulfill the remaining 2 years. If it doesn't meet that deadline, then the appointment is for the rest of the term.

So, So, with this being a municipal election year, does that apply to the general, or would it have to be prior to the primary for that to apply?

So it's the— so if you're just talking about this year, the time period has passed for making it on the ballot because the filing period's already passed. Thank you very much.

Okay.

May I add on that subject?

Sure.

I would like to concur and thank Brent for some of the things he's done as mayor pro tem, but— and also echo his comment. There are so many good things going in Orem that I would think we ought to— we could focus on those at this point. This can take its normal course. I don't have any problems with the questions asked here before, but this can take its normal course. We can focus on the good. We've done the steps that we're supposed to, and someone else is handling it.

I would like to say that at I think that's a very this good point.

point. I think everyone here took a step to doing the right thing, and at this point I'd like to— it's created a bit of a, of an issue among some of us, and, um, any part that I played on that, I want to apologize. But I, I don't want to see, uh, passive-aggressive activity. I don't want to see people assuming the worst in one another. I'd love to just move forward with a, uh, as good as we can. I think we're doing that resolution and focus on the many, many good things that are going on, some of which David reported on today in his report. So it's a pleasure to serve the citizens of Orem, and it's a pleasure to work with you. We've had some rough bumps. I hope we can get through those and move on. So that's it. Anyone wants to say amen or hallelujah, I'll take that.

Amen.

I was just going to say, I think Thank you, Martin. I think we've been very blessed in this city with many wonderful things happening. I pointed that out in the newsletter. We're number 7 for happiest place, and we're number 1 for best city in the nation for our size. So we're pretty lucky that way. Our crime rate, thanks to our wonderful police force, is low, and our fire department, and Our economic development is high. I know when you go out to Eagle Mountain, they're desperately seeking economic development and having a hard time finding it. So it's hard for them to pay their bills because they have a lot of residents and no businesses to pay taxes. We're very blessed with a lot of parks, a lot of trees, a lot of great staff, and have a lot of really good things going on. So I appreciate that comment. If I could, I'd like to go over what the agenda is for upcoming items. As has been mentioned, our Crime Night Out is tonight. Chief, do you want to mention anything about that?

You bet. It's from 6 to 8:30. In fact, they'll be— they'll get started here in about 15 minutes. They've done a lot of work.

What exactly is it?

The National Night Out.

We've done it.

It's actually a national event, as you can see. National Night Out. National Night Out, but a lot of police departments on the first Tuesday of every August will do this. You'll see some that'll do it on a separate day because for some reason that just doesn't work out, but the first Tuesday of August is typically the National Night Out Against Crime. You'll see a lot of police departments, including ourselves, that have a big event where you can bring out the community, that you can get them to come out and see the police department. We have a 5K run that we've always done. We've done it for Oh, probably 15 years or more. Chase— let's see, what did they used to call it? Chase the crook out of town or something like that. But we get a lot of interest in the 5K run.

Is it the Bacon Run?

No, the Bacon Run's motorcycles. But thanks for the—

Is there some donuts?

Yeah.

But last year we had, I would guess, probably 4,000 to 5,000 people.

people.

It was a, it was a great event. The fire department helped us out with some foam. I think they're helping us out again this year. I'm not sure. The kids, the kids loved it last year, but we had a lot of people, so we'll see how it goes this year.

Are you serving food?

Yes, there is food. I don't know exactly what it is. I know that my credit card paid for it, so, uh, I know it's there. And I've got another one here too, so Are you going to have foam tonight? I don't know. That's, uh, that we did last year with that, and I think they, I think they have it. But unfortunately, I've been in meetings all week, and, and we have a committee that's planned it and taken care of it. They've done an excellent job. So if, uh, if by chance you get out of here and want to stop by, it's just over in the park east of us.

We're going to try to finish up early and get over there.

That'd be great.

So certainly appreciate you. Uh, so August 8th, we have our City of Warren, UDOT, State Street open house at 5 PM at the council chambers. August 13th, next Tuesday, is our primary elections. August 19th is the Alpine School District ribbon cutting for the Centennial Elementary at 4 PM. August 20th is our Truth in Taxation meeting at 6 PM.

Mr. Mayor, on that subject, I— long before I knew we'd have a Truth in Taxation, I'll be out of town and will not I'm in Europe, so the time zone difference is too rough to do that. Okay, so maybe make sure everyone else is going to be there, but I cannot be there.

We'll just direct any negative consequences, please, negative questions to your email inbox.

Is everybody else going to be there? Mark, Brent, Debbie?

Yeah, what time is that?

6 PM, 2 weeks from today. Okay, on the 21st we have our Stonewood neighborhood Some of the council have attended that, those picnics, and some have not. But I just want to say that I thought the police picnics are being very well received. The neighbors really love them. The kids are getting to know and feel comfortable with the police, and I'm really impressed with that. So thank you.

I have to give credit to Sergeant Paraskeva for that. He's done that well. The entire Neighborhood Preservation Unit, uh, Officer Alborn and, uh, Brady Andreasen.

Yeah, because they look comfortable with you, and that makes a whole difference in how they look at police and how they treat their neighbors.

Absolutely. But I, those 3 have really done an excellent job with those, and I, I can't take credit for that. That's, that's definitely them.

And if I could add, Kendra Matthews too. And she secured a sponsorship, Wiener Schnitzel So we're providing all the food at no cost for those, which has been helpful.

That's great. Yeah, they've been great. Then August 22nd, we have our joint Orem-Provo City Council meeting at noon here at the City Chambers. On September the— I'm sorry, August 27th, we have our City Council meeting. And on September 11th to 13th, we should have our League of Cities and Towns annual conference. At our August 27th City Council meeting, I don't know if Jody's here, but I'm thinking we'll get the final tally on our vote count and we'll go ahead and finalize that for the primary. Jackie's giving me a nod, yes. And then—

Just as a heads up on that, we've put the ballot boxes out this year and—

Yes.

Yeah, we're pushing near 1,000 now that have been And all being delivered to the county so they'll be on time with— yep, they're being emptied.

I did have one resident say in the middle of the night he was coming by with a chain to pick up the ballot box, so just to let you know.

Anyway, okay.

I hope you reported it to the police. On September 11th through 13th, like I say, is Utah League of Cities and Towns. On the 19th, we have the Sharon Park game. Favorite police picnic at the Sharon Park at 5:30. Okay, if we could go over our consent items for this evening. If you want to turn over on page 9.1, we have approval of our meeting minutes from July 16th, 2019. We have a motion to hold a special city council meeting on August 20th, 2019 Hold the Truth in Taxation public hearing. And on— we also then have a resolution supporting the Utah County Good Governance Advisory Board's recommendation to place a change of form of government question on the November 2019 ballot. Any questions or issues with any of that? One thing I might bring up or just mention In the last meeting with the county government, Commissioner Ivey made a motion and Commissioner Ames seconded to put the Good Governance Advisory Board's recommendations on the ballot for November 2019. The county attorney has to give his advice and consent. He has 45 He has 45 days to do that. Just so you know, he is not in favor and has said that publicly. And at the same time, he said he doesn't have a dog in the fight. He's also said he's not in favor.

But in theory, he's going to make it a matter of law, not opinion, right?

I hope.

So at that same point, Brady Brammer, who is a legislature in the House and is an attorney, is working on the Steve Downs case and Corey Norman case, challenged the attorney of the county and stated that he was not quoting law correctly. And Brady actually had the law in front of him and quoted it. And what the question was is, If it comes from the county attorney, then it goes to the county clerk, and the county clerk then can either say she wants to allow it to go on the ballot or not. What the law actually states is she can only look at it and say this is done correctly or incorrectly, not whether it goes on the ballot. Then it goes to the county commission. The county commission decides if it's then going to go ahead and be on the ballot. In the same motion that Tanner Ainge made, he also made a recommendation that the attorney look at the petition done by Bill Lee and, and 4 others and stated that it's been done in bad faith. The reason that he's stating that is that Mayor of Eagle Mountain, Tom Westmoreland, resigned His— took his signature off the petition and said it was a blocking petition. He did not realize what was happening. He disagreed with it and it should not go forward. So that's actually enough legal notification to call it a petition in bad faith. So the county attorney has to look and advise on both of those and move forward. So if in fact the County Commission were to say we want to move forward with this and we want to say that that is done in bad faith and there's any question, then it immediately goes to the 4th District Court. And the 4th District Court, as a matter of principle, will rule on it very quickly, within a matter of days. And so it's out there.

Thank you.

Um, the last thing I would mention is that, um, the Steve Downs case, there is some movement on it, but I won't say what it is. So we'll see what happens. But he's a pretty important guy for a $250 fine.

Yeah, I wish it stayed that cheap the whole process.

Anyway, if there's nothing else, let's go ahead and close and go over to the council chambers.

I think this week.

Okay, cool.

We'll have to, we'll have to go flying for the exact start date, but I think there's gonna be some cool things to see early on, right? Yeah, yeah, I would hope so. All right, good.

I got my shovel.

It gets deep, I can start climbing. We heard you're our drum major.

Yes.

All right.

We would like to welcome everyone out to our city council meeting this evening and would like to call this meeting to order. We would like to begin with a prayer that will be given by Martin Wright and then the Pledge of Allegiance by David Holliday.

Our dear Heavenly Father, we're grateful for the opportunity which we have to live in this great country and to have the blessings that we have of being protected and taken care of. Father, we ask thee to bless the cities that have gone through tragedy this week, that They might know of our love for them and our care for them. Father, we ask thee to bless our police departments and our fire departments and those who serve this city, that they might have thy blessing and safety. And bless this council, that they can make correct decisions to make this a proud city to belong to. And Father, we're grateful for their service. And we say these things in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Audience, please rise. Repeat after me. 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.

Thank you, Martin and David. We would like to go over some upcoming events. Just so you know, tonight the police department is holding their crime night out at the City Center Park from 6 to 8:30. There will be food there and activities, and we'd encourage everyone here that's available to go over there to that event. On the 8th, we have the City of Orem UDOT State Street open house at 5 PM here at the City of Orem Council Chambers. On August 13th, we have our primary election for 3 city council seats. On August 19th, we have the Alpine School District ribbon-cutting event at 4 PM for the Centennial Elementary School, the new one. on 450 South, 400 East. On August 20th, we have our Truth in Taxation meeting at 6 PM here at the City Chambers. On August 22nd, we have our joint Orem-Provo City Council chamber meeting at noon here in the City Chambers. On August 20th, we have our City Council meeting, and we'll have the canvas of the primary election the final winners of that. On August 21st, we have our Stonewood Neighborhood Police Picnic at the City Center Park at 6:00 PM. On September 11th to 13th, we have the Utah League of Cities and Towns 2019 Annual Conference at the Sheraton Hotel in Salt Lake City. And on September 19th, we have the Sharon Park Neighborhood Police picnic at 5:30 PM. And those are the events that we have. We now have time for personal appearances. We would ask anyone who would like to come forward that has signed up on the sign-in sheet to please do so, but please hold your comments to 3 minutes and give us your name when you come forward. And I will go ahead and read those that have signed up, and we'll go in the order signing. First we have Lisa Wilkie, then Eric Wilkie, then Phil Murphy, and then we'll continue on after that. So Lisa, if you'd like to come forward.

My name is Lisa Wilkie. Thank you for having me.

Hello.

My concern is the high turnover of experienced first responders. I'm a mother of an Orem City firefighter, and over the past 11 years I have made some observations and learned a few things about their job. They have a thankless job for the most part, other than an occasional thank you from the citizens passing by. People, myself included, do not truly understand how physically and mentally demanding their job is, or understand what it's like to jump into action from a dead sleep to the report of a house fire where people are still inside. We don't know what it's like to respond to a suicide when opening the closet, find an old friend's lifeless body hanging in purple, then turn around to face his father. These are just some of the things our first responders deal with here in Orem. 3, they have a stressful job. They are tasked to fix terrible situations which are not random or rare, but in fact these calls are coming in at a record-breaking rate. Not only are the calls stressful, but the fact they do it on minimal salary requires most of them to have 2 and 3 jobs, equaling more time for them away from home and family. Orem City Public Safety is in a position where we are losing experience at an alarming rate. We have lost 13 firefighters in the last 5 years and even more police officers. We not only have experienced leaving, but because of the current city administration's view on compensation, it is virtually impossible to hire candidates to replace the people leaving. We— people are not paid enough. They are under extreme stress to perform, but because staffing and pay are well below where it should be, they are overworked physically, mentally, and feeling undervalued. Our public safety personnel take pride in their jobs and their performance. It's embarrassing for them not to perform at an exceptional level. This is not a job where you want to learn it on the fly. It is critical to have an experienced mentor by your side who has been there, done that. In short, if you do not have an experienced first responder leading and guiding the new hires, bad things will happen and mistakes will be made. These men and women are human, but because— and with an experienced mentor, most mistakes can be caught and corrected and a potential a mortal mistake can be mitigated and lives saved. Let me pose a few questions. What is exceptional now? Is it the same as it was 10 years ago or even 5 years ago? Has the bar been lowered to accommodate the lack of experience? How do we not— how do we not attract the highest-level candidates due to other departments paying more, giving more time off, and having better insurance options? What will it take to change this? How do we keep the experienced first responders I can assure you these are desperate times which will require desperate measures. Years of feeling the underappreciation is going to take real action, not promises. We as citizens do not accept what is happening, and we demand a change to keep the veteran first responders here. We love our city and want what is best for our families and friends. These men and women are the lifeline of our city. Please stand together with us by compensating them what they deserve. As they serve and protect us all. Thank you.

Thank you.

He always speaks first in our home as well. Good to see you, council members. I know many of you have spoken to you, Mayor. It's good to hear your family's doing so well as well too. I am here also just to bring up the issue that we have with the pay for our first responders. As I have been more aware of this, I have been involved with many friends that have been lifelong firefighters for more than 3 decades that have retired. I understand the system. It is a critical point here in this city. The pay is far below what other equal cities are paying. There's plenty of money in this city. I don't worry about that. I've lived here 35 years. I understand the system. We have galas, we have the big expansion of, of unnecessary but very beautiful things like the library hall behind us here, top pay of top city officials, which is one of those things that is being addressed. It was publicized today that our city manager's office is the 4th highest paid in the state. So I'm fine with all that. You deal with what the market bears, and when you have good people in good positions making good decisions, that is absolutely fine. It will benefit everybody. So the question is, why are first responders, those in fire, dispatch, and police, why are they underpaid in this city? That has not ever been an issue. So after reviewing with many people, I have 2 conclusions. The first is that they are not appreciated and they are expendable to this city. There is no other reason, because they deem this a very easy job to replace people. They are, as my wife just mentioned, they are leaving at an alarming rate. We do not get that experience back. It goes to other cities. The second thing is there might have been a mistake in the finances of this city. There might not be enough to pay them, which means the burden of balancing a budget lies upon the backs of our public safety people, these men and women that sacrifice health, their abilities to function well after very critical events. They sacrifice that and they're doing it far below where they should be as market bears. And so they are leaving. Neither one of these are acceptable. We cannot allow our first responders to be underpaid Severe understaffed. Severely understaffed. And we as citizens will be the ones paying for that down the road. They do it day by day with what they do. The other issue is I have 2 other sons that are firefighters in surrounding cities. There is common knowledge you do not hire at Orem anymore. I can't even get into all of the reasons.

That is a fact.

We are not attracting new quality lateral hires. The deal is we have strong men and women who serve in these positions. The city should be able to expect strong opinions from them and not be offended. That will make it better. Thank you. I appreciate everything that you do. You do not do this for the money. You do this for the city that you live in and enjoy. Thank you for your service.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Phil Murphy. Word has it that employees have been strongly discouraged not to attend this meeting tonight or show any support on the issues being raised. I am very grateful for the amount of employees who are actually here. You as a city council You as City Council members should be alarmed. Issues facing the public safety of employees and citizens should never be associated with any form of intimidation or reprisals. I know of employees who have attempted to reach out to city administrators to discuss and present ideas to assist with overtime costs and staffing needs. They have been shut down and their department heads have been warned, quote, rein in your employee. Again, as a council, you should be alarmed and need to reinforce the concept that you are willing to listen and support the employees of this city. On May 28th, my wife and I both addressed you along with Sergeant Arnoldson, who was just days away from terminating his employment with Orem. He was pursuing a new position with Riverton Police Department. 6 days— or since that day, 6 other officers have left the police department. 3 have chosen positions with other cities, and 3 have left to seek employment in the private sector. The 3 that left for the private sector were experienced supervisors who didn't necessarily leave because they were ready for retirement. I believe the major factor was that for the early exit was again financial. Once again, experienced Orem officers are leaving to do the same exact job at a smaller city in this county and one in Salt Lake County. receiving a better compensation than what Orem currently offers. Explain to me how Lehi, Provo, Spanish Fork, Sandy, Layton, just to name a few, can and do pay their experienced officers, sergeants, and lieutenants significantly better than Orem. Orem is said to be the retail hub of Utah County, which generates excellent sales tax revenue. How is it that other cities are able to properly compensate their first responders Why has Orem chosen not to offer a comparable and obtainable wage? I credit Lehigh City with making some fast changes to stop the exodus of experienced officers that were leaving their department. Orem needs to do the same. The many issues facing first responders in Orem will not be fixed with steps and hiring of a handful of positions. Staffing issues in dispatch, patrol, and in the fire department are significant. Tens of thousands of dollars are being spent on overtime and mandatory callouts to maintain minimum shift coverage. Changes must be made. Orem is not losing librarians, public work employees, or rec center personnel. They are losing trained, experienced, and poorly compensated first responders seeking new employment with agencies and with Forest City administrators willing to pay them what they deserve. The citizens of Orem deserve better. and so do the Orem first responders. Please give Chief Giles and his staff the resources and the authority to effectively lead his department, making Orem once again the police agency to work for.

Thank you. Uh, we'd now like to hear from Miriam Murphy and Dry Christensen. Afterwards, Emily Vance and David Holliday.

Oh wait, I forgot my glasses.

Sorry.

Last time I spoke to the City Council, I talked about the training Phil received when he hired on with Orem 35 years ago. He was trained by some of the most seasoned and experienced officers Orem had at that time. That exceptional and thorough training proved to be one of the biggest reasons Phil survived his shooting. Tonight, I want to talk about a few of the challenges wives and families of first responders go through during their career. Phil always worked one or two part-time jobs the entire time he worked for Orem. He worked a rotating schedule that changed every 2 months. He was on graves days, then swings. I put my kids to bed at night by myself, got them up in the morning and off to school alone. I went to school functions by myself, and me and my kids spent many holidays without him. You may be thinking, well, so do other people in other professions. Maybe, but do those other people need to wear bulletproof vests and wear guns to work every day?

No.

These men and women who work as first responders leave their homes every day not knowing if it's to be the last time they'll see their families. Did I know that Phil was going to get shot when he responded to that domestic violence call 14 years ago? No, I didn't. But it was always in the back of my mind, and it's in every other spouse and family member's mind when their partner walks out the door to go to work. You can't begin to compensate our brave men and women for the things they see and do on a daily basis. I appreciate every single person who's employed here in Orem. But do they risk their lives every day when they leave for work? Do people spit on them, kick them, scratch them, punch them, stick them with dirty needles, call them disgusting, vile names, taunt them, flip them off, swear and yell at them? Is every single move they make being filmed, then critiqued and criticized over and over again? No. I want to share— I was going to share some of the calls that Phil went on, but I don't have time. I wish I had time to relay the countless acts of kindness and service our brave first responders do each and every day that go unnoticed. These men and women are heroes. They are underpaid, overworked, understaffed, and underappreciated. They deserve more than what Orem City is giving them. Our experienced men and women are leaving Orem in droves to go to work for other agencies. Both departments within Orem are in a crisis.

Thank you.

We don't have time to wait 3 to 5 years for steps to be taken. Something needs to be done now. You council members will only be in this position for 4 years, then you'll move on with your lives. The decisions you make now won't affect your lives and careers that much, other than maybe getting faster internet. Our first responders are doing this job because they love it here And they want this to be their lifelong career. I have several family members who are school teachers here in Orem. They couldn't be here tonight, but they wanted me to tell you how the recent active shootings in our country have affected them. They're afraid and feeling very vulnerable. Their, their number one concern is the safety of the children they teach. They want to know that Orem has the very best and most experienced, experienced first responders who will be there at a moment's notice if and when an active shooting happens here. And don't kid yourselves, it very well could happen here. You have the money. Some of it's been spent building glass walls right down the hall from in this building. Isn't it interesting that our city management can allocate funds to protect their city offices from an active shooter? While I realize you can't build glass walls around our first responders, The least that should be done is to show your respect to them by offering them competitive salaries.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, thanks for letting me come and speak tonight. My name is actually Drew Christiansen.

Sorry.

Dry Christiansen. That's okay.

Hopefully you're not dry.

Hopefully I'm not dry either. Well, I just want you to know I fell in love with Orem when I moved here 13 years ago. The people here and the landscape are beautiful. It is my favorite place to live, and I have lived a lot of places in this country. I want as— I want as well as all of you who live in Orem to keep this beautiful home safe and beautiful.

Thank you.

Recently, I have learned about what is happening within our city and am quite concerned about it. I'm not a relation of anybody here. I am just a concerned citizen. So our city is growing at an astronomically fast pace, yet our infrastructure, infrastructure is really struggling. We are losing a lot of first responders. Example, they are not getting paid enough to live on And some are on poverty scale. Example, the other day I was talking to one of the first responders and I found out that he and his family qualified for food stamps. That's alarming and shocking that they would have to do that. This is just not right. There are some psychological issues that can stem from our first responders not getting paid enough. Not having enough responders and not having enough seasoned responses— responders to make educated responses, which only come through experience. We want a healthy and safe city. How would I qualify for this judgment? Well, I'm an LCSW and an MSW, and I work every day with mental health issues. So what do we need? We need the city council that understands and will put forth the effort and money to our men and women who keep our city safe and protected. Here are some of the things we need to understand. First responders are those who see the worst aspects of life: abuse, spousal, child, death, murder, fire, drug addiction and its effects, marital issues, drunken issues, accident victims, and all sorts of pain and suffering that goes on. Yet they must be at their best performance for their various duties. How can you really help someone when you are suffering also? I know they have been trained for this, but they also need to be compensated for their efforts so that they and their family do not have to worry where their next meal is coming from or how they themselves are going to survive. When these first responders are worried about how they are going to survive themselves financially, This puts a huge strain on their performance. None of us want to have a first responder try to help us when they are not at their best.

We have a large—

oh gosh, it went by so fast. So just to leave this, we need to make this a priority, to put our first responders first, to pay them, and to put them a first priority in our city budget. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Emily Vance, and I want to share a little bit here from a book from Lieutenant Colonel Grossman. Um, here's a story at Thermopylae. There's a narrow pass, famous story. 300 Spartans volunteered to delayed the invading of the Persian army. There was no question the Spartans would perish. The Persians told them, there are so many of us that when we fire our arrows, it darkens the sky. Good, replied the Spartan warrior, then we will fight in the shade. The admiration and respect that they had for the Spartan army, they offered them a place in their army. Put your weapons down, come with us. But he said instead, the Spartan king, Come and get them. So the Persians attacked, the Spartans fought, buying precious days for the Greeks to be able to prepare for the attack coming from the Persians. Wave upon wave, they came upon the Spartans and the Spartan shield wall, but finally their line collapsed and they died. They buried them along the way. Days later, the Greeks defeated the Persian army, and today these words are carved in a plaque mounted on the walls of Thermopylae. Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie. Just like them, the 2,500 years later, these 300 men, we're like Them.

Them.

The firefighters, the police officers that go out day after day, they volunteer, and there are few that volunteer. They save hundreds. In the World Trade Center, they went up clearing blockage, expediting the flow of people to come down the stairwells, saving hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives. Peggy Noonan said these words, they weren't there, they went They didn't run from fire, they ran into the fire. They didn't run down the staircase, they ran up the staircase. They didn't lose their lives, they gave their lives. So in the darkened sky, they fought in the shade of the Twin Towers. We don't have that experience necessarily here to that grandeur scale. However, we fight day in, day out, and I say we because I am a spouse of a law enforcement officer. He comes home, I hear his stories. So support or not, who will move to the summons of the trumpet? Who will march to the sounds of the guns? The Spartan knights considered their shields to be sacred. Our badge is also sacred. We take it sacredly. This is my shield. I bear it before me in battle, but it is not mine alone. It protects my brother on my left. It protects my city. I will never let my brother out of its shadow, nor my city out of its shelter. I will die with my shield before me, facing my enemy. Today, police officers and firefighters are that shield. We bear the shield of defense of our city to obey the law of the shield. We are joined by judges, educators, emergency medical personnel, and others. They are all warriors Paladins of all kinds and professions unwilling to risk their lives for us. So my question is, we need that support. We don't feel that support. The meager offerings that have been are just not enough anymore. We're tired of the lip service. We are tired of sitting back on empty promises. We need that compensation. We need to feel like we are valued in the employee system of Orem. We do not feel that support from our council members, from Jamie Davison, from Mayor Bernst. We don't feel that support. We feel like we are disposable. It is a revolving door that walks in and out of. You are not keeping seasoned officers. Nobody wants to stay. it is just a head wound that we're cleaning the mess up. You gotta address the wound itself.

Thank you.

David Holliday.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. I am not the spouse or family member of a first responder, but I have over the past 6 months gotten to know various officers within and firefighters. I've got to meet both Chief Gurney and Chief Giles. And as a concerned citizen, I echo the sentiments that are shared here today, and I am here to say as a citizen, yes, I do approve the tax increase to Yes, I would approve more tax increases to make sure that we are on the level with all of our emergency responders. One of the things I find harrowing is not only the turnover rate, but our dispatch, the people who are in charge of listening when bad incidents go down and relaying that information to our officers and our paramedics and our firefighters, those people are getting paid less than what someone would be paid at a telemarketing agency. Not to say that the people at the telemarketing agencies do not deserve that money, but I am saying when lives are on the line, we need to make sure that these people are well trained, which they are, and also well paid. At the end of the day, you know, these people worry about our security. They, they worry about the safety of our neighborhoods and our streets. And they shouldn't have to go home and worry about their financial security. That should be shored up for them. So, as a citizen, I will be here for the truth in taxation. I will give my approving my approving words for the tax increase, and I hope that we can also either find ways to reallocate money in the budget or increase the taxes more so that all these issues are dealt with. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We appreciate everyone who has spoken. We'll now go ahead and close the personal appearance portion of our meeting this evening and go on to consent items. There are 3 consent items. If any of the council would prefer to have these items brought forward as a scheduled item, please let me know that. But we have 3 items. One is to approve of the meeting minutes of July 16th, 2019. 2 is a motion to hold a special City Council meeting on August 20th, 2019, to hold a Truth in Taxation public hearing. And 3 is a resolution supporting the Utah County Good Governance Advisory Board's recommendation to place a change of form of government question on the November 2019 ballot. Um, Is there a motion to go ahead and accept these consent items?

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay.

We'll start with Councilmember Seestrand.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay. Thank you. That— those pass. We have no other business. I would like to just make one comment with regards to our first responders and just say that we, as a city council and as a mayor, appreciate them very much. I have met with many of them. I've met with many of them in the last 6 to 8 months with regards to the compensation issues. In March of this year, I requested of our city manager that we proceed and do something to correct this issue. I met with our city manager in April and requested that we move forward and do something about the compensation issue. I met with the city manager in May. and requested that we do something with compensation as far as the police and fire go. And in June, our city council met with the city manager and required that a compensation adjustment be made and moved forward. And the fire and police and our city management have been working on that. And so with that, I'd like to turn some time over to Bryn Bybee, who is here in place of Jamie Davidson, who's on vacation, to mention a few items with regards to that.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor and Council. I guess I probably want to start off and assert publicly, and even though I'm an acting city manager in this regard, or a fake one, I guess pretend city manager this evening, That being said, I can assert that I know, and I've observed both and seen and know that you as a mayor and council are deeply concerned about public safety recruitment and retention. I can also assert and know and have seen the concern, the stress, the caring on a continual basis of our city manager, our city manager's office, our HR, our public safety leadership. I haven't observed anyone sitting on their hands in regards to this issue. As recently as last week and even yesterday, we met with our fire chief and police chief to go over the details of of another phase, an additional phase of a career ladder program where in additional public safety positions there would be a 4 to 5% pay bump for once our public safety personnel reach specific criteria. That— just that alone, as we've been calculating how it compares to other cities in calculating the cost of this particular program. We're not talking about just tens of thousands of dollars. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next few years, specifically over $620,000 to implement that additional plan. I think you're also aware that— and We know, I know that Jamie knows, that we need to address this in a multi-pronged, multi-year approach. If we look at, as we've been looking at the pay progression over the last 12 months, or from June 2018 to now our most recent merit and COLA increases, we've seen an average of 14.5% increase in pay for for our police, a 9.5% increase in pay for over that period for our, our fire. That includes, uh, 2 years of, of merit and the first phase of our career ladder program that focused on our police officers, our frontline firefighters. So those that are in kind of our middle grade where we have the most, uh, in these in those positions. So in other words, we knew it would affect the most amount of employees to begin to implement that system. In the last 12-plus months, we've also created a bonus system to try and give additional compensation to recruit individuals, employees from from other cities. As part of that, I mean, that's a, that's a $3,000 signing bonus plus an opportunity for a bank of fire and sick leave. Over this same period, the city has covered an increase in 20% cost to our health insurance premiums that hasn't been passed along to, to our public safety and other city employees. So, I mean, the real bottom line is, you know, we have been working on it. We'll continue to work on it. We're working, and, and we're talking about now working on it. And we're talking about, again, not, not small dollars, not small efforts. But when you're— when you combine the, the fiscal impact of these items, we're talking about millions of dollars in that have gone towards trying to address this issue. It's a difficult issue. It will take multiple— like I said, multiple efforts and multiple years to address. And then, as you all know, as our public is coming to know, it's not just a pay issue, it's also a workload issue.

issue.

And that's why we have, for the first time in 40 years, so longer than I've been alive, we've got a property tax increase that's proposed to be able to hire more public safety personnel to address the workload side of the concerns that were expressed. So again, the bottom line is I think it should be abundantly clear that There's no one here that doesn't care, and, and there's no one here that doesn't feel like— or no one in the city that doesn't feel like we're, we're part of and want to be part of the solution with our, our public safety personnel and our public safety leadership and, and our, our city leadership. So as someone who's observed it on a, on a constant basis, I can assert that our city manager cares like you do and has heard it loud and clear. And we've got, I guess, real solutions that we have been implementing and are in the process of implementing right now. So maybe with that kind of general summary in mind, if you have any additional questions, happy to address them.

Debbie has a question.

Have we looked at the dispatchers? I've had some concern raised to me about dispatch. Have we looked at their salaries, their workload, and if not, will we do that soon?

I mean, most recently our focus has been on our police and fire personnel. We, we did meet and talk yesterday with our— in regards to dispatch. patch as well. And as part of that, talked about a new job share or expanding a job share program in order to try and help address some of that. I mean, all of these issues aren't just Orem-specific in nature, right? And so we're trying to figure out essentially something that is, I guess, bigger in than Orem in terms of the scope of the problem. So that's why, that's why we've got to use multiple methods to address them and to deal with it.

But will you have a specific thing for dispatchers soon, or what's your— what's your— I mean, can we expect something within the next few months about dispatch?

Yes, we won't let dispatch nor any of our city employee fall between the cracks in our assessment.

All right, thank you.

Okay, well, thank you, Brent. I appreciate that very much. With no further business— yes, I'm sorry, go ahead, Stamletz.

So, you know, when I ran for office, I never expected that I would be proposing a tax increase at all, let alone during an election year, but here we are. And I, I think adding these additional officers is a step in the right direction. Recently, Chief Giles was quoted in the Herald, I think, mentioning that one of our, our initial targets is to try to get to 1 officer per 1,000 residents.

How—

after making these changes this year, how close are we to that number? And do we have kind of a long-term plan of what it will take to get to that level.

So I believe that if the property tax increase is approved by you on August 20th, that that would get us to a total budget-approved amount of 97 officers, I believe, Chief?

92, I think, out of 100.

Please. That being— Chief can speak.

This is Chief Giles of our police force.

But if I can also add to— there's another aspect of this. As the kind of the retail center of the county, we have a daytime population that, that's higher. And so I would submit to you that looking at calls for service and the amount of officers we have per capita in terms of calls for service is probably a more telling metric to use In this regard?

Yeah, that'll— the additional 4 will bring us up to 96. So based on— if you want to base our population— and we've heard a variety of different numbers— we're nearing the 100,000 mark. So 1 per 1,000 is really a minimal number. I mean, that's— in Utah, that is pretty average. And that's pretty sad. And I'll just— if I could just say a few things. With the shootings that we've seen in the last few days around the country. We've seen El Paso. We've seen Dayton, Ohio. We've seen in Gilroy, California, the Garlic Festival. The police response times in those was critical. In El Paso, it took them 6 minutes. That's a very common amount of time to respond somewhere. If you think— if we had a call at, say, Walmart right here in Orem, if we have 6 people on the street and they're on calls, it's going to take us a little bit to get down there. In that 6 minutes that that gunman was shooting, 22 people were killed. In Dayton, Ohio, the officers happened to be patrolling the streets at the time. There were only 9 that were killed. Now, 1 per 1,000 is a good first goal. It is. So it's something that we can shoot for right now, and it'll bring us up to 96. And you kind of asked what are we looking at in the future. What I have proposed is that we look at an outside company to come in and do a study And Jamie's been working with me on that. I don't know where we stand exactly on doing that in the future, but having an outside company to come in and do a study to give us kind of an idea of where that should be as far as from an outside entity coming in, because I can come up here and tell you what I want, but it would be nice to get something, kind of an independent opinion on that.

And I'm guessing that study would speak both to the, um, the number of officers per 1,000 residents as well as calls per officer, the workload side of it as well.

Yep, right. Part of the idea would be to look at a variety of metrics that would, you know, help us have a, a more full, complete picture and ultimately help us to be, you know, thoughtful and appropriate and fact-based in how we move forward from there.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Spencer. Chief? Chief, can you come back?

So, um, now that you're here, that brings us up to 96. But if, if the Truth in Taxation goes through, so the question is, how many are vacant? How many positions do you have to fill?

I believe we're— I'll be honest, I can't keep track of it anymore.

So you're 80%?

Um, we are probably down 6 officers right now. Uh, part of the problem is I can't even get them into the police academy right now. I can't get them in until mid-September. So if we hire new officers, we get them into the academy. It's 16 weeks of training there, 12 more weeks on the road. So if I hire them now as a new officer, they won't be on the road until about January. So what we want to target and who we would like to get are the laterals. And that is who we are trying to target. We don't get the number of lateral applicants as I would like.

If that—

answer some questions. But, uh, you know, we're, we're getting some new ones. We just had 4 brand new ones start Monday, so yesterday, I guess. I'm losing track of what day of the week it is already. That's sad. Um, but yeah, we— I believe we have 6. Well, with the 4 new ones, I believe we're down, down 4 right now. But again, it's hard to keep track because we just, uh, we have the potential of losing 2 right now to, to Springville. They haven't given me a resignation letter yet, but we do have rumor that that's what's going to happen. So I'm just waiting on that. So we'll see what happens with them.

So, Chief, I was going to mention, from what I've seen over the past 2 years, we're having about a 25% turnover per year, if that sounds correct to you, or maybe you feel like it's higher.

Well, if you're looking at a group of about 96 officers, yeah, we're probably looking at about a 25% turnover.

So in 4 years, the whole force turns over? Not really, but—

Yeah, it's— we've had people come in. I mean, if you look at it that way, we've had some people that have started and left within the 4-year period. So in essence, yes, we do still have some experienced officers that are still here. It's not the entire force. But we have had quite a few that have come and gone with the period.

We need to keep our experienced officers. Absolutely.

Sam, did you have another comment? Yes.

So, um, I— and I know that Chief Gurney's not here. I had a question on the fire side of things. So if you were hoping to, you know, grab a seat, you're more than welcome to at this point. As far as the— So I did a ride-along with the fire department a couple weeks ago, and one of the things that really stood out to me is the idea of Vineyard growing to a point where they're going to need their own fire station at some point. And if we try to go out and hire 15 new, you know, firefighters right off the bat, we're going to have a really hard time getting them, you know, familiar with our systems. I'm not sure if we're going to have to pull them right out of the academy or if we're going to be able to get experienced hires, but Yes. Can staff start to look at how much it would cost to start phasing into that? So, you know, whatever length of time that— whether it's 6 months or a year from now, if we hire 3 additional firefighters, one for each shift, and, you know, add them to the ladder truck stations first, to the engine truck stations after that, so that when we're ready to open up that Vineyard Station, it's not, hey, we need to go hire, you know, 15 new firefighters, but it's just that next phase of adding 3 onto that. But I, I think we need to have more of a long-term view of how we ramp up to that rather than just, you know, holding steady and then having this huge jump all in one shot, because I don't think our, our staffing could really handle that shock as well.

Okay, Councilor Loree.

Oh, sorry, can I give I'll give Brent a chance to respond.

So, yeah, I get the intent. Obviously, ideally with staffing, if we can take essentially a phased or multiyear approach, that's the ideal. And so certainly we'll try to be creative and look at how we might prepare a potential Vineyard Station down the road. I would say it is more difficult to do that. So we will— I mean, we will have to be creative in how we figure that out for fire specifically. In part, that would be based off of how much Vineyard is paying in terms of their contract for the fire services from Orem. As you know, we've wanted to make sure and make that agreement and that cost that we charge them in such a way that our Orem citizens aren't subsidizing that cost. But up to this point, Vineyard's been in such high— yes, they have been in such high growth, but they haven't been paying the equivalent of what it would cost for, you know, a full station.

Right.

Probably somewhere around half a station. So— but yes, we do need to try and look at whatever models there are out there to see if there's some sort A phased approach that might be possible.

Essentially just having a master plan as opposed to just the— let's just wing it and try to pull the levers at the right time and hope that we're on target. But I'd just like to kind of start crunching those numbers now so that we can map out this is where we need to be a year from now, 2 years from now, and so on.

So yeah, similar to what was talked about with the police master plan study effort, the We still need to do that on the fire side as well.

Okay, Councilor Murray.

Chief Giles, do you mind if I ask you another question?

You said you need to attract lateral moves. As we implement this career ladder, which should result in 4 to 5% increase, do you think that's enough to attract people to come over? Will that 5% be enough to get the right people?

I mean, everything is helping. Little by little, we're getting there. With the additional step that we're adding in right now, I'm hoping that we can attract laterals at a little bit higher rate because obviously, I can't bring people in— say, let's say I have a 7-year officer that's coming from somewhere else and wants to come into Utah, whether it's out of state, whether it's another department within the state. It's hard for me to bring them in at higher than somebody that's been working for Orem City for 7 years. And so, in all reality, I'm somewhat limited by where our pay scale is. And so, hopefully, these steps will bring it up a little bit higher to where I can bring those laterals in a little bit higher. So, if your question— I believe your question is, will it help us to attract the laterals? I hope so.

Is it enough?

That's to be seen.

Okay, thanks.

If I may, I mean, I think what you're talking about, that's what I kind of meant by this is more than just an Orem-specific problem. I mean, we're not the only city that is trying to attract new talent to fill vacancies in our public safety positions. And because the chief started talking about the, the size of the hiring pool, or in other words, that there's not as many people that are in our police academy locally, then because that hiring pool is not bigger for all of us, we end up being in a situation where we're cannibalizing from each other. And so— and again, because that's kind of our regional issue that we've got to deal with, that's why I say we have to deal with this in more of a multi-pronged approach.

Thank you.

multi-year type approach.

Councilmember Seestrand.

Thank you. Just, just a couple observations and questions. Chief Giles, you've been working on— I mean, we've been discussing the pay-related stuff for a while. Do you feel like you're making the progress?

We are making progress.

So that's, that's been my impression, is that there has been a great amount of attention. There's been a serious look at different budget options and things that can be done to be able to accommodate and to be able to get to the right level what we need to do. And so we're, we're counting on you and Jamie and, and Chief Gurney and the others to say, hey, you know, we're looking for the right solution here. And we know it's not just, it's not just the pay level, because you mentioned one of the big issues was the fairness. And when you have a lot of people moving in and around, that, that you can hire somebody in that's making more than somebody that's been here And that's some of the phasing aspects that you guys have been trying to come up with, I think, an innovative and appropriate system to try to address those. Do you feel like you just need a little more time, or is there something the city council needs to do differently in this scenario?

You know, it's difficult statewide. As most of you know, I'm the president of the Utah Chiefs of Police Association, so I deal with a lot of the chiefs throughout the state. And as Brent said, this is a statewide problem. As, you know, that being said, it is a lot easier to attract laterals and get them out on the road. The problem that we have is that right now we see a lot of frustration. And we see the frustration because, as, for example— and I'm going to talk from the police side.

Is that in just Orem or just across— in the entire police?

Well, it's in a lot of different forces, and I can't say across the board, but what I— What I do see with Orem and with my officers is that as we lose officers is that there's a level of frustration because as we lose those officers to somewhere else, maybe they just, they went for more money, then, then it really taxes the officers that stay because we need to, we have to train new officers. We, we have to, uh, you know, it is very taxing on those officers that sit in that passenger seat for 12 weeks and train that new officer. And then that new officer doesn't have the decision-making ability that, say, the 20-year officer did or the 15-year officer did or the 10-year officer did. And so the hard part is, is that as a chief, I'm trying to balance that with getting people with experience, attracting those and getting them out on the road so that I can keep morale high, so that we're not burning people out, so that they're not leaving not only for more money, for But for burnout reasons. And so, as one of the council members and I were talking in workshop, it does feel like a juggling act sometimes because there are so many factors at play that, you know, part of it's pay, part of it's stress, part of it's overwork, part of it's training. It is a statewide problem, but I have to look at it as a chief on a local basis.

So with that, and again, I'm just Recalling what we've tried to do over the last number of years to try to be supportive and helpful, do you feel like you've been able to get the budget from us in terms of equipment, police cars, the safety protection that they need in order to be well protected and well equipped?

As far as equipment and cars, we are doing absolutely excellent.

Okay, great, because that's— that was a really important factor to make that aspect at least one that that is pretty strong. We had also talked, you and I, a few times about the trauma that the officers and the fire department experience. I recall just recently that where we had a young girl that was hit with a golf ball, and that wasn't the first child trauma that day. And it really concerns me that we have adequate support for our first responders to address this. Do you feel like we've got adequate support in that regard for our men and women that are experiencing these levels of high trauma?

I can speak from the police side of things. We actually have a wellness committee and a wellness program that I think is top in the nation. And in fact, we actually became— we were finalists in a national award called Destination Zero last year. And what that means is that we were one of the top 4 in the nation that put in for this award. That wellness program entails mandatory visits to a therapist every year for all of our sworn officers, all of our dispatchers, our victim advocates. Anyone else can go as well. It's free to them because it's through our EAP. But we actually require all of our dispatchers, officers, and victim advocates to go once a year. We just bought a year-long subscription for a meditation app. for everybody in the department so that hopefully they can use that as a stress relief. We've got a lot of different things that, that, that we are doing for financial wellness, physical wellness, mental wellness. I think we're doing very well with that, and it's not me, it's, it's the committee, it's, it's these officers that are doing that. And I think we do have a lot of good resources going on here. I think we're one of the best Best in the state, and again, one of the best in the nation. But we have great equipment. We've got, you know, we'll give— we'll keep that coming. And I appreciate what you've done for us in that regard.

My hope is, and again, one of the things we look at as a council, and that personally I hope we're doing a good job, is to say we, we don't know the detail of what you work with nor of what your officers deal with. But we hope that we are showing that we are appreciative and supportive by doing the things we can to give them good equipment that helps protect them, that gives them good support. And I just hope we can address the pay issue and that you can wrap up the stuff that you've been working on to try to mitigate some of that transition. And I recognize there's— for me, there's an even bigger issue of I see on the news all the things that our officers, not just here but around the country, have to deal with and the lack of support. And I hope our community continues to be a supportive place that recognizes the good effort of our, of our men in blue and our firefighters, and that we continue to show support personally to the efforts that, that you as a group do. And I— the other thing is I really hope too that we are being as supportive as we can to the families of all of the men and women that work in these critical difficult areas. So my, my hope is, I hope that it doesn't come across we don't care, we're not, or that we're not concerned. We are concerned. We hope that we've made the right decisions to help empower you and, and, and, and the groups you work with to be able to feel safe and to do the best job that you can, because we really do deeply appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it. Thank you, Councilman. If there are no further comments, we'll go ahead and take a motion to adjourn this meeting.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

We are adjourned. Thank you.