City Council · 2019-08-27

items on our agenda, and we'll start first of all with our Utah Valley University College of Health and Public Service. And Jim, maybe you could introduce everybody.

Sure, they're capable of introducing themselves, but let me just—

That's fine.

Focus that we're grateful to be here today.

Our college covers a lot of ground, and our associate dean will explain that. But today, the representatives who are here from the various departments are from public service, public safety, and public health. So we thought that that might be of interest to the council and other representatives from the leadership and talk about some of the things we're doing.

And we'd like to very much learn what you all are interested in and places where we might be able to assist in a variety of ways.

So I'll turn the time over to Tom.

Thank you, Jim. So thank you all for carving out some time. I know you're busy. I want to thank all of our staff for being here too. And if we could go around the room just real quick for us and introduce each other. So Gary, would you mind?

Sure.

Gary Null, I chair the Emergency Services Department.

I'm Bobbi Kessel, I chair the Criminal Justice Department.

My name is Bucky Walters, I'm the director of the Law Enforcement Academy.

I'm Brian Barthel and I'm representing Public and Community Health.

I'm Matt Flynn, I just got the directorship for the Master of Public Service.

Thank you.

Thank you all for coming. So, um, I've got to figure out how to get this to go. Utah Valley University is a dual mission university, a community college and a university combined. It's not really— it hasn't been common. Usually you have a community college and a university, and students struggle with getting a 2-year degree and then trying to articulate that into a bachelor's degree. We've got that combined. Interestingly, there's a lot of interest in our system both in the U.S. and internationally actually. So it's proving to be a very good system. We are the largest university in Utah and we're set to tip over 40,000 students this year. We've been growing quite fast for some time. I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Thomas Sturtevant. I'm the Associate Dean for the College of in public service. So these are all of our programs. The highlighted ones are fairly new. The Physician Assistant program, we're cranking up right now. Our first cohort starts next spring. Respiratory Therapy just graduated its first cohort. I had 2 kids in that one, so that's cool. And Matt is leading our Master of Public Service. That first cohort just graduated its first class. class as well. These are just some of our major initiatives. We're a huge college. We have 3 schools, we have over 26 programs, and a lot of our programs are toy sensitive. We have a lot of big things— airplanes, fire trucks, ambulances, you name it, we've got it. Starting up the PA program hasn't been inexpensive as well. But these are just some of the issues we're dealing with as a college. We're trying to get funds to help us with maintaining our equipment. We're calling it a repair and replacement fund. We haven't been that successful through appropriated funds, but we're working on it. We're trying to get Jim motivated to get us some money as well.

So could you tell us a little bit about your fire engine and aircraft? So I've been aware of aircraft for a while. Is that growing? Seems like you bought a bunch of new aircraft, if I remember right.

Yes, just recently. I can't remember the number, but the program is going— 3 more?

4 of the twin engines, and then I think 8 or 9 single-engine replacement aircraft.

Okay.

So nationally there's a huge demand for pilots. The old baby boomers are starting to get out, and it's creating a kind of a suction. So you actually have some majors buying their own training facilities just to get the pilots in and out as quick as possible. So we're trying to keep up, keep up with the demand there. And as far as fire trucks, Terry?

Yeah, so we have, um, we've got, I think, one of the more advanced fleets of fire apparatus in training academies in the nation at this level, if you will. We've got 3 state-of-the-art equipment that have been purchased over the last 5 years, and we use We use grants, we use special funding, we use a little bit of student special fees for that, so we try to minimize the hit on the citizen and the tax dollar for that. Great facilities. As I said, I'm biased with that, but I'm familiar with other academies throughout the nation to include the Department of Defense. That's just simply a great apparatus, frontline apparatus that the students will see in other places.

Thank you, Eric. I was just looking at Scott because we had had a conversation yesterday. As you know, we are introducing a new piece of apparatus into our fleet, and the discussions have been retiring the old piece of apparatus and sending it your way.

My understanding is that's And we've had communications with them. So yeah, that's sort of the things I think we try to do is sell it, sell it that Mr. Bates is willing to help partnership with.

Always, always needed.

We have 3, say, frontline apparatus, brand new. I kind of, you know, I don't want to hit on them, but we've got some others that sometimes you have to push out of the bay to get them. So yeah, whatever we should use.

Isn't that why you have students? We— and that's kind of the impetus of this conversation is where can we help each other out in different areas.

So thanks for that, it's very appreciated.

So I'm going to just do a quickie on a couple of our programs, and then what we really want to do is listen to you, what questions you might have or additional information. So one of the really cool things that our criminal justice program just did is put the whole curriculum online, and it is growing. So they've got really good enrollments in the online world. They started national security studies about 3 or 4 years ago, and that's gaining popularity, and, and we see that continuing to grow. And our forensic investigation and crime scene house are both just going crazy. We've got some great new faculty in those areas, and they're growing both of those. The crime scene house, for example, would be something that we're offering up to local communities, especially those in our backyard, to use for any training that you might have within your— within your police department. We also have a police officer strength— police officer standard training academy, post-training It's been around for just a few years. There's— we have over 1,000 graduates, and 54% of all the police officers in Utah County come from our POST program. So we're very encouraged by that.

So could we hear from Bucky about that, a little bit about it?

Yeah.

Bucky's right here. Sir, are we glad to have you with us. But I've got to give him just a little bit of instructions. You cannot talk for 30 minutes. Not that he would, or anything.

He's capable.

Yes.

So, just curious how many you have in your program right now, how many wash out, how many are coming to local police forces, how long it takes to get through your program, the cost.

Well, to answer some of those questions, right now I have 11 graduates.

They're going to graduate on Thursday, and I would invite everyone in this room to come to our graduation.

And see them. All of them except for one person have been hired throughout the valley.

In fact, one of them has come to Orem. To answer the question with regard to how long it takes, it takes generally about 2 semesters to get through the academy.

The reason is, is because we are a part-time academy. We run Monday through Friday from 5:30 at night until 9:30 at night.

And what is the average age of the students?

What's the cost?

The cost right now for the SFO is $2,100, and for the LEO it's $3,100. And of course they do have to pay for some equipment, and that can be roughly about $1,000.

And your capacity is how much? I mean, you have 11 in right now. What is your—

I have 28 right now ready to go through the academy that starts September 13th.

Okay, so you can handle 28?

I can handle actually up to 35.

Up to 35?

Yes, sir.

And are you having a hard time getting people to come to attend or not?

Well, sometimes some people are afraid to come in because of the news media that's out there today, and that's overcoming that.

We also have an issue with regard to salaries.

The average salary in Utah County is about $40,000.

The average cost of a house is about $320,000.

So some of the individuals are having a difficult time trying to purchase homes. They may have to work here, but then live in another community where they can afford to live.

So that's some of the issues. How about you?

How many of those 28 will make it through the academy on average?

I anticipate I might lose 3 to 4, and a lot of that is due to the physical agility, defensive tactics, those kinds of things.

Sometimes after I accept them, POST will review the person's criminal history, which I don't have access to, and will ask me to remove that person from the academy. Because they weren't truthful on their application. So that's—

So the cities recruit with you, or how do these individuals find their jobs?

They do. They— in fact, I invite them to come into our academy and present their departments, and I encourage every one of my cadets to apply that want to apply for that department. I will say this though, to Mainly talk about my academy. I have the best instructors in the entire state of Utah. As a matter of fact, our firearms program is by far better than anyone in this state, and it's ran by Lieutenant Shane Frederickson.

Sure.

We don't necessarily teach shooting a target. We actually teach combat survival shooting. We look at it from this standpoint: qualification is the lowest part on the curriculum. We want these guys to be able to handle the firearm, to manipulate it properly, and to shoot properly. And that's what we look for. Our defensive tactics are by far the best in the state. I have some instructors that will put these guys through things that you would not believe. And when they come out of the academy, they're very proficient. So I'm really proud of our program, and I've looked at it. I attend those classes so that you know that I'm not just talking from other people telling me. I've seen it, I watch it, and I, and I participate in it actually.

Good. Well, thank you.

Thank you, Bucky. Bucky's program is also kind of self-funded, so the students paying that tuition, he has to manage that. So when he has fewer numbers, it doesn't help his budget out, so he needs to get 2830 to help him out. We also have a paramedic program. There's a recent change. Our paramedic program, is it going to be this fall when it becomes its own program?

I think it's next fall.

Next fall. So it's going to be a standalone baccalaureate degree. It was housed within another degree, and now it's going They recently flipped their classrooms, so they went hybrid. That really helps with working adults and trying to get them in, and they're actually trying to push through an evening class to help with those who work during the day could take the classes at night.

So a question for you, Tom. What, uh, I should look this up, but what does the word preceptor mean?

That's a non-paid individual within the community that watches and teaches our healthcare individuals in the work environment. So we have them in nursing and PA and all those industries.

So we have the paramedic students come right along with our department, and once they get placed in the station, we assign a preceptor or one of our lead paramedics to be with them basically the whole way and kind of offer them suggestions, help train them, write evaluations, give them the support that they need to be successful. So that, that's the way I look at preceptorship, the way we look at it on the department.

Thank you.

That's exactly right. So it's that engaged learning out there actually doing it, supervised by qualified individuals.

For this program, how's the demand for enrollment been?

You know, so it's, it's interesting, and Chief Baird can speak to this.

We're kind of a mirror of what we've seen happen nationwide with public services positions. As we've seen a dip, a demand for these positions, we've also experienced that enrollment-wise.

It's something that we're trying harder and harder to market, more selective marketing more towards of, you know, perhaps athletes that can kind of assimilate into something like this.

But we're finding by and large there's, there's been a dip in those that want to be police officers, to be firefighters, and that's been reflected in our enrollment for the last 2 years. However, we've seen a big spike this year, so we're hoping that, you know, it goes in cycles. But I, I've been in this business for 33 years, and it used to be that it was a lottery ticket to actually get hired with the department.

The last couple of years that hasn't been the case.

Some departments statewide at least have been almost bribing individuals to get on with these career departments.

One thing you guys do, which is— this is a little bit unusual, believe it or not— is a train first, hire second concept.

That means you'll bring people in that are certified, need to be certified that have the training already. 2 of your largest departments in the state, Salt Lake City and Utah Fire Authority, will do new hirings where they'll train them themselves. Huge costs are associated with that. So what you do here at ORR is fantastic. It's— and we're, you know, we're happy to be in your backyard doing it for you. So cheaper preparedness but exceptionally supportive of that.

We're also really proud of our success rates of those taking exams. So in a lot of our areas, they take national boards, national exams, and we do rather well in most of them. Paramedic is just one example. Utah Fire Rescue Academy— every state has a training entity responsible for providing training, both volunteer and municipal. We house that entity in our college. It's the Utah Fire Rescue Academy, and these individuals go across the state and provide training to volunteer and municipal firefighters. We also have public— PCH, Public and Community Health. I always think of PCH Highway in California, so I get that acronym. But they have 3 baccalaureate programs, one in Health Service Administration, Health Education, and another one in school health education, one community and one school. And lots and lots and lots of activities with this group. They're going all over the place. We even get the mayor in there every once in a while to help us out. This is— let me be 2 more slides. Our Master's of Public Service, we started about 2 years ago. We have about 3 groupings. About a third are police, police court system individuals coming in. Another third are fire and EMS individuals coming in. And the, the other third is actually growing a little bit. We have an increase in nonprofits, but we also have city engineer, parks and recreation, And a lot of the city services involved. One of the—

Hi, Tom.

One of the things we talk to our students about is if you look at an MPA, Master's in Public Administration, I have an MPA, that's typically for elected or some services within the city, a lot of them dealing with policy-related items. Our MPS focuses a little bit more on that. sweet spot of the administration within a city or county or state. And so we're kind of looking at fire chiefs, police chiefs, or those that want to move up within the public service rank. We're averaging about 25 a cohort. Our first cohort just finished up this past summer. We have— did you, Matt, did you ever find out what some of the—

No.

projects were over this past summer?

I did not find out about that.

So I know one of them dealt with getting— one of our graduate students worked with, I think it was Lyndon, but I'm not sure, getting 911 dispatch information to include autism when police and fire dispatch. What we found is it helps get the police officers and firefighters EMS, get them thinking about what they might expect when they get to the household. So that's a pretty neat thing. We also had— I think this was in Lyndon as well— an evaluation of the emergency management or emergency plans for the city, and we did a gap analysis to see what was missing and started to fill some of those gaps. Wanted to give you that as some ideas for if you have problems or challenges that you're want to tackle in your city, contact Matt, as we might have graduate students who might be able to help you with some of that. It's in line with what they do in the program and can help them out as a project as well.

So you do offer them as interns in various communities?

Yeah, we— so the majority of our students are already working and they're wanting to move up, but we do have a few that need an internship. Yeah, if there's an internship, I bet you we would have a graduate student that'd be interested.

Tom, you also have some—

they do projects as part of their classes?

That's correct. We have a capstone course at the very end. So we start at the very beginning. Matt just took the helm of this. So they're making sure the students are identifying a project up front, and they'll be working on it over a 2-year period with a culmination usually in the summer.

So what kind of projects What projects do you have them do? Any examples?

So they pick their own, so they come up with them. So one was the autism. We had a student doing that. We had 2 working on the emergency management plan. We had at least 2 that I know of that were nonprofits in Salt Lake that worked with how to integrate elderly females that are from another country and integrate them in. And they had this little project that they're working on. She's actually finishing up this fall, I believe, for that one. We had another one work on the equipment side of things, so help establish a kind of repair and replacement for the city on some of their maintenance things. I can't think of any. Do you know of any, Gary? I think there was one One was CERT-related.

It went on the effectiveness of CERT training and offering CERT training to communities, community emergency response training.

Right.

So some of these— so you got about a 2-year window that you could have someone. So if you had a project that you needed, it didn't have to have an immediate kind of end date, you could get with Matt and we could put— look at getting a couple graduate students together and Maybe using that as the— for the project, and they would work over it over the 2-year period. That would be a little different than an internship though because—

Right, it's more of a project.

Yeah, they're not going to get internship credits, but they are going to get credits for that class.

And we want them to apply the concepts that they learned, so it's usually an assessment piece and implementing and evaluating, or at least developing a solid plan that includes all those parts. So that was quick from faculty and staff. Did I miss anything? Anything you wanted to add to that? Okay, so really what we wanted to hear from you, if you had any questions for us, anything else, any— anything we could help you with. You heard any good or bad things about our students in your—

Jamie, anybody need help from staff?

You know, we actually appreciate the association we have with UVU. We have in the past actually hired interns to work in our city manager's office, as well as we work on somewhat of a regular basis with MBA students at UVU. We haven't really spent a lot of time with the public service students because frankly it's a relatively new program. interested in.

Well, if you want to evolve to the next level, we'd certainly be willing to help you with that. I know we have a good MBA program, but—

And I know there's always that healthy back and forth between MBAs and MPAs, I myself being an MPA. But really, one of the, one of the things that I think from our experience is there is much to be learned through practical experiences. And obviously you have that in, for example, paramedic programs and police experiences. I'd be interested to know how you help students kind of grow and understand the administrative side of organizations as you see that number of, you know, students increasing in that area of study. More and more people interested in, for example, not-for-profit organizations or municipal, county, state governments where there are obviously many, many employees who benefit from the education we provide. So that's something that we're always interested in. We're looking for individuals, for example, don't necessarily come to us with directly a public safety mindset, for example, but somebody who is prepared to jump across disciplines, so to speak, because much of what we do in a city is jump across those disciplines. And, you know, one day we're dealing with a water issue, the next day we're dealing with a parks issue, the next day it's It's a police or a fire issue, a library issue. So, you know, that's just a little bit of feedback from a guy who does some of that on the day-to-day. One of the other things that we're challenged— we're struggling with, and I think Bucky kind of spoke to this, is the challenge that we have not just in hiring law enforcement, Officers, it's actually getting them trained. And even if we have slots available, the training opportunity for us to, for example, send people through POST, you know, we can have 3 of the best candidates, but if they're not credentialed, it may literally take us months to get them into the police academy. And I know we've had conversations with UVU about, well, what can we do here locally to kind of accelerate that? Because if you have, for example, an organization that's state-sponsored and the state police has a specific need for officers, who do you think gets priority? State employees. And so we're lucky if we get 3 or 4 slots in 1 or 2 classes. So, where our need may be 6 or 7. So interested in how we might do that to better kind of accelerate people moving through post getting the appropriately trained and credentialed so that they can get on the street sooner rather than later. I mean, I'm— I appreciate, for example, an 8-month window, but our needs are Not 8 months down the road. Our needs are immediate. So how can we facilitate that?

I'll be glad to address that. As a matter of fact, some of the things that you can do is allow that person to go through the SFO. That gives them a tie into the program. If you hire someone just off the street and you send them down the post, you might get someone that is thinking about being a police officer, but maybe tomorrow their wife may, or somebody else, would come and say, look, the real bottom line is I don't want you to be a police officer. So then they cut ties and they go somewhere else. I've been advocating that one of the things that you can do is allow that person to complete the SFO program at the university. Once they complete it, recruit them, and then put them through the field training officer program for the police department. Then after that, allow them to continue with the law enforcement officer academy portion. Do the field training officer program 4 hours a day and the academy 4 hours a day. What I found actually is when you do that, and there's several cities here in Utah County and other places that are doing that, like Saratoga Springs is doing it, Salem has been doing that, American Fork has been doing that, and we've kind of watched what's happened to these individuals that come back to the academy through the Law Enforcement Officer Training Program. What I found is they take it more seriously and they realize, you know, there's some things on the street I need to learn and there's things that in the classroom I need to learn. By combining those 2, I think you're getting a better product. The second thing is, is that it's cheaper to do that, and I've actually used Orem as an example to do that, to find out whether it is cheaper or more expensive. Then once they've completed the Law Enforcement Officer Academy, they will do the FTO program, maybe 4 more weeks. And then it would allow them to kick them to the street so that they can be on their own. Catch is to work that program, and I think, Orem, if they did that, they would be very successful in doing that. I can appreciate what you said about the need to get them in and get them out, and with the credentials, we're seeing that across aviation same way. They want them in, they want them out. And so we as a university are working hard to figure out— we're kind of sort of stuck with the semester timeframe, which doesn't help us. But I can tell you our new president has suggested that maybe we look at alternative ways of starting and stopping so we can move students through a little bit quicker. So it's a university issue that we're kind of looking at. Kind of tough with the university that's Stuck in its ways, not just UVU, but, you know, the academy generally. But it's happening. Competency-based education, the ability to assess and award credit that you've earned in real-life experiences, we need to do that better so we can get them in and get them out with the needed credentials. We also struggle with the quality issue. You know, we want our students to be up here, right? We want absolutely the best, highest quality possible. We all want that, but if others are pumping them out here and they're getting a job at this level, you know, students are walking with their feet. They're going to other aviation programs because they can get in and out a little bit quicker than us. So we have to be able to be adaptive and we have to balance that really fine line of they still need to be quality, but we need to get them in and out with the appropriate credentials.

So knowing that there are also challenges just getting enough students to apply and get into the program. Is there anything you're doing to screen students up front? And the reason I ask that, if let's say they go through the program, they start with the fire department, police department, and they get halfway through that probationary period and find out, you know what, I'm just not cut out for this, or this isn't for me, it kind of— it's a disservice not only to, you know, the city and your program, but to that individual if They could have found out right off the bat that maybe this isn't the right career fit for me for whatever reason. Is there anything we can do up front to help them kind of— and maybe you're already doing this, I just don't know—

know if it's right for them? So it's a fact that everybody wants to become a firefighter first, so we usually get the cream. I'm a firefighter by nature, so we usually get the cream of the crop. Just kidding. So can you talk about what you do with RCA as an example?

Yeah, so, you know, I'm asked all the time, how long is your program?

And my response is, well, what do you mean, which program?

Because it's very complex.

Our recruit academy, our firefighter academy, is one semester, a single semester.

Well, that sounds simple, 15 weeks.

There's quite a few prerequisites that it takes to get to that portion to where you're taking that one semester class. So, and there's a lot of screening involved in that, not only, you know, cognitive screening but physical screening as well that happens. With paramedics, it's paramedic school, it's even, it's even more so that there's, you know, you've got to have math and physiology, math, English.

There's also a physical and other mental testing and screening that takes place. So there's a bit of screening that happens and some of it is, is national or federally mandated.

that they pass certain background checks and stuff like that. So there are a lot of screening that's done on the main players. It doesn't catch everything, quite obviously. You know, there are a number of things that slip through the cracks.

And you think you have it all figured out, and then you're like, I can't believe we had that one slip through.

Do they work at all with advisors?

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Our advisors are, you know, I mean, they essentially hold their hand from the very beginning. Beginning as, say, a freshman coming in, which could be somebody who's 18 or it could be somebody who's 30 coming in.

It's their first college experience.

So they definitely, they work with them from, advisors are there from the very beginning all the way through graduation.

They also do a rookie challenge, is that what you call it?

Rookie training?

Yeah, which is something we've instituted over the last couple of years. This gives students an idea of what So what is a rookie challenge?

They get a taste for what's involved in being a firefighter for a day, if you will.

So they get a couple of hours of putting equipment on and off, doing some physical fitness stuff, and that's helped out quite a bit.

Just putting the uniform on to me is daunting.

It is.

I've done that before.

It's unbelievable. Yeah, there's a lot of extra weight.

Going through that, and we also encourage them to get on a volunteer fire department if they can. It's usually one or the other. They find out quickly, you know what, these guys are crazy, we don't want anything to do with them, or I've fallen in love and I'm going to do that for the rest of my life.

So on the fire side.

Bucky, what about the police officer side? Well, on the police officer side, I can tell you that POST delegates or designates what the application needs to be when they apply for the police academy. As they go through that, I go through that with them, and I try to get them to be honest as best as possible. Unfortunately, there's some people that think that they can get over it. As a result, they will lie on it. When POST takes a look at their application and they have a criminal investigator go through it, they find some of the problems. So for that, we try to screen as best as we possibly can. We're already doing that.

It's just there's some things that are beyond our control.

So it's not necessarily specific to just, you know, this vocation. I mean, any profession is going to have this challenge. You get this degree and like, maybe this isn't what I want to do with my career, this rest of my life kind of thing.

Well, exactly. I can tell you that in Wyoming, there was a guy that had a master's degree in criminal justice Got a job with the sheriff's department. After 2 months he said, I don't even like this field. You would think before he got a master's degree he would have asked that question and figured it out.

So do you do a series of physical tests before they start down the road?

Well, the first day of the academy I would talk to them about what we need to do and what's going to happen during the academy. The second day is generally where I do the PT test and And as long as they pass the minimum standard that POST has established. Right. That's a good idea though. We do a lot of different little video vignettes of our different places. Maybe we should focus a little bit about what's expected and—

Because I've watched 2 wash out because they could not meet the physical demands.

That might be something that we could—

I think it's good, the job that this group does in trying to prepare firefighters, police officers, paramedics. They can only do so much. It's only when they get on the job and they get into that field, they answer that one call that nobody ever wants to go to, they face those situations. It was like that scene situations that are like this or where they're dealing with situations that the baby not feeding or whatever it might be. And we do have those that when they hit that, you can't really prepare for it, is when they say this is not what I need. So as much as good a job as they do to prepare our people to come in, it's usually when it's in that real-world experience that can they or Good points.

We'll take that back for sure.

Sorry, and just on that note that you mentioned there, I was recently speaking with a retired officer that— police officer that had gone to a program that was kind of just getting his mind right after he'd retired and, you know, sorting through some of those emotions. And he these horrific situations that he dealt with over the years. Are there things that you've kind of worked into the program over the last few years with an increased emphasis on kind of the psychological aspects of the job to help them prepare for those?

Yes, sir, we have. We actually have a class that we teach them. The catch is that class is only 4 hours long, and we abide by what those standards are required In fact, we abide by everything in the curriculum that poses demands.

So that's what we do. Lately, I've tried to teach a couple of other different classes, things like how to get a job, and the other is how to work with parole probation with regard to dealing with a situation that would be similar to the young lady at the university.

Good talk.

So I think that's part of the training piece, to get the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job. And then the education piece is to hone in on that and provide some of those other mental health. So we're looking at autism as well. You know, we've had the chief help with the autism center conference that we had and training police officers, fire first responders on how to interact with those that are on the spectrum. It's a little different, and you need to have that awareness. That kind of gives the bigger, I guess, perspective of it. The training, the education, and the continuous professional development.

So do you know, and you may not, but do you know if the university and maybe Astrid and so forth are looking at the idea of changing how the semesters are run to trimester or to Other quicker means of going through like you're talking about?

So there's a task force looking at how do we provide— they're calling it flexible learning. So it's competency-based, it's online, and I don't think our new president would say anything's off the table. So I think there's probably all of those discussions going on.

Any other questions? Well, we appreciate your presentation.

Thank you.

We love UVU. It's a great part of our community, and, you know, our youth need a place to receive their education, and UVU has been great to provide that. So thankful that you're there.

We love being in this city and being part of it, and I'm so sorry you have to work with Tom all the time. It's really sad, but Apology accepted. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

How long, not counting tomorrow, have you worked at UVU?

I gotta get out of here real quick.

Thank you.

One of the things that—

and the mayor's been helpful with this in the past—

is Tom mentioned some of the financial challenges we have. We're always interested in looking into the communities and finding if there are people or organizations companies in your community that are interested in supporting the university in some particular way, something that's of interest to them. And I think when we had our conversation before, he brought up an obvious organization that we hadn't really thought about, and that was Vivint with their home security business. Yes. And Vivint is a great supporter of the university, and they've supported many different areas.

But, you know, we look, just as a case in point, we established without a significant donor an endowed scholarship, or try to establish one, in honor of Officer Shinners, who passed away.

Provo police force, and passed away here in Orem in the line of duty.

And so we're trying to do some things that would be beneficial to our students to help them get through the program, to find some resources, whether it's scholarships or equipment, which can be any kind of All donations are gratefully received, but if there are any people in your community that make a lot of noise about concerns, public service and safety and what have you, we'd like to give them an opportunity to put their money where their complaints may be and talk to them about how they could help out, help students, help with our programs.

So, not necessarily down that line, but I'm wondering, do you have like a mentoring program? Where, for example, you have a Shane— an Officer Shane Frederickson who could talk to some of the students that are in Bucky's program and, you know, not only is he training them on shooting but just giving them some advice of what life's really like.

I don't know.

In the Law Enforcement Academy, Bucky can speak to that.

Actually, I do that quite a bit in the academy.

Good.

Is to let them know what life really is about and how to react to certain things.

We do that quite a bit in our academy, and we especially do it during our scenario training.

Good.

I just noticed when I went to college that as far as mentoring goes, at least back in the day, there really wasn't much. And I often wish that there were more individuals available Sit there and say, all right, this is, you know, if you're going to be a lawyer, this is what it's like to be a lawyer.

It's a very important point. As an open enrollment institution, anybody can go to UVU.

But just as a case in point with our nursing program, after you get through all the prerequisites and all that's required, which will take more time than just getting—

taking your nursing courses, I think the last statistics I heard, we had 100 160 applicants, we interviewed 80, and we accepted 50.

So even though we're open enrollment and anybody can come to the institution, in order to get into your specialized programs where you want to be, there is a screening process.

And so having those mentoring opportunities, having someone come in and talk about what it's like to be a police officer or a city manager or whatever, a fire chief, whatever it might be, Very important to—

for our programs.

So we welcome anybody from the community who would be interested in doing that.

And I know I've been over there multiple times speaking, but I would imagine that our council and staff would be available as well for invitations to come over and speak about their particular employment.

That would be wonderful. Our faculty that we hire are Pretty much all season, so you have to be here for the things we do.

Sure.

I love the offer because, Matt, I was just thinking that maybe we could have some of you over to talk and videotape. We could do an interview and videotape. Our master's program is completely online, so videotaping a session would be very helpful because we could put that in on the web and work it into our degree.

We're grateful as the host city for everything you do. I didn't run the numbers, but I dare say probably half of our students are residents of Oron, probably many more than that. So we are indebted to the city and grateful for everything you do for us.

And we're excited for your new housing there at UVU and the new tunnel underneath the road so they can go just straight into the buildings.

And someday going over across to the west campus.

Yes, someday. That bridge is on its way, we just don't know when.

If it's all right, we have our college newsletter as well as some information about our programs, in particular the physician assistant program over here.

So you're welcome, I'll just leave those for you. If you'd like me to If you have any extras, I'll be glad to do that.

We also brought along some, just some token items, and rather than take up your time to pass them out, we'll leave those here as well.

And, uh, there's your UVU greens and water bottles, so I hope you can make use of those.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Um, before we go to our next spot, I wanted to ask Jamie a question. Are you aware of where we're at on the What's the latest on the bridge?

The last update I received was they are running into some soils issues with the columns that would need to be along the path of the bridge, and that is increasing the cost of the bridge. And now it has essentially the state and UDOT questioning You know, is there another way for us to essentially do this project? Because now the cost of it is north of $25 million.

Wow.

And so—

What is it starting at?

We started at about $12 million, I think, and then it rose to $18 million, and now it's above $25 million. And so some of the things that— obviously they're doing a UVU transportation study right now. And some of the options that are in discussion may help facilitate pedestrian access across I-15 and not necessarily require the construction of, for example, 2 facilities: a bridge over I-15 to facilitate vehicular traffic, another bridge across I-15 to facilitate pedestrian traffic.

Does daylight work?

No conversation of ski lifts or gondolas or anything like that?

Monorail.

Ryan, am I misrepresenting anything?

So it's just in the study stage right now.

It's just a matter of—

We should be seeing the results soon.

They're finalizing the results of the transportation study and the recommendations. And the farther we get down the road and they dig deeper into the bridge, they run into more and more questions and concerns as to structural integrity of the columns.

Well, it started out as a simple idea. It's really turned into a big mess.

Okay.

All right, well, our next presentation is on emergency management.

So, Mayor, may I just give a brief introduction to this conversation?

Sure.

Thank you.

I appreciate Keith being here. Several months ago, a number of you attended sessions of the Utah League of Cities and Towns conference in St. George, and one of the speakers at that conference was the former director of FEMA, and he posed a number of questions relative to emergency preparedness and what we we, you as elected officials, should be looking for as it relates to emergency management. And a number of you approached me and said, well, are we doing this? Are we doing this? Are we doing this? And so I thought it appropriate to invite Keith to kind of give you a 30,000-foot perspective as to where we are with emergency management. The quick answer to the questions that that gentleman, the former administrator, asked administrator with FEMA asked. In short, yes, we are doing those things. We do have a dedicated staff member who—

in Heath—

who works directly in cooperation with the fire department and coordinates our emergency management activities. In recent months, we as members of the executive staff within the city have been meeting with Heath and, you know, adding to that knowledge base In terms of what expectations are for each of our respective departments as related to emergency management. And finally, our plan prospectively too is to continue that education effort with all of our employees so that in the event of any sort of emergency situation, we're prepared to respond. And it's not just, for example, a plan that sits on a shelf. Rather, it's one that our staff knows about, we have an opportunity to exercise in cooperation with community partners, and that we can be prepared when we face emergency situations in the future.

What we're demonstrating here right now is what happens if you don't prepare yourselves for emergencies. You want to be ready. I can tell you we have great confidence in Heath. He has done, you know, Jimmy's been saying, a great job with our city helping us to be ready. He's very much engaged in the process and working very well with his partners across not only the county but the state, making sure that we're plugged in. into everything we need to so that we're— we can maximize our preparedness as we move forward, uh, in the world of emergency management, which is, you are all aware, is very—

and the other thing we're trying to teach here, you know, how to use PowerPoint, communication.

I was going to say, I saw a I saw a show about, I think it was San Francisco, and they were talking about unreinforced brick buildings and how many they had and what would happen in an earthquake. And then, have you seen those platforms that they've actually built and they put unreinforced brick piles and they shake it and then you watch everything tumble down? It's pretty scary. Okay, Heath, take it away.

Okay, looks like we got this up and running. So, um, thank you for the opportunity to come over here. Uh, as Jamie mentioned, I don't know if you guys want to sit, stand, kneel, does it matter? Um, but thank you for the opportunity. As Jamie had mentioned, I'm going to go over just real quickly kind of what Orem City, what I'm doing in conjunction with a lot of our public safety, police, fire, public works officials on an emergency management level. So feel free, there'll be time for questions at the end or anytime during the presentation. Just cut me off and ask questions. So what I plan on doing, just a little roadmap here, are the pillars of emergency management that I try to cover here in Orem. How I cover those pillars Our mass communication, our Everbridge system to get notifications out to the residents. You guys will be sick of the word Everbridge by the end of this, I promise. And then we do— every year we do a City of Orem communication drill with our block captain program throughout the city with the residents, and I will cover that here just a little bit as well. And as I mentioned, feel free to ask questions at any time.

Thank you.

The 4 pillars to build a resilient city are prepared citizens, prepared businesses, prepared schools, and then leads to a prepared city. So everything that I do here at Orem on a day-to-day basis is focusing on making one of those 4 pillars more prepared if we were to have a situation that would arise. Now this one I'm going to read word for word. Sorry about that. The mission statement is, the City of Orem Office of Emergency Management strives to make the City of Orem more resilient by preparing for, mitigating against, responding to, and assisting in the city's recovery from both natural and man-made disasters, as well as larger-scale emergencies. So to be able to accomplish that mission statement, I'll go through This is kind of how I do it. So I do plans, preparedness, we train, teach courses, do lots of exercises on the city level, county level, state level, do promotions at all of our booths and our fairs, mitigation project, apply for certain grants within the city to try to get more money for public Public safety officials. And then 2 of the bigger ones, coordinate and network, just within the city, within the county, and within our state, to have everybody on, on the same playing field, on the same level, and able to help each other out. Just a quick overview of some of the plans that, as Jamie mentioned, are sitting on the shelf that we're going to try to get the city more involved and make sure that everybody understands their roles in these certain plans. But our comprehensive emergency management plan, that is our all-hazard plan, covers— I mean, I guess you can't dream up everything that's going to happen, but covers what I think will happen based on past events, based on where the city is located, those kinds of things. Our communication plan Which I, as I mentioned, is run through the Orem City Drill. Just a way to be able to get all of our residents talking with the Emergency Operations Center as quickly as possible. Each year at Summerfest, incident action plan. If anything were to happen during that weekend there at Summerfest, we have a response plan of how we would go about taking care of it.

Great.

And then the City Center evacuation plan. This was a plan that Chief Nerney had asked me to write. I worked in conjunction with a few of our law enforcement and got different routes for this building as the public safety building and the court.

Question on that. Yes, City Center. Does the Library Hall construction project— I mean, does that throw a huge wrench in how that all works?

Yeah, it'll have to be updated when that's finished for sure. Like, I guess it could be updated now with the plans.

Yeah, I'm saying even just like with the construction site there, like, was that a gathering place out there in that area, or—

Um, no, there was a little— I mean, a smaller one over here, but most of it is trying to keep people off the streets, so most of it is back in the parking lot area here. Um, but yeah, so that's the thing, if plans are You write them and then you update them the next day.

Yep.

Because there's always something changing. And then our point of distribution plan, this was one that is currently working on with the Sandy City Water incident that they had. They were able to write and test out a point of distribution plan as they were handing out water bottles to the residents that needed it. And then some of our plans working with partners. Our debris removal plan. And then, being in Utah County, we only have 2 full-time emergency managers. It's myself and Provo City. And so we get called on a lot to help with our Utah County plans. And then also at the state level, we get brought in quite a bit to represent Utah County on a state level for a lot of their plans.

So Heath, a question. You've got debris removal plan up there. Our public works building is on the west side of the freeway. If we had a major incident where we couldn't get that equipment across the freeway to the rest of the city, have you considered or thought about looking at who possible partners could be within the city that would have equipment on this side that we could use if needed?

Yes, so if our— each incident starts out on a city basis. So like you mentioned, if we can't get our Orem Public Works equipment to where it needs to be, we then reach out to the county level. So I would make a phone call to our Utah County Emergency Manager, say we have this going on, we can't get our equipment over there due to whatever construction or whatever's in, you know, whatever's in the way, whatever's And then our Utah County emergency manager is calling, you know, saying Orem needs this, who has it available?

That's what I'm wondering is, do you have or could you make a list of who has equipment available in different parts of the city that you could possibly access? So for example, we have Ace Rents down on one end of the—

Oh, so Spring Street.

So yes, looking at private, I mean, you've got the county, but on the private side, are there different groups, construction companies, rental companies, etc., that you could have a list of and say these are possibilities we could go to?

Yeah, we could have a list of the different companies. A lot of those companies I don't think would be willing to share exactly what equipment they have or whether or not they'd actually let us use it?

Well, I mean, you'd have to pay for it, but I'm just saying, right, availability, right?

So yeah, we—

I can make a list with all the private companies, um, just kind of a basis of what they have.

It's kind of like a crane. If we need a crane, we have a couple of crane operators that we can— we know that we need, we can contact, right? We can make arrangements with those And have that agreement in there. But like he says, when things happen like that, they may not be willing to give it to us at that time, or they may.

Sure, I just think it'd be good to have a list, a backup list to go to.

Yeah, and so, so on the county level, as emergency managers, we're required to have an equipment list. It's one of the requirements to receive our Emergency management grant. So there is a list, not private, but public government entities of what they have, how many they have, and that. So we know what's available there, but I will work on at least having a list of the companies on the private side. They're going to be available. Whether or not they let us have it, but— or it's available, but I will make the list. So So our preparedness, as Jamie had mentioned, we're working on our Emergency Operations Center training, our EOC training. Right now that's been focused on an exec staff level, department heads and our city management. And we've done a few trainings with that and have asked them to reach out within their departments And have the department people that are in our EOC organization chart, they have to take certain courses online through FEMA. And once they have completed those courses, it's a requirement again to get our grant for emergency management. Right now we've had a couple of the departments that have been really good at reaching out. I think Public Works has completed just about all of everybody on the list, so we are doing good that way. And then our policy group training, that kind of ties in with our EOC training, making sure our policy group— I have a slide here towards the end that has the organization laid out, how everybody fits in, but our policy group training Making sure that they're aware of their roles and their responsibilities if we were to have a disaster situation. Again, Everbridge. Everbridge is kind of our on-the-fly emergency plan. The more people that sign up for that, the easier it will be to be able to access that part of the city with those personnel, let them know what's going on and how best our public safety things, whether it's evacuation or shelter in place or whatever it may be, it's the easiest way to get a hold of them along with social media. But this will shoot it out. Is that countywide? Say that again.

The Everbridge, is that countywide?

It is countywide, yep. It's a countywide system.

Um, let's keep on here.

So, um, our training. So we have city employees We do city resident trainings for both. We've done our EOC training. I keep mentioning that. It's one of the big things that we're working on right now within the city. At least on an emergency management level, I felt like it was one of our bigger deficiencies. So thank you for the support of city management in helping me push that along. We do a shakeout. There's the Great Utah Shakeout every We do just a, you know, a little evacuation for certain parts of the building. We'll send out kind of steps that people should take during an earthquake, those kind of things, just the basics. You know, most everybody kind of knows what to do during an earthquake. It's been the big thing for 15 years now, but just good little reminders to keep it out there. And then, so this picture in the top right, we have a active shooter drill that we did at UVU.

Our police department and fire department were heavily involved in that.

So not only on a city level, but our, our city employees are getting out and being able to participate in trainings with schools, with the county, and hopefully here shortly we're going to have a statewide exercise that we can talk some of. You guys into helping out with. So, and then for our residents, we do community emergency response, or CERT program. Here in Orem, we have about 1,200 individuals that have gone through our CERT course. So it is, it's a good base for volunteers that are needed. They get used quite a bit in With the flooding that's going on, a lot of sandbag operations. We've had force multipliers on search and rescues. So just trying to empower the residents a little bit, being able to help out with public safety officials. Our City of Orem drill, again, that incorporates the entire city, all of the residents. Starts on a block captain level and ends up here at our Emergency Operations Center. Then we do ham radio. We do both classes and host their club. They help out all the time with whether it be net check-ins, whether it's our city drill, whatever it may be. We help them out and they help us out. And then again, I told you you'd be sick of it, Everbridge.

So do you have a list of all the ham Do you have a list of ham radio operators in Orem?

I do.

So, yep, it's, uh, we have one in Orem, and then our— it's called the SCAT team. It's through the sheriff, Utah County Sheriff's Office. They also have a list on a county level. Um, and then just real quickly, these are just a few of the places I mentioned what we taught. And now here at Fuqua, we do it at classes, we do fairs, presentations, booths, church meetings.

We've done—

I keep saying we, so I always have volunteers that are helping me. We've done presentations for different scout groups that have come in and just had emergency management questions. So just trying to be able to help them out and help our residents be as prepared as they possibly can. Exercises. I talked about exercises a little bit, but since I've been here, I've been here for 2 years now, that is a list of the exercises that we've done. Some of them have been done more than once, but as you can see, it's been a citywide, countywide, statewide, and then we've also involved the schools and we have involved our volunteers. So Trying to make it an all-hazards approach and an all-community approach. Involve as many people as we can in each one of our exercises. Promotion. So the big one here is our Orem Summerfest. So I have a booth set up there that goes over all of our different areas. We have little games for the kids, try to keep them entertain. And also help out a lot at Lyndon City. They just had a preparedness fair this last weekend that we had our CERT and ham radio out promoting. So we do a lot of that.

Social—

we use social media on our emergency management website. All of my information is posted there, so any resident can get a hold of me at just about any time. And And then our City of Orem drill website, which talks about our drill, what our residents would do in an emergency situation. So I have links to both of those. I don't know if you guys are interested in seeing those websites, or I can just send out this presentation and you can look— I'll let you guys look at it if you're interested in those.

Please send it out.

Okay.

Mitigate. So I think in my emergency management, what I do for a day-to-day job, this to me is the most important, is our mitigation. And if you can get the mitigation portion right as much as possible, it's going to lessen the effect, it's going to lessen the recovery length. So a lot of the stuff that we do, our drills, our trainings, projects, Raise that preparedness level as much as possible now so that it doesn't affect the city as much as it could. Sometimes this can be hard. We knock on wood, we live in Orem, don't have a ton of huge disasters, but we do have, you know, the power outages. We've had flooding down the river, those kinds of things, but not the big-scale events that you see on the news all the time. So sometimes this portion can be hard, especially on this next slide, our grants. Each year I apply for a— it's our Emergency Management Preparedness Grant, and that one is a yearly grant. And then it's these next 2, our Pre-Disaster Mitigation and our Special Project Grants. I have listed there when the money is available So FEMA has a certain amount of money, and since Orem City doesn't have the big headlines, the news, the big incidents taking place, a lot of that money goes other places. Um, I— it's in the 2 years that I've applied for these, um, that we've been told there's no money.

So it's all in Louisiana.

We have received some special project grant money, 2 times, or 3 times. 3 times that I'm aware of since the time I've been here.

I've never seen any pre-disaster mitigation program.

A lot of that ends up on the coasts, whether it's the East or the West Coast. So, and then I don't know if you guys remember our Mountainland Agreement. It's a statewide level, the agreement that we had, that the council had to agree upon it. It's been a couple years now, but we have to do that every 5 years to even be eligible for any of the grants. And then coordination and networking. So as you guys know, I'm a one-man department, so obviously I can't do all this by myself. So reaching out— there's the list of— I didn't add volunteers on there, which I regret on my oversight there, but reaching out to all of these individuals, all of these groups. And As an emergency management community, that's, you know, we do the best we can with our few numbers here in the county. But our networking group, everybody that we reach out to are great. So a lot of time is spent on networking, trying to build those relationships, not having the first meeting be at an incident, but knowing who's there to help.

So you have a provost Do you have a county counterpart?

Yeah, we do. So we have our Utah County has one full-time and one part-time employee. In comparison, Salt Lake County, their county department has 8 full-time.

Do you network with UVU?

I do, yep. So they have— UVU has their own emergency manager. Her name's Robin, and we We do a lot of different— our Everbridge stuff, we cross over quite a bit. The active shooter drill, that was all planned through her. So we do, I would say, 2 or 3 times a year have something going on between the city and UVU. Here's a list of just the different meetings, different committees that I attend. So as I mentioned, there's only 2 full-time, so myself and Chris in Provo, we get roped into a lot of these chairs on the committees. So Utah County Local Emergency Planning Committee is what LEP stands for. That's public and private, all the partners that have hazardous materials. I won't go through and read all these, but then our Utah County Citizen Corps is— that's our volunteers, that's our CERT, Volunteer in Police, Fire Corps, VOAD, which is Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster. So yeah, I got roped into the chair of both of those, so just because we have a full time, so thanks for that. And then finally here, so last— I think this is the last time you'll see Everbridge, but we currently have This is as of last week, 3,500 people who have signed up. So it's kind of like a reverse 911, is that what it's like? Yep, so on your Everbridge system you can send out a message to everybody that signed up, or you can go in and you can draw circles on this map, there's a map with everybody that signed up and you're able to select certain areas and then push out messages Whether it's cell phone or email, whatever they choose to sign up, that's how we communicate.

How are you getting that information out to the public?

How are we getting the messages or the advertising?

Advertising what this is.

So the advertising, we at any fair booth, drill, whatever it may be, that's the main thing that we're pushing. We have little cards with With the how to sign up, it's alerts.orum.org. And then we just have their little bookmarks that we pass out, have it posted on the emergency management webpage or social media. Our city management here, they have started helping in that effort of pushing out here in the last year and have seen— that's when I first started, it was at 2,100 people. So here in the last year We have gone up quite a bit, and I'm going to say a lot of it has been with city management stepping in to help out promote that.

So when you found a 2-year-old wandering around 8th North, was that what we got the notice on?

Yeah, that's the system.

Yep.

And when you draw the circle on the map, is that based off of their home location or their current location based off of cell phone towers and stuff like that?

That is based off The address they put in. So we ask people, you know, for here in Orem, if you live in Orem, put your Orem address in. If you work in Lehi, also put a Lehi address in. And then it puts you in your spot where you're going to be affected and get the alert for whichever, you know, whichever place it was.

So for the missing child example, we couldn't push that out to the whole neighborhood whether they signed up or not? It's just based off of who signed up and who put that as their address?

It is. There is a way to push it out to everybody no matter what, but that has to be a presidentially declared disaster. I can't just go in and do that, so I'd get in a lot of trouble for that one. Okay, but leading into that, so presidentially declared disasters, which is a nice little— it's like you saw the next slide already.

Now that we all have Do you have to be tweeting to find out about this?

I'm sorry, I was just joking.

Could that be the presidentially declared disaster?

How often in the last couple months have you sent something out?

In the last couple months, none. No, we haven't had— so we had Summerfest and that was the incident specifically. Where we had, I think, either 6 or 7 missing kids that we'd sent out messages.

Was that a 2-year-old?

That 2-year-old was only about a month ago, wasn't it?

On 8th North? Kid wandering around, you found him, and he texts back in about an hour that they found the—

Okay, um, so yeah, so maybe—

Incredibly, it was at 1 and 2 in the morning.

Okay, so that would have been— so our police, our dispatch, they can send out Notices as well. So personally, I haven't sent any out. Dispatch sounds like they sent one out at 1 in the morning that I wasn't aware of, but they can also send out.

We use it a lot. I'm sure Gary does the same thing in communicating to our personnel about different events or the different needs that we may have. So it's, it's widely used. Amongst the city departments here in the city?

Yeah, so I left that bottom bullet point, internal and external. So like Chief said, our internal departments, they use it on a daily basis as far as emergency stuff. Try and, you know, we do a test with our drill that's coming up in September. So we'll send one out there and then we usually send one out around Summerfest to let people know to sign up for the Summerfest incident. So our presidentially declared disaster. So there's 2 thresholds that we have to meet and it's $1.9 million for the county, $3.9 million for the state. And if those— if we have a disaster that affects that, then FEMA is paying for 75% of whatever costs are incurred to fix that incident, and Orem is 25%. If you don't hit those thresholds, then it starts on a city basis and Orem gets 100%. So I'm running out of time here, so just real quick, our City of Orem drill will hold this— it's always the first Thursday after September September 11th is how we do that. And it's kind of crazy to think, but some of the kids these days don't even know what September 11th is. It's more of a history. We had a person that we were talking to at one of our last meetings that wasn't even alive when this took place. It's just kind of crazy to think about. So as I mentioned, here's our organization. So as you see, we have our Emergency Operations Center there in the middle. Our Joint Information Center, that's where we have our 3 department PIOs, our policy group, and then our elected officials with the mayor and the city council. So that policy group, we have done— that's what we've been focusing a lot of our trainings on to make sure that they are kind of aware of what they're doing, aware of their responsibilities. Able to answer any questions there. And then with the elected officials, Jamie would then be the liaison between the policy group and the elected officials to be able to work back and forth there, get questions answered, be able to just kind of take care of what needs to be taken care of there.

So if I may, in concept here, The departments would continue to manage operations and manage the incident at hand, but there will be on occasion a need for you as elected officials to engage in the emergency situation. For example, if there are appropriations of money that need to take place that are outside of what we've approved as part of an operating budget, That would be a situation where the city council would have to engage in the disaster itself. There may be a need to establish curfews and things like that, things that happen by way of ordinance. That is also an action that a city council would engage in and take. There may be interactions that are had with other elected officials throughout the state. For example, the county commission or the governor or the president in a federally declared disaster. Those too would be responsibilities that you as elected officials would engage in. Staff would be left with the day-to-day management of the incident at hand.

Thanks for that comment, Jamie. So one other thing I'd just add on to that, one big thing that our elected officials can do in any disaster is just instill that public confidence. Let the public know that we have the right people in the right place and they're doing the right thing to make, you know, get Orem back to the new normal as quickly as possible. They're going to look to you guys for support and being able to then support the Orem employees is great to have that confidence. So just the last slide here that I want to put up is just 2 quotes, 2 that kind of, I guess, incorporate how I feel about emergency management. So I'll just let you guys read those real quick. Emergency management is the And then that's all I've got there. So again, thanks for the time. Thanks for the opportunity to come over here and speak to you guys. Are there any questions?

So on our block program, how do you feel that we are as far as the city prepared with that? I mean, is that working, not working?

When you do your drill each year, you see a better line?

So overall, I think the drill is really good. We usually get somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 participants in the drill, and that's just counting UVU as one person. So all of their students count as one person because I send their— the message to their emergency manager and she distributes it to the Students, but we don't ask for them to reply to us, just to the city. So, uh, that— I feel like that's a really good response. A lot of the emergency management field, when citywide exercises are done, 10 to 20% is usually the norm.

And I'm not counting the UVU students.

If we count them as participants, then we're right up there around—

30.

Between 60 and 70%. So we we have all of our communications set up in the areas that the city's broken into, which there's 22 of them. I've done three drills. One I just kind of helped with, and the other two that I've ran, and we've gone from 17 to 19. So each year we've added one more area. So this hopefully this year will hit the 21 or 20. everybody involved, get all 22 involved. Um, but no, I think the drill is really good.

Our—

as we build upon it, our residents know what's coming. We just had the leadership training, which is for the area, neighborhood, and block captain, the leaderships in those, and we over here at the City Council Chambers, and we were out the doors. We didn't have enough seats over there. So I think Signed in was like 135 people, then going back out throughout the city to pass that information down. So I would call the drill a success. I think it's really helping each year as we build more and more onto it and try to keep everybody from getting bored doing the same thing over and over. That's the hard part, is adding stuff without getting too complex and losing the focus of the main objective.

How many communities would you guess in Utah have a drill that's working that effectively?

Oh, I don't even know that I want to guess. I know it's Lyndon, Lehi. In Utah County, I would say probably a third.

That's actually better than I would have guessed.

Some kind of drill. So, um, you know, it's easier. So, um, like Sanaquin, Springville, Lyndon, they all have 10,000 residents. So it's a lot easier to do a citywide drill than what Orem or Provo would incorporate. But so, but yeah, I would say a third of the cities are doing some kind of citywide drill.

All right, any other questions?

Looks like we have one over here.

Yes, I know I don't have standing in this meeting, but I just wanted to ask about the Everbridge. I just got onto it and I noticed that Orem isn't one of the cities. Did you mention you have to go under Lehi or something to get notifications for Orem specifically?

No, it's just alerts.orem.org.

For Everbridge? Yeah. First time I did.

Try it again.

Okay.

All right, well, thank you.

Appreciate it.

Yeah.

Thanks for your time.

You bet.

2 more questions.

We'll now go on to a discussion of the TRT and restaurant tax analysis. Laura Lewis and Cody Hill.

So, Mayor and City Council, I wanted to I'd like to give just a brief introduction to Laura and Cody, who are here today at our invitation. We've kind of briefed you in part on this particular concern that we have, and this concern kind of manifested itself in the course of several conversations with Utah County. And as a city, we decided that we would take a little bit of a deeper dive into this issue to see if in fact there was a concern as we perceived. And in fact, the findings of this report, I believe, suggest that yes, there are some things that we can do and should be doing to improve the TRT restaurant tax allocation process and how we as a city can serve to some degree as a catalyst with this effort in relation to Utah County. I will also suggest that we have had conversations with other cities throughout the county, and the level of concern that other cities have relative to this process is universal. There is equal concern across all cities in the county as to how money from our transient room and our restaurant tax dollars are being distributed in Utah County. And so as a city, we commissioned Lewis Young Robertson in Burningham to help us understand the situation relative to the tax, and they are here tonight to present their findings. And these are findings that we, uh, will share with you tonight, and we have also made available to all the other cities in the county. However, we made a request that you specifically been given— be given the first opportunity to see these results before many of your elected counterparts see them in other Before any of them. Before any of them in Utah County. So with that said, we'll turn the time over to Cody and to Lara to make this presentation.

Thank you for allowing us to be here and present to you tonight. Cody will do much of the heavy lifting because he's done much of the heavy lifting on the study, so I'll just give you kind of a high-level overview and So just to give you a little background on what Cody wrote before he goes through the slides, we looked at 6 of the largest cities in the county, which cover about 90%, you know, high 80s for one of the tax generators, low 90% for the other, just because it made sense from a time perspective to, you know, focus in on those majority cities. Cody will show you which cities they are specifically. specifically, and looked at the amount of transit room tax and restaurant tax that's generated within each city. He will show you that data. Then he looked at Utah counties' information relative to how those monies in total are spent. It, you know, there's not a perfect science with it. It did take some, you know, I'll call it the rational man approach of, okay, who does benefit from XYZ park, right? So the rational person approach is, well, yes. I mean, the county could go, anybody can go to that park. Yes, that's true. But are you going to drive past 3 other parks in Norman to go to a park in Spanish Fork?

Yeah.

Probably not, right? So in that rational man approach, we said, okay, well, if this park is, you know, right on Spanish Fork's border or in Spanish Fork, then they're benefiting from the allocation of these monies to that park. Does that make sense? So Cody will walk through that with you and show you the results. Our conclusion is, I think, very much what you all expected and what other— What we expected. Cities, not all other cities feel, you'll see one that probably won't feel quite the same, but how most other cities feel is that they're, you know, where the money is generated isn't quite where it's being spent. We're not advocating that it has to be perfect dollar for dollar. I don't think you as a city are going to advocate for that. But, you know, when it gets a little bit too lopsided, then it becomes a concern. And I think the process itself is a concern as well. With that, let me introduce Cody. He is one of the great BYU MPA students that did an internship in Spanish Fork and has been with us for over 4 years. He is a great analyst. I really, really enjoy working with him.

Thanks, Laura. Appreciate it. So basically what we want to go over in this order are, what are TRT, transit room taxes and restaurant taxes? How much does Utah County collect? And how and where have the revenues been used? And so if you were just to go to the state's website and look up what the tax rates are in each county and each city, You would see this, basically this PDF, and what this does is it pulls out and calls out each additional tax depending on what you're buying. So transient room is a main category, tourism. 2 of them I've highlighted in yellow. Those are TR, and that's 4.25%, and FG, and that is 1%. And what if you're, if you're staying in a hotel in Orange You're going to pay the 7.25%, just standard sales tax, in addition to these additional taxes that are tacked on for transient room transactions. And so that's 5.57 additional percentage points. And so your total tax is going to be $12— or sorry, 12.82% for a stay in a hotel. And for prepared foods, It's an additional 1% that's added on to that, and so your tax would be not 7.25%, but it would be 8.25%. So these are taxes that are collected countywide from everywhere in the county and go toward the county for distribution. So here's kind of a high-level view of transient room tax. It's an optional tax imposed by the county. Like I said, 4.25% up to 4.25% on accommodations less than 30 days, and it's used to establish and promote recreation, tourism, visitor center, museums, sports, and recreational facilities. And then restaurant tax, it is an optional tax imposed on the county up to 1% on alcoholic beverages, food, prepared food, food ingredients.

Yeah?

If I remember correctly, this restaurant tax was put into place first to build the McKay Event Center at EVU. Is my memory correct?

I do not know.

I'm more familiar of the history of your transient room tax than with the restaurant tax.

My understanding and memory is that the restaurant— or monies from one of these taxes was used for the seating in McKay Event Center.

Oh, the seating. But it wasn't essentially put in place Okay, I thought it was the restaurant tax.

Yeah, so these are, like I said, countywide and collected and basically by the county and used by the county.

So the question, the restaurant tax has listed supporting an airport facility. I don't see that under the TRT.

Correct, it's not one of the stated uses under So these are 2 different taxes. They're similar in what you can do with them, but they're not identical. And then this is how much the county has collected historically. These figures are in the millions, and so their average TRT revenues from 2010 to 2017 are $1.5 million— or sorry, $2.5 million that they're collecting annually. And for restaurant tax revenues, the average annual collection is 6.1. And these are very— as you can see, there's steady growth. It goes from $4.5 to $8 million for the restaurant revenues with just a steady increase for each tax. So these are stable, these are growing taxes without any really fluctuation in their growth. Now we want to talk about kind of the contributors, because the So this is countywide collected, so each city and incorporated is being assessed this tax when they make purchases, and then the county is collecting it. And so between 2010 and 2017 for TRT, and again, the TRT was a little bit smaller, it was 2.5 annually versus a 6.1 for the restaurants. So the TRT, this is the average and the total for each of the— like Laura said, I looked at the 6 largest cities in the county: Provo, Orem, Lehi, Spanish Fork, Pleasant Grove, and American Fork. And so on average, these are what they're contributing to the county's— to this tax base.

Spanish Fork has no hotels, I take it?

Right, correct. Yeah, that's strange because they do, but not since 2017.

Oh, so they were just built in the last 2 years?

No, Western Motel's been there for a long time.

Maybe nobody stays there?

My brother-in-law has stayed there.

So the county's not collecting it.

So I pulled this data from the county— from the state website. So there's 2 sources for this. Uh, one, there's 2 cities that actually assess an additional Transient room tax. So for Orem, it's— yeah, it's 1%. And so when that's being tracked, you can actually see how much transient room tax is. The other cities that don't assess an additional transient room tax, I had to go off of what the state's taxable sales were for different categories. And so that is odd because I've lived in Spanish Fork. I've lived in Spanish Fork. Like Laura said, I interned there and I definitely drove— it's right off of the freeway, kind of by the Costco. Yeah, so I'll have to look into that.

But, um, is it definitely within Spanish Fork city boundaries or is it potentially unincorporated county?

Potentially county, but I'm pretty sure that's city tax.

Yeah, so I can take another look at that, but I imagine it's not— but it is only that significant enough to—

yeah, it's not significant enough to really I'll just mention that for each of these cities, we have the data year by year by year by year that we're showing. We're just trying to give you a summary without taking up the whole evening.

And then this is the graph kind of showing what percent— so as a total percent of what the county is seeing in sales. And it's a little bit tricky because transient room tax sales Sales are not included in the county sales. don't all contribute to transient— sorry, hotel sales don't all contribute to transient room taxes. So when you go to a hotel and you spend extra at their lobby or their gift shop, their gift shop. That's not TRT taxes. It's only for the actual accommodations. And so, but this is for the hotel sales, what each city is contributing. And you can track that over time.

As a percentage.

As a percentage of the county's total, correct. And so you can kind of see how Provo's has a smaller piece of the pie, Orem's dips and then levels out, and then Lehi's grows. And then for the restaurant tax, which was $6.1 million on average annual that they were pulling in, You can see that Orem actually has a higher average contribution than Provo at $1.6 million versus Provo's $1.4 million. And then Lehi almost $600,000 and Spanish Fork $400,000 and so on. And then you can see as well what each of those cities makes up as a percent of the total spent within The county on food and beverage sales.

And it won't be lost on you that you're the highest. You're that top line.

So I, I'm only getting into the weeds on the expense line items. So the numbers, high level more, but the expense line items, I thought it was important to show really where these monies are being spent. So for the TRT account, there are 5 different line items. And just as an overview, $20.5 million in expenditures over 8 years on these 5 line items, and $2.5 million on average. And the county spends this money down. It doesn't save it, doesn't keep it for a rainy day or for really future projects. It spends the revenue down.

So are you saying I'm seeing that for outside of the convention center, basically $300,000 to other.

So this does not have the— so you'll see the convention center is $7.8 million. And yeah, so other is $303,000 for the TRT. There's another—

Right, I understand.

Which is TRCC, which has 18, and I'll show you that right now. But, but yeah, this is from the county's, uh, CAPR and from their budget where it shows the actual expenditures. And then the TRCC expenses, that has 18 line items. And, uh, the TRCC, that stands for—

Transit Rural.

Yeah, sorry, it stands for Tourism, Recreation, Cultural, and Conventional Facilities Tax, and it's made up primarily of restaurant tax revenues. And this is the spending between 2010 and 2017 on those 18 line items.

Can you go back for just a second?

Yes.

So Thanksgiving Point bond payment, can you explain that?

Yeah, so the County supported Thanksgiving Point's addition, a project that they were working on, and that went to support that project at Thanksgiving Point. And I'll go back to this in future slides. It shows how it's being allocated as well. So I want to show you the numbers and then how it's being allocated.

Those top 2 lines, Utah County Parks and Materials Services, it's not new parks.

This is— they use this money to pay for their maintenance on parks, to mow lawns, to— right, yeah.

Did you catch that? Yeah, I'm keenly aware of that.

Shine a bright light on that. Yeah, and so for the TRCC, and that again is $6.1 million average annually, 18 different line items, $55.8 million over 8 years. And just about $7 million on average annually is expended. And they spend down these revenues as well. So in looking at how the benefits are being distributed, we look at the cities. Obviously some of them are, like you said, that's Thanksgiving Point, which we all know that's Lehigh. And so when a project has a specific name, that we can associate with it, we associate the benefit there as well. And so for Thanksgiving Point, that bond, we said that is 100% Lehigh. They're benefiting from that. Equivalent mixed, there were some line items that were more for general promotion of tourism and benefit was distributed based on your, Contribution of TRT and restaurant taxes. And then—

And let me interject there. That's, in my opinion, that's a very conservative way to look at it. Um, you know, whether when they're advertising for, um, you know, come stay in Orem and play, whether you as Orem are really getting a pro rata benefit based on what you're generating from restaurant I mean, you may not be getting that benefit. We're trying to approach it from a pretty conservative— harder for the county, if you will, to take shots at, well, you know, they're generating this and we're doing tourism, so surely they're getting— we really are trying to take a conservative approach.

We looked at this from the perspective of, okay, let's give the county the benefit of the doubt. Yes, let's make the assumption that some of these allocations are benefiting Orem, even though there is not a direct nexus to Orem City specifically.

Very well stated.

Do you know how they justify a bookmobile as a tourism sort of expenditure?

Do you—

have you looked at that? We're not sure how they justify apples.

Yeah, so no, we don't have—

we just took it off there, but I just wondered if it's a tourist sort of—

no, We took it off their budget and then tried to use again the reasonable man approach of how would it be reasonable to allocate those?

Cultural activities.

Cultural activities.

And then the bookmobile, that's an example of a— none of the large cities benefit from that. You all have your own libraries. I looked at the bookmobile schedule. It doesn't make any stops in Orem because it doesn't need to. You have a library right there. Some of the expenses were based on population, is how the benefit was distributed. Grants and contributions was just based on population. And then finally, the park location. So basically, the benefit was divided based on where the parks— and these are the county parks that they, that they operate and maintain. And so, for example, Benjamin Park down there in Spanish Work, it's very close to Spanish Fork, so we said, look, Spanish Fork is going to be allocated 2/3 of the benefit from this park, for example. So this— so like I said, I'm going to go back to those expense line items. So this is how the expense line items were allocated, like Utah Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau equivalent mix based on the The city's contribution of tax revenues, Freedom Festival, Convention Center, ISHE, that's Provo. And then the other, yeah, like I said, this is basically how the benefit was distributed for those expenses.

Thank you.

So now this is back to the, uh, 400,000-foot level. This is where we look at basically what has Provo, Orem, Lehi, Spanish Fork, Pleasant Grove, and American Fork—

what have—

what's their average contribution been of these tax revenues, and what has their average benefit been, and what's the difference between the two? And so we see—

That's a pretty telling slide.

Yeah, so we see there's—

This is a picture's worth—

That's all you need, is that?

$6 million.

Yeah, just average annual difference.

Yes, correct.

That's a good point.

This is the average annual, so every year this is how it looks. And you brought up Lehigh. I think Lehigh is good. That's really good. Because they have their benefit and their contribution very, very close to each other.

If I were pro quo, I would be arguing that my people eat a lot in Orem restaurants because they live near here and they come up the hill and they eat in Orem restaurants. So they're making the contribution even though it's not in their community.

That is beyond the scope of this, right?

I mean, you don't know if a pro quo person is generating that same—

Zip code data.

Right, yeah, this is just tied to basically the assumptions of distribution of benefits, so, and what they're spending money on and who it's benefiting.

Yeah, and I'm talking about the contribution.

You don't know who's making the contribution, you just know the city that's being collected. I mean, the argument could be made that a majority of the TRT money is not coming from anybody in the county.

Absolutely.

It's coming from People in town. Guests who are coming for BYU graduation, UVU graduation, football games, conferences, so on and so forth.

Business, whatever.

And tell them that, you know, the counter— I mean, and, you know, I don't expect, nor should you, that the county is going to go, we see how we've been wrong, here you go, right? And again, this certainly, you know, Provo is not going to But your citizens could also drive to Provo and eat. And when you look at the revenues, I mean, you know, you and Provo are the 2 big— yeah, yeah, you and Provo are the 2 big generators of those restaurant taxes.

For a long time, we have understood that there was some level of a balance, but in recent interactions, the suggestion has been Well, based on the response we've received from the county when we've made requests or when we followed up on requests, that maybe we need to do a better job of keeping score and seeing, okay, where are we in relation to our peers?

Right.

Is there a disproportionate amount of money that is going to places in the county that are not really generating their fair share of these dollars. So this is where we did the study, and these are the results. And in fact, as the mayor's pointed out, there is a stark, stark contrast between winners and losers in this graph. And as we get into this, you'll see that so much of that is—

it's—

you'll see the process they go through to allocate this money, and it's not a surprise as to how it turns out.

Can I make a quick observation? When I worked for AmeriCorps, we knew this disparity, and we actually met with the county and showed all the restaurants, and they gave us a $15,000 a year park grant that we could get with our money, and we were contributing like $600,000. And they acknowledged the problem, and they said, oh yeah, we'll try to make that equitable going forward. And they never did. Never did.

And in talking to the city manager, this is still a continuing conversation.

Yeah. The disparity between Orem and American Fork is just—

I mean, it's wrong.

Yeah, American Fork and Orem are the biggest losers in this study. Orem is losing about— not losing, but is contributing $1 million more than the benefit that it receives. And for American Fork, it was $700,000 more than the benefit.

But we argued with them, and they acknowledged it. And they said, oh yeah, we'll work on that. And they did nothing.

So Jamie had mentioned that one of these taxes, and I can't remember if it was the restaurant or transit room tax, that paid for the seating originally at what's now the UCCU Center.

It did.

And for years now that's been an issue where UVU recognizes the need to replace the seating down there. It's in horrible condition and trying to maintain it is next to impossible. At our most recent board meeting down there for the UCCU Center, UVU was kind of pitching the county, because 3 county commissioners are on that board as well, on, hey, how would you guys want to partner on, you know, funding? Because it— so this was pre-tariff, but the estimate to replace all the bleachers down there was about $5 million. So UVU was saying, what if we kept the same split? Because UVU originally paid 68%, the county paid 32%. You know, it's kind of an awkward conversation asking asking for that, and I'm not sure how that is going to play out. But just in the context that we have all these cities participating, you might also have UVU coming to the table to say, hey, you know, can you help us with the seating down here?

Well, I think that kind of drives one of the concerns that we have, is it's a non— it's not a transparent process. So a lot of these projects are just happening without any sort of public No public process, no review, there are no posted meeting minutes. There's just, hey, me and the mayor and I— the mayor's with the county, I'm with the city or with an outside organization— and we broker some sort of agreement, and provided we can get 2 of the 3 county commissioners to agree, then we fund whatever, you know, the benefit is. But all of us, all cities within Utah County are sitting at the table. But not all cities are aware of how this money is allocated or decisions being made.

There's no criteria. There's no formal criteria of scoring or—

One of the arguments we would make is we are part of interlocal agencies For example, MAG. MAG is a very transparent process. Every city has a seat at the table. Mayor has a seat at the table. Santaquin knows what's interested— what Orem's interested in. Orem knows what Highland's interested in. Decisions are made in that transparent way.

Everything's rigged.

Yeah, and there's none of that here.

I appreciate that.

What frustrates me is that agreement could be made and a year down the road we could do this study and find out that the county allocated $2.5 million to seating at UVU. Now I'm not necessarily going to say, well, that's a bad move. I know it sounds like something that needs to be done. But where's the process whereby that project was weighed against other pertinent and relevant projects. Provo Airport just received $4.3 million from this account. No discussion countywide as to whether or not that money should come from there.

And this cost-benefit or use-benefit analysis doesn't include—

like, literally after we kind of did this, I think within weeks, we saw in the news the announcement that And just to be fair to the county commissioners, when that ask was made, they didn't just say, oh yeah, you know, sign us up. There was a lot of pushback, and they were kind of asking that question of— when this first went in, we didn't have a county convention center. This was kind of the only show in town. Like, that event center really defined that space for the county, and so it made sense for the county County partner, and now they're asking the question, well, we have our own convention center, does it make sense to continue on? Because that bond has since been paid off for the bleachers out of this, since that was kind of what you brought up. But yeah, that bond's been paid off, but you're still assessing that tax across the county, so you're still generating that revenue. Can we, you know, get our cut of that, I guess?

And that was the big sell of why to put that restaurant tax on, because I remember it was, it was Put this 1% and you'll benefit that center.

Then this is how it looks annually. So this graph basically shows for every year, your numerator is how much you've contributed, your denominator is your benefit. So at 100%, you're contributing exactly as much as you're benefiting, and you can see how basically each city fared each year. What would the 2014 spike in revenue have been? That would be the UVU arts—

No, it was a property purchase that the county made up Provo Canyon, and given its proximity to Orem, it was allocated to a greater degree to Provo and Orem than other municipalities.

It's not like a city asset or anything like that.

Do you remember the restaurant club that was at the top of Rideau Bell Falls?

That's it.

That property was purchased by the kids.

Good thing they got rid of it.

So we have a couple of observations that we've made. 3, there's obviously a disconnect between where the revenues are being generated and where the benefits of the expenditures of the revenue are going. That much is clear. Second, the process by which TRT and restaurant tax revenues are prioritized, programmed, and expended, it's deficient. I think Jamie spoke a little bit to it. Basically, there is a form that you have to fill out, and that just states the legal requirements. Once you fill that out, the county attorneys review it and see that okay, this would be legal to fund or nope, this would not be legal to fund. So it's very binary, and then they get the ones that are legal and they say this one we'll consider, this one we won't. And there's no written metrics right now. There's no goals, stated goals of what they're trying to achieve by through. their spending. I've been told that they're developing that process right now.

Jamie?

Yeah, but they were going to do that last time I talked to them.

It's a long process.

Probably 6 years since I've talked to them.

A really long process.

Cody, I think the other— as they had the meetings with the various organizations they were considering to fund, like we were one of those. We were invited to the meeting. Right.

No, but no agendas, no minutes.

None of that's public, posted publicly.

We did, when we talked to them, they said, oh, we'll make sure we get those up, but the meetings happened last year, so. Right, yeah, I talked to the county to get minutes, agendas, and I was directed to the, just the Utah State, you know, public notice website. It's available there. And I said, I looked there, it's not there. And then a few weeks later, they posted the last 3 meetings that they've had.

So transparency is not a—

Yeah, and so the third is the county and the advisory board need policies in place to improve the equitable distribution and benefits from the expenditure of TRT and restaurant revenues.

And I will add, state law does not currently provide that they have to do it equitably. I mean, state law says, well, you know, has to be spent on these broad categories.

So it's collected in the county and spent in the county.

Yes.

Now how that divides up is whatever they want to do.

Right.

And I, if I may, I don't think we want— our purpose and intent tonight is not to say, oh, look at Provo, look at all that they're getting, so much more than Orem. You know, we had this conversation with Provo, and Provo's response in part was, yeah, we have gotten a lot, but there are costs. with us in kind of— in having some of these amenities in Provo, we are bearing an additional amount of burden to have these facilities in the city. So we don't necessarily think that what we are getting and have been receiving is inappropriate. Our suggestion is not that what any city is getting is necessarily appropriate or inappropriate. Our premise right now is It needs to be an open and a transparent process. There needs to be a way where everybody can collectively participate in the decision-making process. In addition to that, some of the monies are being used for operational purposes. So they are maintaining county facilities and county parks and so on and so forth using this money. Money that we, within the City of Orem, use general fund dollars to maintain. Why isn't the county using their general fund dollars to maintain some of these facilities? They are, in fact— our suggestion is they're supplementing their ongoing operational dollars with this money to maintain their operational expenses in some of these areas.

Thank you.

They actually run a deficit at the county.

Realizing there are differences, but similar to what we've done with the CDBG process where it's more of a partnership and we're planning, you know, how those funds are prioritized, and it really is more of a partnership and collaboration as opposed to, you know, just hoping and praying that we're the lucky ones this year to get our project.

And that is sort of how their process is. I mean, you know, we joked about it, but seriously, do you get them on the right day when they're— they had a better lunch, or do you— I mean, it really has that kind of feel about it. It's just kind of like a crapshoot.

Our last experience was Steven and Kenna met with them in regards to a project that we were really excited about. We thought we had the committee on board. They said, well, the next step is for you to go find one of the 3 commissioners to champion this project with the commission, get it on the agenda. We got it on the agenda, we got it ready for decision, and at the point of decision-making, while we were standing at the podium, the county commission made a motion to grant the city half of what we had discussed. We had never had any conversation with them prior to that that, yeah, we're not thinking we want to give you the full amount, we just want to give you 50%. It was at the point of decision is when we found out that our request that had been approved by the committee was cut in half. Anecdotally, we've had other conversations with other cities who have gone in, made a request, the request has gone to the meeting, and the county commission has actually We doubled the amount that they had requested. Oh, we think you need more.

Is this where the money for the library addition is coming from?

Yes.

Is this the same pot?

Yes.

So, I, I, in coming to you tonight, our suggestion is not for us, for example, to approach the County Commission and to say we think there's a problem and for them to say, you know what, you're absolutely right, we're gonna fix it. We believe that it's gonna require a louder group of voices to engage in some sort of change. And we believe that your voice, in cooperation with the voices of other cities in the Valley, can lead to that change. It really is frustrating and discouraging, especially when we hear feedback from some of the county commission where they say, well, you know, some of what you want to do in your city is not something we're really interested in doing. Well, help us, you know, invite us to be a part of this decision-making process. Allow us as a city, as for example the largest contributor to restaurant tax in this county to at least have input and a voice in how this happens.

Yeah, the decision-making process should be objective and not subjective, and there should be a process in place.

And one of the things we talked about is, we, you know, there wouldn't have to be a wheel completely recreated as you do with some of the transportation money. There is a process of taking some of this large cost of Taking into account maybe like Provo having heavier needs in traffic and where they disperse the money through that kind of MAG process.

A process needs to be put in place. There is not a process.

The interesting thing is we've been around and met with these other cities is that without exception, including Provo, everyone has been interested in how do we make the process more transparent, fair, and objective.

How do we make it actually formal and make it work?

And we've actually come up with a series of kind of ideas or criteria that we might be able to inject into the decision-making process in order to, again, make sure the dollars are spread kind of more evenly throughout the county. Whether it's, you know, having some amount of basis on where the revenue is generated, what the population is, maybe what kind of recreation arts master planning is brought to it, how a discussion goes in the COG group of mayors, maybe what kind of regional impact it has, maybe what kind of return on investment, economically speaking, it might have. How would this affect kind of overall tourism in the county?

So there are a series of measurable And one thing to remember, we do have a new hotel that will be coming online in about 3 years.

So, I mean, we even had— we even talked to one city. When we sat down, we showed them this, they said, oh, so that's how we're getting all— we had no idea. We just thought the county was generous and was giving us more money to invest in this amenity we had in our community. We had no idea that the money was coming from this It's fun to do it. It's just a head-scratcher. So we share this for your benefit and information tonight, and prospectively, Mayor, we hope that you and the council would be willing to engage with other elected officials countywide, with the commission, saying we need to change this. The next of suggestion, potentially, if there's an unwillingness to change, there is a specific structure established for the distribution of this money for first-class counties in the state of Utah. Salt Lake County. Second-class cities and below, there is not the same—

Second-class counties.

Excuse me?

Second-class counties.

Second-class counties. There is not that same construct as first-class counties. So the other avenue we can pursue— Is become a first-class county. We can become a first-class county, which should take us a few years.

A few years.

Or we can essentially amend the state code to say—

First ad sequestrum.

Yeah, any— or we could say, you know, any county between Juab and Salt Lake County.

So there's 2 ways to do it. We can do it through the legislature or we do it through the Council of Governments with the mayors. So if we want to start the process, I can take or have Laura come to the Council of Governments, make the presentation, and have a discussion with all the mayors. Now that will go— that could go fairly quick, but also the legislative side could go fairly quick. 'Cause I believe we would have support for that. So anyway, and we could do both at the same time.

So— And one thing I recommended as we discussed this is at, you know, at whatever point you collectively— and again, I think the collective voice that Jamie has talked about is much more powerful than you, you know, going before them alone. And that collective voice is important. But I also think when you approach the county to not just do, this is a request, problem and fix it, but have them nod their head and say okay. But to present to them again in a collective voice, here's what we'd like you to consider as a solution, and we'd like you to consider it within the next 30 days. Or I mean, I would give them what you collectively think the solution is, a time frame that you're expecting. At least that gives them something concrete they have to address, or that you—

So one thing to consider is the legislature hasn't started yet.

Right.

So we could do a presentation. I'd be happy to get you on the agenda, proceed with the mayors, see how that goes. If we have a recommendation, go to the county with it. At the same time, we have plenty of time to go to the legislature.

Exactly right.

And if that's acceptable to both of you and to the council, I'll move forward with that.

I think that's a good plan.

All right.

Every other meeting, Mayor?

Pardon?

Which one do you mean?

So once a month, and, uh, I'll have to look to see when the next meeting will be coming up, but in the next 2 to 3 weeks.

And Mayor, I think it would be even more powerful if it wasn't just— if it wasn't you, but maybe a collection of 3 or 4 mayors.

Sure.

Who could say, look, now this is Mayor Brunson's facilitating and putting it on the agenda, but Mayor Frost and American Fork is concerned about this.

Yeah, we can do that. I've done that with Mayor Reese and other mayors before.

I mean, could you even get Mayor— I mean, you get Mayor Cafusi in on that, I think that's an even stronger case because even though we've been a beneficiary for this long, we just need more structure.

And again, this is not about Provo's getting more than Orem. This is about trying to establish a structure.

The reality is I can get every one of those mayors for those cities on that list right there to meet with you.

Thank you.

We've heard from staff that they have heard similar frustrations.

And I think our ideal route is working with the county to get this issue solved. If that doesn't work, we know that this This is a problem in other counties in Utah, that Washington County, Salt Lake County, there are cities that struggle and feel the same way. They don't have a report done yet, but they have a sense that this is a process that they don't like, it's not transparent, and they don't think that they're getting their fair share.

Okay, well, thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

It appears that our food's here, so let's go ahead and stop. Let's eat and then we'll continue on with our discussions.

Debbie, could you give us a prayer over this food?

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the opportunity to gather and enjoy this meal. We are grateful for the opportunity to serve here in Orem and bless this food to our nourishment and strength. And then we hope we'll have a kind of productive evening this evening as we discuss the business pertinent to Orem. We're thankful for those who serve and volunteer in this community and We ask these favored blessings in the holy name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Because in my mind, I'm kind of holding it back.

Tom, how was Portugal?

There's salad dressing in it.

Unfortunately, the sincerity is there. The next question will take up so much time.

Well, and even that, you know, the only question is still about success.

That's good.

It's not broken down. Anyways, I guess I want it to be a good experience for everyone.

Yeah, it'll be fine.

Okay.

Did you and your wives enjoy the play Saturday?

We did.

It was fun.

It was fun, wasn't it?

It wasn't really our best production we've ever seen there, but it was— The musicality was neat.

Charlie Chan.

Jumping over things, hiding in the—

The starting numbers.

What play was that?

Charlie Chan. He felt like it was him.

That's Cody's eldest son.

That makes sense.

I was watching Little House on the Prairie with him. So Cody died a few weeks ago.

We had Jenny—

looks like Jenny's there. There's Jenny.

We saw Jenny at the Hill Center Theater on Saturday.

Oh yeah. Why don't we go ahead and continue on our discussions with We've got a lot to cover. We now have a discussion on the career ladder funding, and Jamie is the presenter.

Thank you, Mayor. I know several email chains have been going back and forth relative to funding this program. Obviously, the staff are quite anxious to implement something within the city. There is an initial first-year cost potentially of about, well, about $350,000. And then subsequent years, it's about $150,000 to $200,000 thereafter per year above and beyond the first year. One of the kind of the areas of focus that I have been concentrating on is trying to essentially take the feedback from employees and try to appropriately align our compensation dollars commensurate with where we believe, based on employee feedback, they want their— they want the money to go. So in recent months, the conversation has centered a lot on base wage. And so this discussion about a career ladder plan does just that. It places more base wage dollars in the pockets of our police officers and firefighters. And so in obviously understanding the limited resources that we have in the city, recognizing that we had a balanced budget Yes. This last fiscal year, I strived to look for ways that could put more base wages in the pockets of our employees. As such, that— and what I have requested and what I have suggested to this point is that we make some changes in how we calculate certain payments within the city. and certain benefits that we provide to employees, and that we look at other targeted cuts within the general fund to meet the difference. But the 3 specific areas that I have focused on and have communicated with you on multiple occasions is essentially taking the money that currently currently is set aside for contributions into 401 accounts for police and fire employees, for police officers and firefighters, for overtime worked, which is 17.95% of whatever an employee earns in overtime, rather than putting it in a 401 account. account in that employee's name, that money would go to fund a portion of the career ladder. That benefit, that 17.9% benefit, is not a benefit that is exercised by many employers in the state. In fact, there are only one or two that do it. And in the City of Orem, our employees Only police officers and firefighters receive that 17.9% contribution into retirement. If we have water employees or parks employees or library employees that work overtime, they do not receive that same contribution. The other changes that we would be recommending, the first one being—

Can I say something there?

Yes.

The first couple times you said something, you said what I recommend.

This time you said we.

I'm trusting we have Chief Giles and Chief Gurney's buy-in with this idea.

The overtime discussion of 17.95%, we have talked about.

And, and how do you think the officers will react?

Um, for—

excuse me.

I think for the majority of our firefighters, there's a lot of them that don't even know that that benefit's ever been to them. I can probably count 4 or 5 that recognize that they get that benefit and look at that specifically. Of all of them, that's probably the one that they'll critique probably the most. But it's like As Jim has indicated, there's not— we're in rare air when we have to do it.

Yeah. I think exactly the same. I mean, I think that there are some that realize that that is going into their accounts. I mean, obviously, this is a— we've got to find the money somewhere. And I brought that up to sergeants a while back as to whether they would want it on the front end or on the back end. You know, with them, with that small group of people, they wanted it on the front end. But we've got to compromise to be able to find the money, and that's the hard part.

And the truth be known, this is not just I'm taking it from your back end and giving it to here. I'm taking from the back end and adding a whole bunch of extra money to give it more now. So we are putting more money in the budget. We're not just changing the budget.

Is that correct, James? No, the shift in the— the shift in this 17.9% is about a $90,000 contribution.

Yeah, and we're then dumping in all the extra into the program. So it's a—

it's a—

I'm not just taking their future money and giving it to a present.

We're making another $300,000 contribution to this plan.

And I hope that will resonate well with both the buyers and employees.

What they want is they want the— their 3/5 tier. They're looking for—

Yeah, yeah, yeah, got it.

Yep, got it. They put diapers on their babies' butts and formula in their bellies, you know.

Putting it in their salary helps with that as much, if not more.

Yeah, and you can never make everybody happy all the time, and that's the downside.

Absolutely.

Yep.

It's kind of like the discussion we're having on the TFT. Again, a compensation cost people weren't seeing as a compensation benefit.

Right, right.

And ultimately it will still play into their retirement benefit, their pension benefit, because it goes into their base.

Because it helps their pension at the end.

But now they'll see it and notice it on a—

Thank you.

Period basis.

Thank you, Jim.

Sorry to disrupt you.

No, all city employees do not receive Social Security Correct. Does that enter into the discussion? I mean—

No.

So our employees, in lieu of Social Security, receive a 4%, 457 match, and that remains in place for all full-time and part-time benefited employees. So this is not part of that conversation. There are 2 other areas of adjustment that I'm recommending. recommending. The first one relates back to a time when our firefighters were— and police officers were part of our Public Safety Department. 25 years ago, there was a concern that police officers and firefighters were classified the same and paid the same monthly amount. However, when they worked overtime, The contribution for overtime was different because firefighters were working on a 2,920-year— 20-hour year versus police officers who were working on a 2,080-year. And so at that time, a decision was made that we would compensate firefighters For every overtime hour worked, we would compensate them at 1.4 times their hourly rate of pay to bring it commensurate with police officer annual rate of pay. And then at that point, we would pay them overtime. So it would be rate of pay times 1.4.

Times 1.4.

Times 1.5. And essentially, effectively, what that did was for firefighters, it took an hour of pay times 2.1 for every overtime hour worked. Now, obviously, we are no longer a public safety department. We are a police department and a fire department. And we no longer have this Uh, need to be equal because we have separate salary classifications, we have separate job descriptions. We are not identifying police officers and firefighters as public safety officers. We're identifying them as a police officer or a firefighter. The suggestion is that we revert back to paying firefighters for overtime at 1.5 their rate of pay rather than the 1.4 times 1.5.

Which comes to 2.1, is that right?

Yes. And making that change would also result in about $90,000 in savings that we could also contribute to this program. The final change that we would make within the payroll system also relates to the fire department and to the police department from the perspective of— we currently have a system in place where employees are paid overtime at 1.5 hours Yes. Per hour worked, regardless of whether or not they have worked their full shift. So if we have an employee who has— and I'll just use a general 40-hour-a-week employee for the sake of conversation. So if we have an employee and he or she works a 40-hour work week, but they took 20 hours of that work week off in a pay— in a work week, they would be compensated for 20 hours of vacation and 20 hours of time worked. Under our current policy, if they come in and they work overtime, then they are paid for those overtime hours at time and a half. time and a half, regardless of whether they have worked a full 40 hours in a pay period. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which is the federal law that we all follow, says as employers, you are required to pay your employees at time and a half for every hour that is worked above and beyond the normal normal pay period. In our case, it's 40 hours a week. We have within the fire department most predominantly, and in some cases to my understanding the police department, we have situations where we pay employees premium overtime regardless of whether they have worked a full Pay period. We do not do that for any of our other employees— public works employees, building inspectors, again, librarians. It's just something within our police and our fire departments. If we were to make that change, that will also net us about $100,000 in ongoing annual savings.

Thank you.

So what I'm suggesting to you is the plan that I would like and have been proposing requires modifications to one existing benefit, which is overtime contributions into a 401 plan for police and fire, and some adjustments to how overtime hours are calculated for For public safety employees within the City of Orono. And then the difference we would look to fund by way of targeted cuts within the general fund, and then in the future, the additional cost, the $300,000-plus that would subsequently follow in next fiscal year and the following fiscal year, we would find ways to absorb through future general fund budgets. David, you know, on that hypothetical situation, if a fireman, you know, they work 2 days on and—

is—

if you take the overtime away and then you give them the step program, how does that compare?

Is it an even push?

Or is it everybody gonna be under?

Well, on an average, well, to represent to you, we are the only city in the state that does this. So if you call, for example, Salt Lake City, they don't have a 1.4, 1.5. If you call them and ask them about when do you pay overtime, they say they pay overtime based on hours worked, not, you know, anything different. So in terms of how it will affect an employee right now, if we have employees that are eligible for overtime, they will see a decrease in the amount of overtime that they will receive in working a shift. Would their pay go down?

I mean, like the way it stands now?

No, they're— what would happen So there's already an overtime for them, and then now we're going to do the STEP program, we're taking that away.

Is it going to be a push, or is it going to be—

are they going to make more or are they going to make less?

It all depends on— they're going to make more if they choose to work overtime, then the amount of overtime, the amount that they receive in overtime will be less. At the same time though, their hourly rate of pay is going to be more, so I don't— I don't know exactly. But again, there is a net give from the general fund to the police and fire. It isn't just rearranging debt shares.

This is more money to them. And hopefully better able to measure because some of our benefits we were paying, people weren't seeing as a benefit.

Or, you know, it's a very delayed gratification.

I mean, frankly, this speaks to the overall conversation we've been having with all of our employees, of what can we do to help our employees better understand and appreciate benefits that they are receiving that do not show up in their base wage on an hourly basis. Everything from the health insurance benefits we provide, the retirement benefits, the, you know, some of the bonuses that you've generously shared, the amount of money that they pay Paid in employee contributions to medical plans and dental plans and so on and so forth.

One question just as far as the one-time bump because we're going to have this adjustment in year 1. Just as a budgeting philosophy, we typically underestimate the one-time revenue that we generate from building fees and those types of things, and oftentimes that goes to capital projects. For this kind of one-time adjustment, could we fund it, you know, the first, I don't know, $100,000 or whatever it is of that, of those, the revenue that we underestimate to fund that one-time adjustment, and then the ongoing stuff is handled by the options that you mentioned here? But would that help us fund kind of that initial bump up?

No, I don't, I don't, Anything that we're talking about is one-time. All of what we're talking about is ongoing costs.

Right, I know, but I'm just saying to make kind of that in year 1—

Year 1 is more expensive.

Right, than year 2 and year 3 is in your 3-year kind of projection. So I'm just wondering if those one-time revenues, instead of just going 100% to capital projects, if the The first cut of that could essentially help fund that year 1 hit to the budget.

Yeah, I mean, I guess it could, but next year it becomes an ongoing expense.

Yeah, but it's a little bit lower. Are you saying—

yeah, I guess the clarity is that year 1 is $300,000, but then year 2 is the $300,000 plus another $150,000?

Yes.

Okay.

And then $300,000 plus $150,000 plus another $150,000. So this is a $650,000— by year 3, we're going from, you know, let's say today is zero, we're adding $650,000 to our compensation program.

Now you're saying in year 3 individually it's $600,000, not cumulatively?

No, I'm saying By year 3, it'll be $600,000-plus on an ongoing basis.

Sorry, I was understanding it to mean year 1 was a bigger hit.

Yeah, me too.

No, it is— it's a net increase. It's a net increase.

Because if you think about it, most of the different bumps essentially have a 3-year window between them. So over 3 years, essentially everyone will have the opportunity to qualify So over 3 years, this is roughly $1.5 million?

Well, yeah.

Jamie, would— so this is the first I'm hearing of the overtime situation. Would that include dispatch as well then, changing that whole entire philosophy of the over—

No, no. I mean, the discussion has been that, you know, if it's If it's an emergency overtime situation, that's not. But in situations where we have individuals who are working an overtime shift, they wouldn't be compensated at 1.5 times their pay unless they have worked the full 40 hours in a pay period.

Would that change though? I guess what I'm asking is, would that change how dispatch is currently dealing with their overtime? Because with that going toward the pay benefits in patrol, I'm just curious as to how that's going to change that. This is the first I've heard of that being a part of this.

Well, I mean, yes, it would make it so that the police and fire would have overtime policies that are consistent with the rest of the city.

Any other comments?

So one thing in the STEP program, or, you know, the Truth in Taxation meeting we had last week, you know, my concern was if an employee with experience is getting an offer from a pretty similar place, How do we compensate if it's a $10,000 bonus?

How do we come up with that?

Is it in the STEP program or do we have to find the money somewhere?

But it seems like we're hurting to find money, so is that really— we say, see you later, go to Springville?

I don't want to lose those people. No, the current program we have in place is an incentive program which includes a $3,000 upfront incentive plus 40 hours of vacation. vacation plus 40 hours of sick. And because that's a one-time incentive, that's something that can be paid out through one-time money.

It's not—

it's something that we're one and done. And if we have vacancies within our existing departments—

We've got vacancies.

Then we have money in the short term on a one-time basis to provide that benefit. I mean, we've talked about increasing the amount of the incentive. That's a lot easier to do because it's a one-time incentive, a one-time increase, than, for example, if we say, well, we're going to pay you $10,000 every year.

No, that would be the—

and then also, if you go back to Kevin Wolfe.

I just want to make sure I'm understanding what your question is. Because your statement is, is how do we keep them here? Your statement is we're hiring. So that incentive is not to keep them here, it's to hire.

The ladder program is what would keep them here.

Yeah, right.

So, so what I'm saying is, so with Wilkie that's leaving Sandy, did we say, hey, we can't help you hit the road?

I mean, did we try to keep them? Do we have an option there? I mean, is the step program going Is that going to help him, or—

Well, hopefully, yeah. Hopefully, if you look at his schedule or his— where he's at in the grade, hopefully he can look at what he's gained from what we've done already, from your putting this into place back in October. But what you're doing here is you're augmenting it even more, right? So if you could look at that and say—

so he's already done anything in He's already left.

He's already signed the paperwork. Nobody tried to hold on to him that I'm aware of.

But as far as me saying I'm going to do this, I can't do anything until you tell me.

No, I'm saying if—

I mean, where I work, I mean, if I want to keep an employee, I do everything I can to keep that employee because it costs me more money to do that.

So are we being proactive is what I'm saying.

For me, For me, this is where you as a body, elected body, are going to help me out in keeping them here, is having a strong STEP program to where they can look at it and say, in this amount of time, I'm going to make this. In this amount of time, I'm going to make this. And that's what's going to help them, help me to help keep them here.

But it sounds like you need retention too.

I think you need both.

The hard part with that is that— has it happened? I mean, as far as somebody getting a job offer somewhere else and us offering incentives for them to stay, it's happened as far as me being able to keep some people here. But what happens is if it was one person, one position, that's easy. When I have 60 patrol officers, there's— the problem is, for example, the 2 that just left to go to Springfield. If I were to come back and say, look, tell you what, if you stay here, I'll give you the $10,000. There's 2 things that can do this. It could be good as far as saying, okay, we just saved them and got them here, but what is that— the message it sends to other people could be, if I get a job somewhere else, then I can get a $10,000 bonus to stay here. And so then people start looking for other jobs.

Right.

And so we try to keep them here and I've sat down with more people than I can even count. I mean, we've had 25% turnover every year. That's unprecedented. I'm talking more people trying to sell them off while I'm standing here than I can even count. It's hard because I've got to balance that. Do I motivate them to leave by sending a message that if you get a job somewhere else, that's when I give you a bonus? Put something in place that'll keep them here. That's a hard balance.

Well, and that's something you have to sell and say, hey, you know, they're giving you a $10,000 step program, you're going to—

Yeah, and we have kept some people in that program.

That's what I'm saying, do we do that with Wilkie?

Do we show up?

So, to be honest with you, it's talking to Wilkie, Kevin. I met with him 2 weeks before and talked with him about his application to Draper, where he's going. I talked to him about West Jordan. He's testing— he was testing with West Jordan and got a job offer. And, uh, but he didn't give me any indication that he was going anywhere. He, he told me that he would— he turned down Draper at one point. So, uh, what, what I'm seeing as a fire chief, what you're doing here now is what's going to help us to, to give them the ability to look ahead and say, I'm going to be making this. Having a strong STEP program, having a strong avenue for them to— because they're going to compete. This Utah Right to Know, they know exactly what everybody's making across the whole state. So that's a, you know, so having the ability to make people to where we have a strong system to where they can go, okay, if I stay here, I get this 4.5%, I get 4.5% here. If I promote, this is what I'm going to get. Obviously, we'd like to have— everybody would like to have across the board 10 or 15% increase like you see in the newspapers, but that's not—

I mean, my point is, if I have an employee and he says, hey, I've got a job offer, well, sometimes you need to—

Because he's not worth it. So you have to pick your—

So yeah, so the answer to that is yes, we do. And this is one thing either myself or Jason Earl, Deputy Chief, mainly our BCs, captains, uh, they're where the rubber meets the road. They're the ones where they're working with their guys day in and day out, and they'll sit down with them and say, let's look at the whole picture. Let's look at the benefits that we have here and look at everything in its totality to where if they look at it in a holistic state, they're going, yeah, I'm going to stay here. But I think it's a matter of— so is the conversations happening? Yes, they're happening. Did it happen with Kevin? I don't know if his VC sat down with him, but I— he came in my office and we chatted. I think it's important to remember that Regarding that, but yeah, we always want to make sure we retain our people. And I think for myself, and I think Gary can say the same, the step we're making right here is going to be a positive process moving forward. If I may too, I think part of what Chief Kern is saying is to some extent it needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis. I mean, the particular firefighter The firefighter we're talking about was already in the top 15% of all the firefighters in the city in terms of pay. He was already near the top of the range. And so he was, he was a well-compensated firefighter, specifically amongst us, because he had been, you know, a good performer. So to some extent, that was already shown to him. And, and this career ladder program It can help someone get essentially 50% above starting pay within about an 11-year period. So it's— I mean, it's not like we've got a 20 to 30-year type time horizon for someone to get to the top end of our pay band.

And I think there's a lot of truth to what David was saying. My concern is I just don't want us as a council to get lost in the weeds of micromanaging individual personnel decisions and things. So if both—

I don't think I was saying that at all.

But if both chiefs are comfortable with this giving you kind of the systemic tools that you need to retain our best people, then I'm fine moving forward with that. If you still have reservations, then maybe we need to have another follow-up meeting.

Well, and I don't need— think we need to have a follow-up meeting. I think our desire is It's not that I'm not happy, I just need—

I didn't know a part of this that is part of the selling point that I've been keeping people here for.

Okay, so I think what we need to do is authorize the CEO, Jamie, to run through this, work with the 2 groups. Whether it's this exact plan or something similar, that's up to them. But our strategy is we want to make more money available for for police and fire. How they pay it is kind of up to this group, but there's got to be unity among you guys. But you're right, we don't want to make individual decisions going forward.

So, so I'd like to make some comments. First of all, I don't think that we have enough time to authorize anything right now. I am in a— not in agreement with this plan as far as money goes. This is a wash. $310,000 from the left side to the right side. The only additional money coming from our city is the $40,000. I believe that our police and fire will actually see that in a detrimental way rather than a positive way, and this I don't believe is beneficial. I believe there's a different way to do it. I would love to lay that out with ideas. I'd also like to have Councilmember Seestrand here. Who is not here, and I think he should be here for part of the conversation. So, and as far as making a decision, so I would like to have a follow-up meeting as soon as he gets back that we could have an hour and have a full discussion and go over this.

So— And I would, I would agree with the mayor. Frankly, I don't think this path forward is sustainable. So, you know, I'm concerned about the future of how we're going to pay for this. benefits and all the other things that we're going to be expected to pay for in the future too. Just as I've communicated with you in the past, we are heading down a path of funding a 3% per year merit program, which I think is a reasonable merit program for our employees. I think we're facing rising healthcare costs. I know we're We're facing rising retirement costs. I think we are staring down a future that includes some clouds in the— on the horizon, and frankly, I'm not sure we can afford what we're talking about even tonight.

Can we maybe just stop right there? And I would like to have a follow-up meeting when—

Well, we can schedule another follow-up meeting. meeting, and as long as everybody knows that we don't, we don't move forward with the plan until we have an agreement as to how to best proceed, which is a problem.

Mark should be a part of it.

Mark should be a part of it if he's here. I'm shocked we didn't spend the 2 hours today discussing this. There's nothing more critical than this. We give lip service that we'd like to fix it, but we haven't done a darn thing as a council.

I'd like to have Mark here.

That's too bad. It's not your decision alone.

I didn't say that. I'm saying I'd like to have Mark.

But this should have been two hours of discussion for us to plug this in fifteen minutes and talk about these other things is ridiculous.

I think we can have another follow-up meeting with Mark here.

That's what I'd like to see.

And have a whole study session.

And I can make myself available if you want to do something.

We can be available later tonight after our council meeting if you want to talk about it then.

Yeah.

Again, I would like to wait till.

Does everyone else concur with the mayor that we need to wait until Mark's back?

No. Well, but my thing is, if it's gonna— if you want a 2-hour meeting or whatever to hammer it out, you don't have time right now. No, it's—

I would, I would suggest we come back for a follow-up meeting next week and we have Mark here and we move accordingly and have the time. We can spend 2 hours, 3 hours, doesn't matter.

To be fair, you've been portraying this message that you've been working at this for the last year and you've had that whole year and you keep sending out these ideas that we could fund it with this and this and this, and then you look at those numbers and that money doesn't actually exist.

Is it wrong to come forward with ideas?

No, but the suggestions you're making aren't valid.

Sorry.

And so if you want—

I think those are creative ideas.

If you want more time to make—

I don't need more time.

Okay, I'm done.

I don't need more time, but I would like to have Mark as part of this.

And so are we going to Yeah.

So I believe Mark's back next week.

He's back on Friday night.

So let's schedule something for next Tuesday, if that works. Is it going to be solved by the council, or is it going to be solved by the staff?

That, that's my greatest concern is—

I think we do it together.

Well, I think the staff brings a recommendation that—

As a matter, Mayor, I I'm probably out of town next Tuesday.

Okay, when are you in town?

Monday?

Monday's late.

Okay.

Are you aware you could call in for it?

Well, I could call in, I guess.

Okay, that works.

Can't you just do it at our work session in 2 weeks?

Well, I wouldn't mind moving farther faster, but—

I don't think 3 days is too far.

Is Mark able to call in?

No, he's in Portugal.

Tons of difference, pretty dramatic, unless we had a morning meeting.

I'd like to see Jamie and Chief—

2 chiefs—

2 chiefs talk. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

We can see him there.

So we can either do it on the 10th, or— so when— and you're available by phone, so that's okay.

So we can do it on the 3rd.

I'd recommend we do it on the 3rd at 6 o'clock.

September 3rd.

Everybody available?

Yes.

But let's not— if we're coming in with ideas, make sure it's been vetted by the staff so we sure don't need to go through and say that won't work.

Well, yeah, both chiefs need to meet with Jamie as well.

Well, I mean, these out-of-the-box thinking needs to be better.

That's fine.

Well, Chief Gurney won't be here next Tuesday.

I've got a presentation with the Linden City Council.

But you can meet during the day with him.

You can meet with Jamie whenever you want.

Okay. All right.

I guess what you're asking me to do, just in all frankness, you're asking me to find money that doesn't But outside of existing operating dollars.

So—

Okay, we got about 5 minutes. So I agree, we're trying to find an answer.

If that's the case, then we say you go, there's no money, then where do we come up with funding?

Well, we have this rainy day fund that we've used that's gone into excess, and how much of that are we willing to dip into without At some point violating long-term financial stability is where your concerns are, Jamie, of course.

Yeah, we're— well, my concern is right now we're in a time of plenty with that reserve fund.

Right.

Just 4 or 5 years ago we had zero in that reserve fund.

Right.

So in the short term we can use one-time monies to supplement. If we get 2 or 3 years down the road The money's not there.

Yep.

All right, we've got 5 minutes, and can we go ahead and schedule—

And everybody's—

and in addition, I think there are structural issues within the way we do things that are a concern too. And, you know, to some degree, I don't think there's necessarily willingness to want to address it, so we perpetuate problems long term.

So I don't think anybody has disagreed with the program, it's just disagreeing with where we get the money from. Can we use that fund to float it? In other words, in the meantime, the people that this matters the most to are kind of hung out to dry. Can we just make the change now and use that fund to float it until we can find funding?

Yeah.

Is there anybody opposed to that?

So the fund itself had 3 It had $3.6 million in it 3 years ago, then $4 million, and this year it's $4.6 million.

And in '11 it had zero, in '12 it had zero, in '13 it had zero.

And I believe it was in— I believe it was in '12 they actually had 4% above the reserve amount. They had 9%, and the reserve required was 5%. So I believe that's money that could be accessed, and I think we should have a discussion on that.

So we start at 6? What time are we gonna meet?

We go 6 o'clock for Tuesday next week. And I need to go over what our consent items are right now. And our consent items—

Fred, are you okay floating it until we can figure out—

On the rainy day? Yeah.

No, I, I don't know that. What's—

again, we're waiting 4 days just to see.

Okay, we're going to have council meetings, so let's just plan on Tuesday if we could. I would like to mention that on our consent items we have the Acceptance and certification of the municipal primary election. Just to mention, we have the top four, top six that are moving on: Terry Peterson, Debbie Larray, Sam Lentz, Jeff Lapsen, Spencer Rams, and Michelle Jensen. Everybody okay?

Okay.

And we have approval for David Holiday as part of the Being on a board, the Heritage Advisory Board, uh, we have the site approval for the Golden Corral located on University Parkway. Everybody okay with those consent items?

Yes. Okay.

All right, the rest of it we'll do when we get in there. Let's go ahead and adjourn and go into our city council meeting.

Mayor, can I just update everybody?

We just had a drive-by shooting down on We don't have a victim at all, so we don't know if it hit anybody, but we've got 6 or 7 shots.

It's a We would like to welcome everyone out to our council meeting this evening and would like to call this meeting to order. We would like to begin with an invocation by Jeff Lampson. And the Pledge of Allegiance by Darla Lampson.

Our Father in heaven, with gratitude and humility, we humbly bow our heads before thee in prayer at this time. We're grateful, Father, To Thee, to be able to live in this free land, to be able to live in this beautiful valley, and to be able to live in this wonderful city where we are surrounded with beautiful mountains and amazing people.

We're grateful, Heavenly Father, to be able to live at this time.

We're grateful for the many comforts and luxuries and the abilities which Thou hast blessed us with as a community. Father, at the beginning of this meeting, we humbly ask of Thee that Thou would bless us with Thy Spirit, with Thy inspiration, with Thy guidance and direction.

We're grateful for these people, Father, who serve our community.

So faithfully and so diligently, giving of their time, giving of their energy to bless us as a community. And we pray that Thou would bless them, that they might be wise, that they might feel of Thy guidance and inspiration poured out upon them. Dear Father, unitedly we humbly ask of Thee to bless those in our community who are in need of special blessings at this time. We know there are many who are weak, who are struggling, who are friendless, and who may not have hope. We pray, Father, that we might know of ways that we can reach out to them and lift them and strengthen them. We especially pray, Father, Father, for those men and women who do so much to keep us safe in our community, our police, fire, and dispatch, our first responders and their families, we ask a special blessing, Father, that Thou would watch over them and protect them and keep them safe.

Help them to be keen and diligent.

We pray that Thou would bless us as a community, Father, that we might remember how blessed we are, how fortunate we are, and that we might share of our excess to lift and bless others who are less fortunate. Father, we love Thee and we're grateful to Thee once again for all which Thou hast blessed us with, and we pray I pray for these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Please stand and repeat the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Thank you to the Lampsons. We would now like to go over our upcoming events. On September 4th, we have a groundbreaking at the Golden Corral restaurant on University Parkway at 1:00 PM. September 11th through the 13th, we have the 2019 Annual Conference of the Utah League of Cities and Towns at the Sheraton Hotel in Salt Lake. On September 19th, we have the police picnic at the Sharon Park Neighborhood Park at 5:30 p.m. On September 19th, we have the City of Orem Neighborhood Plan meeting at 6 p.m., Lake Ridge Junior High. On September 26th, we have the City of Orem Geneva Road Plan City Council Chambers at 6:30 PM. And September 30th, we have the City of Orem, Orem Community Hospital, Orem Harvest and Preparedness Fair at 4:00 PM. We now have our time for personal appearances. Anyone who would like to speak on a topic that is not listed on our agenda for this evening is welcome to speak, and we would ask that you give us your name and hold your comments to 3 minutes. Uh, first on our list is Zach Adams, after which we have Thad Adams.

Council, thank you for your time.

Um, just want to give some full disclosure before I get started in some comments.

Um, I am a police officer. I've been a police officer for the last 16 years. The majority of that was for a law enforcement agency here in Utah County, but I now work for a city in Salt Lake County. Some of my thoughts that I want to share with you— I remember when I graduated the police academy in 2003, and Orem was the premier agency to work for.

I would have given anything to work for this agency, but my brother worked here, so there was a nepotism issue, and that's why I couldn't.

But it's been— it's shocking to see what's happened over the last 15, 16 years.

And now it's— the agency's been handcuffed because of no action and lack of support.

ORM is now becoming the training ground for other agencies, and that shouldn't be the reputation that any of you want. The quality and experience of employees that are leaving, you can't put a price on that.

It's priceless.

It's the community that suffers when these officers, firefighters, paramedics, and dispatchers leave.

It's not just the agency, it's all of us.

I'm a resident and it affects me and my family's safety.

Any idea that you can save money by paying new inexperienced officers less than retaining experienced officers will only add to the liability expenses for this city. That's fact. You have to start planning for the future, and you're only putting a Band-Aid on the problem with a minimum tax increase. Public safety is one of the most important services provided by this city, and your employees are the greatest asset. The culture in Orem is what you have created by not taking any— taking action, and honestly, it's broken. As an Orem resident, I ask you to take this public safety crisis serious and stop kicking the can down the road. It's time to stop talking about a fix and make it happen. Actions speak louder than words. As a resident, I would support any significant tax increase to support public safety in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate the opportunity to take a couple of minutes. My name is Thad Adams. I'm a resident of Orem. My family has deep roots in this community. My grandchildren who live here presently are the 7th generation of our family to live in Orem. And so I have an appreciation for the community, and I have an appreciation for the many changes that have occurred over the years and recognize that the challenges of each one of you to see to the needs of our community and to see that the community is managed efficiently and effectively, it's, it's a big task, and I fully appreciate that. I want to speak briefly regarding public safety as well, and I appreciate what my son Zach has expressed and he's close to the issue and he's knowledgeable about the circumstances here in town and, and throughout the law enforcement community in the county, and, and certainly recognizes the things that are occurring relative to experienced law enforcement personnel, men and women, who are leaving this agency and other agencies simply because there's a lack of— for me being limited in a better way of saying it, there's a lack of being able to be competitive in terms of the standard of living that someone might be able to attain by moving to a different department. And we all understand that. I think and appreciate it, but I just tend to feel personally that we need to encourage that public safety, police, fire, and dispatching areas of our community need to be a very high priority. Frankly, I appreciate the parks, I appreciate the good streets, I appreciate all the departments that that provide services in our community. But in my perspective, if we don't feel safe in our community, these other things become kind of secondary in our— in the quality of our lives here. And so my hope is that acting soon you'll consider what is feasible and what is doable in terms of retaining experienced officers, experienced fire personnel, and dispatchers who, frankly, when we talk about first responders, in my definition of that, those dispatchers are the first of the first responders. And you just can't replace experience overnight. One of the factors that's evident throughout the law enforcement community is that there are fewer people entering that field of service, and the academy down at UV can bear that out. So it becomes critical that we retain quality people. Thanks for your—

Now I have Miriam Murphy, after which Phil Murphy.

Last week during the Truth in Taxation meeting, a response was given by the city manager regarding a question asked by a council member if fire or police personnel had been instructed not to attend the meeting. The city manager stated a directive had been given stating that on-duty personnel were to stay within their assigned shift areas, ensuring proper response to their geographical jurisdiction of the city. Isn't it ironic that this directive came out before the Truth in Taxation meeting and after the previous city council meeting in which numerous uniform-wearing fire personnel attended? This ridiculous explanation This explanation was nothing more than a strong-arm attempt to keep on-duty fire personnel from once again attending a civic meeting where issues facing their careers and livelihood were being addressed. It's common knowledge and practice that on-duty fire personnel routinely drive to the City Centre building, rec centre, city shops, and the Public Safety building located directly next to this very building, requiring some fire stations to leave and respond to any incident outside of their assigned area. Even more ridiculous was the innuendo that uniform-wearing personnel had or would intimidate members of the City Council. I spoke with many City Council members last week after the meeting, and none of you indicated you felt intimidated. Rather, you expressed appreciation for those who had been to the meeting, and you welcomed them to attend on or off duty. It should be obvious to City Council members that this directive was nothing more than a veiled attempt to keep certain city employees away and to not have any show of support for issues and concerns being brought to your attention. When the word or reference to bullying has been referred to and associated with the City Manager's Office, this is a perfect example of that behavior. At a previous meeting, a member of this council questioned the assistant city manager about how things are going with our dispatchers. This led to a very brief discussion. Our dedicated dispatchers are facing many of the same crises as our first responders. In my mind, our dispatchers are the lifelines between Orem city residents and our first responders. Without their quick-thinking, well-trained, and caring people who answer the majority of the calls that that come from within our city, we would lose that important link and there would be no first responders rushing to answer 911 emergencies. I want to read a heartfelt letter from one of our dispatchers whom I consider a hero. I'd like to thank you for standing up for dispatch at the council meeting last night. We are always the forgotten ones, but our jobs are stressful day in and day out. I am approaching 25 years with the city and I— and right now I'm looking to move elsewhere because of the current conditions. We are working with 12 dispatchers, mandatory overtime with no end in sight. Not only do I work full-time, I am a mom like most of my co-workers, and I want to be home with my kids, but currently we are working so many hours it's not manageable. Our training failure rate is high, and it takes 6 to 8 months to train a new dispatcher. In the last year, we have one person that has passed training, and his last day I've loved Orem and would like to be the first dispatcher to retire from Orem with 30 years, but with these conditions, I can't do 5 more years. We are the forgotten ones, but I'm the person who has walked countless moms through CPR, been on duty when an officer has been shot, sat in a chair without a break for hours, delivered a baby over the phone, and most recently took a call from a mom who ran over her 6-year-old daughter.

Thank you.

And I— this last call hit me hard as I have a 6-year-old daughter, and I will never forget that call. I will never forget screaming and crying. I appreciate all you do to serve the city and for thinking of dispatch during this crisis.

What was that? You'll have to conclude. The 3 minutes are up.

Phil and I have a special bond with this dispatcher. She was on duty the day that Phil was shot while responding to a domestic violence call 14 years ago. She's an amazing person and a dedicated dispatcher. More importantly, she's a friend. Can Orem afford to lose any of these experienced and qualified dispatchers? No. We haven't forgotten you. Thank you for always being there to answer our calls.

Thank you. Now, now hear from Phil Murphy and David Young.

Thank you.

My name is Phil Murphy.

It was refreshing last week at the Tax and Truth and Taxation meeting to hear some of the comments that you as council members expressed showing appreciation for responders. Some of you specifically stated the following: keep our good people here, prevent losing more, possibly offer a bonus.

Or a counteroffer to keep employees here at Orem. Rolling out the new structure for the ladder program is very good, and you did recognize that this is a statewide problem. This is not just Orem.

Believe me, I know that.

I travel up and down the state speaking with the sheriffs and the chiefs.

I have 140 agencies that I'm involved with training. This is a statewide problem, and I know that. But this is also something that problem This is a problem that Orem has to be very aggressive with and very proactive because you have a lot of competition. It's a competitive market.

And with that being said, we have to change some things.

I think last week you heard that another valued SWAT-trained firefighter paramedic is leaving for another department. I know Mayor Brunts knows this individual personally and the quality and the integrity of that individual.

I too know this individual and his family, and it sickens me to see that another person is leaving.

It's tragic.

I'm passionate about the first responders and dispatchers here that work for this city.

You can say that you appreciate and value them. You can think that you know what the job is like. But believe me, you really don't. You may get a glimpse of it or a taste of it by attending the Citizens Academy, or like most people, you see a lot of things on TV or in the movies or on the news. But believe me, unless you were really involved in the work, you just do not know what it's like. I doubt many of you drive around Orem like I do. I know most of you do errands and drive around and go shopping, maybe like I do.

But I specifically drive around some days and I look at intersections where I've responded to fatals.

I look at houses where I've committed or had to perform CPR on dying infants. I've been to apartment complexes where somebody has committed suicide. I drive past the department store often and think the last time I went in there is when a TV fell on a 5-year-old and crushed and killed her.

Every first responder and dispatcher lives with the sights, smells, and the voices that come with this chosen career.

Some may think anyone can do this job, or that you don't need to have to have some advanced degree or college education to do it, therefore a salary should reflect proportionately. This couldn't be further, further from the truth.

It is time for the city to step up. Stop just saying it, show it.

Become the innovative and progressive organization you once were. Stop paying average, non-competitive salaries.

Raise the bar. If this truly is a statewide problem, you as a city council cannot stand by any longer following the same plan.

Ask for the best, pay the best, and you will get and keep the best.

Thank you. Dave Young.

Hello.

You want to give us your name?

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you knew it because you called me up.

I know I do. But the microphone, I need to have you—

Okay. I'm Dave Young.

Thank you.

Okay.

I don't doubt that that there's an issue with the police and the first responders and what they make and how this all plays out. I just think that we need to separate the emotion from all of this from the actual numbers. I keep hearing this, we haven't raised taxes since 1978, so we need to raise them. You guys all know that's a joke. You know that the taxes have actually gone up at least triple since 1978. So to say they haven't means that's not true. And just as far as the whole idea, adding 4 policemen to 88 really won't make a material difference. I mean, if we have a problem, 4 policemen won't make that big of a difference. So how many policemen do we need? People last week in the meeting said we need 50 more policemen. You know, other people think we need less. We really don't know the answer to that question right now. But that's a question that we need to answer before we change our tax structure. The entire city presentation was based around how many calls the police department answers. The chief said he didn't know for sure how those numbers came from. He said they would likely change next year when when they change the way they account for those calls. So we're making decisions based on calls, not on crime statistics. The real numbers that would determine whether or not crime is increasing or decreasing would be the actual number of murders, rapes, assaults, burglaries, auto accidents, etc., not the total number of calls. That number of calls is a game. If you really need money, And if you go through a study and you determine we really need money because we have increasing crime in Orem, simply take it from the nonessential categories, like the $2.5 million from the city manager's office that's spent on wages, or the $2.7 million from the library that's spent on wages. I mean, if there's really essential versus nonessential, take it from there. Because those are not— essential expenses. They're not essential when compared to enforce the law and to take care of people in need. Another option would be to take the funds that are being, you know, if we can't do that, another option would be to take the funds being used for nonessential specialty officers such as resource officers, D.A.R.E. officers, and neighborhood watch officers. Back in the day, we never had any of those officers. While they're great if you can afford them and they add value to the community, we don't have them anymore. Anyway, I'm out of time, but I just want to come again tonight because if you guys vote this in, then you'll be the first city council in 40 years to fundamentally alter the tax structure. And you, you know and understand what you're doing by fundamentally changing it. And, and that's not what any of you ran on. That's not what any of you campaigned on. I never heard anyone do that. So to come up and fundamentally change the tax structure when it doesn't really need to be changed, when you need to just reallocate your resources to the most important things, that's what I'd encourage you to do. Thanks.

Thank you. Hear from Val Gibson and then David Holliday.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Val Gibson. I got a lot to cover, so I'm going to talk fast and hopefully get through most of this. I think a lot of problem with the city of Orem right now is a lot of things that are being said that are untruth. I was reading a newspaper article the other day, uh, and there were some things said in there that was blatantly not true. The person that said it should be ashamed of himself, and the supervisor should be ashamed of himself. And the city council and the mayor should be ashamed of themselves because it makes each and every one of your jobs that much more difficult because you don't have the trust of the people. And the second issue I want to talk about is sort of following through what the gentleman before me said. You know, the director part of recreation— and I'm not singling him out, but I looked through the budget and it was easier to identify him. For example, he makes about 25 to 30% more than the governor of the state of Utah. Now I understand that he's making comparable with the other cities, but really and truly, 20 to 30% more than the governor—that's hard to swallow. He's making two and a half times the median income of the citizens of Orem. You know, the police officer starving, but. Other people are, in nonessential things, seem to be doing really well. You know, the rec center loses $600,000, $700,000 a year, and we reward those people by paying them more than the governor. You know, excluding the mayor, most of you people in the City Council live within your budgets. And I'm not trying to single out the mayor, but I know he's had a few issues, and I'm not trying to single him out. But why can't we run the city the same way as we do our home budgets and stay within budgets? It's crazy. You know, I went through this year and took a look, a quick look at things. The valuations of property in the city of Orem increased by between 14% and 17% this year, which means that you received over a 14% increase in property taxes No, it's true. I can prove it to you all day long. Now, you haven't received the money, but you will in this budget year. Yes, it is. You know, I've dealt with this for 100 years. I know that that's true. If the valuation goes up, your income goes up. You get a percentage of that. You don't get a flat fee. You know, in the City Council budget, you know, I only spent a few minutes looking at this, but, you know, it says that, uh, the salaries of the City Council members are $14,222 a year. The salary of the mayor is $42,833. That means the annual salary is $128,500, basically. In the budget, we have $332,255. That's 2.6% higher.

That's right.

I'm sort of confused on those numbers. It doesn't seem to jive too well. I just think that we're just sort of rushing through this, you know, really, really fast, and things aren't being checked like they should. If I can find that in 20 minutes, I'm sure I could find a whole lot more if I spent more time at it. I have some more to say, but my time's up. But so thank you for your time.

Thank you. Now hear from David Halliday.

Hello, my name is David Halliday, and I've been attending City Council meetings for the past 6 months. And I want to start off by saying I am still for the property tax raise to get more officers and fund them, and I find the reasons that the council has given compelling. But that's not why I'm here to talk today. I was in city council and I noticed a very odd occurrence. As I said, I've attended many months and most of the meetings seem very level-headed, over— almost to the point of boredom, which that's fine. That's how things should work most of the time. You should be bored because people are working out details. I think that's a good thing. But today, when we talked about the issue of how to get more funding for officers and firemen, it looked like for a while we were going down a good road. It looked like there was communication back and forth. Plan had been laid out, and I'm not going to say any names because I honestly have had lost what was going on. I needed one of those like sport replay things where someone stops and freeze frames and circles things and puts lines. But it felt like. Even though I do not know the specific numbers or the specific facts of the issue, there was some break in the communication where all of a sudden people were saying, oh, I didn't receive this information. Oh, I don't know about that. Oh, actually, I changed my mind on this. I'm glad that we're meeting— that the council is meeting again on Tuesday with the chiefs to take care of it. But just for the sake of appearances, I would, I would like the, the council and the staff to look internally and see if there is a better way that they can communicate things that are very heated like this so that— and once again, everyone here, you can go and— one of the great things is everything is online and you can watch it play for play and you can see if I'm exaggerating or if it looks— if it makes sense to you. But I'd say look at internally what you've got as far as communication and find out where the bug was and treat that bug.

Thank you very much. Thank you, David. We'll now go ahead and close the public comment portion of our meeting. Do you wish to say something? Yes, go ahead and come up. You've got 3 minutes, and give us your name, and then we will close.

Emily Vance. Thank you for considering, uh, giving me the 3 minutes. I know that we've discussed a lot of issues, and I know that a lot of this stuff is something that you guys are considering as well, and that's very personal to us. And we do appreciate that there is effort being made there. But my concern would be is that the talk that we've had and the communicating in the last few weeks we've discussed the STEPS program and the plans that are going to be implemented. And I am in support of those and I am appreciative to that. But my, I guess, suggestion or hope would be as a benefactor of that is that those things can happen sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, as these programs are taking That time is precious, and people are leaving, and we need to kind of start to implement that because the last change that was put into effect was 14 months ago, which is a long time—a long time when we're already years behind, a long time when people are trying to make ends meet, paycheck to paycheck, to take care of their families. So I don't know. I feel like we've been here. for the last couple weeks, like a bunch of kids throwing tantrums, which is frustrating that we have to kind of have this, this format, this— I don't know, that it needs to come to this point to where we're frustrated, to where we're discouraged in order to be able to have our voices heard.

Thank you.

to be able to feel like there is appreciation there, to feel like there is communication happening. So we're hopeful to move forward, kind of. It's been— this process has not really actually delivered the hope that we were hoping for, but we are hopeful as a department, as a community, that these things will be able to be worked out. So with that emotion that's been shared, with all of the things to consider, we're waiting. We're hopeful.

We need you as a city.

We need you as bosses, as employees, as those who take care of us, because we are at disposal. We are essentially just There at whatever you decide, um, until, you know, those, like I said, that have left beyond and, and they go for something better or different or whatever that pasture looks like for them. Um, but we're hoping, we're hoping that you're able to, to provide that for us.

Thank you.

Now we'll go ahead and close. Um, if you could hold your applause, we're going to give We'll go ahead and close the public portion of our meeting for comments, and we're going to move on to our consent items. We have 4 consent items. If there's any that the— a member of the City Council wishes to put on a scheduled item, please let me know now. If not, we'll go through these. First is the approval of the meeting minutes of August 6th, 2019. City Council meeting. Second is the appointment of David Holliday to the Heritage Advisory Committee. Third is acceptance and certification of the 2019 City of Orem municipal primary election. And lastly is a resolution on the site plan approval of the Golden Corral located generally at 225 West University Parkway in the PD 5 zone. And I would move that we move forward with these. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember Larray.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the consent items pass. Move on to schedule items. The first one is a public hearing considering public input on the proposed transfer of funds from the enterprise funds to cover general fund utility costs over and above Administrative and Overhead Costs, and our presenter is Brandon Nelson and Richard Manning.

Good morning. Mayor and City Council, uh, the purpose of our meeting, uh, for this public hearing is to, as per state laws, to discuss the transfers that are occurring or that are budgeted to occur, um, from the city's enterprise funds to the general As part of a background, the GAP, which is the Government Accounting Principles, and the state auditor recently started focusing on the fact that cities needed to pay for the services provided to themselves. and pay those fees to the enterprise funds for which those services were provided. The city has gone ahead and we have budgeted that and built— those have always been built into the city's utility rates to cover those services, but now obviously we're to show those services within those funds. We have 3 choices from that point in which to, in essence, recover those funds within the general fund. One of those is to raise property taxes. The second item is to cut services, or the third is to transfer funds, which is what the staff is proposing that we transfer those funds back from the enterprise funds back to the general fund. This is just a brief summary of how that works and the amounts associated with each of the enterprise funds. Those are calculated by each of those— each of the departments associated with each of those. Go through a process of evaluating the various water use as best as we can estimate since most of our stuff is not metered at the current time. We estimate those fees as well as surface area related to street lighting and then come up with the estimated fee and then obviously we then propose that we transfer that money Back. You can see those amounts on the right-hand side, the amount that, that is applicable to all of the— each of those enterprise funds' total expenditures, the appropriate percentage that applies to each. Just to give an outline of where the utility revenues come from for each fund. And you can see obviously sales of services is a large piece of each of those funds. A brief summary of the costs of each of those funds and where the money is spent within each of them. Within each of those components. When we're looking here, when we're looking at operations primarily, then you can see here with administrative and transfer information, those are provided within that operational number. They're not the whole thing, but they're the piece within it. We have various components. You can see down near the bottom the transfer fee return. All other transfers out, just as a word of note, relate to those enterprise funds actually paying for certain services within the general fund. But those other— the transfer fee return does not have a correlation between any specific service. So therefore, it's classified as not tied to a service. So therefore, it's just simply a transfer.

Thank you.

Some more detail in relation to each of those line items within each fund. Obviously, the contracted services and personnel are large items within there, but I want you to note that the capital items as part of our master plans, that those things are moving forward. And a breakdown of those contracted services since they are a rather large amount within each one of the funds. So those are the elements that we're required to show and talk about within this public hearing related to the enterprise fund transfers. Do you have any questions about any of those particular things in relation to the funds or in relation to the transfers?

If no questions, we're going to go ahead and move forward with— to the public hearing and open this up to anyone in the public who would like to speak to this item. Please hold your comments to 3 minutes and give us your name when you come forward. Seeing as how no one's going— coming forward, we'll close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council.

Thank you.

Any questions or comments from the council? This is just a transfer item and you're making a note of that for the public, correct? So this is not regarding any motion by our city council. Okay, Councilmember McDonald.

It's interesting that we didn't have a question because often this is a confusing item and public will and raise a question. And I've, I've come up with an analogy that works in my own mind that I think explains it a little bit. When my children got older and were living at our home, we asked them to pay us rent. We saved that rent for them until they moved out and we gave it back to them. So it was not an expense of my wife and I. We weren't paying them to get out of the house, although one could agree that it seemed like that. But their months of rent were paid to us, and we saved it for them to help them when they moved out. In a similar way, the city must collect— must pay a water bill. The enterprise funds holds on to that and then pays them back at the end of the year. So this isn't any new money to the city or extra money. It's just refunding the money back that they paid for water, much like I refunded money that my children had paid me for rent for living in the home. Hopefully that explanation helps a little bit.

Thank you.

I understand it better now, Tom. Thank you.

Good. I bet you already—

All right, we'll go ahead and move on to our next scheduled item, 10.2, which is a public hearing on a resolution to adopt the certified tax rate with the tax increase and an ordinance adopting the budget for fiscal year 2019-2020. Our presenters are Brandon Nelson and Richard Manning.

Mayor and City Council, this portion is to obviously adopt the tax rate as well as the budget. We, we went through the tentative budget several months ago. I'm not going to re-go through that whole thing because really at this point I believe that all that is needed to be decided is in relation to certifying which tax rate that we are going to move forward with in relation to the budget. And so at this point, I simply want to turn that time back over to you for any questions that you may have in relation to that tentative budget that was previously presented and/or a discussion in relation to the tax rate.

Any discussion from the council? I would just like to make one comment. First of all, our budget, I believe, is $126 million. Is that correct? For a city of approximately 100,000 people, I feel like that our city is very well run. We balance the budget, and we've got excellent roads, excellent parks. We're dealing with the public safety portion, which every city is dealing with right now. And the state. But I feel like that as a whole, our city is a great place to live, and I appreciate actually the opportunity to pay taxes to have a good, safe place to live. With regards to the increase, many of you might remember, but 7 years ago there was a proposed tax increase which I fought at that time. I did not feel like that was necessary or correct. At the same time, I feel like that this is necessary and correct to help fund our public safety. It's $1 per month per average house in Orem. I'm very much aware of what $12 means to many individuals in our city. At the same time, I feel like it's important that we recognize there is a cost to having a safe and peaceful city. So I feel like that this is a proper use of budgets and that this is something that is necessary. Councilmember Lentz, do you have a comment?

And, and on that same note, out of that $126 million, roughly $19 million of that is transfers like we talked about earlier, where it's not necessarily meaning that's revenue coming into the city that we can spend on other things, but it's essentially— it's typically us paying for things internally to document that so we have a paper trail.

Correct.

So I just— I wanted to speak to some comments made earlier by Mr. Young and Mr. Gibson. And it's a common misconception that as property values in the city generally go up, that means that the city gets additional revenue coming in. And I actually went back to, you know, over 40 years ago in the Orem-Geneva Times and looked up The budget that they were approving back then, the tax rate, the last time they had adjusted it, if I'm understanding right, it was $13.48 per $1,000 of assessed value. So that means if you have the average Orem home today of about $302,000, that means just the Orem portion of your property tax would be $4,071. And that's only about 15% of our property tax bill. So if you've— That's a lot of money. Factored in the school district and all these other entities, if, if that's really how it worked, if that rate stayed the same, your property tax bill would be about $30,000 for the average Orem home, which is obviously not the case. So Brandon, you can speak to this more eloquently, but can you just again reiterate how that works? When your property value goes up, the rate goes down to adjust accordingly. The goal is to keep the amount the same. Year over year.

Correct.

So each year, the city and the county calculates all of this information. So the city— all we—

This is by state law?

Correct. So state law requires that the county go through and assess all property, and then they go through and identify anything that is considered new growth, meaning an addition to a home, addition to a business, a brand new structure. Those items are carved out, and then the remaining property is then all compared, all thrown into a big pot, if you will, and each piece within that pot is calculated against one another. But the total amount received by the city— let's just, for lack of a better number, $5 million— the city still receives $5 million. Who pays the $5 million may change. X business is valued— their building is valued more, so they pay more. X blank vacant piece of property, not valued as much, perhaps it pays less, but the city still receives $5 million. Now they do receive— we do receive the new growth So those do increase our property tax. And then the next year— and, and there's a whole blending thing I don't want to get into, but there, needless to say, in a simple way to look at is the next year that new growth is then put into the pot with everybody else. And that, say, it rose to $6 million with that new growth. The new number is now $6 million with those new things that are growing. And that continues on year after year.

So if property values indeed went up, you know, 10% or 14%, we're not growing the pie by 10 to 14%. We're just recutting the same pie based on, you know, so-and-so's property went up this much, so-and-so's property didn't go up at all, so he's going to get a bigger wedge of the pie, he's going to have a smaller wedge of the pie, even though his property value Correct.

And, and accordingly, the— your rate, if values are going up, your rate is going to go down, and vice versa.

And even with this proposed increase this year of the amount that gets paid, the rate actually goes down compared to last year.

It still does, yes.

So if your property value is the same this year as it was last year, the amount you pay actually goes down.

Correct.

Councilmember Spencer.

Okay, so from last week, I would like to reiterate what I, what I said and how I feel about this certified property tax. You know, since we're going to raise property taxes for the first time since '78, I think we need to get it right, and I think that we're missing the mark on this.

Can we see the forest between the trees is my question. I I feel we're just putting a Band-Aid on the problem.

This property tax increase, we need to be able to utilize it for police, fire, and the people that have experience and keep those people. Um, so I think I have a question for maybe Jamie and Chief Giles. Have we ever done a survey to see about how many police officers we really need per citizen? Because right now it's So is there a survey that we could do?

Chief Giles, you know?

There, there are standards that are considered as part of law enforcement, the law enforcement community. Some of those standards are based on calls for service, some of them are based on officers per thousand, but no, we have never done a survey. We have talked about, and our plan has been in this fall when we have some available dollars from carryover to initiate both a police and a fire service study that we would hire an outside consultant.

Like a nationwide type basis?

Yes, somebody who, somebody who obviously is credentialed nationally to do this kind of work and has done similar projects in other cities to come back and to suggest That's my thoughts, and I, I just hope that we would get it right the first time if we're going to raise taxes.

So thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments from the council? Okay, we'll open this up for public comment. Anyone who would like to make comment, please come forward, give us your name, hold your comments to 3 minutes.

My name is Leonard Lee. I am a citizen of Durham and appreciate what's happened in our neighborhood since we had our meeting with the mayor and Mr. Spencer and Mr. Lentz. And in Westmore Park, we've seen some improvements in our sidewalks, curb and gutter and street repair. We're appreciative of that. With regards to the tax increase, um, it's— and the budget approval, it seems like the priorities aren't quite, uh, right in my mind. It seems like, uh, the safety people and fire should come to the top of the list of the budget, uh, And that you might look for other places to find money to pay for those officers. I know a few weeks ago my neighbor Kent Astle approached you about a problem with the city suggesting that we tear down the fence at Westmore Park, and there is a portion of that fence fence that needs to be replaced. We agree with that. But plenty of the fence is still serviceable, and we would appreciate if you wouldn't transfer a little money from that back into your general fund to help fund those police officers. You have a huge challenge, and I understand that. But it seems to me that I would look into a way to back into prices for projects rather than going forward just with numbers that are presented to you. It seems like we ought to be looking at maybe saying, hey, Mr. General Contractor, could you repair something for this dollar amount, or could you build something for a dollar amount? and then back into that price. And I think that's a concept that's not well understood by public institutions. The real bone of contention with property tax for me, and maybe with you, is the Alpine School District's portion. You don't control that. We understand that. But those of us that pay a fair amount of property tax on commercial properties, boy, it really hurts. But your increment would not be so hard to take if we could convince that Alpine School District not to build so many expensive buildings. Now, that's not your issue, but those are just some of my thoughts. It seems to me, too, that the City of Orem might consider dropping— I understand there's a frivolous lawsuit being pursued by the City of Orem. I'm not sure of the details of that, but it was reported to me this morning on the phone, that if the city were to drop that lawsuit, maybe there'd be a little more money available. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

I'll keep this short just because I already spoke. I was a little confused, Sam. You said that based on the way that I was calculating the property taxes, I That if that's how it worked, the property tax on a home would be $40,000 on a $300,000 home? Okay, you do not understand what you're talking about. I mean, you seriously do not. That's not how it works.

If—

prices would have had to go up 10 times for anything near that to happen, and that, that hasn't happened.

No.

So you're way, way off on your math.

You can have the discussion afterwards.

Yes. I'm just saying, if members of the city council are voting on this based on the theory that if the property taxes work the way Sam thinks they work and taxes would go up to $40,000, if that's what you're— the way you think it works, then no one knows what they're doing. So I just wanted to point that out because that's nuts. And I do believe that the firemen and the police are the number one priority in the city. I just think that we need to work within our budget.

Thank you.

The simple example is we live off of the mill rate. The mill rate changes as the city grows, as property values go up, that income goes up. I mean, painting the picture that the income never goes up, the only information I could find was— the earliest I could find was 2006. Revenues to the city in this budget were $52 million. Here we are in 2018.

I'm sorry.

And I can't read, but revenues are $66 million. So that's from 2008— or 2006 to now. So something happened that made the revenues go up. So this whole theory that we haven't raised taxes since 1978, so we've got it— not accurate. Anyway, I would just encourage you not to be the first city council that essentially changes the— fundamentally changes the structure of the tax rate. It hasn't happened in the last 40 years. I don't know why you need to do it now. You just need to learn to live within your budget. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, City Council, my name is Thomas Cook. I'm originally from here but was away for about 26 years with the military.

I retired in 2016, came back, and I was given the great opportunity to come and serve as a police officer.

I think one of the things that we're missing here though, as we talk about the police and the fire, is that though there is concern about having enough of us, probably one of the more important questions is, are we going to keep those that are on, that have been on for For 5, 6, 8, 10 years. There's 3 or 4 fine officers back here with that many years.

The concern is losing them, and if we don't have the enticement to keep them, we're going to continue to lose them.

Um, it's emotional because some of these are my leaders here, and I don't want to lose them. I've already lost Sergeant Arnoldson. He's a great man. But if we don't do what it takes to entice these senior officers, we're going to be even more enterprisey than we already are. Just to give you an example, like I say, I've been on for about 2 and a half years, not even quite 2 and a half years.

As of right now, Besides my sergeant and besides my corporal, I'm the 3rd senior officer on our team. I'm also training as an FTO.

2 and a half years and I'm training new guys.

Yeah, I have a little experience from the world of 26 years in the military, but still, there are definitely differences.

And if we don't ensure that we're keeping these 10-year veterans around, We're going to put our future officers in a predicament by being trained by less experienced officers.

So with that, as you look at that, you're not only looking at the proper number of officers, you're looking at ensuring that you're doing whatever it takes to keep these fine experienced officers here in Orem City.

so you're not running a PD department with guys that have less than 3 or 4 years.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

My name is Lynnae Millett. I just want to say that I agree with Councilmember Spencer. I think we need to get this right. Nobody wants to pay pay more taxes. I don't want to. I don't think anybody wants to pay taxes, but I think we really enjoy living in a city that's safe and having trained and seasoned officers and firefighters to take care of us and our children when we're in a difficult situation. I think that we need to bring the— we need to figure it out where we can make it competitive to keep these officers here. And to bring their wages back to competitive wages and to reward them for their dedication to this city over these years. It's a tough job. I have 3 cousins who are police officers, one of them in Utah and 2 of them out of state, and I know what they've— what they go through and the training they've received. And as was mentioned earlier, there aren't that many people who want to do it. They're good-hearted people who the reason they do it is because they want to serve. And they want to help people. And as a citizen that doesn't like paying taxes, and I, and I also always want to make sure that when those decisions are made that they're wise ones, you know, because it is a burden on many people, I'm willing to pay this and to make this community safer. So when I or my family or my neighbors whom I love need these services, we've got the best. serving us here in Orem. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Melissa Wilson, and I spoke last week, so I'll be brief. Um, I spent a lot of time this week in communication with some of you, and I truly appreciate the time that you've taken to reach out to me and share their needs and their sides of what they think needs to happen to Orem. It makes me hopeful for the city when I can see that change is on the horizon. Last week I mentioned my desire for higher patrols and strongly staffed fire and medic city. This week I'd like to share on a personal note as to why these issues are important to me. I spent the last year in and out of hospitals and doctors' offices running tests, running test after test, trying to diagnose symptoms that arise from both my brain and my heart. The process has been long and frustrating. I have great days, I have hard days, and I have days that I have to tell my children, I'm not doing well today. If I fall down, call 911. It scares them a bit, but we have all put our faith in the city of Orem. I hope that it's able to pull through for me and my family if and when I need it. I spoke to a few members of council this week, and a phrase that was used has been on my mind. I was told that one of the problems with Orem is that there just isn't enough money to go around. Money can't be pulled out of thin air. This is a true statement. But the direct reference was, it's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. I don't mean to sound simple-minded, but following a simple budget shouldn't lead to robbing Peter to pay Paul. It's just a matter of priorities. When my kids need shelter, I'm not going to invest in— I'm not going to invest in a lavish vacation. When my kid needs— my kids need food, I'm not going to buy a new house. A budget is a budget is a budget, and when budgets are done correctly, the most important items are purchased first. In Orem, Family City USA, safety should be a top priority, and if Peter needs to be robbed in order to pay Paul, it sounds like funds were not allocated correctly in the first place. This is where my questioning starts. Considering that Orem was able to round up the funds for a new fitness center and library, I feel like we're finally at a tipping point where the citizens realize we have to pay to keep Orem on the map. Whether this means trimming the fat in the current budget or finding a way to raise new funds so that money is available, the discussion is important to the future of Orem citizens and those who come to our city to make a living. I ask that safety once again be a top priority, which also means it earns a top spot in our budgeting. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, thanks again for letting us speak. James Vance, spoke with you last week. Just wanted to kind of reiterate what the Colonel said. And yes, he's a full-blown Colonel with the Army. He speaks with authority, in my opinion. He might be a 2-year officer here, but he speaks with authority. He knows what he's talking about. I don't know if you guys realize, but as we speak right now, there are 9 calls for service in our computer system, what we call the CAD. One of those calls alone requires 6 bodies on. Yes, there was a big enough call tonight while we all are here, 6 bodies are on. That means there maybe is 2 other bodies that can handle calls. Guess how many of our people are sitting here? I don't know how many times people have called the police or medical and it's taken an extra 2 minutes or 3 minutes or 20 minutes for them to get there. It makes a big deal. Now, when we have new officers versus senior officers, it makes an even bigger deal because new officers take shorter amount of— or a longer amount of time to clear one call to get to another. Senior officers have the ability, have the smarts, To wrap things up quickly, to move to the next call. We are moving call to call to call. Fire, paramedics, no different. Right now we have 3 accidents. They're just sitting there. No officers to go. I don't know if they need paramedics. It doesn't say in the CAD. I didn't read it. However, there's 3 accidents there. I'll bet you anything they're pretty ticked off because no officer's there to take their accident report. We need bodies and we need the money to keep the seniors here. If we don't have the money to keep the seniors here, then keeping getting new bodies isn't going to do us much good. The seniors are going to keep quitting, going to greener pastures. The new guys are going to come to get the training and then go to greener pastures. The ones who stick here have the loyalty and the love. I consider myself part of that. I've had multiple opportunities to leave. I choose not to at this point because I love this city. Okay, I grew up in Provo, but guess what? My love's not in Provo. My love is here in Orem. This is the city that I stay with. This is the city that those who are seniors like me are going to continue to stay with. But I'll tell you what, you're walking a very fine line of a department as green as we are right now. It's a fine line. You're going to start getting citizens that are pretty ticked off getting the services that they don't feel like they're paying for. They, they're getting crap service because they have learned to expect greatness from this city. That comes from fire, paramedics, and police.

All of us.

Dispatch.

All of us.

They, the citizens, have come acquainted— accustomed to a service that we may not be able to provide for much longer. I mean, I'm not administration, but coming from the line, I'll tell you what, somebody wants their car unlocked and they got a basket full of groceries and their ice cream's melting, it might be 45 minutes. Where in the past we might have been there a little bit quicker because we had the senior and the love and the drive to keep going full 110%.

Thank you.

Thank you, James. Anyone else care to speak? If not, we'll close the public portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Councilmember Luria, do you have a comment?

Yes. I appreciate the opportunity to speak for a minute. We know that there are people who are leaving our community, and it's, it's a great concern for me. I don't want to lose one more officer. I just don't. I value every officer we have, the training, and it takes a long time to train a new worker.

I get that.

By adding these new officers, these 4 new ones, this is just the beginning. Next Tuesday, we will be working on the career ladder and exactly how we're going to pay for that. We are all committed to retaining the officers. We appreciate your work. I know— I don't know, understand exactly what happens when you guys go out. You guys have courage beyond belief. But I, for one, appreciate it. And last time you heard me talk about my neighborhood when that gentleman was murdered at that apartment and how my neighborhood went on lockdown. It was the first time I'd ever felt unsafe in Orem, and I don't want to ever feel that again. So I'm committed to helping us find a way to retain our officers. I am for this proposed property tax because I, I want to get more officers in, into the system and help, help with the workload. I, I, those calls were so high last when we looked at that document. And I was— and no one could really tell me why. So I believe we need to do both. We need to retain our great officers and get a few more in the pipeline. And so I'm committed to doing that. And as far as the property tax, it's a very confusing thing. I understand what the gentleman was saying. But when I studied this in graduate school, basically you get the same amount except for the new growth. And they just changed the rate. And so it sounds confusing. It doesn't make sense. But that is how it works. We get the same exact every year except for the new growth. And even though your property goes up a little bit and someone else's might go down a little bit, we do not get more money. And it's like I said, it was difficult to understand on a graduate level. But that is how it works. And so nothing we can do about the school district. Be sure to lobby your school board on, on their— which they're about 3/4 of the cost of your property tax. So I appreciate everyone coming out. An engaged citizenry helps us find solutions, and I appreciate your time and effort.

Thank you. Councilor McDonald.

Oh, thank you. I didn't know I was up. It's never popular to talk about a tax increase, and several of you have spoken eloquently here. When we first asked Chief Giles some months ago what his number one concern was. At that point, his number one concern was new officers and said we needed at least 4 new officers. Since that time, of course, it's been fairly public, and grateful to many who brought it to our attention, of the concerns of the pay of existing officers. And almost every council meeting for the last several months, we've had that renewed. So I want you to know this is a 2-part approach. The new property tax is for new officers, and we will be Allocating budget resources to change compensation. I thought we would have done this a long time ago. We're finally getting to it next week, unity of a council to finally make a decision. I'm grateful for that and look forward to the two-headed approach to this, both new officers and additional compensation. As it relates to property taxes and the cost of officers, Jamie, our city manager, leaned over to me and told me some facts And rather than me re-quoting him, I'd like to turn a moment or two over to him.

Thank you.

I think part of the conversation centers on what the city does with its property taxes on an annual basis. We have a general fund budget of $48.24 million. Those are monies that are collected to fund all the general operations of the city. So things like water service, sewer service, storm drainage facilities, those are excluded and are part of that bigger $126 million budget. But the $48 million that we have to work with fund all of our general operations, including police and fire and dispatch services and emergency management. If you just look at the The amount of the cost of providing police and fire services in the city as currently constituted, not including anything that we've been talking about this evening, we look at police and fire costing $21.622 million, or representative of 45% of our entire general fund budget. So you may ask, well, what do we do with the remaining 55%? of the budget. It's also interesting to note that of that $21.622 million that we spend on public safety, which is very, very important, the city as a whole collects $6.9 million total in property tax. So we don't even have enough or 50% of what we need to fund our police department.

By way of property taxes.

We don't have enough by way of property tax to fund our fire department, but we use obviously other resources to fund and to bridge that difference.

But 45% of our current general fund budget goes to public safety, specifically police and fire.

The remaining 55% of our budget— and I just took a note and identified the other 55% of the budget.

It covers planning, building inspection, facilities, finance, recreation, neighborhoods in action, public works, senior citizens, justice court, traffic, transportation, urban forestry, the library, engineering, streets, parks, city treasury, the city recorder, the HR function, the legal prosecution.

The cemetery, economic development, and activities within the city manager's office. I think we get a real bang for our dollars with what we are collecting by way of property taxes. Now, that doesn't suggest that we have— we don't have a need to improve. I think it's obvious based on comments that we've heard from in recent weeks that we have a need to improve, and we're working on that.

Thank you.

But I also think it's disingenuous to suggest that this council is not necessarily focused on public safety and the needs of our community and making sure that it remains clean and safe and making sure that those who need medical assistance receive that, because right now they're receiving 45% of all the money that we collect within the general fund.

Okay. Any other comments from the council? Sam, you have a comment?

And I think it's also worth noting that over the last— I'm not sure if it's 5 years, but as we've been recovering from that recession and we, you know, public safety, just like all our other departments, had a hit, we've been adding additional officers every year since that time. This just accelerates that because I you know, in January when I, I brought attention to this, I just didn't feel that organic growth that we had within our existing budget was getting us there fast enough. And so that's why, why I proposed this. There was one question about the fence at Westmore Park. If I remember right, I think that's funded using CDBG funding, if I'm not mistaken. And I— We use a portion of our CDBG funding for our neighborhood preservation police officers, correct? But we couldn't simply add more patrol officers with CDBG funding, right? Okay. I guess part of my— and David, I, I don't want to speak for you, and I'm not suggesting you're going to vote one way or the other, but part of why I'm a little confused is this whole year as we've been discussing this, it seemed like you were on board with the idea we need to add more officers. When we were receiving the survey results in our work session, we kind of went around the room and everybody said, you know, do you want to add 2 or 3 or 4? I think you said, yeah, I'm okay adding 5 or something like that. So it just seems like in this, in this last week, kind of in the final hour, it seems like you're pulling back because you think we should be spending elsewhere. But why wasn't that presented throughout the year?

Well, my one concern was that fire was not included.

Back in the day.

It wasn't—

you were specifically talking about police, and I'm talking about fire, both. And if you look at— if you talk to Brandon, can we really allocate this $412,000 for 4 police officers in the budget?

Is it specifically going to be in there?

Can we allocate—

When you were—

this tax increase is for 4 police officers, right?

Is that going to be in the budget saying you have to use this money for 4 police officers?

Is it going to be in the budget?

Not required that it's reserved. We can certainly earmark it as such, but it's—

And that's been the plan all along.

But we are adding 4 officers if, if that's the right way to go. My point, Sam, is I, I don't think we should eliminate the, the firemen and the first responders in this thing, because we are losing people out the back door. And if we could utilize some of that money to keep our experienced officers, that's what my problem is.

I want to keep them.

I guess we're, we're kind of using a red herring argument there, because by adding 4 officers, that doesn't take anything away from fire, it doesn't take anything away from dispatch. It would actually make it harder to address those issues by saying no to this. Because then, right, then we have to essentially split the baby with the existing funds between needing to add new officers and address the compensation.

You wouldn't really need to add new officers if you kept your seasoned officers.

That's not what our police chief said, and that's not what we've been discussing as a council this entire year.

In your world, it's perfect.

Okay, Sam, thanks.

But the first time that I heard that from you was one week ago from today.

Sam, okay, just done.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

All right, any other comments from the council? Okay, I would like to make a motion then that we adopt the certified tax rate with the tax increase and adopt the budget for fiscal year 2019-20. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember Luray. Aye.

Nay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, both pass. We'll move on to now a public hearing enacting Article 2-37 of the Orem City Code pertaining to the creation of the Orem Arts District Review Board, and our presenter is Jason Bench. Thank you, Brandon and Richard.

He didn't know what to say.

You think I'm lying?

No, no.

Okay, Jason.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. So tonight is the opportunity we have to implement what's already in the ordinance. So in the arts district zone that the council implemented back in October of 2018, it indicated that they needed to— or we were going to create an arts district review board. This is the ordinance that sets that up as part of the arts district. So it's a committee that's made up, and of course I'm not expecting you to read that, but it's set up just like any other committee that we have, typically Planning Commission, any of those other review boards. This is simply designed for the Arts District. They will make sure that they comply with the requirements outlined in the Arts District ordinance. The Planning Commission did review this and recommends that the council adopt this as part of the ordinance. So I can address any questions that you may have.

Thank you. Councilmember Sumner.

Thanks, Mayor. And I, I've talked to Jason and Ryan about this commission, and I fully support what we're doing on State Street with the 5 districts. And I think we're moving forward with improving our business climate on State Street. The one concern I have about this commission is— there are usually 5 on the commission? There's 5 on this one, yes. I would suggest— and I'd like comments from the council on this— of those 5, I would like to require that we have a minimum of 2 property owners within that district on that commission. Now, the reason is I think you'll get better results when you have skin in the game. And I think art is kind of a different viewpoint for all of us. And I think it would be a better commission and you'd get better results in the end.

Thank you.

And with having 2 of the 5, they couldn't dominate. But I think you should have property owners within the art district on this commission.

I like those comments, Brent. Good suggestion. Any other comments from the council? Now, I just will— I'm not sure if he wants to talk.

Yeah, I know. At first I didn't hear if Brent had said I said 1 or 2. Now I heard it's 2, and I endorse that, that we ought to have business owners who have an interest in State Street but not business owners who can control it, not 4 or 5. So I echo Mr. Sumner's comment.

Not necessarily business owners, just property—

Property owners. Thank you.

Property owners.

2 property owners. Okay, uh, if no other comments, this is a public hearing, so we'll open it up for public comment. Anyone wishing to speak, please come forward. Give us your name. Keep your comments to 3 minutes.

My name is Doris Schoenfeld. Maybe I'm not as educated as I should be. Is this a commission that's going to be salaried?

It is not.

Good.

Volunteer.

Are you interested in the job?

Not right now.

Okay.

Any other comments? If not, we'll close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any comments from the council? Okay. Anyone care to make a motion?

Yeah, I'd like to make a motion, Mayor. I'd like to make a motion we act Article 2.37 of the Durham City Code pertaining to the creation of an Art District Review Board, which includes— which includes a minimum of 2 property owners within the Arts District of the 5 on the commission.

Second.

Hold on, can I ask a question in that? If, if for some reason we cannot get property owners within the district to be on the committee? Do we— Come to, come to me. I'll get them.

Okay.

We'll plan on Brent supplying the bodies.

All right.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. We'll start with Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay.

The ordinance passes.

Just a clarification. This commission doesn't meet Monthly. It's just when— It's an as-needed.

Yeah.

If we have a project that is required to put art, then— Once a year. Yep. And the ordinance does allow them to bypass this committee if for some reason the developer just wants to put 1% of his budget into art. They can avoid this committee altogether. So there is some caveats in the ordinance that would preclude that. So there is an option for developers.

All right. Going to 10.4. This is a public hearing on an ordinance. Amendment to Orem City Code, amending Sections 22-8-8 and 22-14-20 of the Orem City Code pertaining to minor site plan amendments along State Street. And our presenter is Jason Bench.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. So this addition is a minor amendment to site plans that does not add any gross square square footage to a project. For example, the Chick-fil-A across the street wants to add some canopies over their drive-through so their employees that are out taking orders— typically rain or shine, they're out there— and they want to add some small canopies that cover not only the order window but also these employees out there. Right now, we prohibit that. This ordinance amendment would allow them to add similar to that nature without expanding their square footage of their property. So it's a minor amendment and we support that. The Planning Commission also recommends that the council adopt this.

Okay. Are there any comments from the council or questions?

Okay.

If not, we'll bring it to the public. Anyone who would like to speak, please come forward. Keep your comments to 3 minutes and give us your name when you step to the podium.

Hello, I'm David Halliday, and the only question I have is, uh, I just want to make sure that, uh, if this is an aesthetic thing, that's fine. Um, if there's anything that has to do with safety, like when you were talking about setbacks when it came to authorizing solar panels on accessory, uh, dwelling units and things like that, I just want to know, um, are there any safety implications for having these canopies?

Jason, any comment?

There would not be.

They would have to meet the building code and everything else, so they would require to be permitting and all that kind of stuff. So we're not suggesting this bypasses any requirements for that.

Okay, thank you. Any other comments? If not, we'll go ahead and close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any comments or questions? Okay, anyone wishing to make a motion?

I move that we enact Article— or sorry, we amend Sections 2288 and 2214.20 of the Orem City Code pertaining to minor site plan amendments along State Street.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember McDonald.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the ordinance passes. We'll now move on to a public hearing with regards to an ordinance on zoning text amendment for 22-11-35L12B, amending fence height in the PD-22 zone. And our presenter is Jason Finch.

Thank you. This deals with the PD-22 zone, which is the WinCo— for a general knowledge of this, it's outlined in the blue. That's specific to the PD-22 zone. So this change directly involves the PD-22 zone only. What they're requesting is an applicant that is wanting to locate it at this location with a daycare facility would like to put a fence that has— as an enclosure for the children that are playing during their recess period. Right now, the ordinance allows a maximum of 4 feet. For a site— or non-site obscuring fence, they're requesting that it go to a 6-foot. Chain link is not an option, so it'd have to be some type of wrought iron or something like that. And the proposed ordinance still would require them to meet the safety clear vision requirements. So if it approaches a corner, they would work with our traffic engineer to make sure that the fence doesn't encumber or—

And what business is this?

It's a new I don't know the name of the— it's a childcare, but I have—

Can you give us an approximate address, Jason?

It's on there.

I don't see it.

Well, if you look, you can see the streets.

Oh.

So Canyon Parkway is 800 North.

So 950— 980 West.

Oh, 980.

Yeah.

So it's Orem Childcare Holdings. They do a mix of I think preschool all the way up.

And is the applicant here? Could you come forward? This is WinCo. Yeah.

Yep. Hello, my name is Bryant Anderson. I'm not the applicant, but my father is.

Okay.

So can you give us a little background on what your concern is here?

So just for safety reasons, on the— enclosing the playground, we have a— I believe the brand is Ameristar. It's a metal fence with a durable dark-colored finish with excellent visibility, and we would just like to increase the height from 4 feet to 6 feet.

So is this going to create any issues as far as traffic? Cars going anywhere where they can't see with this fence?

They shouldn't. That's why we added the requirement that it still needs to meet the clear vision. So any site plan that comes in, we'll make sure we know where the fence is.

Okay.

And install it.

So you'll ensure that?

Okay.

Councilmember Luria has a question.

Are you increasing the feet for— to keep the children in or keep them from climbing over? Is that the idea?

Yep.

Children, equipment, balls.

Okay.

Thanks.

My understanding is the state requires a minimum of 4 feet. So if and when they come out and inspect and there's a portion of the fence that happens to be 3 foot 11 inches, that's an issue for the property owner. By allowing the 12— or the 6 additional— 2 additional feet for 6 foot total, it gives them flexibility under the state requirement, but it also gives them some added ability to keep errant balls or stuff in the playground.

Councilmember Lentz.

Raising the minimum from 4 to 6 wouldn't put anybody out of compliance if they have an existing fence that's in compliance. The question was, if we're adding that section that it needs to conform to the clear vision area requirements, is there anybody that has an existing fence in place that that could be an issue for as far as—

No, anybody currently has a fence would be 4 feet or less, so they would have complied with this current ordinance or the existing ordinance.

Thank you.

Any other questions from the council? All right, this is a public hearing, so we will open it up to the public. Anyone wishing to make a comment, please come forward, give us your name, and keep your comments to 3 minutes. Seeing as how no one's coming forward, we'll close the public comment portion of the public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any questions or comments? All right, I would take a motion.

Mayor, if I may, I'd like to move that by resolution we— the City Council amends Section 22-1135L-12B for fence heights in the PD-22 zone.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember Larray.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the ordinance passes. Thank you very much. We now would like to go on to a public hearing, which is an ordinance amending Sections 17-4-1, 17-5-1, 22-14-20, and 22-1-5, Orem City Code, pertaining to DRC application expirations. And Jason, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor.

And Jason, can you explain what DRC stands for?

Development Review Committee. Okay, every project that comes in to the city requires an application, and the DRC committee is what we review it to make sure it's compliant with the ordinance. I apologize, my machine decided to time out. Anyway, what it pertains to is the preliminary plats, final plats, site plans, and zoning ordinance, either text amendments or rezones, would put a time limit of 1 year on an application.

And presently, what is the time?

There is no timeline. So right now we have multiple— sorry. And since there is no time, what has that Right now we have, you know, applications that have been in the process for many years. And so unless an applicant tells us, hey, we want to withdraw our project, we've kind of had it in our limbo. And if they want to come in 2 years later, you know, we, we let them do that. It causes some issues when we have ordinances amendments and they have a current active application. It's hard for us to then require them to meet meet current requirements. So this would force them to at least move along. If they're ready to make an application, then they ought to be ready to finalize that within that year period. If they're getting close to that, either, you know, within a month of expiring but they're working towards getting on a planning commission, then obviously we're not going to cancel that. But as long as they're moving forward with that, then we can do that. What we're trying to prevent is people that make application and then sit on it for 5 years hoping that they can maintain that ordinance that was in place 5 years ago. So we're trying to move that along. So this would affect those 4. The Planning Commission did make a recommendation that we— that the council approve it. So be glad to address any other questions.

Any questions from the council? Councilmember Lentz.

Is there a notification as they get close to that deadline? Let's say they're a month away from that expiring. Is there any way that we have the Just kind of document that, okay, we've notified them, and if they don't come in in that next month or whatever that time frame is, or does it just expire and they have no recourse for—

We could definitely do something like that. There's nothing built in at the moment. We do have a tracking system that we could put that as a, you know, a month out, we would notify one of our project managers to give them a call and let them know that it's going to expire. We could definitely do that. Otherwise, it would expire.

I can see this being something that, you know, if they're not actively working on it, it's not top of mind for them. I think we would just need to do something to remind them that, hey, this deadline is fast approaching.

Well, that's something we could put on the application initially as well, so that they know they have a year to make that. So if they're not quite ready to make the application, they may want to wait until they are ready so that they have enough time to accomplish it, rather than apply and then try to work out the details as we go forward.

Okay, any other comments from the council? So this is a public hearing. We will open it up to anyone who wishes to make a public comment. Please give us your name and keep your comments to 3 minutes. Seeing as how no one's coming forward, we'll close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any comments or questions from the council? Yeah, I would be open to a motion on this.

Anybody— everybody okay if I add that notification kind of caveat in there as well? I move that we amend Sections 17-4-1, 17-5-1, 22-14-20, and 22-1-5, Orem City Code, pertaining to DRC application expirations, so long as staff notifies the applicant within a month of their application expiring.

Okay, is there a second?

Second.

Okay, start with Councilmember Lurie.

Me?

Okay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

There's only one of you, so—

Well, it didn't sound like—

I'm sorry.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, thank you. The ordinance passes. Thank you. Um, we'll move on. Any, uh, information or communication items From the city manager?

Okay.

Then I would make a motion to adjourn to a meeting of the Redevelopment Agency. Is there a second?

Mayor, before we do that, could I just ask one question? We were kind of rushed at the end of our work session, and I had proposed an idea of what if we kind of float this career ladder program for public safety until we can come to an agreement with this has just dragged on for a little while. There was a concern raised that we'd rather do this while Mark was here. I did just want to note that Mark had sent an email— was that yesterday or today? Just noting, you know, thanks, Jamie and team that worked to put this together. Looks like a nice advancement to me. So I'm not saying that's, you know, 100% voting to approve, but we at least have some indication from Mark that that he's okay with that. And I do think we have some consensus on the council that we would like to do this. It's just a matter of how we fund it. So could I just ask again, do we have at least 4 people that are okay using the one-time monies available to, I guess, float that career ladder program so we can enact it now so that we're a little bit more on the clock to solve the funding piece?

This is not on the agenda and we've already I said we're going to wait till Tuesday. So I'm sorry, but we're going to wait till Tuesday. So we are adjourning the meeting. Is there a second to adjourn the meeting?

Second.

Okay. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay. We are opening up the Orem Redevelopment Agency meeting. The first item is a consent item, approval of RDA meeting minutes. Anyone care to move that to a regular scheduled item? Okay. If not, I make a motion that we approve our consent items. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. We'll start with Councilmember Larey. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Okay.

We'll move on to our RDA scheduled items. We have a motion authorizing the chairman of the Redevelopment Agency to approve and execute a participation agreement with Canyon Park Center, and our presenter is Kathy Beckett. And could we have our applicant come forward and tell us your name?

There we go.

Good evening, everybody.

I'm Justin Farnsworth. I'm general manager with Canyon Park.

Great.

Thanks for having me.

Good to have you here. Okay, Kathy, we'll turn the time over to you and Ryan.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. As you mentioned, I'm Kathy Beckett, the economic Development Manager for the City of Orem. And I'm here to present to you the redevelopment agency of Orem in entering into a public-based tax increment financing agreement with the Mueller Company. And just as a brief review, the 85-acre Canyon Park Technology Center is made up of 14 buildings and over 900,000 square feet of office space. The campus was purchased in 2017 by the Mueller Company, who's committed to investing $8.6 million into the property. And at the current time, the majority of investment has been spent on renovating the main floor lobbies of the 14 buildings, infrastructure improvements such as replacing roof, and exterior lighting, new park signage and wayfinding signs, and new building entrances, and a new outdoor and a new indoor amenity area. And also a contract has been finalized to build out Utopia fiber throughout the park. And in these pictures you see, see the different indoor and outdoor amenity yards, and the indoor yard is called the Hub. And it includes a full gym, a yoga studio, lounge, game room, bike storage available to tenants at no charge. And the outdoor is a multipurpose amenity that has, as you can see, all kinds of outdoor things for the tenants. Now, this is a picture of the signage, and these are bright and easy wayfinding signs that have been installed. in the entrance of Canyon Park and throughout the campus. And these signs help the visitors to more easily see their way through the 85-acre park. New street lighting has also been installed throughout the park along 1600 North, 800 East, and 1200 North. Now, over a year ago, the Mueller Company approached the city requesting financial assistance. With updating the street lighting around Canyon Park. And the city has been discussing with the Mueller Company the possibility of entering into a performance agreement with the Orem Redevelopment Agency using tax increment financing. And the purpose of the funding is to help revitalize Canyon Park. The $250,000 in RDA funds would be used by Mueller Company for the cost incurred in in replacing the street lighting system throughout Canyon Park and along the adjacent streets and with upgrading the amenities that we just previously saw. And for a background on the streetlights around Canyon Park, the existing streetlights on public streets have been maintained and financially supported by the park since the WordPerfect ownership gained ownership. written agreement doesn't exist for formalizing this arrangement. So this proposal formalizes the ongoing maintenance and financial support for the streetlights on Orem streets to be covered by park owners. And this proposal outlines that as a muller fulfills the incremental performance obligations shown in this chart here, year, the RDA will make incremental payments to the Mueller. For example, in order to receive the first $100,000 distribution, Mueller must complete new street lighting system, reach 80% occupancy at the technology park, and prove up capital investment into the project totaling over $3.4 million.

Kathy, I was just going to say, Could I ask a question? How much time do you think it's going to take for you to do this?

To hit the occupancy, I would say that we're on a 3 to 5 year trajectory from initial acquisition. So I would say we would expect to hit that sometime mid next year to end of next year.

Okay.

20%.

So just as a note, the post-performance requirements are cumulative. And also in addition, Mueller will be required to provide proof to the agency that construction improvements have been made, such as contractor pay receipts or invoices for construction materials. And also, the agency or its designated representative may enter into the technology park to verify that the construction improvements have been made. Some of the benefits to the city from the loan or from the— for the financing include The RDA funds captured from Canyon Park will be reinvested in infrastructure. The benefits include it meets the primary goals for the, for the original RDA, helps meet the primary goal of Orem's Economic Development Strategic Plan, helps to stabilize property tax revenues per acre in Orem's District 15, Economic District 15, and also And one benefit is the final— finalization of the Canyon Park agreement with Utopia to bring fiber throughout the park. And it also eliminates the need for $220,000 in streetlight fund to be— to install the city streetlight around Canyon Park. This chart shows the potential yearly sales tax revenue increase to the city, and it's depicted in this table. So it illustrates a sales tax increase at the incremental occupancy rates as found in the agreement. Currently Canyon Park has about a 56% occupancy rate, is that correct?

That's about right.

Okay. And the approximate total increase in annual sales tax to Orem from the 50%— 56% to 85% occupancy rates would be approximately $71,000, a little over $71,000. Which is shown in the gold-colored rectangle. And just as a note, the estimated sales tax revenue increase is based on Lewis Young Robertson Burningham's recommendation multiplier— recommended multiplier that's used in conducting this analysis for Orem and all different cities. So the 2017 actual and 2018 projected Yes. The total 2010 Canyon Park property tax revenues paid to the city, broken down by parcel, are depicted in this table. And these— this data was found on the official Utah County government website. And the total property tax revenue from each parcel and the total property tax revenue illustrate the importance of the revitalization of Canyon Park in stabilizing property market value and in turn the property tax revenue to the City of Orem. So just in brief, in summary, the purpose of the tax increment financing agreement with the Mueller Company is to help revitalize and redevelop the property known as Canyon Park Technology Center. And the benefits to the city from the agreement include that it meets the primary goals of the RDA, as the RDA funds captured from Canyon Park are reinvested in the park itself. And it helps to meet the primary goal of the City of Orem's Economic Development Strategic Plan, which is to increase the sustainability of the city's tax base through increased property values. Another benefit is it helps to, to stabilize the property tax revenues per acre in the district to maintain its rank as among the highest revenue-earning districts in the city. And the last is it eliminates the need for the $220,000 of city streetlight funds to install standard streetlights.

Okay.

Councilmember Lorena has a question.

A couple questions. I think you answered— currently you're at 56% occupancy, is that correct?

That's correct, yes.

Okay. And as you target companies, are you going more of a A tech business. And the reason I say that is some of their jobs are higher paying. And when I do tax incrementing, when I've done in previous cities I worked for, I always want to look at the job creation and make sure that those jobs were well above the county average. And I'm assuming a tech company would be, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, tech companies are certainly a target.

I mean, that's one of the major things about Canyon Park is to really innovate and create a tech campus environment here in Utah.

And So—

but we're certainly open for business for any tenant opportunity.

We have, you know, Check City.

We have Wayfair.

I mean, we have companies that are not related really or grounded in tech as well.

But we want to still stay close to those roots as well because that's what made it successful in the past.

Okay.

And my other question is for Cathy or for Ryan. Currently, what kind of monies do you have in that RDA?

Do you have enough—

I'm assuming you have enough to pay the $250,000?

Yeah, this RDA is actually nearing expiration. It may have already expired, but we only have a little bit of money left in it, and this will pretty much wipe it out.

Okay, but this would probably be the best use for that money, correct?

Yeah, we're— you're actually reinvesting money back into the park that was generated and created by the property tax growth in the park. So that kind of meets those goals of the original RDA when it was created to invest back into the RDA.

That's what I thought. Thanks.

And it was created in 1985, I believe.

Uh, 1982. I think this is '82, if I remember correctly, but you're close, Mayor.

Okay, Councilmember Lentz.

And even without this project, the city would have needed to invest in upgrading the lighting there, just as we've done throughout the rest of the city as well, right?

Yeah, and I, and I, I should probably clarify that $220,000 number includes operating expenses over 20 years, so it's not just the installation of the lights, but the city's cost to maintain them over the 20-year period.

And, um, I think we all, all know this, but just for the record, this isn't money that we can transfer to the general fund and use for public safety or something like that. It has to stay with the RDA.

You're absolutely correct. It's, it's redevelopment agency money that is governed by state law to be spent in the redevelopment area on, uh, infrastructure-type And if I'm correct, the lights will be owned by the Mueller Company and not the city?

You're correct.

And just add to that, all of the light heads that have been replaced are all LED lights.

And maybe Justin could share with you the energy savings. I know Councilman Lentz will appreciate hearing that.

They're beautiful lights, by the way.

Yeah, we're actually really happy about the lights. There's—

we roughly estimate about half a million kilowatt hours a year with savings on those, on those particular lights.

Just to kind of throw in there, as part of all of this reinvestment, we've done a projection recently.

We hit about 1.2 million kilowatt hours in energy savings.

That's partially some of these capital infrastructure upgrades that Kathy referred to.

We're on target to hit roughly somewhere between 4 and 5 million by the end of year 2, so by the end of this year.

So energy savings are enormous.

And as I As you have made us aware, you're changing all the lights out in the buildings to LED.

That's correct.

All 15,000 to 17,000 fixtures will be at some point in the future for sure.

Okay, that's great. I'd just like to say thank you for coming. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to invest with you. This is a wonderful park. It's a big part of our city, and we appreciate having you as a partner in the city and For all that you're doing and the Mueller Company. Mueller Company is certainly an outstanding, solid, well-respected company with a great track record for reinvesting in properties and bringing them back up to their potential.

I appreciate it.

I'll just say from our perspective, you know, being a California-based company—

of course, I was born and raised here in Utah, so I, you know, I've been here my entire life—

but Mueller being out of California, the way that Utah does business.

There's a reason why Utah is one of the top-growing states and one of the strongest economic states in the country, and Orem is among the top of those cities in the state. So thank you for the partnership. It's been refreshing for us as well.

Great.

Any other comments from the council? All right, I would accept a motion to authorize. I will make the motion. I'm not— I can't make the motion. Somebody else like to make a motion?

I move to authorize the chairman of the Redevelopment Agency to approve and execute a participation agreement with Canyon Park Tech Center.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. Start with Councilmember Larey.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Motion passes. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Kathy and Ryan.

And thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

I make a motion that we adjourn. Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

We are adjourned. Thank you.