City Council · 2019-09-17

She is 75. Her husband is Debbie's son-in-law. They're MS1s, medical students, first years.

So they call them MS1s.

Yeah, MS1s.

So my daughter's talking, she's like, yeah, the MS1s met with the MS2s. Sounds like a secret mission.

It seems like a very elaborate program.

Well, since we have a quorum and it's time to start, uh, I don't know where Steve ran off.

He was here.

Hopefully he's coming back.

I'm sure he is.

You have 4 Americans.

We have 4. What we don't have is Steve Downs. All right, so we want to welcome everyone here today and would like to start out. Tom will be calling in and he's up at the Woodbury celebration. So we'd like to start out on a board and commission follow-up discussion presented by Steve Downs and John Dibble.

Yep, I'll intro. That's okay, John will take the majority of this, but we, we talked a handful of months ago about the desire of some boards and commissions to just make some minor tweaks and changes. Over the last couple months, every board and commission has had that opportunity to look. The majority of the changes you'll see are kind of broad, applicable to all commissions, and then you'll see some unique changes that have been made to maybe specifically the library because of the Kind of change in focus of what they put out, strictly from books now to all kinds of materials, things like that. So, and John Dittar, our Assistant City Attorney.

All right, so there's, um, as Stephen said, there's going to be some general changes as well as specific changes, but some of these things we've already been doing. So, Officially, some of those changes. A lot of the changes as well will make these boards and commissions more flexible. And lastly, sometimes we're just taking out some unnecessary work. So that it will apply to almost all the boards except these ones that they're showing here: Planning Commission, Board of Adjustments, Board of Building and Fire Code Appeals. So these are all the ones that it will apply to, which is almost all of them: Arts Council, Beautification, Care, CBG, Heritage, Historical Preservation, Library, Natural Resource, Public Works, Recreation, Senior Citizen, Summer Fest, Transportation.

So generally, here are going to be some changes.

This one is currently in practice for what we're doing, but when a member is replaced instead of finishing out the term, we're going to start a new term, and that's just practice, and that seems to be a lot easier to deal with. Also, we're going to be removing term limits. In the past, we've had just a few individuals that we're glad this applied to. Generally though, most commissions and boards are sad when members Terms are up. And so we thought instead of the exception becoming the rule, we should instead remove term limits. And if, if there's specific instances in which someone is a good fit, then we can, we can make that individual judgment call instead of hamstringing all the boards and commissions because of a few exceptions.

And obviously this gives the flexibility of if we have a commission where there's a lot of people wanting to get on, we don't have to continue to reappoint. But more often the issue is that we can't find people for them. There's somebody that's terming out and they would love to stay on, we would love to keep them on, and we don't have somebody else in the wings waiting to fill their spot.

Right.

This last one is just— it's just inapplicable as of now. Initially when some of these commissions started, we staggered the terms 3 years and 2 years. That's no longer applicable because they've been going for a while. Also, in all of these commissions, if a member misses more than 25%, they're just kicked off.

No exceptions.

Although that's not been current practice, but this makes it more flexible instead of automatically they may, and so it's a determination. Also, another flexibility item defines the quorum as the majority of the appointed members Because sometimes there's less members that are appointed than are sometimes specified in the code. So that allows for more flexibility and the quorum to be adjusted accordingly.

So what is the smallest number of any board?

5.

5?

So that— so we'd have to have at least, yeah, 3 there to be the majority. But sometimes the issue is we have 7 on the books, a quorum is defined by 5, We only have 5 appointed, so 100% of the people appointed would have to show up to have a meeting. Or in this case, we would then say the majority of now what's appointed, which would be sort of—

The idea is appointed members.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

Another flexibility item, chairpersons are appointed annually rather than specifically in the first meeting in January.

Not everyone meets in January, so that just doesn't make sense to—

not that anyone would wait an entire year for that January deadline, but this just makes it more flexible. And then this last one will show specifically commission by commission and how that applies, but we're going to be adjusting the number of members, length of term, and the frequency from which they, they present. So here are those specific changes. For the Art Council, reducing the term length from 4 years to 3 years.

Of course, feel free to— if you have any questions about And it is not specific.

Unification, reducing the number of members from 9 to 7.

Care, reducing members from 7 to 5.

CDBG, increasing the term length from 2 years to 3 years. Heritage, reducing the members from 7 to 5. Historical Preservation, reducing members from 7 to 5, as well as changing from meeting monthly to periodically as needed. The libraries, as Steven kind of alluded to, taking out the book selection policy, replacing it with material selection.

Natural resource, changing frequency from meeting monthly to quarterly.

Public Works, reducing members from 9 to 7, as well as adding duties and responsibilities to things that are already doing, adding cemetery, parks, and fleet.

So tell me about that. How, how has attendance been? I've only usually seen 7 mostly there, but yeah, maybe.

So Chris is— Chris, or I'm not seeing anybody. Yeah.

Um, I— from what I understand, we, we kind of upped it tonight when we took on this broadband, and we had a couple people appointed for that specific purpose. They went through that vetting situation.

So now bring it back to 7.

Back to 7.

That's what I remember.

On the natural resource, does that just mean quarterly?

Yes.

Right. I know when I was on it, we had stuff going every month, but like Oh, we definitely—

yeah.

Did that come from staff or from the committee, or— That, that was the committee's recommendation.

Maybe Jason, you and Emily can speak to that. I think from staff.

Okay.

Because they've been pretty active.

I almost feel like sometimes they feel like they don't meet enough, would be my concern there. And, and the language in all of these says quarterly or as specified by the chairperson. So if they want to meet more often, they can. This is just a flexibility item to allow them to meet less often if they're not meeting that often.

Yeah, and that's a good point because every one of these that says quarterly or whatever, it says or more often as determined by the chair, right? And so I think for us it was about the flexibility so that we're not stuck to the month. They can meet monthly, but there may come a time where they say, you know what, this is just more often than we need for the next 6 months. And then it really— yeah, it's about the flexibility.

Yeah, I mean, there were times where, like during the summer months, where they would just cancel a meeting because, you know, too many were out of town and they just couldn't meet or something.

So, right.

So that's how— yeah, Summerfest is going to be worded that same way, quarterly or more often as needed. We do need it more often, especially January to June, but not the rest of the year.

Yeah, as I guess as long as our staff is willing to support them, if they're willing to meet more often, then I'm fine with that. Okay, yeah, recreation from 9 to 7 and also increasing the term length from 3 to 4 years. Senior citizen also reducing from 9 to 7 members. Summerfest, last year we created a subcommittee, but it was specifically for raising funds and sponsorships, those kind of things. This just allows the creation subcommittees to assist in their various duties, and so it doesn't limit it specifically to just raising funds if they need additional help in other areas.

Okay, transportation, no changes.

There's a few boards that are currently unnecessary because of different reasons. So we would recommend striking these boards. So the Strategic Plan Advisory Commission, it's currently the responsibility of the City Council, and no one actually meets on that board.

So currently it's not doing anything.

I don't know if any of you know when it's been.

I think it's been years since it was actually functioning, if it did at one point.

Human Relations Advisory Commission, The police has informal meetings with different various groups, and they actually recommended not having it formalized. They like the informal nature of it, being able to pull different groups at different times. And that also has not been reviewed as well. Recycling Advisory Commission is currently under the stewardship of the Natural Resource Committee. And they also don't meet, so it's just also an unnecessary board. And then lastly, this Sister City Advisory Committee, uh, it's really an obsolete committee that hasn't met in over a decade, and so we would also recommend that it be disbanded.

So one thing I might mention on the sister city situation, we've had 2 cities since I've been mayor, uh, request to be a sister city to our city. One in South America and one in China. But the expense and the cost and the time to go over there and spend time over there, to me, has never seemed like it's of great value, and it seems like it's way too expensive. So I, I have never agreed to move ahead or, you know, recommended that we move ahead.

Thank you.

Just so you know.

Yeah, we couldn't figure out a reason that it was there either, but yeah, it also hasn't been renewed for many, many years. So that's kind of the summation. You know, obviously the next step would be to put this into code and then put it on the City Council for next meeting.

Next month.

Are there any questions? Do you have a summary slide, or could you go back to some of that? I was trying to take notes, and the first few went by pretty quick.

Oh, sure.

Oh, yeah.

As when we got to the specifics, or the general?

Sorry, and I came in a few minutes late as well.

Oh, you're good.

Just as far as, yeah, the specifics.

So these are kind of the general changes.

So I got beautification and Historical preservation, but I missed the ones.

Yeah.

Arts three to four or four to three. Care seventy-five.

I think these are good recommendations. I think it's time to clean them up and like what you're doing.

That makes sense. And a lot of it is what we're already doing.

Yep. So on the term limit type thing, we. taken off. If you have somebody that's, let's say, the Recreation Commission, people have been on there for 4 or 5 years and somebody wants on, what's the process? We want to keep them so they don't get on the new people? I mean, how does that work?

There's always still going to be an element of judgment to it. I mean, in any scenario. So in this case, it would be, yeah, we have people waiting in the wings, and then it would be a discussion with Carl and the council member, probably the representative or whoever to say, hey, we have somebody that really wants to, this person's been on for a while, and probably a conversation with the person that, that would be terming out. So we always have that flexibility to not reappoint. The issue we've run into is no flexibility to reappoint when, when they reach a term limit. One perfect example is that we all know is Kay Bradford for our seniors. She's termed out, but she is passionate, and there aren't a lot of people sitting there waiting to take that spot. We don't want somebody like that to not be able to continue.

She'll outlast all of us.

Yeah.

So an individual would come to the end of their term and you could conceivably thank them for their service and then move forward with the appointment of another individual to serve. Well, I think it's good to have at least some turnover because—

Yeah, and I think there naturally will be. We, we see regularly where somebody has done one, they want to move on to another one. So I think That'll probably still be the— generally what happens.

There'll just be the occasional that wants us to. Okay. Any other questions?

So as— yes, as John mentioned, in October we'll bring— we'll bring this forward. We probably won't go through all these changes again. This will be on a consent agenda for you to approve in October.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, John.

Steve.

All right, so our next discussion is on rental properties in the city, uh, long-term rentals. And Steve Downs is our presenter. Oh, we see them everywhere. City Council works.

I usually do better when I get to see them right before I present. They're my wise— I remember my wise why I'm doing this on days like this. We've been talking about neighborhoods. Neighborhoods is one of your areas of focus this year. One of the things we've been talking about— let me just say, we have representatives from— there's a lot of people that would come into play as we get into rental licensing. IT, police department, some analysts, planning, zoning. Steve Earl has been advising us legally on these issues.

these areas.

And then utility billing, of course, has been a big part of this. As we thought about this neighborhoods and how we can improve neighborhoods, one of the challenges that any college town runs into— that might be—

Tom.

Tom, are you here?

I think he's coming.

Any community that's growing, especially in a college scenario, Especially ones with aging neighborhoods, is the number of homes that are turning into rental properties, which we're not here to say people can't invest in rental properties. What we're saying is if you're going to do that, there's rules and good neighbor type things that you need to be doing in order to, to kind of play that game, if you will. So the focus here is strengthening neighborhoods, increasing the accountability for landlords, and reducing the city's costs associated with the rental We'll market. Thank you. go into those in detail, but we feel like this is an opportunity to allow us to do things that will help improve the neighborhoods more quickly, and we'll go through the details. There's a handful of what we would say are our desired outcomes. Please stop me anywhere along the way. First—

So can I stop you?

Yes.

So the very first sentence there, gathering contact information, Do we have contact information on most every property?

For the tenants, usually through a utility billing. So in the case where it's in the name of the landlord—

Not necessarily the landlord.

Yeah, and Sergeant Alborn can speak to this, as he would pull up— we have a code enforcement issue on a rental property— generally maybe step through what that takes sometimes to get the contact information of the owner.

I could open the Utah County records, and if it's in an LLC, it could take weeks, even months sometimes to get in touch with somebody who lives out of state.

But I mean, how much do we have of that?

We'll get to that. 2,400 single-family homes.

Okay.

At least, that's what we know of.

I mean, how much information— not how many rentals, but how much information on landlords do we have?

Name and addresses.

And, but we don't have that on hand. We have to go get that.

I guess what I'm saying—

No, no, no, but I'm saying like we don't have it in our system.

Yeah, but that's what I'm saying is we don't really have it on hand.

We may get a complaint about specific property and people generally want immediate response and action, but it may take our police department literally days to figure out who the property owner is so they can make contact with the appropriate individual to address the problem.

I'm just curious, as far as our database, how current or how much we have. And basically what you're saying is very little.

Very little, especially on the single-family homes.

Yeah, you mentioned the LLCs. Don't they have— an LLC pops up, don't they have the manager's information, which is It's usually the owner. It just usually has the LLC name of the company.

You can pull up that additional information.

You have to pay for it to find out who the, like, the registered agent. Oftentimes that's all you'll have is a registered agent. Sometimes it'll give you some of the principals, but you typically won't have a phone number or an address for the principals. You'll just have an address for the registered agent. And that, again, oftentimes is not even the person you can get in contact with.

And some of these LLCs are in Utah, but some of them are out of state.

We've had Florida, Texas, California, all over. Or they're owned by banks.

Yeah.

And that is a whole different layer of complexity.

So that's a process that you do within the house, or you have to do in-house?

I think, uh, great question. You teed it up for us.

I was just going to say, I think we're creating the problem for you to solve.

This speaks to just the challenge it is for our, you know, our code enforcement team is they want to be responsive, they want to get to these properties, they want to solve them, but we need to find a way to bring the landlord into it quickly so that it becomes a problem that they have to help solve as well, not just The tenant who may or may not solve— they may— their lease may be up in 2 months. They may not have a long-term, you know, investment in that property. So, that's number one. This would allow us to notify them about issues, citations, code violations, water leaks, whatever those issues might be. We'll talk about this a little bit too with utilities. One of the challenges, as it's for single-family homes, a lot of times the utilities, in almost all cases, they're in the name of the tenant. Not the landlord. There's a water leak. We've had— Kathy will be in here in a minute, she can speak to this. There's a water leak, the landlord won't fix it, it's not their responsibility and it's not their bill. And the tenant is saying, I can't get this fixed either, I'm coming in and paying these hundreds of dollars. You know, those are some of the issues that we're trying to solve that we can be able to proactively reach out to a landlord about. And I should say, we define landlord as the owner of the property or the property management company that they have entered into an agreement with to take care of the property.

Second, are management companies good to work with? No.

Privacy—

there are multiple steps in dealing with these situations. I have contacted owners of the property. They referred me to a management company, and management company are hard to get in touch with. So then I put the pressure back on the owners. This is your shift, you're the captain of it, you need to have these people called. That's usually what it takes, but even at that, the response is not real immediate.

Um, second desired outcome, have a teeth to prevent landlords that are inattentive to their properties from continuing business as usual. You'll see for most of these cities that have a rental licensing program the ability to suspend the license. If they continue to have these issues and they're not getting resolved. Some of those details we'd still have to work out, and we would bring this back to you, but that's, again, one of the desired outcomes. Third, on the utility side, preventing the city from having to absorb uncollected utility bills on rental properties. The ones in there— so as a general rule of thumb, if it's a multifamily apartment, duplex, fourplex, there's one meter, multiple units.

Multiple units.

Our code requires those to be in the name of the landlord. This is what you experience when you're on your properties. If it's a single-family home, it can be in the name of the landlord or it can be in the name of the tenant. So the ones that are in the name of the tenant, annually we spend— we send about $80,000 worth of uncollected bills to collections. We collect about $30,000 worth, so about $50,000 every year is going unpaid. Because the tenants haven't paid those, and oftentimes they've left town. They're not able to get a hold of them. They're not really, you know, I guess anxious to help get that settled. Fourth, reduce disproportionate amount of time that we spend dealing with rental properties. As you think of a rental property changing over tenants each year or every other year, every time that happens, we're changing names. We're going through. Obviously the collections issues, we're verifying lease agreements.

Not an uncommon thing. I think Kathy mentioned this to me at least 3 times last week.

It's gone to collections on one name. Oh, okay.

All right.

Somebody else comes in to get it in their name.

You have to go through lease to make sure, which sometimes is the case, that it's not the spouse now trying to get it in their name. We've got to make sure that it's, you know, it's not the same family that's just moving into different names to avoid having to pay.

I was testing it to make sure you could log in.

So with that code—

Ernesto's talking to Tom on the conference call. Yeah, and that code—

Ernesto, can you hear us?

Okay, so it was the, like, the 88262498 code. Okay, yeah, so that's it. Okay, so Steve probably just hasn't had a chance to log in. Okay. Thank you.

Bye.

Tom, you there? Okay, well, continue on. So code enforcement, this is kind of Sergeant Aldorn's area. What we want to have is the ability to notify landlords when citations are issued on properties. We go out to a call of a party at 3 AM, we go out to a call of abandoned vehicles on a property, whatever that is, we want the ability to make sure the landlord's brought into the loop to know what's going on. Tom Phelps in our IT, one of our programmers, has the ability to program— when we would have a licensing in place, email addresses, information tied to the properties, this can become an automatic thing. We issue a citation potentially weekly, landlords are being notified of the citations that have happened on their property and they're being brought into the loop so that they know in a case where maybe they live in California that Hey, there was somebody out on my property at 3 AM this week dealing with this property, dealing with an issue. Our hope is to, again, make landlords part of helping us solve these issues, not just us and the tenants. Second, allowing our neighbor preservation officers to just have this quick access to contact information for landlords. This is what Alborn was speaking about as well. Currently, the process of getting this contact information is cumbersome. It takes a long time. Even if it's not a negative thing we're trying to reach them about, we want to be able to contact them quickly. And then third, obviously there's always the ongoing concern about illegal rentals. Having a licensing program allows us to make a quick determination if there's a license or not a license, and it allows us to move on something more quickly. That's— those are kind of the things that— how we would sum up the benefit of this on the code enforcement side. Kathy's joined us. She can speak to obviously a lot of the utility billing if you have any questions here. What we're proposing is to require all rental properties to have their utilities in the name of the landlord, or in some cases the property management company if that's how they've entered into the arrangement, but no longer in the name of the tenants. We would reduce the amount of time we deal with collections and the number of work orders on rental properties. I'll show some data data on that in future slides. Limit the amount of work our employees spend doing shutoffs, reading meters, reviewing lease agreements, and dealing with the various challenges of rental properties. So this is data on the percentage of accounts that we send to collections each year. We're only talking rental properties. Blue is your multifamily. Orange is your single-family, again, just rentals. Here's the total, if you're interested, here's the total number of— and I shouldn't say units, accounts. 1,300 multifamily accounts, 2,400 single-family accounts that are rental properties. Of that, in a multifamily situation, again, this is a Brent Summers, this is where the landlord actually has kept it in their name. We're sending 0.3 to 0.5% of those accounts to collections. In a single-family rental, we're sending between 8 and 9% of all, of all those accounts to collections each year. And so obviously, as those utilities stay in the name of the tenant, it becomes challenging in the utility billing world as it relates to collections. Then we talk work orders, and these are all those other scenarios of reading meters and going to turn off and turn on, all those things. When it is in the name of the landlord, we, we do a work order on, you know, about 11 to 12% of the accounts. When it's in the name of the, of the tenant, we do it on about 55% of the accounts each year. Obviously, the amount of time we spend in a work order— this isn't just a utility billing thing. This is where we're sending our water crews out to do the turnoffs, to read the meters each time somebody's moving out. Again, many of those things go away in a situation where it's in the name of the landlord on an ongoing basis. Are there any questions about any of the things we've presented so far?

If, if it— for a single-family home, how do you identify— if I come in, say, put the water in my name, how do you identify I'm the property owner?

Yeah, so that— I'm not the renter, the tenant. We would have the ability to look up to see who owns the property through county records. Maybe Kathy, somebody comes in and put it in their name as the, as the land, as the property owner.

Just— but I'm the tenant, but I'm putting it in my name anyway. How do you verify I'm the tenant or property owner? Right now we're not requiring any paperwork. In the future, we will require the property owner's documents. That's what other cities are doing.

So, um, right now anyone can sign up, you know, except if they're multi—

um, a duplex, fourplex, then we don't allow anything And then we need to look at the county records. That's what we do. Question, please.

Have we started talking to landlords to find out if maybe they're already struggling to be able to just collect rent, let alone, okay, now I've got to start collecting utility bills from my tenants as well, or just building it into the rent? Because then if they leave the water running all day long and all the lights on and all that kind stuff, then I have these huge bills that I have to absorb. So have we started those conversations with, like, you know, groups of property owners, landlords, that kind of thing, or are we still kind of early on?

We're early on, yeah.

We—

before we called them in, we wanted to make sure that you're comfortable with the direction we're going first. But we would have a ramp-up period to educate, to bring people kind of— we have talked to select landlords, you know, in a one-off situation. We haven't done any Anything?

If I may, Steve, I think we're approaching the conversation also from the perspective of this is not a typical single-family residential situation. This is an individual or an LLC operating a business. So this is a business relationship. And as a result, it is different than, for example, a single-family who's coming in and signing up for utilities. There's a rental arrangement, there's expectations. Some of these are investment properties. It's a much different dynamic than, for example, you and your home versus somebody operating a business, which really what we're suggesting in these— in this conversation is this is an individual who's operating business and really needs to be treated as such.

So does that—

with that in mind, will they have to get a business license then?

Yeah, that's the next— we'll talk about that. Yeah, there would be a licensing fee for sure, for sure. And, and most of this— a lot of the cities are on top of this license. Oh no, just this one. We called something different. Yeah, rental license.

Yeah, yeah, good, good clarification.

Oh, please, Mark.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think currently a lot of landlords have an agreement where if they move out, utilities revert back to their name. They need to give us a call because we don't know when a property has been sold, so we don't do it. But they don't have to re-sign up. There's already an agreement in place that transfers it from them.

Yeah.

How many rental How many people have that in place? They're already giving us their tenants' information. I mean, is that common?

It is. Let's say about—

we have about 300 orders a month. Let's say we do 100 of them where we do the work. They just need to give us a call and then we transfer back into their name. So 2/3 of them are not?

Are not.

Okay. My thought being is it's, I mean, it's pretty common for many landlords to say, you know, if they don't pay, it comes back to me. Well, when they move out, it goes back to me. But the balance doesn't move back to the landlord right now. When they move out, if they have a balance, And so those are the ones that we're having a hard time recovering in collections. Yeah, but make sure the landlord isn't covering. Do we have a way for the landlord to cover that? It's part of that.

That's what we're trying to do.

Yeah, worst case, I mean, we see a lot of opportunities keeping it in their name.

The landlord doesn't have to pay that.

The tenant moves and you might as well forget it.

They send these out. I think under any scenario we would recommend making a change to say we're at least going to send that to the landlord and make them pay that final bill, not absorb it as a city. So we would at least go that far, but there's challenges that way too. So then the landlord doesn't know that the tenant's 3 months behind, and now there's all these late fees that have been accrued, and now they're on the hook for the late fees plus the bills. So it becomes challenging that way too.

Neil, please.

Mark, I think what you might be referring to What you could do is what Questar Gas does, maybe, where you sign a landlord agreement where you agree that when they move out, that saves you money as a landlord. And in that case, that bill is forwarded to the landlord to cover if the renter skips out. Yeah, because we don't have that. Typically they also have deposits that they can use the deposits to pay some of those bills.

The owner of the property should be responsible.

Even if the tenant moves out and leaves a gas bill, the landlord's still not responsible. If it's been turned off, the landlord will have to turn that back on.

Well, it— If you have signed that landlord agreement. It goes into their name.

Yeah.

The landlord. But what bill the tenant had, he's not responsible. If you have signed that landlord agreement and get it turned back on, you will have to pay that. I mean, that's been my experience. No, it's not the way mine's set up.

If a tenant moves out, those $50—

Well, you're the one we're trying to correct.

That's true, but—

Actually, it's not.

He's the one who's operating a multi.

On our side, yeah, he's in— he's so replaced.

Then from that date, it comes in my name, and then I pick it up from there. But that $50, I'm not responsible for.

If it's been turned off, to get it turned back on?

Well, they have—

they can roll over in your name.

That's automatic.

And we have no security deposits, Jamie, says, for people who sign up?

Not initially, no, no. We do, we do do it if they've gone to collections a couple times, or I don't even know if it's a couple times, maybe once, or, or if we have a shut-off notice, then we will.

If they've been in collections, would we require that they pay the collection?

Yeah.

And then if it's been more than once or twice, then we request that they put it down. If this is your first experience with that, is that common enough in deposits?

I mean, it seems like, yeah, they're—

and gas, they— you do give a deposit up front and then you earn that back over time.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are other cities that do deposits for sure. Obviously sometimes the challenge is just tracking all the deposits and who has them and getting them back.

Having the lien.

That does become challenging. In the scenario we're putting out, we would, given the such, given that the landlords go to collections 0.3, 0.5% of the time, I don't think we're even talking about doing collections. All right, the landlord wouldn't have to come up with a deposit.

We just have to put it in their name.

So it would take us out of the deposit business too, which we see benefits from.

What does a work order mean?

Yeah, you want to speak to that, Kathy, or Neal, either?

Yeah, a work order is anything that is required attention to that property. A simple meter read when a tenant moves out, we have to go read it to know exactly how to bill them. Anything that, that they need to check, whether it's a turn-off and a turn-on and a meter read, in this instance that would consider be a work order outside of our normal reading schedule.

Let me tell you, there's, as we've been talking about this, this is one, this is an individual property, this is an actual example that is a single-family home and it's been the name of renters. From what we understand, it's generally been singles that have been living there so the names can go around. So this isn't uncommon where you'll have a few singles that'll say, I'll take it. If I go to collections, I just got to move it into your name and then we get the water turned back on rather than paying the bill. So we have one property That between 2010 and 2004, it went to collections 4 times in 4 years, and it changed names 6 times. And the property, that single-family home, in the time it's been a rental, the police have gone out on average every other month for 15 years. And so these are the scenarios that we feel like this allows us to help address of, okay, we continue to have police calls out there. Landlord, this is your responsibility too. not just the tenant's responsibility. And then the collections 4 or 5 times, that goes away, but that stays in the name of the landlord as well.

So—

Do you turn water off in the cold months for non-payers?

Yes.

Except around the holidays, we do skip some time then, just out of compassion.

Until January rolls around, we just do twice the amount.

Actually, December 31st.

Any other questions on just some of that data? Well, we'll get into kind of—

It's just interesting, you have half of your single-family homes have work orders.

Yeah, and you know, as we thought about that, it kind of, you know, you think of a single-family, if it turns over every other year, Then you'll kind of get, you know, about that. That'll be about right. Some of these, of course, have had more than one, but this is the average. These are just of the single-family homes that are rentals, though. Yep.

No, no, I know.

I know.

Yep.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

So next we'll just talk about the licensing itself and what the licensing might look like. I'll represent that we don't have numbers yet. Part of what state law has required is for us to charge some of these fees, you have to have a study done to show The disproportionate cost from rental properties than a single-family situation. So what we're looking at though, and I'll just show you West Jordan's fee structures, and I have plenty of other examples too, is a base fee to be a landlord. So this would be your equivalent of a business license, but to brand it, to differentiate, it's not a rent-a-business, it's a rental license.

Is it yearly or once?

Yearly.

Yearly.

Similar to a business license. This again, this is just West Jordan's adopted fee And then a per unit charge. And so what the study would show is, hey, for every unit you have, this is the disproportionate cost that police calls, fire calls, utility issues that come with the rental property that may not come with a single family. And we would use real data to do that. And then that would be the per unit charge. What the study would show is the cap. This is the most you can charge based on the data. We don't have to go that high, but that's— that would set the cap. And the state law— state law has put that out. If we didn't have a study, then all we could charge is just kind of that base rental license fee. We couldn't differentiate anybody because we don't have data showing that that landlord, because he has 10 properties, is more expensive for us than this landlord who she has 1 property. We can't differentiate until we have a study done. So our recommendation would be to have some type of a base fee that covers all the paperwork, all the licensing, all of that, and then a per-unit charge that charges them depending on the amount of quote-unquote businesses they're operating in the city. Any questions on that, please?

So once you do the $75, that's for paperwork?

That's per year?

That's for— that's for to have a license, like a business license.

Correct.

But what— so you do that every year or just when the property changes hands? Every year.

It'd be like a business license.

And who's going to do the study and how long will it take?

So there's a couple companies that do it. We talked to one of them to get an idea. They thought it would take a couple months. They're going to be getting us a scope and a cost here in the next day or so. So Lewis and Young and Zions Bank both do these studies.

We'll get—

we would get quotes from both.

And you're studying the entire city?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, not a representative sample?

Um, I don't know the methodology completely, but I would imagine they would probably pull everything that we have listed as a rental and calls.

And then, yeah. Did they look at things like your collectibles and all that?

Yeah, we talked through all that.

We talked through some of the specific issues we're looking at.

What we're talking about too is—

I can't remember if I go into this later—

what we're talking about too is having— so statewide they've adopted this Good Landlord Program, and what that is generally is you have to take some classes and sit through and you watch enough videos and you become a good landlord, right?

And—

well, we're not looking at a program like that, but we've defined things that we feel like would really make you a good landlord in the city. One is getting this utility thing figured out. 2 is having a property that's free of citations, or when citations come, they're being resolved. One of the things we're considering is having a fee like this, but if somebody were to— the year comes up and they have 10 outstanding citations on their property, then we wouldn't classify them as a good landlord and give them a discount. So we're looking at some of those types of things, and that's what the study would do.

So how many cities do this and how many don't?

I don't know all of the numbers. As we've— we went to a recent conference that talked some about this, but in a college town, it's very, very common because of the number of rentals. Provo does it, St. George does it, Ogden, Salt Lake, Clearfield, Taylorsville, West Jordan, West Valley, and Roy all do it as well. These are some of the state ones that we've used.

Do you know what promo charges—

do you have any idea?

I do, yep. So if you have an individual unit, one home, which is one unit you're renting, you pay $20 a year. If you have multiple units, no matter how many, if you have more than one, then you pay $60 a year.

Just flat $60?

Flat $60 if you have more than one. I— my guess is they probably haven't done a study to show the differentials between They can't get it to the per-unit charge. That's so— yeah, it goes as high as Salt Lake does $150 base fee and then $20 per unit.

Does Dr. Provo do— I mean, have they had success with this?

Yeah, in fact, one of our 311 help center agents, Alita, is from there, and yeah, she said it'll be a good day when we do that. American Fork City is one of the only ones we know that requires the utilities to stay in the name of the landlord. They've had challenges with landlords not loving it, but all the benefits they hope to see, they see.

Do the billing statements go to the house or to the landlord?

It would be to whoever the utility's name is.

That would be the address, yeah.

Now we have a Quick Pay system. So recently we've created a system with our utility billing called Quick Pay where all you need is an account and a WebPIN and you don't have to log into the You just see the one month's bill and you pay it. So there would be a way for a landlord to say to the tenant, hey, you're going to want to pay this bill. Here's the PIN and the number. You don't have to have my account number. You don't have to log into my account to do it. So, but we would be sending them to the landlord, like we do in a multifamily case today. Brent gets the bills for Warm City and he charges it to Brent.

Good question.

Any other thoughts, please?

So are you like most of the way through your presentation?

Yeah, I just have a couple slides left.

Okay.

So subletting, if somebody's subletting a place, would they also— like, would you require a license from the owner and from the subletter, or would it just be like the owner essentially that would need one?

You know, we knew there was going to be some kind of qualification.

I think it's only—

it's going to be the owner still.

That's who we would do the crime rates with.

Okay, so I don't think we have that.

Okay, okay.

Accessory apartments, is it different if somebody is just, you know, they're owner-occupied living in the main house, but they have a basement apartment that they're renting out? Would we have kind of discounted or anything like that?

Yeah, so in fact, one of the things the study will look at is the difference— the differences there. Chief Giles and Alborn can both speak to this. Generally, other than somebody calling to say, we think it's an illegal basement apartment, we don't run into many other issues because the owner's on site all the time. So it'll look at— it'll take that into play too. It may be that a basement apartment has a different price because the costs to the city are just significantly less than when they're— when the owner's not living on site.

And then last question was short-term rentals, Airbnbs. Things like that. Would they be lumped in with everybody else, or could we have like a higher fee or different, you know, restrictions or guidelines for short-term rentals?

Greg or Steve, do you want to speak to short-term rentals?

So I think somebody who's doing a short-term rental, so they're renting, I mean, that's a rental just like anything else.

They would need the base residential rental license. I think what you're talking about is, could we charge them a disproportionate fee? That's part of it. I think a lot of it speaks to kind of like NPU-type issues. Like, last year I've gotten a few calls from people that they have an Airbnb in the neighborhood and people rent it out as kind of like a party house kind of thing. And so then they'll have, you know, 30 cars parked in their quiet residential neighborhood and They're not really sure how to address that. So would this give us, even just kind of the base policy that we're applying across the board, would that give us the teeth we need to address issues like that? What it would do, it would make it easier because we'd have the owner contact information so we could say, hey, did you know your property is being used as a party house? You know, you want to do something to take care of that? So I think it would help in that respect. It may not address all the issues. You know, there's a lot of cities have a separate ordinance dealing with Airbnb-type rentals, and that's something we can certainly consider as well.

But that's not part of what this is doing. I think internally we've talked about not necessarily using the same tool for every situation. So this is right now kind of set as a means to address Long-term rentals. Pieces of this may apply to short-term rentals, but we may need to do something a little different to really get and address the concerns of short-term rentals that could be a little different.

I mean, if we're thinking about like this was a section of our city code, if we just had kind of a subsection that addressed the accessory apartment part of it and the short-term rental part of it, just so that we're still kind of being consistent with the overarching objectives. But like you said, we might need some different tools to address different situations.

So in short, they'd at least still have to get the license.

Okay, but tied to that, it could be though that if the study comes back that there's a violation or citation or work order or a call-in, if short-term rentals are getting a lot of complaints because of Parking or noise, that would have an impact on their fee, I suspect.

I think potentially the challenge in Oro would be supplying them the data of where the short-term rentals are, because we don't have any kind of database to say, here's the short-term rentals, look at the calls for service on those versus— that may be some of the challenge. But I think your logic is right on, that there's a lot of— I would say we get a lot more—

we get a lot of calls on Airbnbs, a lot of issues, a lot of But we could just go on Airbnb and find out where a lot of them are.

But state law specifically doesn't allow that.

Yeah, it does.

We just—

yeah, we can go and find out where they are.

We're just not allowed to prosecute.

Oh, okay, okay. For the local listing advertising.

There you go.

There you go. Sorry. Plus the neighbors would probably tell you if it's in their home. Yeah, that's more— in many situations, the homeowner, the property owner, is living in the home and renting part of his home or her home out as a short-term rental. So these issues associated with utilities are not really in play because the property owner is paying the utility bill, and to some degree it's a different matter. It would just be the complaints that kind of go into the connection.

Correct.

Yeah.

I mean, really, one of the things we're trying to do with— and I really applaud Steven and his team that has put this together— together is we're kind of expecting a lot from the MPU, expecting them to enforce these issues associated with rentals and these challenging properties. And we, as a result, need to give them tools so that they can essentially do their job. And right now, I think some of the tools we have are helpful, But they could be better, they could be stronger. And I think this is what Stephen and the team and Sergeant Alborn and all others are trying to do is, hey, we want to do what you expect of us, but we need some tools, some more tools to help us essentially be more successful. That's a great point.

So where—

if, if we adopt this, where does the money go? I mean, is that Great question. Sorry, before you go to that—

Oh yeah, that is the next slide.

You say it goes to Steve?

Not all of it, just a commission.

So what about, uh, in-law apartments that are not— they're not renting with their in-laws? Stay with them.

I would imagine we wouldn't treat that.

Those would not fill within this aspect. No. Another issue that we might want to address is the accessory apartments where the owners moved out and they're renting both sides because now they're illegal. And so we haven't been able to do much with those either. Correct.

And do we have quite a few of those illegal duplexes?

Just dealt with one today.

What?

Just dealt with one today.

So how do we get them to register?

Well, if they come to the city, we find out who the owner is. And I educate the owner. In this case, the owner had no idea that was illegal, and he even came down to 311 to talk with you guys about it, and things worked out fine. There were no necessary evictions. But for example, in that particular situation, if somebody came to turn the utilities on, then we'd say, well, are you the property owner?

No.

Are you the property owner?

Yes.

Okay, well then provide the documentation that in fact you are. Yeah.

So we're already a step ahead, ahead of where we currently are.

Because right now, we don't know.

About 3 years ago, we asked for a list from Development Services. So then we work with utility billing, and we flag a lot of the accounts that are legal. Then when someone tries to move in and change that we don't know you can't.

It has to be in the owner's name.

Then the owner calls and then they get upset because we don't allow them, the renters, to sign up. So there's always that fight between my group and the owners.

And I think, yeah, and one of the things that I think Brett brings up a good question. The question brings up is a challenge we already have today. We're already struggling with that. We're already struggling with illegal basement rentals. We're already struggling with too many people in a home. All those issues will still be issues. We just feel like this is one more tool that helps us address them more quickly. Because now if somebody says, hey, I think there's an illegal rental, we can just pull up a license and say, do they have a license or don't they have a license? We can move on that pretty quick.

So just one question on illegal rentals. Is that increasing every year?

Yes.

Okay.

And that's just the dynamics of having UBU here.

Okay. So we have a majority in one part of our city more than we do in other parts?

It's not specific.

We have them in the north end as well as the south end.

Is there teeth if they don't pay this? I mean, what's the enforcement side of this?

Yeah, I mean, we would work— there's still some mechanics we work out. But the, um, I mean, the teeth is the ability to suspend a license, and I would imagine have a fine associated with operating a rental without a license. So then we would use our administrative law judge process to quickly move into compliance. Brent Sumner brought up the question of kind of how does this look. Licensing rentals would be handled through the OREM Help Center like our business licensing is. The additional employees hired through this program would be This would likely be mainly code enforcement. In talking with our NPU staff, this would likely be on the civilian team. This is, this is the need to send letters, make phone calls, do the follow-ups, do all of those things that don't require a sworn officer. And then we would have some help in the help center to administer the program, answer some of the questions that come with rental properties, things like that. So that's, I mean, that's where the money goes.

If you have 1,306 units and single-family, 2,461 times $75, you're talking $300,000, $400,000.

Yeah, we did model this a little bit. We don't have the exact number, but one of the things state law doesn't allow us to do is if I own 5 properties, I still can only— I still can only be charged one $75 fee. So a lot of these rentals For example, you have 1,300 multifamily units, but 100 of them are going to be in one complex, one fee. Then the per-unit charge. So we don't, we don't have the exact numbers to what it'd be. You're likely south of a couple hundred.

You still could have enough money to hire 2 code enforcement individuals.

Yeah, yeah.

So if somebody has, you know, let's say 10 properties through 5 different LLCs, do they need Yeah, they probably need one for each LLC. Yeah, this is one per—

The actual owner.

Yeah, so if it's a different owner, they'd have to have different licenses. Maybe I'll just clarify one thing.

I mean, the general rule is that any fees you collect from this type of a rental license can only go towards administering the license program, licensing program.

People who are taking the paperwork and working with people and so forth. Unless you do the disproportionate services study that Stephen was talking about. And then if you find that these different rental units are creating a disproportionate need for services, then you can charge more to basically help for more NPU officers, you know, whatever else, other employees, water employees or whatever, who are dealing with the additional need for services that they So the actual base fee is probably going to be relatively low.

I would guess less than $75 because you only can charge an amount that you need to actually administer the licensing program.

Is that what the study will show?

Yeah, the study will show that.

So the study, that's when you could potentially charge more to pay for the disproportionate services.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So the excess fee can't be used for NVU.

If we haven't done the study, if we've done no disproportionate burden study, then we cannot. It can only be for the licensing program.

If we've done the study?

Yeah, then you could use that to potentially pay for MPU and water and so forth.

Yeah, we would— I mean, yeah, we would show that, hey, we're spending significantly more time on rental properties than our code enforcement, therefore we need additional help in that area.

And in kind of pricing that out after the study, if we If we can also demonstrate that this will save, you know, money in like the work calls and things like that, do we have to subtract that out of the calculation or is that just like bottom line savings?

I'm sure they— when we did the impact fees stuff, I mean, they had some credits in there, you know, related to certain things. So I would assume similarly that they would have some kind of credits in relation to that.

Oh, and you want that so that there's an incentive to not have those. What you'll find interesting is we looked at the different fees. So again, a lot of cities have this good landlord program where if you're a good landlord and you do these different things, here's the lower fee. If you're not, here's the true cost of your unit. Um, in like, uh, in West Jordan, it's $7 if you're a good landlord. If you're not and you're paying the full cost, it's $200 per doing it. So what usually comes back is that, hey, the real cost of these rentals to a city is really, really high. So we'll just obviously have to try to be reasonable in that area.

But yeah. Didn't we try to do the landlord charity washroom owners? We looked at it. We studied that. I think we remember. We didn't have a licensing— we hadn't agreed on a licensing process to— as the basis for the program. So—

oh, please, please, no, Mark.

One other thing that I noticed, I don't know if it ties in with this, but it's one thing to have a legal apartment, but it's another one to use it illegally by putting 4 or 5 or 6 people in the apartment as opposed to 3. And I wonder if there's any way that connects this and allows us to better enforce the that aspect as well, or at least to put— I get frustrated when I call on some of these and it's to a management company and they have no qualms of saying, no, there's 6 kids in this apartment, and that they have no responsibility to be able to obey the law.

Yep.

As part of the rental process, they're just filling up. Is there any connection back with not only just the lack of paying the bill, but also the ability to live within the law in terms of number of people?

Yeah, at least what we've thought of in concept is this idea of, okay, so we recognize it, we find this problem, we notify the landlord, and notation's made on their license. They come for renewal and we still have this outstanding issue, then the fee becomes significantly more than that. next year while we're still trying to fight through this problem, right? But again, what we struggle with now is we have that issue and we're trying to now just—

who do we talk to?

Who do we talk to that is this? Instead of all board saying, hey, 3 of you, you know, draw straws and 3 of you are in and 3 of you are out, we want to be able to get to the person that can actually take care of that in the lease and educate them. And I think, you know, Sergeant Holmer brought up a good point that While as frustrating as it is for us, and those of us that know this business well enough know what's legal, know what's not legal, a lot of them really don't. They don't understand maybe that they couldn't put 4 in. They don't understand that they couldn't take their house and turn it into a duplex. We have the ability now to proactively mail things to all registered licensed owners to say, here's the rules that you ought to be playing by.

A lot of them don't know by choice.

I think there's some truth, but I think there really are some that don't understand.

Stephen?

Yeah, this also is going to be a great opportunity to educate the mentor who probably knows even less about the law, and if they're in a situation where it's, it's not a healthy or clean situation or whatever, this could be a mechanism to help educate them so that they can perhaps come to the same conclusion. City and say, hey, we got this problem here going on. Or they— maybe they, maybe they at least know the law enough so they can approach the landlord and say, hey, according to the law, you're supposed to do this and you're not doing it in front of my house.

So it could be a good mechanism or opportunity to educate.

Yeah.

I mean, this will create a database for us to more proactively try to educate other than right now. it's maybe a little bit more on a piecemeal reactive basis. So we would be able to essentially create documentation that shows we have in fact done X, Y, and Z to educate, you know, and we're doing it on a regular or annual basis.

One of the— oh, no, Sam, please.

I like the idea of using that kind of good landlord program, whatever we end up calling it, to help address the overoccupancy issue. I'm just wondering if there's a landlord that looks at it just from a dollars and cents standpoint to say, okay, if it's going to cost me an extra $100 this year to be out of compliance, but I can charge 3 more people rent for 12 months out of that year, the economics still— they might still just continue to make that choice.

Yeah.

I'm not sure what the best way is to balance that, where how do you make it sting enough to kind of bring people into compliance without being overly burdensome? And you need to be able to justify the actual cost to the city in that situation.

Isn't that where you come in on that? Yeah, that's where we come in, but he's looking at it from a different perspective. This is not to sting people for illegal items. This is for infrastructure circumstances. Where people aren't paying their utilities and stuff like that, is that correct?

So there is that part of it, but there's the potentially— we won't give them the lower price if they have, you know, issues outstanding.

If they have outstanding issues with us.

But I think what Al Gore is saying, they would still be going after those issues. So we wouldn't turn a blind eye because they paid the higher fee, but if they're not addressing them, we charge the higher fee and continue to go after the issue.

And run the bill through our JDR.

Yeah, yeah.

And the reason I asked that, there was this daycare that had done this pilot to see if they started charging parents more if they showed up late to pick up their kids to try to reduce the number of parents showing up late, but actually increased the number of parents because they could justify, oh, I'll pay the extra $5 if I don't have to leave this meeting early or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, run my errand before I pick the kids up. Good question. You know, one of the things that I think that all of us can understand in working with police, one of the challenges that comes with illegal rentals, and we're sensitive to it, you are, there's 2 parties here involved. One is the landlord who potentially knows, and in some cases doesn't, I agree, a lot of times know that they're operating something illegal. Then there's the tenants who I think we could speak confidently say they don't, they didn't know when they got on that KSL ad, hey, I should look up to see if that's a legal basement apartment or not before I met. Those are, those are the people that, that it's challenging to try to figure out how to exactly handle that in a, in a quick way, but not take this young family or whoever might be living there and put them out on the streets. And as we deal through the mechanics of this, I think one of the things we'll be sensitive to is, is the timing and how much time do we give somebody to, one, come into compliance and make their basement, you know, legal if it's an abatement issue. Or others. We want to make sure that we're not in November taking a young couple who's in a basement that thought they were in a good place and putting them out. And so we're still working through the mechanics of how can we enforce what we need to but be human in what we're doing as well and ultimately get to compliance, which is what we want. And if compliance takes 6 months for them to finish out their lease and then they know they can't lease, those are just things we're just looking at to try to be get human in what we're doing and not put, you know, Alborn and his team in a really difficult spot as they're standing there with a young couple who had no clue and telling them that they've got to find a new place by, you know, this date.

Wait, till December 26th?

The same day we'll shut off the water.

So, um, but, but tied to that, I think, I think the other aspect I hear is when, like, when we sent out that mailer that Explain the rules of being a good neighbor. We got a lot of phone calls coming in, and I understand it probably flooded the resources that we had to do it, which is tough. But then I also— some of the neighbors I talked to said, well, you know, I send the information in but nothing happens. There's this aspect that we also need to have some element that is the residents work with us and support us. They can see the outcome, that it actually is working, it's being effective. So I think that's the other— the aspect of not only having the tools and the resources to do it, but to be able to meter that or gauge it so that we're not flooding the system and we're able to actually come up with— Correct.

—effective outcomes.

I think sometimes too part of that is managing expectations.

Yeah.

I think of a neighbor, for example, their expectations Maybe the problem is resolved and the apartment, illegal apartment, is vacant tomorrow. Yeah. Well, to this point of, look, we want to enforce, yet we want to be— show empathy at the same time we're doing it. We want to give property owners an opportunity to cure the problem. So— Well, we don't really have much feedback to the person that called in. I mean, it kind of goes into— Yeah, I mean, some of this, some of these resources, for example, Could be used to follow up with a property owner and say, you know, we did get your call, we are aware of this concern, this is how we— this is what we have instructed the property owner to do, what he or she may do, this is how long they have to do it, so they feel like we're following up on an issue. I think that'd be helpful. And again, to the point of this being another tool in the toolbox, so we have Traditional way to educate, then the owner can try and cure themselves. Then now we've got the ALJ system that we added in part based off of the influx we saw last— our last educational effort.

And then finally, we've got ultimately our Justice Court system for the extreme cases.

So again, ultimately this is just providing another tool to address the overall issue.

If you were to look at— this is a conversation we've had with the NPU— is if this is looked at as, oh great, this is— we now have a penalty for renting illegal, let's have our NPU drive around and just try to find illegal rentals all day because now we have something that we can penalize them for. This doesn't work in that method. This isn't to change the prioritization of their calls. They're still going to say, The drug house is priority one. They're still going to say those things are— this is a tool to help them address those issues more quickly. This also allows us to address illegal rentals or some of those other issues, but this isn't going to change the prioritization of calls. This is going to allow us to take care of those high-priority calls in a more efficient way.

That's, that's our feeling. And the $50,000 a year that we're walking away from in utility payments.

Correct, correct.

Yep.

Left behind when we don't appropriately address these issues. I think that's more reasons why the money is directed to MPU or paper process or whatever.

Yeah, we think that's where this— that's what the study will show.

We just haven't done the study, but we would agree.

Let me just go over next steps so you kind of know where we're at. The next step would be to complete the study, the research that disproportionate costs of rental properties. As I mentioned, this will set the cap as to what we can charge and show where the disproportionate costs are. 2, refine and work out the mechanics of administering the program, the application, online forms, software programming, procedures, notifying owners, all that. What we're considering is then how do we bring owners into compliance. We're considering giving landlords a discount the first year if they'll come into compliance during the ramp-up period. Namely putting the utilities in their name and registering the rental property. It'd be free in the free— this is again what we're considering. We'll look at all this, but in the first year, if they come in the first 3 months of renting this out, we'll give them a free first year for not making us have to go after them and try to get them registered. A 50% discount if they do it between months 3 and 6. After 6 months, what we're looking at is like a July 2020 new fiscal year, everything is fully in swing and full price is paid for anybody that comes into the licensing. So we're hoping by January to kind of have all of this mapped out as to how it will look and be able to start the education process and getting people to bring in—

come into compliance on the registering with utilities. That's kind of the time, that's what we're looking at.

At what point will we do the public outreach and Maybe that's part of the initial study that, like, Zions or Close Young would do, but are we going to have, like, open houses or something where both, you know, residents, landlords, tenants can come kind of weigh in on this?

Yeah, I would definitely anticipate that. We've done that through our sewer base rate charge where we've reached out to landlords and had those opportunities to discuss. I see it the same way. I think once we have the study in hand, because that's really then kind of the nexus for what we're doing, to suggest there's a reason we're doing this and it's because of the costs that are being provided. So once that's done, I think we would go through that period. It would be during the ramp-up period, but we may have some initial things to go out before the holidays.

Good question.

Anybody else? Any other thoughts? Any concerns? Any heartburn that any of this has given you that we can either address or look at further?

Glad you're doing it. I think it's needed.

So the 2 big things— oh, please.

Sorry, one more question.

As far as other cities that have done this, have there been any kind of legal battles?

Anybody—

in other words, did somebody try to sue the city because, hey, this is my property, you can't do this to me kind of thing? Has there been anything along those lines in Utah?

I haven't heard of anything like that.

I was going to say the one thing I have seen is, as has been brought up, a lot more More duplexes, illegal duplexes, where people just move out of their house and rent both top and bottom and call it a day.

And Sam, maybe to further address your question, state law actually gives us explicit authority to do a rental license for people who use their properties for rentals. So there may be related issues that there's, you know, disputes over, but the basic program, I mean, it's It's very clearly in the law. It's got to stay in law.

Great.

So if I could summarize the 2 action items that we're looking to do is one, begin requiring the landlords keep the utilities in their names, and then 2, get a license. Most of the other things we talked about are the benefits of that, but those are the 2 action items that we would be asking of landlords to come into compliance by July 2020. And obviously all those things you talked about during the ramp-up period, those are the specific So in that realm, then the tenant would pay the landlord for the utility? Would be similar to what—

Or would the landlord be the ultimate person responsible but allow the other person to—

Yeah, in fact, Steve, if you can remember, maybe there's a state code that specifically says we can't get involved in the payment of utilities between landlords and tenants. We would charge the landlord. How they want to bill them is We're not allowed to get involved. Is that so?

Yeah, I'm not sure if I fully understood the question, but yeah, we can't basically say the landlord is prohibited from charging the tenant for the utilities.

That's the one thing the state law says.

Right, I was just saying if you had the landlord on as a party responsible, but then the person renting had their name on there to pay the utility, and if they didn't, the landlord I don't know if that's allowed to do it.

You could do it that way if one wants to. I think that still leaves us with a lot of the problems we're currently experiencing, where you have to go out and shut off the water, maybe still if they're not paying, and reconnect it and do all those things.

But you do have—

but you could do it that way.

You do have an ultimate party responsible, and nobody's going to be walking away.

Yeah, you could do it that way.

Yeah, I don't think they're—

oh no, please.

So you're saying like the landlord would still be the responsible party, but the payment itself would be delegated to the tenant or something like that?

Yeah.

Instead of—

I'm assuming from an IT perspective that would be—

That's up to the landlord.

But yeah, in other words, what you're saying is having it in the landlord's name, sending the bill to the tenant.

Yes.

Well, potentially the difficulty becomes that we're still now turning this over every year.

I think that the ideal would be for the landlord to be mailed the bill on a monthly basis, and however he or she decides to work through those utility costs with the tenant is a relationship between the tenant and the landlord.

So that's my question, is how we would actually come down to finalize this. Is it straight landlord, period?

Yes, that's how we see it. This is the same way a duplex and 4-plexes.

That's what I want.

Yeah, but, but there are online— oh, the renter can pay the bill.

Correct.

Money.

No, no, I understand that, but I'm saying, are you going to have the renter's name on there and, and say the bill goes to the renter, but if he doesn't pay, the ultimate person is the landlord?

Another benefit is also, um, using the— or people can join So if the landlord doesn't have anything, it doesn't matter how many times the renter comes and changes, um, they can have it just in the program and it's auto-paid and they don't have to think about it.

So I'm not recommending one over the other, I'm just trying to ask the question, figure out what your plan is.

So no, our, our plan is we bill the landlord, the landlord, the landlord or somebody pays it, but that's the only person we deal with.

It's between the landlord and the tenant to Is our system set up where we can have it go to multiple email addresses? Because I think that would probably solve that.

And we would accept payment from the renter in the landlord's name?

Correct.

We have generous council members that pay the utility bills of individuals. We don't care who pays.

I know, I wish they'd do it for me.

But ultimately, The individual responsible for the property in question is the landlord. So if we ever got into a situation where a need required, for example, collections, it would be the landlord who would bear that responsibility. So if he's having a property management company do it, who do you throw it at?

The property management company. Because there are people entered into that arrangement, that's who's This does happen in other cities.

And that property—

that property management company has a separate agreement with the property owner.

And you'd have to make sure the landlords understand this.

Correct.

Because this isn't how it's happening right now.

Yep.

And this would be a big change.

Yeah.

No, we don't disagree on that.

Especially for some of the staff with more than 5 or 6 properties. But at the same time, again, this is a business. This is, this is not about a single-family home and a family trying to manage their respective household. This is about an owner of a business who's essentially acquiring these properties or managing these properties as a commercial enterprise.

Yeah, and I think, you know, Kathy and her team's been great stepping through a lot of this.

There's—

I'm sure there's things we'll still have to kind of figure out as we go. We all recognize that in the short term, there's going to be a lot of work to do. And we just see the benefit in the long term being as great as it is financially and time-wise to the city that we want to take care of this. We talk about this every budget season of, hey, there's more demand for services in every area, in 311 and in police. There's 2 ways to address that: hire more people or reduce the amount of time we're spending on different things. We've talked about hiring people. We've done that. We also are trying to look at the other side of the coin to say there's also things we do that we feel like we can do to reduce the amount of time we're spending in these areas. This is a way to reduce the amount of time rather than just— we could continue to address this problem as more and more rentals might come on by saying give us another 311 agent and another one and another one. We feel like this can kind of start to reverse that trend.

And also reverse the trend in the money you're losing.

And in the money we're losing. You're trying to create a contact list. And the contact list and get the utilities paid. We may lose money in late fees because, you know, all these ones we've got in collections have late fees established too. That's a trade-off we're willing to make.

All right, any questions?

Appreciate your time, thank you.

Thank you for the presentation. We'll now move on to a discussion of parking on State Street.

Mayor, before you move on, I just want you to know I've been on the phone the last hour and applaud the efforts of Stephen and the team and support the direction you're heading.

Good.

Glad to have you on.

Thanks, Tom.

How's the celebration for the Woodburys going?

I'm just walking into it now, so I'll rejoin you at council meeting in about an hour. Okay. Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'll stay on to that.

Yeah.

So we'll come back later because we'll have to do some code changes and stuff. But we'll work through the mechanics and the notification. We'll keep you in the loop. We'll just start going down this road.

So now we have a discussion on parking on State Street in the district by Jason Bench.

Thank you, Mayor. As you just kind of a brief overview of what's done with the parking Standards moving forward. As you know, we've adopted the districts back in October, the final 4. We did one in June. We knew going in that the parking standard was a little high. We basically mimicked it on Midtown Village when it was originally built. When Phase 4 came in— Phase 3 and 4 came into Midtown Village, the council actually reduced some of that parking demand from the original code. But we kept the original code knowing that we've had some issues in the past with parking. It went through, as we've looked at, we actually hired a consultant, Metropolitan, out of the University of Utah, to do our parking study. As you recall, a couple months ago they actually came in and gave a report on the overall parking study. With that in mind, with those developers that came to that meeting, we had to think At least 5 different multifamily developers came to that City Council discussion. We actually had them into our office to sit down with them to see what parking standards they felt comfortable with, in addition to looking at the parking study. So we've kind of moved forward with the proposal. Just to reiterate, what is currently required is 4 stalls per 1,000 for any commercial. And as you recall, this pertains only to the So we're not talking about any other commercial zones. It's only those properties within the districts itself. Right now we require for a mixed-use in the city center, for example, 20% of any development has to be some type of commercial, whether that's office or retail. And that's basically parked at 400,000. As part of that, they can use that, dividing that requirement by 3 to get a base, what we call a base density. So that number of residential So if 100 parking stalls are required, a third of that, so 33 stalls, can be used for the residential component. And then the current standard for the residential component over that base is currently 2.25 stalls per unit, and then anything over 3 or more bedrooms requires an additional stall. So it's pretty heavily loaded for residential. So that we don't We don't expect to have any parking issues. Of course, Residential B, which we do have some areas that are residential only, it's just 2.5 per unit, which we're not proposing to change that at all. We're simply talking about those that have the ability to mix, a mixed-use development. So the 3 takeaways that we had from the parking study is that one, that they recommended that we actually reduce the parking between the 2 and 3 spaces per 1,000 for the commercial. We're actually proposing that we go to 3. They also recommended that we keep the mixed-use component where they have a base so they can still use the shared component with the commercial versus a portion of that residential as part of that. So we're proposing that we keep that as part of this requirement as well. And then the final one was they actually recommended that we go to a 0.75 per bed— bedroom, or 2.5 per Or 2 unit. per unit, whichever is less. So if we took those to the developers, we actually come up— or proposed we make some modifications which basically keep the 3 per 1,000, but then go to the residential requirement of 1.75 per unit regardless of the number of bedrooms.

Gotcha.

So on an average, we're seeing between single bedrooms, studios, the majority of the units are usually 2-bedroom. We do have some with 3 bedrooms. As we met with the majority of the developers, in fact probably all the developers, Ryan can correct me if I'm wrong, but the majority of them do not build a lot of 3-bedroom units. It's just not rental or rentable. They do have some, but typically you're not looking at really large families living in these units. They're usually looking— the first units that go are either 1 or 2-bedroom units. So the majority of their developments are typically 1 or 2-bedroom units.

So Jason, how does this relate to student housing?

This has nothing to do with student housing. So we're not proposing to change any standards currently for student housing. We're still adamant about the 0.8 per bed. This is simply the district's own standards. So our proposed change— part of the recommendation in the parking study was they had 2 stipulations. As we dealt with the green on the university campus, they don't charge additional for the rent or for the parking stall. So it has to be included in the rent. So they felt that if we're going to go down to this lower standard, that needs to be a stipulation. And if they're going to, they need to bundle the rent, basically. You can't have the rent and then they charge for additional for the parking because people are opting out of that and parking in the neighborhoods.

So do we know how many Complexes actually do that. I mean, I'm aware Promenade has done that, but I know that the green on Campus Drive is not doing that.

They can't because we basically took this language out of that ordinance and are proposing it in this language. We actually had ICO came to the Planning Commission and basically said they do on some of their products, do charge for that because of the pro forma and different financing issues, they do that. But I don't think it's impossible for them to actually have that somehow in their pro forma where they can actually bundle it and they get it all included rather than having to have it separate.

Sure.

But the potential— basically our issue is that if they have a potential of getting out of it, a lot of tenants may choose not to pay for that parking and fend for themselves on a public street, which is kind of the issue that we have with some of these parking issues. So, so they represented that they charge for covered parking, and our response to that was, well, you need to include that in their base rent and not have it as a separate charge. So the way the ordinance reads, any required parking— so if they required 150 stalls and they provide 200, they could charge extra for the remaining over the above that's required.

But anything that's required for that unit, so 1.5 or 1.5 But if you're charging as part of rent, you can't then pull that out and say, all right, if you're not going to use it or you're not parking, you don't have to pay that high a rent, you can pay a lower rent.

What we're proposing is just there's a fee that includes the stalls.

If you want a premium stall, it's over and above what's required. So we did actually look at several projects. We had 5 projects you're familiar with: Martha Ball, 924, these other ones. Basically what we did is we took the existing current code and the proposed code and looked at the comparison to be able to do. There is one that 1450 South, the project by the Wendy's down on South State, would actually require a little bit of Based on the mix, they have a lower mix, so they have a lot of studios and 1-bedrooms versus a 2-bedroom mix. So that would ultimately require— so the lower the ratio, the higher the parking actually. The parking ratio is going to kind of hit the middle of a 2-bedroom unit, just kind of the average. So an overall average reduction with the 1.75 and reducing it to 3 per 1,000 commercial would give us about 7.

So how would you propose Dealing with that where it's higher rather than lower.

If that was to come— if that were to come in today, they would—

that's just—

So you're not going back trying to enforce this?

No, no.

It's just a new process going forward.

This is just more of a comparison of how the standard would relate to existing projects that ultimately would give a reduction of like, say, 7.3%. As we talked to developers, as you know, then, as you Compared to the parking study that we've worked out with staff, this is kind of a median, medium average of where we think we'll come to. In the event that we get multiple projects and the parking standard doesn't work, then obviously we'll be back to discuss it again. But I think this is a— I think it's quite a good start. So, I mean, on the 920 North State, I think there's major problem issues with their parking right now. Right, there used to be. So now you're— now you're going to cut it another 10%? Well, I don't know if there is a parking issue now. There was because they were starting to charge. They did charge in the first culture. They charged for— I mean, I go by there, there's still parking all over the street. And I have seen that too, but there's been stalls on site available. And some— sometimes it's— you can't regulate usage, so sometimes people will park on the street because it's closer to carry their groceries in their door than to park in the parking lot. So that's a challenge we run into on any apartment. The thought being that this is in the district, so we're going to have the majority of the dwellings hopefully within the district mixed with the commercial. There are going to be some obviously on the edge that could have, like the Monteval, could spill over into the neighborhoods. Is it the point of having that part of the rent where they can't split it up, like somebody can't opt out to pay for that part, you have to have it included? But then also give them the ability to park on site if they choose to. If somebody wants to park on a public street, they could, unless we redline it or prohibit them from doing that. But it is a public street. And there are some businesses across the street. In that case, a lot of those— the dental office and other things— actually people park on the street to do that as well, not necessarily all tied to apartment complexes.

It would at least help keep them out of like the residential neighborhood that's back Right, and this is—

yeah, we felt it pretty strongly that that has to be included. That's kind of the one thing that we've, I think, determined that when they don't have the ability to have that parking and they can opt out, then they will find some other place, some other mechanism to park. Planning Commission did review that a couple weeks ago. They gave a formal This will come before you on the 8th of October. We definitely want a discussion to see if that's— if you need to tweak it, if this is going down the right direction, if this makes sense. It's kind of like trying to hit a moving target because every development is different depending on the mix of how many 3 bedrooms, how many 2 bedrooms, how many 1 bedrooms, and then how do you incorporate the tenant mix, which may have 2 people with cars Somebody with 1, somebody with 3. So it's kind of— we've found where we're trying to hit a moving target. And with this, the first development will come in and we're going to find out if it works. And if it doesn't, then maybe we need to tweak it. But it's kind of— there's no science behind it. It's a best guess solution. The disadvantage we have is if somebody comes in, developer comes in and says, I want to do all 3-bedroom units. So we're going to need to go back, Jason. to where you redlined. Okay, so right, right there.

So if you look here, it's 1.75 and 2.25, and that was—

0.25 was for, uh, for visitor parking. So now we've got it from 1.75 to 0.10.

0.1.

0.1.

So 10%.

So you're— and if you have 2 people living there, you're already over your parking density. You're screwed. It's going to be, it's going to be a mix of landlords managing or the owners managing. I don't like takeaway parking personally.

So to give you an idea, um, Sienna Villa is on Columbia Lane.

They, they think this is way too high still. Their parking on their site is about 1 point— was it 4.2 is their ratio of stalls per unit, and they have 60 to 70 the extra stalls on site. And so we feel like we've kind of hit a middle point because we have some developers telling us, telling us that this is an improvement, but we have others telling us it's not far enough. So we kind of feel like we haven't been all the way to the developers. Well, if I'm a developer on it, I can cut down the parking, I can add more buildings or whatever. That, that's more money in my pocket.

So I don't know.

Very good point. Very good point.

ICO, though, has—

it's They've explained to us that they don't— they won't build something that they can't park, that they feel they can't meet their tenants' needs. And so they self-regulate is what they've explained to us with their ratios. And this ratio is higher than what they do in their own developments. So that's just the feedback we've received.

We do have some big developments that may be coming in, uh, you know, one just south of Monteval on 920. And then where Meadow Gold is. So if we get this wrong, it's not like we can experiment. Those are too big to get wrong.

But part of it, the mix that we don't have in some of these, like Montebello, they don't have that commercial component where we've taken kind of the basis for the Midtown Village where we have that commercial component where there's a mix. So in the evening times when the office is gone, there will be a spillover of parking that's provided by that mix. Which is required. They have to do that 20% commercial. They're going to have that number of stalls, they're going to be able to share. When they leave in the morning, that's going to be open then for the commercial to use during the day. So there is going to be some split. Right now, the Monteval and these other projects don't have that mix. Right, right, right. The only one that we have that we can compare is the Midtown Village, which seems to be working well the way that it's designed, because it has that flexibility with that commercial. And that's what I think our hope is, that because we're requiring that commercial, And that extra parking can be shared, there will be the potential to mitigate that spillover in the evenings, especially when they can park in the commercial spaces. And the reason we're even looking at this is developers are telling us that the projects don't pencil with the current parking requirement. The investment in parking is so extreme that—

So have we compared to other cities on this?

Um, it's relatively close to others. I talked with Morgan with Vineyard, and they're way under parked. So they think this is—

Yeah, Vineyard's got real big issues.

They actually went too low. I mean, there's obviously a— they went to the very low.

They're kicking everybody out.

And Provo did that as well. They went to kind of a low standard, and they've kind of adjusted that around the train stations a little different now than they've done south of campus. They've kind of got a medium. How many developers are complaining? Nobody's necessarily complaining, but as they're coming in looking at these vacant properties in the district, it's a pretty high standard to meet as far as what we have now in the district. So we could err on the side of having too much parking, which staff agreed at the beginning, let's err on the side of parking and adjust it as we move forward. Now we're having developers coming and say, yeah, we'd love to develop, but it's just right Right. On the edge of too much parking, therefore it's not really working in our requirement. So let's get to a different, more reasonable standard. And I think as staff and as the parking study shows and as the developers agree, this is kind of a middle ground. I think we all agree that, yeah, there may still be some issues, but I think if everybody works together, we'll be able to have enough parking to satisfy the demand. It is going to take, obviously, a The council's agreement to move forward knowing that it's not a perfect science. It's not until we can— I think we worked together good as a team to come up with a solution that we thought would work. Now we may be kind of pushing the envelope a little bit, but I think we're erring on the side of, of still having the So we've created a model where we can go in and manipulate how many 3-bedrooms, 2-bedrooms, and 1-bedrooms are in a development. A development that's heavy on 1-bedrooms, you actually run a surplus of parking. Development heavy on 3-bedrooms is where you kind of get into trouble. But in the market right now, very few 3-bedrooms are even being built, so we're anticipating a lot of 1-bedrooms. So, Mostly 1 and 2 bedroom developments. And so we think that this is going to work. The key again though, I think we all felt, was is you can't charge extra.

Because if you do, down at the Medical site, somebody's just going to be parking a block or 2 away in the neighborhood.

And so it is a key to have that commercial component, and it is a key to have No extra charge for parking.

On the stormwater side, we had— we talked about building to the 10-year storm level or the 100-year storm level. It seems kind of like we're shifting a little bit more from the 100-year storm level, maybe closer to the 10-year. And as far as you think, if you have a shopping mall, for example, if you built all your parking based off of Black Friday, that's like 1 or 2 days out of the year, and you just have a ton of wasted extra space the whole, you know, rest of the 363 days.

So— Yeah, I think we're still going off of the Black Friday model, if you will, because it's like people will still have cars, they just might not use them as much. Their trips per day may be lower because they're in walking distance to a lot of different They have transit, they have those kind of things. But the, the, uh, I like that analogy because people are still going to have cars. And what we've found through the study is that I think these, these rates take into account, yeah, not everybody's going to have 2 drivers in a 2-bedroom apartment. There is a certain ratio, and again, it's not an exact science, but it is one of those It's one of those things where we've made so many comparisons that with our area, we're pretty comfortable that we think it's going to work. In the study that the university completed, they did look at 4 different commercial properties and actually recommended that we reduce it from 4 stalls per 1,000 to 2. So as they reviewed it based on Black Friday, I mean, the majority of the 365 days a year, 2 stalls are plenty for thousands. So I think that's— we haven't proposed that in our cities in general. This is simply talking about the districts. But I think there is some wiggle room that we're actually providing, probably requiring a little too much parking in most instances. So this is kind of coming back to hopefully a middle ground where we can gather maybe a project that's going to stretch the limit. But I think the majority of them are going to be on the lower end of having enough parking.

Okay, any questions or comments? All right, appreciate it, Jason. While we've got a second, Brent, do you want to give us a report on your responsibilities? Let's see, then we'll do our food.

You're talking about the commission? Yes, I have. I've been assigned the historic preservation Preservation Commission, which is a work in progress. We're going to get that going a little better, from what I understand.

Yes. Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, that's down at the moment. As soon as I get Steve to get in the committee. Also the Youth Council, and I've really enjoyed being with the young people, and I wish they'd had something like this When I was in high school, instead of the activities we did—

Baseball, you mean? Was that a bad influence?

Steve and Greg, they do a great job with these young people. They teach them how the city works, how the government works, and I think he— that I think I think they have sessions with most of the department heads, or activities where they understand what they're doing. And of course, the legislative day in February, they participate in how bills are created and passed.

One thing that I really enjoyed this last spring was the mock court.

Greg said that was just like the first year of law school, so I think I did pretty good. Anyway, that was a good opportunity to put on a mock court for the young people, and it was a lot of fun.

Brett, were you the judge, or what were you?

You said what?

Were you the judge, or what were you?

No, just the kids participated in it. I was just an observer.

Oh, observer.

And as all of us know, it's open to Orem, Timpanogos, and Mountain View High School students. And we're starting that back up this month or next week. Next week. Anyway, uh—

And how many students do you get involved with coming out?

Well, different months, you know, like the legislative session, we had a whole busload.

And then the mock court, I don't know, we had 10 or 13. It's a pretty good number.

We didn't have as many sign up this year as we did last year.

I'm not sure why, but we have our first meeting for this school year next week and hopefully get a feel for how many of those students are going to really be active participants. How many just want to put their name on there and not show up. Anyway, it was a lot of fun for me as well, and I learned a lot. The other commission I'm over is the Senior Citizens Advisory Commission, and you've mentioned Kay Bradford today. She's chairman of that commission, and she's a— The Youth Council?

Is that what you're saying?

Bundle of joy.

They have good participation.

I think they always have a quorum or pretty close to it. Carl's always there. Yeah, it's a good group and they move things forward. Let's see, they have, I think, over 3,400 members.

Is that right?

The senior? Somewhere around there.

Are we one of the bigger ones in the state?

I think we are the biggest one. Yeah, so they're doing a great job over there.

Are they happy with the fitness center component?

Are they adapting okay?

I'm proud of the way they're adapting. They're handling it very well. The sticking point right now is we're using the ballroom for multiple things, so the temperature is way too hot for the aerobics instructors, freezing out with the seniors. So we are, uh, we're working to find a happy medium in that zone in the building, but everything else I think is working really well.

I've talked to both senior citizens and participants over there, and it, you know, there's a few rumbles, but it— I think it's working fine. It's working well. I think it's working fine. Brent's going to smooth it out by handing out more Beaky Couture blankets. In July, they served over 1,000 lunches, and in the winter, I understand that goes up over 1,200 when it gets a little colder. And if anyone has not been to the Grammy Awards, please go to the Grammy Awards.

When is it?

Frank Sinatra is the emcee. So it's a fun day. And they have movies, watercolor groups, personal history, literature classes. And I've seen Dave over there a couple of times in that belly dancing class.

I'd pay good money to see that.

Carl and Gigi— hold on, I can't get that out of my head. I had nothing to do with that. Carl and Gina do a great job over there, and it's fun commissions to be part of.

I really enjoy it.

Cool.

Any questions or comments?

When is the Grammys? Do you know when they're coming up?

Anyone? I believe it's in March.

March, okay.

Yeah, that is a fun day, or a few hours or so.

Grammys are great. And, uh, Flamingo Day is good too.

That Gina, I— she was dressed up, I didn't even know who she was for about an hour.

She was—

she put on quite an act there. She's got a lot of talent.

Well, thank you for your service there.

Appreciate it. Yeah, it's fun.

Um, so why don't we go ahead and have a prayer over the food, and then we'll go over our agenda, and I'll say the prayer on the food. Our dear Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for the food that's provided at this time and pray that Thou might bless it. Father, we're thankful for the city that we serve in and for the residents who live here. Thankful for the good families that are here and thankful for our city staff and the good work that they do. And pray that Thou might bless our efforts and the city staff efforts and Those of our police and fire and those of our residents to continue to build a better city and a great city and make it a great place to raise families. And we say this humbly in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Amen.

I've been to a lot of WrestleManias, but that was a fun game. Probably top 10 for me. Never once looked at you in my life.

So we got one Is that right?

For the old folks.

You mean the old folks playing, or the old folks listening?

It's both.

Eagles music.

What did he sing?

So he's doing all the Eagles old songs. But his voice is still there. His guitar playing is excellent. And they put on a great group.

So I didn't see you there.

Were you on the bottom floor?

We were up there.

Yeah, that's why we were trying to work. Yeah, we, we went to the one next Didn't last very long, did it?

Of course.

Actually, not a lot.

Do we do any, uh, done or just the old, old? It's been a work in progress.

So he was one of the 3 who made up the shield.

No, no, not—

we went off.

Over-under. Over wings.

Wings.

Okay.

Oh, that's a house. I heard that's really—

730.

Okay, I heard Billy Joel and Elton John are a big house. I think you're under—

we went— hey, Ryan, over-under on the building.

4 hours.

I'm under 8.

It's, it's gonna be tricky.

Hey, I need some red paint. I got a can.

The paint.

Your own purse?

Oh my gosh. What?

No, I'll have my portion.

Something about good talented—

Where do you live?

Well, I live in East—

I live in Caneyview, but if you live there, that YSA Award, that's where— it's not just federal.

That's where the YSA Award—

is that Summerlin, DC, for those about to walk?

Is that where you know?

16th North and 12th West. Yeah, just to the east of the road is the road.

So you come out and you look down into the car, you can't see anybody come up the hill.

Looking west or east?

Looking west.

Okay.

Yeah, it's probably coming up the hill. It's probably, it's probably, I don't know if it's striped as a turn pocket or not. I know it's, it's a book. I saw Genesis.

I'll look at it.

It is dangerous.

Yeah, that's a road the longboarders will appreciate.

Yes, very much so.

Unlike the canyon road going up by Neil's house. Where some of the, some of the slurry roads— Very dangerous things.

Because of the aggregate.

Yeah. We need to redo 950 North.

950 North?

In Canyon View Junior High.

Canyon View Junior High? It's like this all the way down.

Almost.

There's quite a few little side roads that I find interesting. Canyon Deer Junior High, gotcha.

That's the main road to his house.

We should just deed that to the school district.

The whole road?

Yeah. The big road is pointless.

Close it off.

They got to get caterers through, don't they?

Hey, we need—

if you're going to have to create a list, can you send me an email? I will. I'm ready.

Better hope it's a different straw. Well, I think most everybody's close to being done. Why don't we go ahead and move forward on our agenda? Uh, the first thing is we have upcoming events, and we have Marco's Pizza ribbon cutting 1 PM on the 21st of September, and they're located at 800 North 45 West. Then on the 19th, we have the Sharon Park neighborhood police picnic at 5:30 PM at Sharon Park, and we have the Uh, neighborhood planning meeting at 6 PM at the City of Orem, Lake Ridge Junior High. On the 26th, we have the City of Orem Geneva Road plan at 6:30 PM, the City Council Chambers. On the 30th, we have the City of Orem, Orem Community Hospital, Orem Harvest and Prep— Preparedness Fair, 4 to 7 PM at the Orem Community Hospital, IHC. October 10th, we have a City of Orem futsal court ribbon cutting and police picnic at Geneva Park at 5:30 PM. Uh, Steve, do we know who's coming down? Um, is Deloitte coming for that?

Deloitte will be there. Mary, who's kind of their overall— she's been the one we're working closely— she'll be there. There will be some players there. They're trying to arrange to have some youth soccer teams to come.

So are we going to get any coverage in the Herald with some pictures?

Oh yeah, yeah, I imagine so for sure. Okay, so it should be exciting.

It's, it's going to be, it's going to be—

We could even get on a TV channel with that one.

We might be able to.

Fox 13, I think, would love that.

YouTube will be there for sure.

I know, really.

You said U2's playing.

U2.

Yeah, U2 will be there.

So October the 12th, we have the City of Warren Waste Management Touch-a-Truck, 10 to 2 PM, Timpanogos High.

And I appreciate all, all of you sent back whether you'll be able to help serve food. Appreciate that. That's always a great event.

Look forward to cooking 2,000 hot dogs.

Yes.

Yep.

Uh, October the 12th, Utah Valley University President's Scholarship Ball, 5:30 PM, the UCC Youth Center, business dress. We have the library giving us their commission report this evening. And on our consent items, we have approval of the City meeting minutes, October 27th and September 3rd, council work session 2019. City manager's appointments. Jamie, do you want to mention anything about that?

So just a couple. One of them is an appointment of a planning commissioner, Haysom. David Moulton.

Okay, so David Moulton's been on for a long time, 7 years. Okay, and I know he was chairman.

So he comes obviously well recommended, as well as a lot of experience, and obviously a business owner along the State Street corridor. So we think he would be a great fit for the Planning Commission. The Board of Building and Fire Code Appeals has met 3 times in— twice in 27 years. But there is a requirement that we staff that board, and so this is an appointment, reappointment of Mr. Frisbee to serve as a member of that board.

I know those 20-year terms are—

yeah, okay.

Then we have an ordinance amending city To reflect the change from Department of Administrative Services to the Finance Department. And then we have a new Finance Department Director, Brandon Melton.

Yes, so both of these items are essentially formalizing changes within the Administrative Services Department to the Finance Department, as well as Brandon's appointment as the And is everybody good with those appointments?

Not only Brandon, but also Asim and Stefan?

Yeah, I don't know Stefan, but—

Okay, well, if he's being reappointed after 27 years, he must have done a good job.

There's a good chance he never will be called into service.

As long as he doesn't keel over. Okay, and just so we know, the city recorder will administer the oath of office, correct, to Brandon right after we follow the consent.

Do the consent.

You ready for that?

I, I had never done one before, so I'm excited. I promise to obey the law. No cooking the books.

Okay, on our scheduled items, first one's a public hearing. It's an ordinance amending Appendix U of the Orem City Code by updating the tree requirements in all zones. Jason, you're our presenter.

Just a few minor adjustments to the— mainly the district tree selection requirements, just adding a couple trees in each of the districts.

Okay, as in the type of tree or—

Type of tree. We found that there were a couple that were Difficult to find in this region. We actually worked with our urban forester to come up with another selection within these districts, one that he particularly wanted to plant along the frontage of the city center. So we have that in the city center district.

Okay, that's a public hearing. Item 10.2 is a public hearing. This is an ordinance amending Section 22-6-10 And Standard Land Use Code 4832 for water storage tanks and Appendix A of the Orem City Code pertaining to water storage tanks.

So this is just the ability for the city or Central Utah Water for that matter, that has to be a publicly owned tank, to build below the current elevation that we have on the water tanks on the hill. I know that you're familiar with the 2 water tanks that we make, Orem A Building and Vineyard So this just gives the ability to put those down below with some requirements that landscaping be on top.

So Jamie, any update on the water storage tank situation?

Yes, and I will defer to Brent on that since Brent and Chris and Neil have been working on those, that deal. Yeah, we've continued to meet with the school district multiple times. Particularly Shane Farnsworth, who replaced Jess Christian, and we actually met with him Monday morning this week. And up to this point, we've been getting some more detailed appraisals on the different properties that we'd like to essentially swap or trade in order to ultimately hopefully get the storage As close to 4th South there as possible. The, uh, the— I guess the optimum location that, uh, from a cost standpoint, most particularly, that gets us close to the main line under 4th South, where those— the west softball fields there on the west end of, uh, Orton Elementary, South That's that's the location that we've been pitching to them the most, or trying to work with them on. And long story short, Shane said that based off of their internal discussions between him, Superintendent Sam Jarman, and Assistant Superintendent Paul Smith, the section received verbal approval that that's. Also been proposed. So we've been proposing the tennis courts on the northwest portion of the park and a little portion of property that is right next to Centennial and Sierra Elementary. The combination of those being an equivalent acreage amount of the 2 west softball fields there, west of 1 Looks like it'll work for them.

Would they change the tennis courts then?

No.

So the next steps would be to essentially kind of paper this and revise our, our joint maintenance and use agreement that we have with them and essentially ensure that each of us would still get existing usage of So them, softball fields, us up there, the tennis courts. So we still need to hammer out the paperwork.

And you're saying water storage tanks with an S. Are we talking Vineyard and Orem or 2 for Orem?

I must have misspoken.

So it'd be one.

Okay, that was my understanding.

10 million gallon water storage tanks. Water tank underneath ours. Vineyard is trying to work separately, their own potential.

So they're not going to join in with us then?

No, not for this.

Okay.

They're looking at property at Forum Junior High School.

And timing, when are we looking at timing as far as construction?

Okay, the master plan is earmarked for 2023. But this property swap was a significant hurdle that we were able to jump. Now we have one kind of final hurdle with the federal government and just making sure that from a land and conservation grant perspective— remember, we received— we were awarded monies in the '70s for the construction of parks. Community Park is one of those parks. We've got to get their Blessing too before we proceed. But we have even talked about accelerating construction of the project and obviously starting to get down to brass tacks sooner rather than later. So, you know, we could, we could even begin the engineering of that, of that tank next year.

And the reason behind Moving ahead quicker with it?

Well, we, we still have an outstanding deficiency with the State of Utah and the State Engineer's Office, and so this would, this would allow us to essentially correct that deficiency sooner rather than later. But it would require obviously us to figure out the financing of the project since the revenue To build it, which would be totally abandoned until 2024.

And so this is changing the land use basically?

Land ownership. So it'd still be—

So the plan would be to build the tank, but I mean here it says we're amending the land use code.

Yes. This is just amending it to allow the tank to go in that location.

To go at that elevation, yes.

Yeah.

That's what I was trying to say. Okay, then 10.3 is public hearing on an ordinance. The applicant requests the city rezone the property located at 355 West University Parkway from the R-8 zone to the PD-5 zone and amend the PD-5 zone to include Standard Land Use Code 5530, gasoline Gasoline service station with or without store as a permitted use. This land is the Central Utah Water Conservancy District corporate offices that have been sold, and the new owner is wanting to change the zone.

They want to change the zone to PD-5 zone. They want to keep the office building, the staff supports. They also want to add a gasoline station and Maverick on the corner. We're obviously opposed to that. Planning Commission recommended denial on that as well. They also recommend denial on the PD-5 zone until we get a concept plan that better fits that location, including the office building.

So, question.

If—

I don't have any idea how anybody's going to vote, but if this did not go through this evening and they want to come back with a new plan that gathered support, They're okay doing that, going back through the Planning Commission?

When you say a new plan, you mean within the PD-5?

Within the existing zone.

Oh, R-8?

R-8.

Yeah, we'd have to go back. Well, it's an R-8 zone, so whatever's applicable in the R-8 zone would not require a Planning Commission.

But if they did also want to change the zone, they'd just come back before you, then Planning Commission?

One recommendation, if they If the council is comfortable with PD-5, is to continue the rezone part if you choose to do that, deny them the staff item as called for, approve them. There's multiple options you can do. Our recommendation, if council likes the PD-5 zone, is to continue that as an option. Let them come back with a concept plan that fits the zone. And just for the point of clarification, if you as a council were, for example, to deny If we deny the PD-5 zone tonight, then the applicant would have to wait a certain period before he or she could return, or— Uh, it wouldn't, because they're not creating the PD-5 zone. They would just have to reapply.

They'd have to reapply with a different concept.

With a different concept, new fees and everything.

So your thought is you're okay with the PD-5 zone, you just are not recommending that it be amended for a gas and service station.

The other idea is to get a concept plan that fits that area, right? We've got a U.S.—

Right, no, I know that, but you were just saying if the council did deny but wanted to move ahead with, uh, deny the gasoline but move ahead with the PB-5 zone, you see that as an option for the city?

That is an option. I think that we would continue it to allow them to come back with a concept plan that fits within the zone.

In other words, wait to rezone it. until the concept plan works.

Mayor, should we have Steve Ruhls speak to that?

Sure.

Yes.

So just to—

if you were to deny the PD-5 zone tonight, then if they wanted to basically reapply for the PD-5 zone, then they'd have to wait a year.

But if they wanted to, say, apply for a C-2 zone or a different PD zone, then they could do that without having to wait any period of time.

And how does that play in with what you're seeing with the they want to do. Would it be better to approve the PD Zone 5 zone tonight and then, you know, deny the amendment as far as the service station, and then they could come back with a new plan?

I'll let the applicants speak for themselves, but in a perfect world, I think we would continue the option for them to rezone it and allow them to come back with a concept that fits within the zone.

So continue to rezone towards the PD-5 zone.

Right.

So not deny or amend anything, just continue.

Yeah, we're not trying to kick against the fact that we think it's appropriate to go to PD-5 zone. We just don't like the concept plan or think it's appropriate with a gas station.

But your feeling is if we were looking towards that direction, maybe just continue the whole process Well, to a later date, deny the one part.

That's the sort of kind of gas station part, right? But they continue the rezone part, allow them to come back with a different concept.

And Mayor, if I can jump in, maybe it would be appropriate to talk to the applicant about that because they are not interested in doing it.

No, I know, I'm just trying to get ahead. How do you deny the amendments when you're then continuing the They're 2 separate actions.

So you would, you would ask, you would potentially encourage the applicant to seek a continuance?

No, no, I have that part. I'm just wondering if we're not amending the PD-5 zone, and then we're saying we want to deny the service station, which is part of it, but I guess you're denying That on the land use code, period.

Right, they're wanting to add that into the PD-5 zone. We're saying don't add it into the PD-5 zone as a use, but continue the rezoning for it.

Right, you could even have it as 2 separate motions if you wanted to.

Yeah, because essentially you'd be opening up the entire PD-5 zone for a service station. Now, I was at Planning Commission because that's my assignment.

They were not— the hotel seemed like it was pretty amenable to them. And they were certainly worried about egress and ingress with the gas station. They also commented about beautiful view and overlooking the valley, and they really wanted something that would be nicer. And I don't know if that meant pushing the hotel more toward the frontage or— but they were not big on the gas.

I didn't see a lot of pushback on the hotel portion.

Well, yeah. From staff's perspective, we we feel it's one of the prime locations in the entire city that's left. Even even you could argue one of the best locations in this city period. Even if we're developed now, what we've learned going through all these processes is that we need to hold out to get what we want.

We don't need to settle.

And so if we think there's a higher and better use, it should go there and take it. Advantage of the UVX station, the college, the proximity to the freeway, and views, we should hold out for that. That's where staff's coming from.

Which is what?

What's the higher— we think office is an ideal additional office on top of what's there right now. So instead of hotel office? Well, you can still have a hotel too.

Parking's a challenge, but we've even offered to have 38 instead of gas station.

So they already have an office Yeah. And that would be to continue on with that. And instead of putting a Maverick on University Parkway, the idea of putting either an office building or maybe even a hotel on University Parkway and then maybe putting apartments behind it. Or I think there's a—

We're not advocating for housing.

Okay. But there's a discussion also of maybe doing a mixed use with the service station underneath. Yeah, we would—

the hotel, we just feel—

So we're talking density there. Are we talking office space? Are we talking mixed use with the hotel?

It could be mixed use with retail on the main floor and office above it, or hotel.

You could park it.

Parking will be a challenge.

And if they wanted to do some housing in the remaining corner, any thoughts? That's up to the council.

We haven't really thought about it. We would have to create a district. PD-5 doesn't allow housing.

Okay.

So if it was rezoned to PD-5, we'd have to either amend the PD-5 after the fact to add that as a use, but then that would open it up all PD-5. Yeah. You know, housing can fit there. Yeah. Now she mentioned housing.

Well, you have a student housing. It's another one.

But yeah, I'm sure they would like to do it, but we, we as staff I'm not advocating for that. Because it's currently an R-8 zone, obviously you can't create a new PD on that property because we don't allow PDs in the residential zone.

So as far as the mixed use, could you have like retail on the first floor, offices above, and then like housing up above?

If you amended the zone somehow. You'd have to create a zone that would work. Right now you couldn't create a new PD zone because it's currently zoned R-8. Which the zone prohibits us to create a new residential zone. And it currently is zoned R, residential.

Now, with everything said, it always has to pencil out. And the applicant has told me that it doesn't pencil out to have office space.

That is his opinion.

Okay. I might be wrong.

I thought penciling out was it doesn't pencil out to tear down the existing.

Correct.

Well, they're not discussing that part. There's 2 parts to the property. That part I think everybody's in agreement on. It's the other part to the west that is the discussion. And the applicant's here, so I don't know if you want to mention anything.

I'd love to jump in.

Thank you so much.

I just wanted to be respectful. First of all, I just want to thank everybody. I'll make it really quick. My name is Leslie Masker. I'm with Wright Development Group. I've worked so closely with your staff, and then also I've reached out to every council member and also the mayor. And so I'm just so grateful for all of your feedback, and I'm looking forward to the additional feedback that we'll receive tonight. This is a site that we're really excited about, and we want to do something special with this site as well. Yes, ma'am. Currently working with Maverick, and then we also want to build our own hotel. We will be working with either a Marriott or Hilton to locate at this particular location, and we've already started those conversations. We purchased this property at a very high expense. It averages about thirty-one to thirty-two dollars. Typically with office space, the most that you're going to pay for land only is $16, maybe up to $18 a square foot maximum. And so since we're already into the property at such a high price, it makes it very difficult to build office space. And then something else to consider is that there really isn't Right now we have tenants in place for the particular uses that we have on site, and so that's why we have moved forward with the concept plan that we have. With that being said, we would love to hear all of the feedback that you have for us. We would like to move forward with a project that is obviously feasible in the will work for us. Something that is in the staff's presentation that you'll notice is that there was a report that suggests up to 200,000 square feet of Class A office space, and there are a few issues associated with that. Number one, there isn't necessarily a tenant in place for that. We're already into the purchase price at such a high rate, and then also parking becomes a very big issue. I believe the parking requirement for The requirement on this particular zone is 1 parking stall per 250 square feet, and so that would yield roughly 800 parking stalls. And so the cost associated with the parking and then also the land values, it just makes the Class A office space infeasible. I've been able to reach out to a few of the council members. Some of the things that we've discussed That includes a few QSRs, maybe a restaurant at the corner, also the hotel. Obviously, our preference is to move forward with this site layout that we have, but as I mentioned earlier, we're open to hearing good solid suggestions as well.

Mayor Pegg?

I think one of the additional concerns is access to the property. UDOT access to this parcel would need to come off of 4th, so it cannot access University Parkway, which also is a concern to the city. I think I read the changing of the light sequence. Is that something for the time or something? The timing of the— Is that something that needs to be done? That would be This might be a Paul question or a Chris question more so. Does UDOT say, okay, we'll change it?

Or Sam.

No, UDOT's done extensive studies with the widening of the parkway and the addition of the UVX bus system, and they're not going to change the timing because of a Maverick and a hotel.

We appreciate the question. We will also have our traffic engineer attend the meeting later on today.

Any other questions? So again, we'll— are you comfortable if we continue this on the BD zone?

Uh, yeah, I'm, uh, more than anything tonight, um, if you If you do make that decision, I would like you to express what other options that you would like to see.

Sure.

Thank you for asking.

I think it's important to know, Mayor, that we've been very upfront with the developer from day one in this process that staff is holding out for something bigger and better than a convenience store.

Showed them that.

The parkway was developed in a way The convenience stores were not allowed to ensure that we had higher tax revenue generating properties.

So I'm fine with that. What do you see?

I mean, if if office space doesn't pencil, I actually want the developer with Red Development told me on the phone that he talked to commercial office agents and they said that they thought the property had viable opportunities for office tenants.

So I guess.

The bottom line is the price that they're paying for the property with their financial model doesn't pencil. And I think it's important to note that it's currently zoned residential and they're paying $32 a square foot for residential zoned property.

So—

It'd be interesting to see a study though to show how, you know, it works with the office side.

Well, we do have a study that Zions Bank did for the Corridor for the TOD, and that's what the slide in the presentation talks about, how they see this as a location for 200,000 square feet of office. Is that with the existing building staying there, or is that with the— That was not made clear in the study if the existing building were to stay or be demolished. Is there room for that size of office with the existing building? I believe so. It's just under 5.5 acres once you take out the road. That's part of their acreage. Park lot's going to be an issue, obviously.

You'd have to have structured parking.

Structured parking is always an option.

So the existing building on site is about 28,000 square feet and it's 2-story. And so if you took that same footprint and put it right next door onto the existing structure, you would be required to go about 10, 11, 12 stories. Yeah, but you could do a 40,000 square foot storefront 5 stories high too.

I mean, it's feasible with the structure. Yeah, and the current building that's there is not—

the whole thing is not 2-story, just the one end is.

The majority— the northern portion is 1-story, the southern portion is 2-story. It was originally a shop when it was built, and then they went in and retrofitted it to a second So, are there any comments at your neighborhood meeting?

I appreciate you for asking that. Um, as I went through the proposal, there were about 4 in attendance at the neighborhood meeting, and they really liked the proposal because the buildings are a little bit lower than what they're hoping to see. I believe in the The ordinance allows up to 48 feet, but the fact that we have a 4-story hotel, we've offset it from the closest residential property line about 100 to 120 feet, and so they really appreciated that quite a bit.

Did you bring up the possibility of apartments?

No, because that hasn't been our proposal. We've been working so closely with Maverick, and then we've really want to provide a hotel at this location. We think it's ideal to help support UVU sporting events, also graduations, and it's so close to the BRT line that you can go all the way up to BYU and support those events as well. We also feel that the convenience store is a fantastic supporting use to the hotel just because it is open 24/7. And those who are staying within the hotel, if there are any kind of amenities that they have forgotten, they can easily go to the convenience store to pick up anything that they may need.

Now, the convenience store is different than the gas station?

Yeah, so a convenience store is, uh, it's basically—

Right, no, I know what it is.

Yeah.

But you're looking at it without the gas pumps?

Um, no. The proposal is to include the gas pumps.

But could you—

If it makes a difference, we could push the building up to University Parkway so that you do have that presence of a building and then push the dispensers towards the rear. And we would love to install some type of a nice pocket park for the passengers riding the BRT line so that they can Obtain any of the fresh amenities that the C-Store offers and then also have additional seating, include bike racks, those types of things. It's actually a great use for the BRT line as well.

So, Ryan, looking at that, if the hotel is on University Parkway and is an upscale hotel, but they put the convenience store at the bottom as a mixed-use facility with To the rear. What are your thoughts?

Well, we did talk to them about doing a mixed-use building on the corner with the convenience store on the bottom and the pumps to the back, and we're not opposed to that. Okay, we think office goes better with that.

I understand, I'm just getting your feeling.

But keeping in mind, once you open up gas stations, you're going to want to—

Hobby Lobby is going to want one in their parking lot. Well, I shouldn't say Hobby Lobby.

Ashley Furniture has a pad. So, the dealership could possibly put a convenience store on their corner.

So, I understand. Do we have to open up the whole parkway if we want just one location?

Yes.

You're going to amend your zoning parking.

Lowe's is underutilizing their parking lot. There's a bunch of different ones that could.

So, that could open up a real can of worms.

I mean, In-N-Out Burger is a pad site that was recently done. Pollo Loco is a new pad site. There's a bunch of different ...pad sites that have been built, the gas station could easily go on Ashley Furniture's corner, do the same type of access that this one's proposing, or similar. Sam?

So the, the biggest hurdle for me, and we talked about this, was just even just the optics of having a gas station right next to one of our, you know, brand new transit stops. And I attended a workshop last week at ULCT about Yeah. I'm a big proponent of transit-oriented design, and one of the things that we were discussing is how that land immediately becomes more valuable when it's right next to a transit stop. And so you still have to make the numbers pencil, but if you're wasting too much of that land on parking, for example, it makes all the rest of it harder to deal with. So if you had like a mixed-use facility where you don't necessarily have to have as high of parking because you have the businesses using it more during the day and the, you know, residents using it at night. It, I think, allows— would allow a developer to make those numbers pencil a little easier without having to, you know, develop tons and tons of just parking again right next to a transit stop that I think is one of the more valuable transit stops that we have in the city.

So, question, Leslie. So we're— we realize how closely tied you are to Maverick. In your relationships. But in discussing this, if we didn't want gas pumps— convenience stores, okay, but gas pumps, no— what are your thoughts there?

That's something that I've had a discussion with some of the other council members, and I was able to look at the use chart in the PD-5 zone. If we could consider maybe 2 QSRs, quick-serve restaurants, Or a restaurant at the corner, that may be something that we would be open to as well, which that also matches the height of the buildings that are located.

Restaurants in place of the convenience store or in addition to?

We would love the convenience store, of course.

But I mean, I'm not saying convenience store is a gas station and a convenience store. I'm looking at it as 2 separate items. You're looking at Maverick as one I'm just saying, you know, I've stayed at Marriotts before where they have a convenience store down below without a gas station just for the residents. I could see that happening.

There was a council member that actually asked me that. I think it was Councilman Lentz. And to the best of my knowledge, Maverick doesn't have a convenience store without the gas pumps.

There's only one That's fine, you could go to somebody else.

And that's downtown Salt Lake, but that is their worst operating store. In fact, it's kind of a joke around—

But I've stayed in Marriotts, for example, that have convenience stores, not related to Maverick, but a convenience store on the main level, and it works very well, very well used. Anyway.

We appreciate the comment.

Thank you.

All right, any other comments? Okay, let's move on then. Thank you. The next one is a public hearing. The applicant requests the city amend the Orange City General Plan on approximately 16.72 acres of property located generally at 1577 South Geneva Road from the low-density residential designation to the medium-density Residential designation. And Jason, you're the presenter on that.

So we worked with Mr. McDougall about 4 or 5 months ago to ask him to bring the general plan forward without the PD zone to see what the appetite is of the council. Obviously, this staff, based on the decisions that are made by the council in 2015, was annexed. The general plan was put in place. It is a single-family Yes. And then light industrial on the west side of Judy Barone. This is before you tonight to see what the, what the question is, if it's doable, if it's feasible. Our opinion, and the Planning Commission has made a recommendation that it stays the way it is, so they've recommended that. The other option I guess we can consider is looking at maybe a PRD, which is a lower density. This is proposed— the PD zone is proposed Opposed?

Opposed.

11.6 units per acre. If the council chooses to do this as medium density, they will be back before you with this PD zone for the 11.6 units per acre. I don't know that we're necessarily opposed, but the way that this structure is done with the IFFA and the IFFP, all those types of impact fees and stuff, the analysis that was done at the time of the annexation and the rezones, the density was at 4.3. 3 units per acre. And that's kind of the path that we've been going down. The design of the lift stations and all that were based on that density. So if the council chooses to change that and change that direction, that's— I don't know if that's an issue. The fact is that we need to change those plans going forward with the upsizing and different design, you know, with the capacity of the sewer, the capacity of the lift stations, and things like that. So that's the direction we need to know now because the design that we're going The cost of going down is for low density.

So when you say changing it to the PRD zone, how many units per acre on that?

So PRD zone allows up to a maximum— typically it's a 7. If they have homes on the property that they take out, they can get a bonus of 3, so a maximum of 8 units per acre. Right now PRDs are developing around 6 or less units per acre.

And the medium density is how many units per acre?

8.

8.

So the PRD and the medium density are pretty close?

Pretty close. We still recommend if the council chooses to go down the PRD route is that we look at the plans and different things, lift stations, to see if that— if we do this PRD, then chances are other PRDs are going to come in that area to make sure that the capacity supports it.

Yeah, I was going to say, how do you move How can you move forward or look at doing that if you don't even know what could be supported or not supported? And you are changing direction of what we originally started.

Right, so we'd had a plan that shows if we take the low-density residential that we have designated now and change that to a medium density, so 8 units per acre versus 4, and we look at our plans to see whether we need to increase that capacity, whether that's a redesign of the lift stations, whether that's, you know, increasing pipe sizes, That's what we need to look at before we go down that road. So this is essentially, Mayor and Council, this decision tonight is essentially a tipping point decision. If, if in fact the decision of the City Council was to proceed with the PRD or the MDR designation, then that would essentially require the city to revisit all of our— obviously the general plan, revisit the utility infrastructure plans that were designed, because as Jason stated, they were essentially designed and scaled to low-density residential. That would then require us to update our capital infrastructure master plans tied to that area and ultimately our impact tied to that area. So it's not just a matter of Making a decision and saying, well, we're going to proceed forward. The concern is in proceeding forward, if we do move forward with a, with a PRD or an MDR, then that's going to require us to revisit the entire utility infrastructure scenario in that area.

But that's what brings the question to me, is how can we sit there and contemplate changing this When we have no idea what the costs are or the ramifications, it would seem to me like we would need to have that information first before we would consider this.

That's our point. If we want to go down that road, we continue. Allow us to do all the information before we come back and make those changes. That's our point. That's what Mr. McDougall is saying. Well, I think you have capacity, but he's saying let's take it from other places, stick it in my development, and then in the future we'll have capacity.

But I'm just saying, personally, I'm not comfortable making any changes unless I know what the ramifications and costs are. So it seemed to me like we'd want to have all that information first prior to making any changes.

We concur. Unless, Mayor, that there's no vision with the city council that wants to make the change, and that's comfortable with the vision that was implanted there.

Several years ago and we envisioned staying with that, then we don't need to make—

go through the process of calculating all the changes.

And that's true too.

That's our recommendation, is that we stick the course that we're going right now. If you want to make the change, we're all for it, we can do that, but it's going to take some time to go through that process before I think we should make that change or stick to the course that we're on. So we talked about this, I think I think we had a special meeting or something.

Yeah.

And I brought up the fact that there's property out there that's not in our— we didn't annex it. So if that comes to fruition and we annex that or we have that property, are we shooting ourselves in the foot because we're not looking forward to build it now, which is cheaper to build now than build later?

So that was my point.

One of the things we talked with the property owners who chose not to participate And be included was in the future, prospectively, then if you were to develop, then the cost of infrastructure development would be 100% on you.

So—

And—

We tried to take that into account.

We tried to say, look, we're not suggesting you have to develop, but if you ever want to be part of this into the future, it's probably a good idea that you get in on the ground floor. I mean, and when they pass on, I mean, their kids probably want to sell. And then, yeah, well, the 2 main property owners that we're referring to basically were adamant that they did not want to be part of it. So it's their decision. You know, and it'd be interesting, you know, what would the cost be if we upgraded whatever so we can include that for the future? What is the cost? But we're not talking about the fact that we went with a pay-as-you-go plan, uh, really. Who's paying for that infrastructure that we would build now for those people who don't want to be in our city? Every, every one of our residents would pay for infrastructure that is sitting there waiting for someone who didn't want to be in our city to come.

And that's why we designed it and are planning it the way we are.

So kind of an I'm going to keep one, maybe you guys can address that. But there's 2 lift stations in the— right by the Springwater Park that actually this gravity feeds to those lift stations that lifts into the sewer treatment plant. Those are under design right now, and it's based on the capacity of the 4.3 of that area. If we change that, now that's in design and hasn't been constructed, now is the time to decide if those get upgraded beyond what they're doing right now. Any increase in density will affect that design. It would turn the underdesign— construction up. Capacity is what we would need. So this is a pivotal point, as Jamie mentioned. Now is the time to decide, because once we go down that road and design it, then all of a sudden we change it, it's going to cost us even more to upgrade it. It's just like, you know, we bought into the Jordan L, which everybody's saying, ah, you used too much money. Look where we're at today. We're sitting pretty.

So I'm just I have a question about the Mansell property. What was the density on that one and how many per acre?

They're around 6 per acre, roughly. I didn't pull the actual number, but it seems like it's roughly 6.

So would we—

something like that that we've already approved on there, would that be—

is that a PRD? It's not a PRD. It is a PD, but it's a density similar to a PRD. There are some restrictions if you're calling a PRD. They can have 2 stories or they can have a basement. They can't have both. So there are some restrictions in a PRD as it currently is constituted. So it doesn't— it wouldn't be able to build one like the Mansell right now without making some modifications to a PRD zone for that area. That's another option to look at. A PRD would go right now like you're seeing Abbey Road and other things. Those types of PRDs would go out of there.

All legitimate questions.

Yeah, another thing is the traffic issue. Looking at the density that he's proposing, we're probably looking at at least 2,200 vehicles a day, possibly more than that because they're not anywhere close to services. Um, and they have one access on Geneva Road. Now they do show on their concept plan a future road to the north and a future road to the south, but if those Or if those properties take—

Don't develop.

Or take a long time to develop, or we can't require public roads to go through because they keep their existing zoning, or all of these different kinds of issues, you— we have a road or we have a development that can really can't reasonably be served by one access function. We really need to have other properties be zoned at the same time so that we can have a master— so we can have a grid network of roads that can handle this type of density.

Because again, you know, 2,200 vehicles a day at one access isn't feasible, really.

No.

And again, you know, if we had— if the road to the north, we knew it was going to connect in a reasonable amount of time. Road to the south, the same thing. And maybe we could say, okay, there's only a certain portion that you can develop until those roads go through. But it's— to just go ahead and rezone the property the way the request is made, uh, isn't going to work from a traffic standpoint. So that 2,200 is just out of that one development?

Uh-huh.

Compared to what if it were— if you What would the traffic be?

Well, what is it?

It's OS-5 right now. R-8 would be the typical one. So yeah, it'd be getting pretty, pretty small with, uh, 1 residence per 5 acres.

Could you design a large—

oh, sorry. But, but, but the master plan is for R-8, for 4 per acre. So I mean, you're You're saying 2,200, but we've currently master-planned it at a certain area. What's the increase? And the developer hasn't laid out the road network and how it would be for an R-8. And so I don't know how many units it would be unless we had somebody on the planning staff or the developer lay out what an R-8 would look like. So I talked with the developer before last week. He indicated that a PRD might be an option, but that would have to— like the smaller homes that you see in the packet, that's probably what the design would go with, some of the smaller footprint homes. That's what you'd probably see, probably a density of 7 units per home. So that's assuming they liked the PRD. In an R-8?

What's that?

You could do 7 per home in an R-8? No, that would be a PRD.

So my question is, if you went to a PRD, Do we have the volume in what we currently have? I mean, what you're saying to me, this might trigger everything, but—

We don't. We don't. We would want to look at it to see if we have that capacity or what we'll need to do to meet that capacity. That's when we designed it. We designed it as an R-1A, so anything that's greater than that—

I actually thought of planning that Sam said that they could accommodate this one area, we just couldn't accommodate the rest.

So maybe I missed—

Well, you could. Yeah, but if you want wanted to say we're only going to do this, but that kind of goes to the— that's not a fair assessment. If I'm the property owner to the south and now I want to do a PRD, well, we've already used your density, you're out.

I think the gentleman's argument that he came in at annexing time and Mansell was part of his thing, and so he was kind of there initially. So I think his argument would be that I was there and I—

and so I don't know. The argument he's making is if I'm first I get to take everybody else's density, which I think is problematic. So if you take it, it means I don't get it.

Even though you may be, you may be third in line.

Yeah, so our point, if we decide to do— let's say we move down the PRT route— in fairness, we need to look at the whole area and to make sure that we're okay with that density. If we're not, I mean, that's the question. Do we want to go down that route and redo our plans, or do we want to stay the route course that we are? Keep it low density. That— those are the 2 options. If we go down the PRD route, and we need to give us time to do the report— How much time would that be? I don't know, Sam, how much time do you need to review that? It probably takes 6 to 8 months, I think. Just the impact fee process alone, to adjust impact fees, is probably 5 or 6 months. 7 weeks.

And it would come at a cost too.

Yeah, so it will take some time. That's the direct— depending on the direction the council wants to take it.

Okay.

We'd like to make a comment on this as well. Outside of the engineering aspects and so forth, if you think about this, this is a big piece of pie in Southwest Warren with 1,250 slices as you build that pie. And when you change the density, then you're giving that one property A bigger piece of that pie to enjoy, whereas the others are going to thereby receive a smaller piece of that pie because the pie is only a certain size and it can't go bigger than through the IFFA.

You're making me hungry.

Unless you cook a bigger pie, then we can all have a slice of that pie.

We got to bake a new pie here is all I'm saying if we're going to build that route.

And then if we don't and we increase the densities, then we're will give you some maybe unfair— perhaps an unfair— some people are going to have less pie than others.

You really can't have your pie and eat it too. You can't have it twice, that's what I should have said.

All right, thank you. Jamie, do you have anything to say?

Uh, no, just, uh, want to recognize we won't have another meeting, uh, through the end of the month. Councilmember Spencer has a birthday, so So we'd invite you all to join Councilman Spencer. We'll have carrots and celery dipped in chocolate sauce after the meeting.

Belly dancing.

No belly dancing. No belly dancing.

All right, let's go ahead and adjourn and move over to our city council meeting. If we could have everyone come forward to start our meeting. Jackie, do you want to let us know when you're ready?

Hello, are you there?

Yes, we are. We're waiting for a camera issue, Tom.

Okay, thank you.

I'll hit mute. All right, we would like to welcome everyone out to our city council meeting this evening. We would like to begin with a prayer to be given by Mark Tippins, and then the pledge of allegiance to be given by Steve Ward.

August 12th, from 10 until 2. And on October 12th also, we have the Utah Valley University President's Scholarship Ball at the UCCU Center at 5:30 PM. We now would like to invite the Library Advisory Commission to come forward. And provide to us an annual update of their activities. And, Char, as we've done in the past, if we could have everybody introduce themselves. I might mention that Councilmember McDonald is not here with us in person, but he is on the speaker and is listening in and participating.

So—

Good evening. Tom, can you hear us? Well, it's my understanding he's there somewhere.

Yes, I am.

Yes, yes, I can. I have the mute button so you won't hear highway traffic.

Sorry.

Okay, glad to have you here. Char, why don't you go ahead?

Thank you for having us this evening, Mayor and Council.

Suzanne Stratton is our chairperson.

Do you want to turn that on? I don't think that's on.

Sorry about that.

Okay.

Suzanne Stratton is the chairperson of the Library Advisory Commission, and she was not able to be here tonight, but Marcia Cerny is our vice chair, and she is here. I will let them introduce themselves, but we also are missing tonight Terri Potts-Smith. She's just finished her second term on the Library Advisory Commission, and she is out of town, and she's going to be retiring from the commission, but we appreciate her service. And we also just wanted to recognize Councilmember Seestrand. He's been our council liaison this year, and we've appreciated working with him. So I'll just let them go ahead.

Okay, make sure it's on. There you go.

I'm Marcia Cerny.

I'm Courtney Burns.

I'm James Jones. Ken Bonney.

Want to turn that one on as well.

Ken Bonney.

Okay.

Mary Stovall Richards.

Okay.

So who wants to go first?

First off, we're excited to be as members of the Library Advisory Commission to present, as we firmly believe that when libraries succeed, communities succeed. And we're proud to present some of the successes we've had this past year.

If we could—

there we go.

And so I'd like to report on our centennial-themed summer reading program. This year we had nearly 3,200 participants and also 640 families comprised of that. We had 17 various activities, and on the next slide we'll illustrate what some of those activities were. with 3,300, over 3,300 in total event attendance. And we received a lot of positive feedback, 93.3%. And we're kind of convinced that the other 7% must have misunderstood the survey question. So, but we received a lot of very valuable feedback to make the next, next year's summer reading program an even bigger success. And all studies have shown that when young, there is that summer slump, that when students neglect reading during the summer, there tends to be a fall-off, a drop-off that has to be made up at the start of the year. So we're pleased with so many schools. 93 different schools participated in the summer reading program, and with Cascade Elementary leading the way. And on this next slide, it just shows different events that we had. And again, you can see that a lot of community engagement came out of this and a lot of fun. And it helped cement the Orem Public Library as the community anchor of Orem. That's a nice segue into something that I'd like to speak to for just a second. And that is that One of the great things about our library here in Orem is that it serves so many different populations and ages. And one of those age groups are the offerings for teens. And just looking behind me, I noticed that we have at least one young person in the— well, not that anyone else is old, but there's one scout out there. And one of the great opportunities for, for the young people in the community is to get involved with some of these teen offerings at the library. There's a very active teen library council that allows young people to, to develop leadership skills. And that in addition to those opportunities, the, the collection itself geared to young people, the, the, the YA offerings is vast and and circulates a lot. Maybe I'll just— well, one other thing that I should mention is that I think that the library does a great job of collaborating with our partners in the community. I work at Orem High School, and frequently we benefit from the outreach from the public library. The teen librarians visit our different departments at the high school publicizing the, the, the programming and the events that are being hosted. And like Ken mentioned, many of our students can take advantage of the summer offerings when we're closed. If we could just go to the next slide, there are a few photos here of some of the, the teen events of the past year. The one on the left in particular was very popular. Um, a game night and, um, and kind of focused on some role-playing games and, and very well attended, as are many of these events for teens.

All right. I'm going to talk a little bit about library trends. Um, at our, our library, uh, we continue to have, um, a desire for connectivity. So individuals and families want to be able to come to the library and connect with each other and with others. And we have some examples of some of those things that the library provides for our individuals and families in the community, such as the toddler programs and allowing parents after those programs to be able to interact and socialize with each other. We have groups that meet in the library such as the Pins and Needles Handiwork Group, which is a longtime group that has met in the library that offers opportunities for individuals with hobbies and other needs such as that to meet together in a space and to be able to work on those skills or learn those skills if if they're new to them. We have an increased interest that we are meeting with hands-on classes, that individuals and families want to come to the library and learn how to do things. And we see that in the makerspace as well as with other programs such as quilting and sourdough starter and other things like that that we are offering in the library that allow our patrons to come and learn in a hands-on manner. We also have an increased interest in our community of family activities, activities that they can come and do as an entire family. And we have a wide, wide range of opportunities of programming and activities that they can come and do that. We are, of course, Also seeing just an increase in interest and use of the makerspace. There is a picture of one of the activities that they did using the 3D printer. One of the things that we are looking at and doing in the makerspace is both creating opportunities for open lab for individuals who know how to use the space to come in and use it, but also creating some modules that people who don't know how to use a 3D printer or some of the other equipment can come in and watch a short video and then kind of have that step-by-step walk them through how to use the equipment in the makerspace so that that can be available to all levels of interest. Ebooks and e-audio continue to be massively popular with our library. We've got just a little over 28,000 checkouts each month. So massively popular programming there, or opportunities there. And then passive programming is, is another thing that is of great interest in our community. That's programming that individuals and families can come and do not at a specific time, but at a time that works for them where they can come and check out a book bag with an activity in it where they can come and participate. During the summer reading, there was a town city building project. They could come and create their own buildings on their own schedule and then contribute that into the— to the city that was being built. So that was— that's a nice opportunity that we give to patrons who may not always be able to come specifically during the times that our programs are set. And then just a little bit of a look at some of the most popular things that are being checked out from the library. Where the Crawdads Sing is the most popular fiction book that has been checked out. Becoming by Michelle Obama is the most popular nonfiction. Our most popular DVD is Mary Poppins Returns. That is, that is currently the most popular. We expect Avengers: Endgame to take that lead not too far in the future. So, and then the most popular picture book that is being checked out is The Good Egg.

The library also plays a very important role in the cultural life of Orem, and as you'll see on these next 3 slides, this is everything from concerts of all types.

Joe McQueen, who was a 100-year-old jazz musician who had been living in Utah for 75 years, performed, as did Cantorum. And we'll see on the next slide, we had community performances, everything from Alice in Wonderland to The Nutcracker.

And in the next slide, we can see that we had author visits and readings as well.

Thank you.

These are not the only things.

We also had a chemistry magic show, a UVU puppetry presentation, and a jazz quartet, the Turtle Island Quartet, whose appearance came as a result of the grant that the library wrote.

While most performers perform for free, we— the library does apply for grants to particularly the illustrious performers. Thank you.

The important thing is that the library is not just a place to check out books, but it's also a place to become culturally literate as well.

And the big project of the year was the beginning of the construction of the library hall, a project that has been talked about and dreamed about for many years. Currently, all of the fittings have been poured and a lot of dirt has been moved. And the large cement pour for the auditorium floor should take place about the 1st of October. And they're continuing to work on finishing projects like what doorknobs they need or what other kinds of materials and other kinds of things.

I find the—

I find the construction interesting, so occasionally I drive down State Street so I can see what's happening. So I think everyone's interested in it and looking forward to when it's completed.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Let's give them a round of applause. So don't get up just yet. I just wanted to say we love our library. We love what it does. I'm always amazed when I walk out of the children's library to be passed by families with children and mothers that are all getting books and taking them out to their car. And it's just great to see the activity that occurs. And then I always love coming to different events at the library, you know, the bagpipes, you know, the Baroque choir. Anyway, just great events. Utah State University coming down. So we appreciate very much what Char has done and the library staff do, and we appreciate very much what you as a commission do to help guide the library in the direction it's going. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

One more round of applause, please. Okay, we have time for personal appearances. We have 2 that have signed up. I would ask that you keep your comments to 3 minutes and give us your name when you come to the podium. First, we'll hear from Mark Tippett, after which we'll hear from Eric Wilkie.

If you haven't met my wife, she has some handouts. Could she pass those out to you?

Sure.

Thanks.

My name is Mark Tippett. I live in Orem, Utah. My address is 876 South 725 West. The other night, just to give you a glimpse at how my wife and I spend our evenings, we were watching a spy thriller on Netflix. And very early in the movie, the head of the Defense Department was talking to the prime minister, and he said, The citizens demand safety and security. But that always comes at a cost. I'm here tonight to talk about our first responders and our Public Safety Department. I had the opportunity over the weekend to meet a fire captain from Provo, and we talked a little bit about Orem.

And he said, Orem used to have the best reputation.

Everybody wanted to come.

Everybody wanted to come.

and serve at Orem's Police Department or Fire Department. But he said now, unfortunately, the morale is so low that no one wants to come.

In this handout that I gave you, there's some letters there.

And in one of them, They made reference to, for nearly 20 years, the city of Warremont has required paramedic certifications prior to hiring.

And at one point, at one time, every firefighter was a paramedic. However, recently, we have lowered our standards. This year, we have started to hire advanced EMTs.

Thank you.

With that said, the question I would like each of you to consider is, in a game of chess, would you be willing to trade a queen for a pawn? Again, would you consider trading a queen for a pawn? From another firefighter, he says, the changes that we want to see are not just money and benefits.

We need to see a change in our morale. In a recent discussion with another firefighter, just after being called in after involved the death of a small child, we both came to the conclusion that it was more stressful from the stress that we were getting from our city government than it is having to come to these fatal calls.

I would like to turn these letters over to you and hope that you'll spend a few.

minutes and read them.

I would like to see Orem back to where we were— public safety was our priority and that we had the best first responders in the state. And I know that that's something that we can do. I thank you for your service.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, council members, good to see you again. My name is Eric Wilkie. As for the career ladder, I will not be eligible for my raise until at least March 2020.

There are many others like me. The certifications are simply not immediately obtainable. Councilman Spencer asked repeatedly in the last meeting if classes were obtainable. and employees would be eligible. Would it surprise you to hear that several of our employees still haven't been able to take advantage of the Paramedic 2 and Paramedic 3 pay levels that were implemented several months ago because classes have been unavailable and postponed? Again, you gave approval for the budget, and most likely you thought the money was being spent in that area, but you thought wrong. The previous career ladder steps, like the newest ones, Are really just carrots being dangled in front of us. And as we learned from the last meeting, there is no IOU process for the fire department like the police department has. My pay, when it comes in March, barring the cancel—

canceled classes or other misfortunes out of my control, will be greatly appreciated.

In the meantime, I am willing to guess that we will continue to share the same feelings of frustration, knowing that you are being told one thing while another is happening. And while you give direction to do something, in fact, the opposite continues to occur. I have been told I cannot complain unless I have a solution. I have adopted this philosophy and would like to share a few suggestions that may resolve some of the issues we are facing. Number 1, most, if not all, the agencies in Salt Lake Valley have a pay scale system. The system is defined and is not ambiguous. It works there. They don't have to have compression problems.

And leapfrog problems like we have.

A survey is conducted every few— or a few years ago which identified some of the major improvements that needed to be made. If it is not apparent yet what improvements need to be made, it might be time for another survey. Lastly, if any of this is new information for you, then someone is not doing their job very well. I certainly— it certainly should not be the responsibility of the public to bring these things to your attention. Thank you again for your support and willingness to address the current situations. I read this from an anonymous source, one of our firefighters who feels under the breath of retaliation. He cannot speak out because of what will happen to his personal career. My son spoke up 2 weeks ago. 12 hours prior to the last shift that he worked for this city after 11 years, the battalion chief showed up to took all of his safety equipment, his personal equipment, leaving him with a radio, helmet, safety vest, considered him a safety officer. He had the clothes on his back and that was it. No one replaced him. No one came in to protect his rookie as a mentor. This means— and this has not happened before in recent memory.

Nobody has ever had this done.

This means that that station was down one man. They could not respond to a fire. They could not respond to any crash that needed extrication. My son, his rookie, that station, and the citizens of this area were endangered. If something would have happened in that 12-hour timeframe, say a fire in a building adjacent, they would have stood out there. By standards, you know that they would have gone in anyway under their own own duress and safety to take care of the citizens of this. Retaliation is alive and well in this fire department. We are all on the same team.

I'm here to help plead with you that we might find the root of this.

Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now go ahead and close the personal appearance portion of our meeting and move on to our consent items. We have 4 consent items. If any city council member would like to move the consent item to our scheduled items, please let me know. I will go ahead and read through this. The first is approval of meeting minutes of our city council meeting August 27th, 2019, and also the minutes of our city council work session of September 3rd, 2019. Number 2 is we have city manager appointments. The first is to appoint Haysom Sawkar to serve on the Planning Commission, who is replacing Dave Moulton, who's coming off, and then the reappointment of Stefan Frisbee to serve on the Board of Building and Fire Code Appeals. The third item is an ordinance amending the city code to reflect the change from Department of Administrative Services to the Finance Department. The 4th is the Finance Department Director Brandon Nelson, per our advice and consent on his appointment as the city's— as the city's new Finance Department Director. Do I have any of those items that anyone wants to move down to a scheduled item? If not, we'll go ahead and take a vote. I move that we approve all of these items. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, Councilmember Seestrand, we'll start with you.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, those actions take place, and at this point—

Aye.

At this point— thanks, Tom— at this point in time, we would like to have the city recorder come and administer the oath of office to Brandon Nelson as the new finance department director.

And the laws and ordinances of the City of Orem, and that I will discharge the duties of my office with fidelity to the same.

We give him a round of applause. Congratulations, Brandon. You'll do a wonderful job, as you have been for many years, and We appreciate the work that Richard Manning has done for many years. We'll now move into our scheduled items. The first one is a public hearing. This is an ordinance amending Appendix U of the Orem City Code by updating the tree requirements in all zones, and Jason Bench is our presenter.

Good evening. Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. This is a simple request. In— as you recall, in the Appendix U, there are tree selections that allow citizens to select trees throughout the city. Specifically, we're looking at trees that are within the districts. Recently, we've had a couple of applicants come in and Basically let us know that it was kind of difficult to find some of these tree selections locally in the nurseries. And as we did that, we reviewed the tree selection with Josh Story, who's our urban forester, and Jim Orr, who's our parks manager, and basically come up with some selections within these districts that would allow at least an option of 4 trees within the districts. The idea behind the selections in the districts is to have different and unique trees without throughout the districts. And so we're proposing that these be updated. In addition to that, as he's gone through, there are a couple trees that have had some issues, particularly the ash trees and some of the red maple or maple trees that have— are susceptible to disease. And he's asked that these be removed so that people don't plant these going forward. So the Planning Commission has reviewed it and made a recommendation for approval, and glad to address any questions.

Any questions or comments from the council? Okay, this is a public hearing, so we will open it up to the public. Anyone who would like to come forward, 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 questions from the council?

I'll make a comment.

Yes.

Just in driving around the city, I've really enjoyed the variety of trees that we have, and I commend our parks group and the arborist on what they've done to maintain trees and to do a great job. And I fully support this change in adding some additional trees to the options that we're looking at. So I would like to make a motion, Mayor, if that's okay.

I have to wait first and see if there's any other comments from the council.

Okay.

Okay, go ahead, Mark.

I would like to amend Appendix U of the Orem City Code by updating the tree requirements in all the zones as stated.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, you need to turn yours on.

Second.

Okay, um, okay, we'll go ahead and start with Councilmember Lentz.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Okay, and Tom? No, I got it. Tom, do you want to vote on this?

Sorry, I was on mute again. Yep.

Okay, keep her live. We're going to be live for a little while here. Okay, so the ordinance passes. Appreciate that. Thank you. Okay, the next is a public hearing on an ordinance amending Section 22 6-10 in the Standard Land Use Code 4832 concerning water storage tanks and Appendix A of the Orem City Code pertaining to water storage tanks. And our presenter is Jason.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. These are changes to allow water tanks lower than the current elevation, as you can see in the ordinance, that we currently allow up by the treatment plant at 49 10, which is the elevation above sea level. What we're proposing is to modify that to allow water— or storage tanks in lower levels, particularly in the R-7.5 and R-8 zone. But it has to still be a publicly owned tank or someone that services a publicly— or public facility, such as the Water Conservancy District. So the ordinances are outlined for that specific purpose. It has to be a municipal water storage tank, as as outlined. So we propose that these be changed to allow future expansion of these types of tanks that would be particularly to a municipal water authority. So any questions that I can address?

Any questions from the council?

Okay.

This is a public hearing, so we will open it up to the public. Anyone wishing to comment on this ordinance change, please give us your name and hold your comments to 3 minutes. Seeing as how no one is coming forward, we'll close this public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any comments from the council? All right, I would be open to a motion.

I can do that. I move that we amend Section 22610 and Standard Land Use Code 4832, Water Storage tanks and Appendix A of the Orem City Code pertaining to water storage tanks.

Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember Seestrand.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Tom?

Aye.

Okay, the ordinance passes. Appreciate that. We'll move on to item 10.3. This is a public hearing for an ordinance The applicant requests the city rezone the property located at 355 West University Parkway from the R-8 zone to the PD-5 zone and amend the PD-5 zone to include Standard Land Use Code 5530, gasoline service station with or without store, as a permitted use. And our presenter is Jason Bench. I think we have the applicant here, if she would like to come forward. Or if there's 2 of you, have you come forward. And if you could introduce yourselves. You'll need to turn on the speaker there.

Okay.

It's Leslie Mascara. I'm with Wright Development Group. Would you like my address as well?

Uh, we don't want your address. I'm sorry.

I'm Kevin Croshaw with Horrocks. We've been working with them.

Okay.

Horrocks Engineers?

Yes, Horrocks Engineers.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

Jason, we'll turn the time over to you.

Thank you, Mayor. Members of the council, just to orient yourself with the PD-5 zone, there— it's along University Parkway, roughly from 2nd East all the way to 4th West. The property in question is this piece right here, which is owned right now by Central Utah— sounds like you may have purchased the property— formerly owned by Central Utah Water Conservancy District. The applicants are here to request that that property be rezoned to the PD-5 zone. So that's one request. The other request is to amend the PD-5 zone to add as a land use within that zone gasoline service stations with or without a store. So there's 2 requests before you tonight. Just to show you the concept plan that the applicants have proposed, they do want to keep the existing office building that's currently there. They do also want to propose a hotel that you see there. And then they also want to propose a Maverick C-Store on the corner of 4th West and University Parkway. As part of our review, we did— as part of the BRT review, Science Public Finance in connection with RCLCo and Alta and CRSA did an overall study of the BRT line. And one of their projects or locations that they identified was this particular property that if and when it is redeveloped, they felt it was appropriate because of the views, because of the access and proximity to the transit. As you recall, there is a direct stop for the BRT line directly in front of this property. It does have some specific and fantastic views from I-15 and others. So with that, I mean, they can or did support up to $200,000.

Yes.

100,000 square feet of office. Of course, that's market-driven. This is the consultants coming up with a plan. It's not a definite, but that is something that they would support, and staff also would support that as well. What they're— the applicant requests, I guess, in 2 parts is that, like I say, you amend the ordinance to allow the Standard Land Use Code and then also rezone it to the PD-5 zone. Planning Commission did review the project, and they did recommend that the guest SLU code be denied and also that the PD-5 zone request be denied also. We would suggest that maybe that be continued and allow the applicant time to come back with a different concept plan unless the council feels differently going forward, but that would be staff's request. Any questions that I can specifically address?

No, I have a question. For Leslie, is there anybody working in the office building right now? I know that Central Utah Water moved to Xactware and has purchased that. So is there anybody in that office building as we speak?

It's currently vacant.

Okay. All right. And they did have— and you can see underlying this— some very beautiful gardens and grounds. sitting there. And my question is, we're going to discuss some of the things that could occur, but you did mention that you would like to, as part of the plan anyway, maybe use some of those grounds and, and have a little park there in the corner. Can you maybe talk about that a little bit?

I've prepared a presentation. Would it be okay if we I provided that to Steve earlier.

Sure. Hold on one second. Sam, did you have a comment or do you want to wait?

Well, just a question, and we can address later. But it had to do with the recommendation from staff to— if we wanted to proceed down that way, if we continued the PD zone part of it and voted now to decline or reject the gas station part of it. Is there a mechanism where we can send it back to the Planning Commission to have them review this again?

Because they—

one of the reasons I asked that, last year when we were voting on the student housing project not that far from here, I had hoped that we could send it back to the Planning Commission so they could review it again, because in 3 weeks between when they voted on it and when we voted on it, so much changed where the staff went from negative to neutral to positive. I But we just proceeded to vote. If, if we did go down that path by continuing it here, do we also have a mechanism to send it back to the Planning Commission to have them review any alternate plan that is proposed?

I would have to defer to Steve on that. Sure, you could request that it go back to the Planning Commission, have them ask them to review it again and give you their comments and recommendations on it.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so Leslie, if you'd like to do the presentation, that'd be fine.

While they're setting up, Mayor, I had a question. Yeah, go ahead. The current ingress and egress is situated— is that required to be there? Do they have flexibility to move that either further to the South or to the north? There is an elevation change as you go further south, so there is a significant elevation difference. I imagine they could. I mean, that's— they'd have to dig into the hillside and then have a driveway going up.

Okay.

But there is flexibility.

It's—

that's not required by the current— No, I think it's separated further south. Paul Goodrich asked them to widen the access a little bit, which they have. They're also the the access going west, there is— needs to be a separation between those 2. Okay, thank you.

And just to make it plain, UDOT does not allow us to do an access onto University Parkway from this property?

That is correct.

All right, Leslie.

Okay, but I guess I can go ahead and get started. The request that's before you tonight Yes. So the first request, as Jason so eloquently described, is we have a request for a text amendment to include a C store use. The zone that is directly adjacent on the west side actually allows convenience stores as part of that zone. I believe it's a permitted use. And the second request is to rezone to the PD zone. My first slide illustrates— as it's pulling up, it illustrates the PD-5 zone. But I did ensure that there was a bit of transparency so that you can see what is located within that area. The staff report identifies that this area, the PD-5 zone, is fully developed out, and in fact it is. A convenience store, there's a science as far as where it can locate. They typically locate at hard corners. They can't locate in line, mid-block, just because their business is all about convenience. And so it's how do I capture the existing traffic that's located in the surrounding area into the site as quickly as possible and as conveniently as possible. Thank you. Possible. And so if you look at that particular area, there are only a few areas where the convenience store can actually locate. One property being our property that— which includes our proposal. And then the other intersection would be Main Street, which includes a car dealership and then also a variety of all other businesses, including some existing buildings that are located within that intersection area. How are you guys coming on that?

I have a question.

Sure, Councilmember Sumner.

Well, you mentioned, I guess, the Maverick is what you're talking about.

A Maverick is what we're proposing for this particular site.

That's just their policy. They don't— they're in mid-blocks all over.

In order for them to be successful, yes, the hard corner is the most critical portion portion of property that they need to be located at. And so yes, you see that there are some convenience stores that may locate mid-block. However, the access needs to be superior in order to get vehicles in and out. But to have passenger vehicles drive a long distance, it becomes very inconvenient and difficult. This is the slide that I wanted to point to. And as you can see, at the corner of Main Street and University Parkway, it is currently zoned as a PD-12 zone, and so this zone change would not be applied to that particular portion of the property. And then on the rest of that intersection, you have Ashley Furniture. The existing parking requirement within the zone is 1 parking stall per 250 square feet, and so they do need parking associated with it. Visibility is very important to car dealerships, and so the likelihood of a convenience store being located at that corner is very small. The PetSmart— the parcel is so small, in order to get any type of a C-store, you would actually have to assemble both of those parcels. The typical size of a convenience store is about 2 acres, and so you, you would need a sufficient area in order to make that happen at that particular location. In the event that the council does— would like to see a convenience store located at this site where we're proposing it, there are also some other mechanisms that you could consider. One would be to allow us to rezone to the highway commercial zone, which is located directly west of this property. And then the other mechanism would be to allow us to create a new zone such as the PD-12 zone, but it would be a separate zone which would allow all of the PD-5 uses with the inclusion, of course, of the convenience store. And we would absolutely be open to that.

So, Leslie, just one second. Jason, do you concur with that?

Changing—

if this were changed to a PD-12, allowing then a convenience store in there that would not affect any other PD-5 areas? With a convenience store?

We don't. We don't want to see a gas station on that corner.

No, no, I know that, but what I was saying is it, it would not affect the rest of the PD-5 zone if it was a PD-12.

That is an option. Would you mind going to the next slide, please?

Oh, it's right here.

Thank you so much.

Uh, this is the second of, uh, discussion tonight. I just wanted to point out the existing building. It's 28,000 square feet. We plan on retaining the building and utilizing it. It's a very nice building. And then I also wanted to point the curvature of this road, which also impacts some of the views from I-15. And I'll kind of go through those with you. This is a view of the site. You can see it kind of back Here. It's hidden. You can't actually see the building.

This is from the west.

This is from the west looking east. Yeah, thank you so much. This is the Krispy Kreme, and then this is the Water Conservancy property right here. And then this is a view that's farther back. It's about 2 blocks west of the Water Conservancy property, and you can kind of see it Right about here. And then if you're sitting on the property looking west, this is your view. Very beautiful vegetation and landscaping. This is the Krispy Kreme. If you notice, the building is about 18 feet from the bottom up to the roofline. If you multiply that several times Yes. So from the base of the property to the peak of the vegetation, the vegetation actually expands over 108 feet. This is the view looking towards the rear of the property or the south side of the property looking west, which is of hotels and existing multifamily buildings. And then, of course, we're just back kind of looking east Yes. This is the proposal that we have tonight. It includes the convenience store located at the hard corner with the dispensers located along University Parkway. At the rear, we have a 4-story hotel which we will also retain. It will include 90 rooms and also 4 stories. And then, as I mentioned earlier, there's an existing office Yes. Building with 28,000 square feet. We are currently working with Maverick on the site. And as the mayor mentioned earlier, we would be open to providing some type of a pocket park located at the corner so that passengers who are using the BRT line will be able to connect into the site, enjoy the pocket park, And then also be able to purchase any amenities that are located within the convenience store. We're also happy to include some bike racks as well. We know that biking is something that's really important to a lot of those BRT passengers as well.

So Leslie, what would the pocket park include and how big would it be? Would it have any water feature to it?

If you would like a water feature, we discussed that initially. We would be open to including some type of a water feature. And then also, I believe we spoke about some type of an entrance feature sign for Orem City. And of course, we would be open to that as well. There's also an existing amphitheater that is located— I'm not sure if anyone has been out to the site. That is located in this area, and we're also going to retain that as an additional amenity. Something else that I would really like to point out about the convenience store is that they have an excellent security system. And I just feel like this adds an additional level of security for the passengers of the BRT line, especially for those passengers who are traveling throughout the dark.

Thank you.

Hours of the night. Maverick is typically used as kind of a safe spot where divorced couples will bring— they'll meet up at a Maverick because their security system is just such high quality. And in fact, it typically covers their site and then it spills over onto the streets. And so local police officers, if there's any kind of an accident at the intersection, they typically reach out to Maverick, that's always one of their first calls so that they can see what actually occurred. This is an economic development strategic plan that was prepared in 2014 by Zion Bank Public Finance. I believe it was adopted by the City Council in 2015. I've highlighted a few sections of this. study, and it basically states that there's a shortage or a leakage of yearly sales of approximately $35 to $36 million with a combined use between the convenience stores and then also the hotels. And I'm happy to pass this around. Would you mind helping me, Mayor? Is it okay if we approach the council and—

Sure.

Yeah, go ahead and pass that around.

Probably skip this. I had— Jason mentioned an additional study that was recently performed by the same group at Science Public Finance. They provided a TOD study, and what they're illustrating in this slide is that The rent rates for office is $16 a square foot. And the reason why this is significant is I've mentioned to many council members is it places a valuation of the building, the existing building, of $6.5 million. And so if you take the 28,000-square-foot building, you multiply that by the $16 a square foot office rate, it provides you with a valuation of $400,000.

Thank you.

$148,000. You divide that by the 7% capitalization rate, which is shown right here, and it provides you a valuation of $6.5 million on the building. This is another portion of that study, and it's just illustrating that this site, 400 West and University Parkway, is also ideal for future retail Just to—

So, Leslie, one thing I might say, the rental rates out in Lehigh are much higher than that, obviously. And we have the Canyon Technology Park, and their rental rates are higher than the $16 a square foot as well. So they're in the $21, I think $23, $25 range. And out at Lehigh, they're higher than that. So I understand you're 16, but I, I think the 16 is skewing your report, in my opinion.

If it is higher than—

Mayor, if I may, she's talking about net rates and you're talking about gross rates with CAM.

So net versus gross. But anyway, the rental rate that I've seen available for those properties are higher than What you're showing here.

So this is actually the—

and that's what I'm saying. They are not higher once you deduct sewer taxes, cleaning, etc. I think they're about the same, and she can confirm or deny that.

So this is actually from the study that was prepared by Zions Public Finance. This is the TOD study that Jason referred to earlier, and this is their number, which is $16 a square foot. The highest that we've seen from our brokers is about $18 a square foot. And so you will see a slight fluctuation, but our numbers are actually fairly close to the numbers that were provided in this report that was prepared for Orem City. And the last thing that I have is some elevations that Maverick has kindly provided to us, which I understand you're most likely familiar with their product, but they have included some new colors and materials associated with this particular building. And I would like to introduce my traffic engineer. His name is Kevin Croshaw. I'd like to give him a few minutes to address traffic and, and the traffic impact study which was prepared.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor and Council.

Thank you.

Just want to be brief and quick just regarding the traffic. We looked at the site. When a C-store is included in the traffic study, it's a very— it's a high generator of traffic, especially during the peak hours. And so as we looked at it, with the— with it being near University Parkway, we looked at that intersection as well as the 2 intersections, the access to the west, as well as the access onto the property. And so looking at the overall kind of with growth and with the site on— included in the analysis, the only real mitigations required would be to update the signal timing on University Parkway. That's its own animal. It's a big intersection. And adding lanes would probably be unrealistic anyways. And so that would be a large coordination effort with UDOT on looking at that on that side of things. Also looking— sorry, Mayor.

No, go ahead.

And then looking at the site specifically and the 2 accesses, the access to the west as well as the side access, looked at with our 2050 Traffic projections as well as the distance of those 2 accesses being so close. We looked at the queuing that's anticipated with the signal at University Parkway as well as just to make sure that the queues wouldn't— you know, so the left turns going west and the left turns turning in onto the site wouldn't impact each other. Our analysis shows that they're— the 95th percentile will not— there will not be any impact. Of course, I'm not going to say that it's never going to happen, but if it is, when we looked at it in the analysis, if it ever did happen, it would happen for maybe 10 to 20 seconds, and then it would— the queues would flush out and it would operate just fine.

The other—

Sorry, were those—

were those The studies you did based on current traffic flows that are going through the area there. And so the other thing we also looked at, too, is for our future growth. We looked at MAG's travel demand model and their anticipated growth with all of the projects anticipated through 2050 just to make sure that we're getting the right projections for growth.

Yes.

And then the other recommendations we have is to— as Leslie mentioned there, or I think it was Paul, there's a wider access to the site, a 50-foot access that will be accessing the site. And we would extend that 50-foot access to about 80 feet into the site to allow for the cars to turn in and to access the C-store without congesting access. Also, just for trucks, large trucks accessing the site would take the access road all the way to the back before entering into the C-store. That corner's too tight for a large truck. And then I guess, again, I think those were kind of the main recommendations from the study.

So— So when it comes to traffic, the only way I can really relate to this is the Maverick store on 8th North, just east of the freeway. And it's right across from McDonald's. It's north of 8th North. It looks like you have 8 pump stations proposed here, if I'm correct. I mean, as I counted those, it looks like there's 8 of them.

8 islands, but there's—

8 islands.

—pumps, yeah.

And I just know that on 8th north where the Maverick is, and with that many islands, it is a constant flow of traffic in and out on a very regular basis, and it, it gets pretty congested. They also have a Marriott Hotel— 2 Marriott Hotels right next to them, just behind them. But I am aware of how much traffic this will generate. At the same time, Krispy Kreme's doesn't generate a lot of traffic all the time, but sometimes it generates a tremendous amount when it has free donuts, when it has a sale, when it's a holiday. It becomes, you know, people are backed up all the way down the parkway for a block and then come around. So I feel like it's kind of a tight road to begin with. And the amount of traffic going in and out of the Maverick, I think, would bring a tremendous amount of pressure on this area. That's just my visual and my personal thinking anyway.

Could we possibly have Paul make a few comments about that and about—

If he wants to join us in the council room. He's out in the hall hoping that we don't put him on the spot, but— Paul, come on up. Maybe you can tell us what your thoughts are on the traffic as far as a maverick right there.

Do you have the other slide that shows the left turn queuing?

So while Jason's trying to queue that up, Kevin with Horrocks did a good analysis.

The basically the the proposed site would generate approximately just a little over 4,700 vehicles a day. A Maverick, a high-volume Maverick, especially if it's the only one in for blocks, might generate more than that. You can kind of see the I don't know if you can see make out the left turn.

turnarrows there between the Krispy Kreme shop and the Maverick access.

But those are pretty close back to back.

So for instance, you've got somebody northbound wanting to make a left into the Krispy Kreme and all of the other businesses that are in that area.

At the same time, somebody's coming down left into the Maverick.

So you'd be playing chicken. So what would happen if Someone trying to do a left turn into the Maverick, you have more than 2 or 3 cars and it backs up past the entrance to the Krispy Kreme.

They would then have to make a left turn from the through lane, so they wouldn't be able to make it over to the left turn area. So that's my biggest concern with the site is that, yeah, UDOT doesn't allow an access on University Parkway, and I support that. University Parkway has probably 50 55,000 to 60,000 vehicles a day on that area. And so we do need to limit the access to this side. And one of my biggest concerns through the whole process was that offset intersection.

Well, I mean, if we block Krispy Kreme entrance and exit, then that is a stuck area. And then cars are backing up Over onto the University Park. And I wouldn't recommend doing that. But I'm— what I'm saying is the cars would do that. If you had enough cars trying to come in, you're close enough that you could actually block that off with cars wanting to turn into Maverick where Krispy Kreme couldn't get in or out.

I think we're saying the same thing. Yes, that's a concern when you have 2 intersections that close together and that offset. One of the things You know, we really haven't explored putting the access further to the south.

Of course, there, you know, maybe there's an opportunity to have 2 accesses, one where it's currently at that's just a right-in, right-out, and then one that's full access further to the south.

So real quick—

I don't know if that would be conducive to the— what Leslie's talking about.

You need to get the quick in and What is the distance from the Krispy Kreme entrance to the Maverick entrance? I don't know how many car lengths that is or how much footage that is.

It's 80 feet.

And so a car length is how far? How long?

About 19 feet for an AASHTO passenger vehicle.

So you're talking 2 cars trying to turn left, 2 cars trying to turn left. So you've only got 4 cars there, plus maybe 2 more. So— I'm glad you understand that. You've only got room for about 6 cars. Well, I'm going by your 20 feet.

Well, and that's, you know, most people don't go bumper to bumper either. Most people like to leave a few feet, you know.

I'm just saying it looks to me like you've got room for about 6 cars before you totally block Krispy Kreme, and then you block Way less than that, but— Less than that, okay. Councilmember Seestrand, did you have a comment?

I think so. I'm trying to remember what it was.

We can come back. Councilmember Sumner has a comment, and we'll come back to you next.

It was mentioned to help with the traffic flow, we could synchronize the lights on University Parkway.

You made a comment about that.

Can you— Well, the traffic signals on the parkway are already synchronized. Well, I mean, it could change the timing or whatever.

Well, the timing has been changed to handle the high volume of traffic that's on the parkway. So I don't— I can't imagine UDOT changing their synchronization for the 55,000 to 60,000 vehicles a day to accommodate 4,700 vehicles from this proposed site.

I can't imagine that happening. Other than that, I think Mr. Croshaw has done a great job of analyzing the site. Again, because of the way they wanted— because of the way the developer proposed laying out the site, you know, they didn't want to have an access further to the south. They didn't want to consider that. But again, it's the, you know, how quickly can you get somebody in and out of a convenience store. And so it was one of those, you know, it was hard to balance that issue. Now, if there wasn't that Krispy Kreme on the other side of the street or if it was further to the side and lined up, but it is what it is. But whatever we do with that site, whatever happens to that site, we're going to have the same issue with whatever happens there.

Well, I was just going to say your different uses actually dictate different amounts of traffic. So a C-store necessarily involves people getting in and out quickly with convenience, and you're back and forth and back and forth. That's different than what you would see with a hotel or an office building. Councillor McEwen, did you remember anything you want to say?

Yes, and I remembered it from before. I was making a comment that So the aspect that I was looking at was if you isolate the different uses that are on there, Paul. So the office, the 28,000-square-foot office, that's not generating— is that generating much traffic?

Well, their traffic is more the peak hour, you know, when people come to work.

8:00 to 5:00. What about the hotel? And then the hotel is more kind of an evening sort of a thing. and, you know, a morning. But I, you know, I think they're probably a pretty good mix of uses.

But in my mind—

and again, we haven't actually studied what Zions proposed in their BRT when they looked at their BRT study. We haven't actually done a traffic study to say, OK, what would happen if there was more of an office component on this site?

Right.

That was kind of where I was trying to get to, was we're looking at— primarily the concern is the C-store from that standpoint because of the constant traffic in and out.

And the C-store is going to be more of a constant traffic feature.

Whereas a commercial build, an office building, would generate less traffic, generally speaking? Except for your peak hours? Except for your peak hour. But then again, you know, I don't know, you know, how much is the UVX line going to be able to contribute to somebody who wants to work in that?

Yeah.

And if you use transit, then the—

you know, that—

I think that's one of the reasons why Zion's recommended that site for office is because it would—

The proximity.

Yes, it would. Right now, too, there's— UVX is carrying 15,000 to 16,000 passengers a day on it.

Right.

And this would be a site where I think a lot of what would happen at the office building— now, again, you know, again, if you compare the UVX that's there at that intersection, the C-Store, yeah, sure, if somebody wants to get a Big Gulp— I'm sorry, that's the wrong brand.

Anyway, whatever else you get You know, that's one of those things that yes, it's a convenience.

If I've got a few minutes between the you know, then I'm going to go ahead and go there. But versus somebody who's going to let's say work at that location, and there you know not too many people are I think are going to go take transit for a few blocks to go get some goodies at a convenience store. You know, no matter what kind of a convenience store it is. But if it's office, they're going to— they're going to take that service every day. Thank you.

Do you mind if I address some of those items?

Sure.

OK.

I was going to say real quick, Councilmember Laredo, did you have a question that she maybe could address?

I just wanted to talk about the Planning Commission.

OK. All right, go ahead. I'm sorry.

I just have a few things. Typically, a convenience store, they're not necessarily a destination location. However, they capture the existing traffic that is located on the roads. It's not like a Chick-fil-A where you're going to actually drive to a restaurant to be able to enjoy that facility, but it's all about convenience and capturing that existing traffic. And so a convenience store doesn't necessarily add additional traffic to the roads. It's just capturing that. We have identified 3 different uses on the site which we feel are very complementary of one another, especially geared towards the high peak value— or high peak times. The convenience store obviously has a different peak volume. Traffic flow than the hotel, where the hotel you're going to see customers coming in throughout the day. The convenience store, it's basically capturing that existing traffic. And then obviously the office, the peak hours for that would be associated to most likely 8 to 5 or 9 to 5. And so we feel like those uses all complement each other very nicely. The other item that was brought up is Yes. The additional access, we're not necessarily hung on the idea. We like the location of the existing access, but if it does present some issues with queuing and stacking, which our TIS identifies that it doesn't, and I'll allow Kevin to address that, if it does, we have sufficient space on the site to actually locate that farther to the south or as mentioned, we would be open to providing a secondary access if that is something that is absolutely necessary. But as I have mentioned, RTIS, it doesn't necessarily reflect those issues that were brought up. The other item that was asked to consider is 200,000 square feet of office space and that the recent study that was performed by— I always forget their name— Science Public Finance, it actually identifies that 64% of the riders that are on the BRT line are between the ages of 18 to 24. And so if we're providing a lot of additional office space, I'm not sure how many really fit within that category of 18 to 24. The likelihood of them having their own vehicles is actually pretty high. And if we were to develop this site with the 200,000 square foot of office space, the code would require up to 800 new parking stalls associated to this site. That's all I have, and then I'm going to turn it over to my traffic engineer so he can address everything else.

OK. Yeah, so looking at the queuing— so yeah, it's about 80 feet for that kind of between the 2 accesses there. So when we run the analysis, we ran it in a program called Synchro.

Yes.

Or there is a simulation aspect to that where we put the anticipated volumes in there and we run it 10 different times where then we take the, you know, the average of those 10 runs to kind of get a good estimate of what those average queues are going to be. And as I mentioned earlier, our analysis shows that there will not be necessarily much conflict between the 2 accesses. But of course, if the city would just pass a no Krispy Kreme lights on during PM peak hour, I think we'd be OK.

Right.

But there's, there's always the potential of, of that overflow occurring.

Right.

And another— as we, as we took our traffic counts, the majority of the vehicles accessing the Krispy Kreme do come from University Parkway. And so on those occasions where there are so many vehicles, it probably— I've never been there when it spilled out onto University Parkway, but I'm sure it has before.

It has. I've seen it.

Yeah. And so, but the majority of them are coming from University Parkway and turning right into the site versus turning left. I know—

So my question is, you just mentioned it's 80 feet from the one entrance to the other entrance. And you show a left turn into Krispy Kreme's and a left turn into Maverick. And so if 80 feet, that allows 4 vehicles, and you've got 2 basically going into Krispy Kreme's and 2 going into Maverick, I think there's no way that you're not going to run into stacking and covering up Krispy Kreme and then— I think that's a good point. backing up, because 2 cars to go onto Maverick, I think, is totally unreasonable. I mean, if you go, like I say, to 8th North and turn there, you'll see what I'm talking about. 2 cars doesn't get it. And when cars— anyway, it just— I don't think it would work. But just practical experience.

Yeah, and that makes sense. And I I do.

I—

as we, as we mentioned in our report, I mean, the analysis does say that it'll work, but of course there's always those chances that it's going to happen. And even in the, in the simulations, we saw that happen a few times. But when it did happen, it was cleared with, you know, within—

I just can't envision 2 cars turning into Maverick as being reasonable. I mean, that isn't what happens at a Maverick. But anyway, but— and do you have more? Because Debbie had a question. Go ahead, Debbie.

So my assignment is with the Planning Commission, and I was at this meeting when they talked about this. And I have to say that there was little or no support for the C-store. The hotel, I think, was fine. They were fine with it. The office was fine. But there was not a person on the commission that thought a gas station was appropriate here. Some of their reasons is that we've mentioned this is a great place. The views— several of them mentioned the views. They were concerned about the egress and ingress. And so I think— I personally think the hotel would be fine, the office, but I think the gas station is something that we—

Yeah.

There's no doubt that we need a gas station. We are Our sales tax leakage does show that we need it, but we think that— we as in they, the commission— think that that could probably be located someplace else where we could capture that sales tax. So I guess the way I— what I'm saying is if we could do a mixed-use or move the hotel closer to the parkway, this is a prime piece of real estate, and I think our planning commission I think they were almost unanimous in denying this. Do you remember?

They were unanimous.

They were unanimous, yeah.

So I think there's just very little appeal to the C-store. So I just wanted to communicate what they said. And like I said, I do think there's a merit here. And I think the hotel and the office could certainly work. And maybe we could come up with a different concept plan for the gas station. Do you feel that you would be open to potentially considering If we took the existing C-store—

is there any way—

I'm going to try to—

existing— where is it?

Right there.

If we took this existing C-store and located it closer to the street—

No.

—locate the dispensers to the rear and provide a nice pocket park— I think a hotel closer to the Parkway would be acceptable with a nice park there, but I I don't think the gas station would have very much appeal. That's just my opinion. Is it the dispensers or is it the building, the architecture? I'm just trying to get feedback so we know how to move forward. I just think it's the gas station. I think— I think Mavericks are actually lovely. I think they do a good job. I don't think it's anything to do with Maverick. It's just having a gas station there. I just don't think it's the right fit for that property.

So Jamie has a Thank you.

Just a question for you, Kevin, and frankly, I'm surprised to see you here. I just want to clarify that Horrocks Engineers was this— was the engineer that completed the city's transportation master plan.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Yeah, and you're part of a project team that represents the city a block to the north on the roundabout project here on 4th West.

So So how does—

how does what you're doing in this particular situation affect the traffic flows and the outcomes on the other projects that the city has retained you to represent the city on? Well, from what we've done, there wasn't much impact to the north of the intersection. But I mean, we did look at using the travel demand model, which was used in the transportation master plan. It has been updated a few times since we did it in the master plan, but we used that for—

We actually hired you to update it, didn't we?

In—

The modeling.

Modeling, yes.

As part of the master transportation plan.

Yes, that was a few years ago.

Okay.

Yep.

Councilmember Lentz.

So I'm thinking very similar along the lines that Debbie is, and I'm excited to see some activity with this site. I think it's a very, you know, great location. Excited to see what ends up going in there. I'm just not convinced that this is it yet. You know, very similar I love the office, love the hotel. The gas station is what concerns me. And not even necessarily the convenience store as much. If, you know, if we had, like, quick-serve restaurants or something like that on the ground level and then had, you know, office space above it, you know, some kind of mixed use, I think that would really help us best leverage that UVX station, which is right across that crosswalk. In my mind, if I was envisioning what would be the absolute worst thing to put right next to a transit stop, it would be a gas station. And I, you know, nothing against Maverick or, you know, I have an electric vehicle and, you know, nothing against gas vehicles. We have one as well. But I just don't see—

Maverick offers EV stations.

Sure. I just don't see this as necessarily the forward-thinking, like, future of how I'd love to see that site develop. I think the mixed use would also help us— I talked about this in the pre-meeting— the need for additional parking where this really is prime real estate. And if you have mixed use where you have businesses using it during the day and, you know, different types of uses, I think you've captured that a little bit here with the office space and the hotel. But it just reduces the amount of parking required to really adequately park Yes. to the east. And even if you look at the zoning map where this kind of stands out as a residential zone in the midst of all these different types of commercial zones, it just seems like a better fit for the PD-5 zone. And so I'm not necessarily opposed to incorporating that into the PD-5 zone at the right time and for the right use. I'm just not— I'm not concerned that the gas station is the right way to do that. Another point was brought up about the security cameras that you know, Maverick puts on their stations and how that can be useful, even with just kind of keeping things safe. The concern I have is when we— I think it was part of our impact fee study where we were looking at, or maybe it was the business licensing presentation where we're talking about different types of businesses throughout the city and how many calls per square foot or per location we got, and convenience store was just way out ahead of all the other types types of land uses that we had in the city. And so I understand that they have tighter security, but there's a reason for that, because we need higher security there. And so I'm not— I don't necessarily buy the argument that having that next to the transit stop would help with security. In my mind, it might be the opposite of that. As far as the point about this not necessarily being a destination, I think there's some validity to that in that it's not necessarily going to create a lot of new trips just to go to the gas station. But if you look at it in the specific proximity here, I do think it creates a lot of additional trips on that 400 West site there. So maybe not more trips along University Parkway. It's probably just capturing existing trips there. But I do think that 400 West, you know, kind of inlet there is going to have a huge uptick in the in-and-out traffic, whereas with a hotel or an office space, you know, you might— one person might be going in and out of there a couple times a day. But if it's a gas station or something like that, you're just going to have people constantly replacing each other along that intersection. There was also something brought up about young people not necessarily using the office space as much. I'm not sure I would agree with that. Most of the people I know that are in school are working as well and have a job. And even if, you know, you're talking about people that are graduated and in the, you know, a full-time job outside of that, I think a lot more are starting to choose public transit if they can have that convenience factor of, oh yeah, my office is right next to the station. So, and especially with— I'm not sure how long the UVX line is going to continue to be free, but as far as free fares So I do think that could factor in as well where if it was office space, I think you'll have more people choosing that as— even if they still have a car that they leave at home, I think they'll be using that a lot more for their daily commute if their office is, you know, literally right across the street from the UVX station. So again, I'm excited to see what goes in here and I'm confident that, you know, we can work together to find that. I'm just not sure we're there yet with this proposal.

Okay. I've got a bunch of comments I want to make, but I think we'll open it up to the public to hear any comments from the public first, and then I'll make my comments. So this is a public hearing, so we will open it up for anyone who would like to make a public comment. Please hold your comments to 3 minutes. And give us your name when you come to the microphone.

My name is Linda Brown. As I'm hearing, your only comments on the traffic is coming off from University Parkway heading south. My husband Barry and I use that street often as we come off from Sand Hill Road between a lot of apartments, and there is a blind hill, a blind curve coming up that hill, and it would be a quick right turn into this Maverick property and a left turn into Krispy Kreme. I think it would be a real hazard for traffic from coming from the south.

OK, thank you.

Were you to the neighborhood meeting? But no, you, you were? Okay, thank you. I'm Maria Georgie.

I'm one of the neighbors.

I'm not directly behind the development.

I am—

oh, further down.

I am diagonal from the development.

I know that other zones were brought up as a possibility, like a highway zone or PD-12 zone and/or other zones. I would hope that whatever zone you choose to change this property to, you're paying attention to the neighbors. I'm familiar with PD-5.

I know the 7-foot wall. I know the 20-foot setback, so forth and so on. PD-12, I don't know if that was an option for a gas station or not, but that wall is only about 5 feet.

The highway zone, I don't know how that impacts the neighbors.

And you're also talking about—

I don't know if any of the neighbors are here that are living directly behind there—

you're talking about possibly moving the entrance into that area further south. Some of those neighbors, I'm not sure what they would think of that.

And then I did want to make a comment about what they made— about what they stated about 18 to 24-year-olds doing primarily riding that line. I guess when I was working, I probably would not give up my car because I would take my car during the day to run other errands and do other things.

I also don't know that you have much transit.

So if you're trying to do it, make it an office building complex, I don't know that you have many bus lines going across the city for them to get on that bus line to get on the other line to get to this office building. And so I don't know if that works at this point in time in terms of how the mass transit is set up in Orem City.

And I, you know, to speak positively of the Wright Development Group, I understand that they work well with neighbors.

So I did want to say something about them.

All right.

Thanks.

Thank you.

My name is Martin Wright.

I came today because I wanted to talk about something else, but that's okay.

I've watched—

and you got to go watch what happens around other cities. I work in just in Linden. They're building roads, they're building buildings, and And you can't predict how much traffic and they're on one-lane roads. This is a major road that you're taking people off and moving them onto. You're moving them onto an intersection. You're going to have the height where she had the gas station pumps. Were those lights shining across the street through the traffic? You know, across University because it's higher up right there, it's shooting across. they pull through those pumps. You know, I honestly don't like the way Mavericks look. That's just my personal opinion. I've been throughout the country.

People have different ways of managing this.

Put the hotel higher up. Make them drive in to get to the hotel. Use the parking from the office building to supplement the hotel.

I've been to hotels like that recently in Raleigh, North Carolina.

That they have an office building building in at night. The hotel takes all the parking spaces during the day.

The office building has all the parking spaces back.

You know, there's ways to do— to complement the parking. You know, there's ways to make this a win-win for everybody. I don't think that having a gas station right there with the traffic— Mayor, like you said, there's not enough space there. If you're going to add more— a wider traffic entrance and you're going to provide, you know, more easements to the side of it to give people on and off, it makes sense.

But if you're just going to move it and put a divider down the middle and expect people to get into it, I don't see how they're going to do it.

So either you've got to move where the Maverick— where it's going to be at or change the philosophy of how we— and what do you want the city to look like when we—

first thing you drive into, oh, oh, there's a Maverick on the right-hand side.

That's great.

I think that's a great question.

I don't think I want to—

I want to be in a city like that.

I'd rather see something that's— that's more classy. Maybe it's hidden beside something, you know, but we want to see—

the city wants to be family-oriented, and this just kind of makes it community, or, you know, it takes that away. It takes that away.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak? If not, we'll close the public comment portion of our meeting and bring it back to the council. I would like to make some comments unless anybody else wants to make some first.

Mark? Do you actually own this property or is it just on contract to buy pending the outcome of the meeting?

We're currently under contract and we're scheduled to close soon on it. Regardless, we're moving forward, um, with the purchase.

Okay, thank you.

Any other comments? So yes, go ahead, Leslie.

Some of the neighbor comments, I really appreciate them coming out, um, tonight. I know it's such a big sacrifice, um, to be here, um, and I just really appreciate their feedback. We've worked so closely with up to this point, um, we are going to, um, ensure that Yes. We retain all of the landscaping, the existing mature landscaping to the south of the parcel, which will provide some additional screening from our site. We've also worked very closely in where we're placing our existing buildings to kind of push them as far from the existing residential homes as possible. And the only other thing that I have to add is, as far as the And lighting from the canopy projecting out onto other areas. It's actually downward-directing lighting, and so all of that will be retained within the site. That's all I have to say.

Okay, thank you. So I appreciate the discussion that we've had and the different topics. So it is a beautiful site. Obviously, you feel the same way since it's not an inexpensive site to purchase. It has great value. I love the fact that you're going to keep the office building. I love the fact that you're going to do a pocket park, that you could do a water feature there and maybe an identification feature. I think the idea of putting a hotel there is very— makes a lot of sense. What we're trying to do as a city is to bring our buildings Closer to the road and then to have landscaping along the road and then to have a sidewalk next to the building. And we've been changing State Street that way, and we'd like to do that here as well. So to me, it would make sense to put a nice hotel there. Like I said, I've mentioned to you before, there's a nice Marriott Downtown Salt Lake on State Street that is, you know, you have some pretty black glass, you have some beautiful metal. I mean, it looks really beautiful and classy. I think you could do a beautiful building like that. Whether you put a convenience store in the bottom of it or not, that would be up to you. I'm against putting in a gas station. I'm against putting in a Maverick. I'm I love the Maverick brand, but I'm against putting it here. So I would like to really see either an office building or a really high-class, well-built, with great elevations hotel, not a medium-type hotel with Spanish architecture, but something that is high-class and looks really nice. The other thing that I think to remember is So if you do that there and you do the office space, then you have the space where you've got the hotel listed to the south that's empty, and then the 4-story hotel there. So if you're flipping that with the C-store and we don't do the C-store, the question is, what do you do with that property? So a couple suggestions we talked about at work session— you could put 2 really nice restaurants there. That would be one option. Another option is oftentimes, as you see by the Maverick gas station on 8th North, Marriott has put 2 hotels next to each other. That is often done throughout many cities in the U.S. Marriott will put 2 hotels in the same location. I could see you putting a nice hotel on University Parkway and even another different hotel, maybe of the same brand, Back where you have the hotel down here. That could make sense because UVU has a lot of people visiting, a lot of people coming and going. As you read in our study, we are short on hotel rooms in the city as far as income revenue goes. We're short on gas, but also on hotel rooms. I could see you putting 2 hotels here and doing very well with both of them. The other— so 2 restaurants, 2 hotels. The other thing, and Sam mentioned it to me, but— or mentioned it, but it caught my thought pattern, is he talked about a destination. Could you make this a destination? So what I mean by that is if you took some of this property, could you do something that would make it a destination? By that, I mean in Phoenix, they have a children's interactive museum that is 3 stories tall. It's about a block and a half long. And it has— I mean, it's not something that you go see. It's something you interact. So they have things where kids are on bridges, on special areas. I mean, certain interactive play areas. Anyway, we have a lot of children in our city. We're Family City USA. And I could give you the name and show you the reference. But if you were to put a destination in there together with some of these other facilities, I think you could maximize your return on investment for your square footage.

May I ask a question? I appreciate your feedback. I really do. If we propose 2 QSRs or a restaurant We would most likely place them where the convenience store is. It's very critical for a QSR, a quick-serve restaurant, or a restaurant to be visible on the major corridors. And so that would be something—

But it could also be part of the hotel building on the main floor, just like when you look at our Midtown 360. We have some very nice restaurants on the main floor, and we have apartments that are going up above it. So on a mixed-use facility, it would work very well. Not so much a quick serve, but maybe a quick serve, I don't know. But it— if you had a really nice hotel, you could put some restaurants along the base of that hotel, and I think that would work really well. Mayor, can we—

yes, if it's approved, can we Tell them what hotels to put there? You can't do it, can you?

No, we can't. But I'm— but we wouldn't— we have the right to approve or not approve, uh, what size hotel, and we would request a type of hotel, but we wouldn't have control over it unless, Jason, you know different than I.

But could they put a Hotel 6 or motels? They could, unless there is some type of development agreement. That would limit them to a certain type of hotel.

But we could do that development agreement.

Yeah, that's—

so I recently met with Motel 6, not for this location. Um, their, their sweet spot, they can pay, uh, $10 to $14 a square foot.

Sure.

Um, we're in—

this wouldn't make sense—

much higher. And so it's absolutely impossible to, to get a Motel 6 at this location.

Okay, but you could have a nice I mean, you were talking about the Hilton brand and the Marriott brand.

Marriott brand, yes. And it's—

And the Marriott brand has about 100 different variations of hotels in their family of hotels. So you can have a really nice one. And like I said, oftentimes you have 2 Marriotts in the same location throughout many cities of the U.S. But I think you could put in some nice restaurants, some nice hotels. You could put in a destination that would draw people in, and you could put in a beautiful park, and I think you could make this pencil out without the C-store. C-store certainly business-wise makes sense to you. It doesn't make sense to us as a city. So I'm trying to look at it— is there a compromise and some creativity where we could look at some ideas to do something that makes sense from a financial return standpoint? Thank you.

standpoint.

So that's what I'm trying to bring forward. And anyway, those— you were saying you'd like to hear some creative thoughts. Those are some creative thoughts. So you bet. If there's no other comments from the council, I'm ready to make a motion. I'm sorry, Mark.

Thank you.

First of all, Leslie, can I say you're one of the nicest developers we've worked with? You are very gracious and very—

Probably one of the Respect.

I appreciate that. Appreciate that. You know, as I've thought about this, I guess I'm looking at it more as a long-term perspective. Over the years, this whole strip has been very vital to the city in the overall development, from the standpoint of it going from orchards to developing significant retail base, a significant positive entrance, the UVX beautification that's gone on. It's really a beautiful part of town. And I think it was just interesting that not too long ago when we heard that the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, which has been a great partner to the city, was moving to another location, it really offered an interesting perspective of to say, okay, here's this right at the edge of the hill, point of the mountain, visible from everywhere, potentially the crowning jewel on the rest of this development up and down University Parkway. And I agree with the mayor that I don't think the C-store is what needs to be the most visible thing from wherever you're coming from. I would hope that there's the possibility to look at something that really would be A beautiful edifice, a beautiful facility that is a bit of a landmark in Orem. I like the idea of the office complex. I'm seeing some beautiful office buildings built along the freeway. We had— Jive, for example, wanted to make a statement with the building right off the freeway. This, to me, seems like it would be really potentially a really beautiful spot for not only the views of the employees, that work there, but also for the view coming into the city. So I'm okay with the hotel. I'm not excited about restaurants either. I think I would rather see this be a very nice professional office development that takes advantage of its location, of its accessibility, proximity to the university. That's just my thought. Thank you. Thank you.

Could I ask Mark a question on that?

Sure.

If it was a stacked building where you had, you know, a nice restaurant on the main floor with office above it, would you be comfortable with that?

Could be, maybe.

Yeah.

I mean, I— and it's interesting because a key part of this area has— a key driver has been the retail sales. So there's the part of me that says, you know, for a city, from an ultimate standpoint of revenue generating, The C-store is a positive in that it generates a fair amount of retail sales tax, if I'm not mistaken, right, Ryan? So it's a matter of— there's that aspect, but I also think there's the aspect of the character of the community and the location and the proximity and the visibility that leads me to— I'm not at all in favor of any kind of housing. I'm okay with hotel because I think the hotels can be very, you know, positive impression. But I really kind of liked what was laid out by our planning group, that they envision a very nice quality business development here that becomes a bit of an anchor with Orem. So, and if a restaurant on the bottom floor is part of it, that I'd be open to that, but not just a standalone. You know, restaurant.

Okay, I would like to make a motion. I would like to move that we continue the request for the rezone of the property located at 355 West University Parkway to October the 29th at 6:00 PM. That's our council meeting, 2 council meetings from now, giving about a month's worth of time. And would ask for a second.

Point of question, Mayor.

Yes.

Is there a reason to put it on that date? I mean, it's possible you might—

Well, we could put it sooner, but I'm thinking that if we're going to have discussions on how to do this, Leslie could tell us.

October 29th will work out just fine.

Okay, great. And I'm going to make 2 motions. This is the first. So is there a second to this motion?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember Seestrand.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Okay, that request is continued. Tom, sorry.

Aye.

Thank you.

Aye.

Aye. So, um, that is continued to October the 29th at 6 PM. I would now like to move that the, uh, that we deny amending The PD-5 zone to include Standard Land Use Code 5530 gasoline service station with or without store as a permitted use. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. Councilmember Lentz?

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Tom?

Aye. Okay.

Thank you. All right. So that passes. And we will continue, as I said earlier, the rezone request to October 29th at 6:00 PM. So thank you, Leslie, and appreciate having you here.

We appreciate your time.

Okay, thank you, Jason.

Mayor, could I just ask a clarifying question?

Yes.

And I know that we've already voted on continuing it, but I'm just curious what the general sense from the council is if we do come with a dramatically different proposal, are we comfortable sending it back to the Planning Commission for review?

Yes. So my request— let me put it this way, and I don't know if I can amend my motion— but my request would be that you do go back to the Planning Commission. And would there be enough time, Jason, for that to occur?

Without having a concept plan, I'm not sure.

Okay.

I mean, it's possible, but—

So let me ask Leslie, are you— and maybe the two of you can—

It's going to be October 2nd and 16th. Yeah, so we'd have to— yeah.

So if you went on the 16th and came to us on the 29th, does that—

It's possible.

All right, well, we'll leave it at that. Let's just continue it.

Mayor, just to— just a qualification that it's not a requirement, right, for them to—

So let's just plan on the 29th, and however things evolve, we'll see how that works. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. All right, we'd like to move on now to a public hearing. Item 10.4. This is an ordinance where the applicant requests the city amend the Orem City General Plan on approximately 16.72 acres of property located generally at 1577 South Geneva Road from the LDR, low-density residential designation, to the MDR, medium-density residential designation. And Jason Bench is our presenter. Thank you, Mayor.

I just want to quickly give you a brief overview of this area. I know you're— most of you are familiar with this area, but just the southwest area was annexed in August of 2015. There was a very long night. Those that were on the council at that point, I think we got done at 2 o'clock in the morning. But the annexation or annex area was 227 acres, although the total service area, which I'll have some maps Is a lot larger than that, 289. So the impact fee areas, the density, the 1,250 ERUs that we've referred to tonight is based on the entire impact fee area, not just the 227 acres that was annexed at the time. So as we look at the capacity and the ability for the units, we're talking the entire area, not including any other areas that were not part of that area, that— like the Klinger property and others that were not annexed that are currently in— Not in the— and I'll show you on the map as well. At the time, the council approved a general plan map that had low-density residential between Geneva Road and the railroad tracks going east and light industrial going west along Geneva Road. The impact fee areas were approved, including the 1,250 ERUs or units that were allowed in that area.

Yes.

And at the time, the property was rezoned— let me show you a quick map. This is the current zoning map. So the majority of the property was in a holding zone or rezoned in a holding zone to OS-5, which is a 5-acre minimum zone, with the idea that the applicants would come back when they're ready to develop and propose a rezone. So you can see some areas of the R-8, the 2 M-1 zones, and the PD-43 that was zoned that night. So this represents The annexed area, 227 acres. Like I mentioned, the LDR areas were on— majority on the east side of Geneva Road and then the LI or light industrial on the west. And the service area that you can see in the crosshatched areas, that's including the 289 acres which was the entire area for the impact fee areas. The conservation easement on the west and then the agricultural easement were not included in the service area or the potential annexed areas. The property owners did not want to be included at that point. Before you tonight is Mr. McDougall, who wants to— the property that you—

So, Jason, could we ask Mr. McDougall to come forward, the applicant? If you want to sit there with Jason, that'd be great.

Ryan is here. requesting that— he has 2 applications. One is not before you tonight for the PD zone. He had an application in prior to our changing the requirements to not allow applications on currently residential properties. So that is in the process. And then a general plan amendment, which is here before you tonight. At our request, he's agreed to come before you with just the general plan amendment to see if the council wants to move forward with a different designation other than the low density that was approved back in 2015. So he agreed and is willing to come before you tonight, and so we're presenting that as an option. So before you tonight is his property, which is the 16+ acres that he's requesting the PD zone. The proposed PD zone that he has— I'll just give you a quick concept plan— is 11.6 units per acre. He does have some attached units, if I can get in this area here, and he's got some single family attached or detached units there, which I'll show you a couple examples of those as well. So these are his proposed attached units that would build on the east side of the property, and then this represents the single-family detached units that he wants to build closer to the Geneva Road area.

Ryan, a real quick question.

Yes.

What are the square footage of the units? How many bedrooms? And approximate starting cost?

So we have been working with different home builders on different products in this range.

And what we have seen is most of these single-family units are probably going to be around the 2,200-square-foot range, and they're going to have a 2-car garage. But that's going to be dependent on—

each building can be a little bit different.

So you could have one 3-bedroom, one 4-bedroom, depending on how you use the space. Some of them can be a little bit bigger.

Some of them can be a little bit smaller.

But we actually plan on doing all 2-car garages. And then the price point that we've been targeting is about $300,000 starting on the single-family.

So 2 issues before you tonight. One is, does the council want to stay status quo, keep the land use designation that was approved in 2015, which was the low-density residential, 4.3 ERUs per acre, which is what the equivalent is, or do you want to consider doing something different? If that's the case, there are a couple things that, as staff, we need to, I think, at least let you know that should be considered. One is the IFFP, which is the Impact Fee Facilities Plan, and the impact fee analysis.

Yes.

Should be amended prior to any change in a zone. Right now, it's zoned for— or the impact fees are based on a low-density residential, so the impact fees are based on that. Although Ryan agreed in the Planning Commission that he'd be willing to pay that impact fee, it may not be fair to future developers if they want to come in and pay a higher impact fee if it can be lowered, if you decide to go at a different rate. So that should be looked at, and that's probably a 4 to 6 6, maybe to 8-month process to get that looked at. The other thing is the spring water lift stations, which this— although the line in Jenny Varone does gravity feed to the north, it does fall into 2 lift stations in the spring water area that then lifts it to a sewer treatment plant. Those 2 lift stations are currently in design based on this density and other densities in the area to design at a certain capacity so that it can handle future capacity. If this area is upgraded, meaning that PRDs or other uses or other densities are permitted in this area, then we need to look at that to see if those lift stations should not be upgraded now rather than having them built and then 2 years later decide that we need to upgrade them because we are over capacity. So those are the 2 key things that we need to look at.

So, Jason, I would add a 3rd to that, and that is the traffic situation. how much additional traffic this will put onto Geneva Road and how many entrances and exits there are. Maybe you could just go over a little bit about where the entrance and exit is.

Right. So because—

yeah.

And I don't know if you're familiar with the Lakeview Parkway, but that's— let me see if I can— so Ryan was kind enough to provide this map, which I just lost. So if you can see right— well, it's not—

sorry.

So the property in question, which I can't point on this pointer, but the cul-de-sac that comes off Geneva Road, the Lakeview Parkway is the one that you can see labeled there. That actually will— so his access will actually come off University or Geneva Road onto that little cul-de-sac. So the point being— so this is the end of the cul-de-sac that we just saw on that. So he has one access here, although he does show future access points going north and south. There is no plan right now to connect those.

And those would be dependent upon the property owners to the north and to the south.

Right.

So they would have to develop to have that go through. And if they didn't develop or it took a long time, That would then leave us with the one entrance.

Right. So, I mean, those things can be worked out if the council decides that, yeah, that's a new direction we want to go. Then we can look at access and we can do those types of things. The point of the meeting tonight, I think, is to find out the direction that the council wants to go. Do we want to stay the course of low-density residential, which we have 4.3 with the plans, or do we want to then deviate and move forward? If we want to move forward in a different direction, then I think these 3 things that we just discussed So an MDR is 8, is that correct? General plan is, yeah, 8.

8 units to the acre?

Okay.

And right now we're at 4.3.

4.3 is what the facilities plan indicates in that area, right.

Okay. Councilmember Luria had a question.

Yeah, so PRD is considered medium density or still—

So it is under the designation of low density, so we can, throughout the city, and you guys are familiar with PRDs Right. And they typically are right now designing at about 6— 5 to 6 units per acre, roughly.

One thing I was thinking, like the Baxter Gardens we just did, that seemed to fit nicely with the single-family.

Yeah, well, it was below 4—

I mean, 5.

It was 4-point-something. The one that we're looking at tomorrow on Center Street and 1000 East is 4.5. So, I mean, they— based on the number of units and the street configurations that Things— not very few of them get up to 7 units per acre.

If we did allow a PRD, would we have to go back and redo all of our plans, or would we just incrementally just do a little bit? Because it's, what, 3 more per acre, 4 to 7?

I think based on the fact that we've approved them at a 4.3 density, if we choose now to increase that by doing PRDs in that area, we really need to look at— because then that option would be available to anybody in that area. And so I think we need to look at it. If we're going to allow this property, for example, to go to PRD, we really should look at the whole area to see if that makes sense as a city and then update these plans. So our fees may be adjusted one way or the other. The lift stations need to be adjusted one way or the other so that we can, you know, before we go down that road, I think we need to look at that.

Councilmember Seestrand.

Yeah, typically when there's a request to change a zone, there's usually a statement as to why the current zone is not functional or viable. Is there a reason why the current R-8 Thank you for that question.

Yes. So if you could go to that—

can I push it? Is that one mine? No. That one. Which one? This one?

Okay.

So thank you for that question. That's actually one of the points that I would bring up is When you look at our property, if you look on this slide, you can see—

does this—

so we are right here, Elmcrest Farm, right here. So we are currently sandwiched in between industrial and on my map, this was a city map that I took and maybe you can help me with this, but these are the 2 tracks here and your current map, I think it showed low-density residential.

Right here.

Is that correct?

That's current, but it's probably going to be more of a low-density or low industrial.

Okay.

Okay.

So this is probably more accurate. And so when we're looking at our— that question of as far as density, there's a few things that we're taking into account. One of them is that the density that it's currently at, single-family homes and that price range are going to be prohibitively expensive for most people that are looking to live— to move to Orem, and especially in this area where you're sandwiched in between light industrial on the east and the west. And you've also got the FrontRunner tracks, the Southern Pacific Railroad, and I-15 just to the east of us. Another factor in that is, you know, anywhere you look in a city where they're doing the lower density single families in that, in that range, you're looking half a million dollar plus homes. And we don't feel that that is appropriate for the way this property sits. When we— if you look at this, if you were to fast forward maybe 5 years, and let's just assume in 5 years that we have the, the Lakeview Parkway, that parkway, as you can kind of see on the map, this is actually an older alignment, so it doesn't— it doesn't show. This actually is going to cut in further here, I think, than what this map shows. So if we fast forward 5 years, and let's just assume this is all developed out, and if we go back to that— where's that with the cross-section of the—

it's not on there?

That one.

So if you look at the type of stuff that's going to be going in around us, if you look at Actually, I want it right there. So this is just south of us on Geneva. This is all going— I guess this is— I saw this originally, I think, a week or so ago where this is all going to be warehouse space. And so it doesn't— We wouldn't— I guess if I were buying a $500,000-plus home and I knew And I didn't know what was coming down the pipeline as far as there's going to be warehousing right across the street from me. There's, you know, obviously you'd be able to see the FrontRunner and you'd be able to see the freeway. But you're going to have that in 5 years or so. You're going to have that Lakeview Parkway, which is a major, major road that's going to be going through there. So there's quite a few factors that I think, you know, factor into why we believe That, that low of a density doesn't work. And I think, honestly, probably the biggest is just the cost of homes that will be— that we'll have to build in that area. I mean, they'll be very expensive homes. And typically, you're not going to want to put those very expensive homes right in the same area that you're doing industrial, right up against the railroad tracks and right in front of where there's a major thoroughfare coming Show that map again with the property to the north.

Tied to the mayor's point that you're counting on some traffic flow exit to the north.

I'm sorry?

It looked like in your map that you had some access out to the Geneva Road, but you were also planning on some traffic flow heading north and south out of here.

Oh, yes. And yes.

So does that not go right into a conservation or an agricultural easement property that has no intention of ever developing?

Well, we— when we originally came before the city, we actually proposed that this be private and not connect. But the city— or the staff requested that we add those stub roads. And I believe they felt like, you know, in the eventuality that it does develop, that they'd want those there. And so it's not necessarily a critical part of our design. And we, you know, it's not something that we requested or we wanted necessarily.

But what you're saying is all the traffic would go out the one exit on the west?

So—

Because there's no option for exits on the north or the south?

We didn't design that in as far as— I mean, we designed this or we originally envisioned it as just the a private street.

All going with just the one exit?

Mm-hmm.

Thank you. That's it, Mayor.

Good.

Any other questions or comments from the council? Councilmember Lentz.

Regarding the road access there, is there any way to make that road wider, the intersection wider, so that you can have, you know, dedicated turn lanes coming out of there? is I don't imagine that there would be a ton of traffic congestion in this small neighborhood as long as you have, you know, wide enough streets and things like that. But if the only traffic concern was really that intersection with Geneva Road, can we address that by just improving the proposed intersection there? I would imagine. And again, this is a very preliminary concept. And I would imagine that there are multiple ways to handle that. And we're open to, you know, whatever is the wisest route to go as far as handling traffic and the way to connect into Geneva. So, yes, I believe so. And is there enough frontage on Geneva Road with your property specifically where you could have 2 2 roads coming into Geneva Road, or would those be too close together? That's a great question. We do, I believe, have enough frontage. We've met with UDOT, and it's been a while, and so I can't remember, but I believe they kind of pushed us towards more of the one entrance. And so what you see here is we've got this kind of Split entrance, which— with the island or the median in the middle, which is kind of the current design. But I believe it was more of an issue— and maybe Ken could help me out if he remembers— but it was more of an issue with getting access from UDOT. We currently have 2 accesses on the property. There's 2 driveways currently on the property.

Right.

Right now. And I'm not sure if it's easy to answer this question right up front, but if we did, instead of going with the proposed zoning, if we went with a PRD, for example, how many units would you lose? And would that mean that, you know, half of the townhomes become single-family homes? Or can you speak to what that might look like on the page? Sure. Yeah, that does require a little bit of math in my head. But we would basically, if we were to do a PRD here, assuming— I'm assuming you're thinking 7 units to the acre. Is that— I think that's the limit, right? Yeah. So at that point, we would eliminate all of the townhomes. It would only be— it would basically— we would hit that density with only the single-family.

And with—

we talked about this, I think, a couple weeks ago, but with the— I think the single-family homes, the plan was to sell those. With the townhomes, I think a portion were planned to retain and rent those out or something like that. Yeah, I think our plan in, you know, as we flesh through it, as we have come— we originally started with an entire— one we originally presented our concept, our original concept was only townhomes. This is 4 years ago? No, this was, um, about a year ago, I believe. Um, and so we presented our, our original concept that we presented to staff was, was, was solely townhomes. And, um, it has evolved to this point where we have the, the mixture of the townhomes and the single family. And, and as we've evolved to this point, we, we have, um, basically, yeah, come to that point where we, we feel like the townhomes would be more of a rental property and then the single families would be a for-sale project. And would the— It would be a— sorry, sorry, it would be like a 50— depending on how the financing worked out, it'd be about, about 50/50 so that we could secure that kind of that type of financing for it. And would both the single-family homes and the townhomes be on an HOA and the same HOA or separate?

Yes.

Thank you for that question.

Is that other concept, the colored concept, that one?

So the way we envision it is you can kind of see some of the clubhouse. And again, this is very preliminary, but we've got some open space and clubhouse in the middle here. Well, kind of in the middle, right in this area. And this would all be common to the entire development. So whether you owned or whether you rented, you would have access to this pool, clubhouse, open space area. Same, same really with this open space area over here with the tot lot and the open— the field. I would imagine that the single-family home residents probably wouldn't use this as much. But this one we kind of placed centrally so that both community or both— it would kind of be in the middle for everyone to access, that everyone would be able to enjoy it. And if it went to a PRD where it was all single-family homes, would you still envision that same type of shared, you know, pool clubhouse space as part of that HOA? We would still— I mean, if we were to go to something less dense, we would still provide amenities. And I don't have an exact plan of what those would be, but it would still have open space and amenities and things. We would— we wouldn't want to build something that didn't have— that wasn't— yeah, that didn't provide those types of things. You'd want to build it the way that you would want to live there. Exactly. Yeah, we'd want to have places for for people to gather and to join and have barbecues and all that. That's all for now.

Could we have Paul Goodrich come back into the city council chambers? I'd like to hear from him as far as traffic goes coming out onto Geneva Road. Paul, if you could talk to us about the— I'm sorry, what, Tom?

Mayor, since I don't have a button to push, maybe you could ask me after Paul talks for— give me a chance to make a comment.

You bet, you bet. Paul, could you tell us about the traffic and, you know, how much traffic you believe there would be, how much room Geneva Road needs?

Jason, do you have the slide that shows where the new Lakeview Parkway is going to be— Thank you. So anyway, looking at that slide that's on the screen right now, Geneva Road is the access that's kind of, you know, taking the angle. I don't know if you can see that very— OK, well, you can see where Lakeview Parkway is depicted. Well, Geneva Road is over to the right, and you can kind of see that that one section of Geneva Road is right where this project is coming in, is about where that cul-de-sac is at that location. Part of the problem is, is in my estimation, what's going to— the traffic that's going to be generated by this is going to be a little over 2,200 vehicles a day. It could possibly be higher than that because it takes a while to get to services— grocery stores, gas stations, schools, all of those other things. It takes a while to get there. It could be higher than that.

With that access shown at that location—

and maybe I can back up and say that on The transportation master plan— the region's transportation master plan— the Lakeview Parkway is shown to be in need within the next 10 years. Now, I don't think it's, you know, one of our high needs other than as development happens and as rezoning occurs, we protect the corridor.

Provo is already planning for it and has part of it in place, I believe.

Yes, they do.

Hmm.

But I don't think—

personally, I don't think it's one of those things that we want to spend our resources in getting federal funding to put a road that's going to benefit Provo and spend a 7% match on the millions of dollars that it's going to take to build that roadway. And one of the things that I'm thinking may happen as as we do a corridor analysis with UDOT of the Geneva Road corridor, basically— and it's not just Geneva Road, but it's everything west of I-15. Right now, the 2050 model shows that there is a need because of traffic to have a second I-15 somewhere between I-15 and the lake. Not the other side of the lake, this side of the lake. Well, one of the things that I think might happen with this area is that Lakeview Parkway may actually become bigger. And when it goes down south of the airport, it may actually even go across the Provo Bay to be— it's not going to be another I-15, but it might be—

It's actually envisioned that way.

Yes, I know.

I know the vision is that way.

But anyway, it looks like we're going to have a study with Provo and Vineyard and other communities on this corridor to look at that. Anyway, this is what's already adopted on our master plan. The City Council, I don't know, 5, 6, 7 years ago adopted this general plan for this layout like this. But again, you know, and if you look at the concept plan, they do show a road stubbing to the north and they still show a road Yes. Stubbing to the south, but those properties aren't ready to develop. And they haven't obtained the road corridor to be able to make a grid network connection. And having 2,200-plus vehicles a day going to— whether it's one location on Geneva Road or two that's very close together on Geneva Road, it's still one location. So anyway, I think it's premature to— from a traffic standpoint— to approve anything like that until some zoning and some general plan changes happen for properties on both sides so that we can make sure that we have a grid network system. I mean, that's what we've got through the rest of Orem. That's one of the reasons why we have less traffic in other cities.

And you mean where the stub roads could go to the north and south?

Right.

See, those stub roads to the north and south right now just go nowhere. Right.

And if we're just sending everything to the, to the west, to basically to Geneva Road— and I know the developer, you know, I haven't met with the UDOT people about this access. But after I show them or remind them how it's going to be dead-ended and how Lakeview Parkway is going to carry the majority of the traffic to the south, they may change their mind about giving them 2 accesses.

So anyway, I think it's premature.

I think there's too much density just from a traffic standpoint without the roads, without the grid network, with everything just trying to go to Geneva Road.

Any other questions? Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. Tom, did you have some comments?

Thank you for the time. I don't think I'm saying anything new, but for me, this is absolutely not an issue of parity or fairness. When we developed how much we thought the impact fees needed to be out there, it was based on so many units going out to all the projects. And frankly, granting this project more than its, quote, fair share of doors is unfair to the other property holders who will get less for their money and their land if they can't develop as many doors. So for me, changing that requires phenomenal change in how much we charge in impact fees, and frankly, I don't want to go down that road.

Okay, thank you, Tom. This is a public hearing, so I would like to go ahead and open it up to the public. We would request that anyone who speaks give us their name and hold their comments to 3 minutes, and the time is now open.

Mayor, if I can make a comment, maybe— I suspect the developer maybe has a presentation that he wants to make before public comment.

Yes.

If it's okay.

Sure.

Yeah, I was not aware of that.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

So we will hold off on the public comment portion of the hearing until after his presentation.

Thank you. So a couple of points, I guess, to address some of the concerns that have been brought up. If we look at the entire area and we're talking about, you know, fairness and densities and things like that, just, just to, I guess, get a good overall picture of what we're looking at. So our property, you can see, which is Elmcrest Farm, which is about 16 acres.

Ryan, one question real quick. So have you purchased that property and do you own it?

Yes, yes, we do own it. So originally— and that's probably confusing because originally when, when I brought the annexation petition forward, the property that we were— I was working on at the time was this Wilkerson Farm property. And so just to refresh memories, I put together the annex— actually, excuse me, the annexation petition for this region with the intent to develop the Wilkerson Farm property, which was about 14 acres. We were denied. Our application was denied. And that property has since been sold to a charitable trust. And that charitable trust is— the purpose of it is to maintain open farm ground, to maintain farm grounds within, you know, cities. And so that— they've taken it out of development, basically. And so— and that gets to my larger point of the overall density in the area and the traffic. So, so when you're looking at our piece at the north end of the Elmcrest Farms, a couple of unique things about us is we're going to— we're talking about the future Lakeview Parkway and how it may even be bigger. So I would ask you to just kind of use your imagination and just kind of think, you know, let's, let's say 5 years from now. Let's say we come back 5 years from now with an application and that that parkway's in and some of that industrial's in. It's not going to be— I believe at that point it's not going to be a question of whether we should do single-family. It's going to be a question of how much can we fit on this property at that point, because it's going to be a massive road going right in front of us. We're going to have warehouses all around us. We have multifamily to the north. We have multifamily to the south. And yet we're trying to shoehorn you know, large lot single family in between those. If you look at the fairness question, if we, if we were to divvy up these, these, these units, right, I guess is the, is the question before us. So the way, the way the, the densities are calculated now and the way the, uh, way they're distributed is basically The entire area— so this entire area is all slated— excuse me, I guess it goes more like this. So this— all this residential is slated to have basically the same density minus the conservation easement, which wasn't included. And this— then this is the school here that's not included. So I guess the point being, if you take the Wilkerson Farm just for one out of the equation because it's now in a charitable trust to be kept farming in perpetuity, that opens up quite a few units. If you look at the AC property, which is also slated to have, you know, quite a bit of density, that's already developed and it's not likely to change its use. If you look at This Millhaven property here, this is already developed to single family. And then you've got these smaller units here, which are all, I guess I wouldn't say remnant, but they're 1 acre to 1 point, you know, something acres, and they already have homes on them. So, and then you've got this home here, the brown home, which already has a home on it. So you have I guess the point is, I don't believe it's realistic to expect all those properties to develop out at that density. I believe if even if you just considered only the Wilkerson Farm as being taken out of development and you don't consider the AC property— who knows, maybe they'll, you know, sometime in the future decide to add something to their property. I don't know.

I can't speak for them.

But I believe that it's, it's quite quite likely that many of these properties that are in this area that this density has been allotted to will not change their use, or it's not likely that they will change their use. And so as far as the traffic and the discussions, I completely agree that we've got to be smart with traffic, and we've got to design this in a smart way to not affect You know, to not to not be a burden, and and we're open to looking at different options and different ways to mitigate that. But I think if you look at the overall area, this is one of the least dense areas in the entire city. If you if you look at the fact that we've got this massive these massive oops these massive areas here, so you've got. This massive conservation easement, this massive agriculture easement. You've got the conservation easement over here. You've got, you know, the church property up here, which is owned by the Presiding Bishopric. It's not owned by— it's owned by the arm that's going to develop or build buildings. And so that's going to be a fairly low-density property. This general area is a— a pretty low dense area in the city, and it will remain so because of just all of the easements and things that are, that are on the property. And so I believe, you know, our— the density that we're requesting is, is, is, you know, kind of a drop in the bucket. It's not really going to be a massive burden on, on the entire area if you, if you consider it as a whole.

So a question, if, if you were to switch to medium density, then Peterson would have that availability to them as well, correct, Jason?

If council goes that way, they would, yeah.

Okay, at least the precedence would be set.

Precedence, yes.

And the Taylor property could go that way. The other— the Lavor property could go that way. So, so that's 8, that's 12, that's 20. And you have 16. So that could be 36 to 40 acres that would change from low density to medium density.

Sure.

And if you're— if you take out the 14 for the Wilkerson farm— and I don't— I can't speak for the Taylors. I wouldn't presume to. I don't know what they'll plan on doing with their property. And I don't know exactly what their— you know, why they sectioned out the 5.25 acres out of the conservation easement. I know they live there and they have their home there. And so I don't know what their— what their plans are, but I would assume—

Do you know what Peterson's plans are?

I don't believe they have any at this point. And I— again, I hate to speak for them. Maybe they do. But I haven't heard of anything. But I wouldn't imagine that the Taylors would be looking to do much density considering that they put most of their property— they were the ones that did this conservation easement over as well. So they're not necessarily the— I wouldn't peg them for looking to do much density. But again, I can't speak for them. I don't know what their plans are. But I believe, you know, just looking at the entire area, I believe this, you know, this is— if we're talking about trying to bring people to Orem that can afford it, that can afford to move here without spending, you know, we're at least $500,000 now on a single-family home on that size of a lot, at least. And that's conservative, I believe. If it were me building the home, it'd be more— starting more around $600,000. And so, you know, I believe our vision is we want to provide a product that people can afford to have a single-family home, have a 2-car garage, have an affordable place to live within a convenient reach— within convenient reach of the freeway, within convenient reach of the schools, and not have these people that would be moving into these homes moving to Eagle Mountain and commuting here or moving to Payson and commuting here, but moving here and staying here. And I believe, you know, that's what I believe is good for the city as well. I believe that that if, if the city is intent on having, you know, either apartments— either you're living in an apartment or you're living in a half a million dollar plus home— then there's, I think, a large segment of the population, unfortunately, that gets left out of that equation. And I think, you know, we feel like this is a great place to do this. I don't believe that there are many places in the city now that you could do this type of a product, and it's a very, very popular product. I believe if we had them up right now, we could sell them Immediately. I mean, there's a demand for this type of a home. There's a lot of people that can't afford to live here that would love to have a single-family home here, and I think we could sell these homes very quickly, and people would love to live here in those homes.

Councilor Seestrand has a question for you.

Yes, I just wanted to thank you for clarifying the vision because, as you mentioned, that there's church property to the north, there's the Taylor family There's all these other places that are low density. My thought was, well, darn it, that's exactly what we had in mind. That's what we envisioned for this area. That's what— you were part of that whole discussion. And, you know, that's what the intent of property owners and the neighbors in the area was, to retain this as a low-density rural family area, that it was not intended to be a high-density issue.

It was not—

That's why why the Wilkinson Farm was denied, was there was no intention to do anything other than preserve this area with the conservation easements and the agricultural easements and those things to say, that's what the property owners in this area— and that's what the city envisioned— is that there are other places in the city where you're going to see high-density apartments on very busy streets like State Street and University Parkway and various areas, but for this area that's rare, that's unique, that's a farming community, that's what we were trying to preserve. And I think as you laid that out, I felt, well, yeah, that's exactly what— that's what everybody wanted. So I don't— I'm approaching this from a standpoint of I don't know that low-density residential is a failing proposition. I think there are many people are looking for a nice, quiet, rural area in Orem to enjoy a very quiet lifestyle surrounded by farms, surrounded by livestock, surrounded by the amenities that you don't see too often in big cities. I think that's a huge plus and a benefit. And I'm really anxious to hear from the neighbors, too, that are here to speak, so I won't say any more.

Thank you.

I do think that's what was intended, was to go with that, and everything we did was in that regard. The density calculations, the— all of the planning was tied to that. And I'm really concerned that just a few years into it, now we're back here to say to the neighbors, ah, we changed our mind, we see this as medium or high density. That doesn't fly with me because I think we were all part of a really good plan.

Thank you.

To say, how do we add this park to the city in a way that really preserves the integrity of this community?

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate your— I appreciate you saying that because I do understand, you know, the idea of maintaining this as farm ground and as rural. I guess I just unfortunately see when I look at it, you know, I feel like, well, Well, yeah, but the city did approve, you know, the Mansell project, which is all multifamily, which is this—

Yeah, we did that because they paid for the infrastructure developments and the city bond for it. That was the exchange for that. You can go just south of 2000 South and buy lower density or lower cost, higher density housing in Provo. But I think the intent was here in Orem, we want to keep this distinctive and separate, and that, that was the intent of how we, we did that. So that's just my, my thought. And it doesn't seem like it was that long ago that we had 2 o'clock a.m. meetings on, on this whole thing because it was so critical and important.

Sure.

To try to map it out. And I just don't know that, that a few years later we're ready to change that vision. That, that's just my perspective.

Sure, I appreciate that.

Thanks.

I care about the neighbors' Perspectives on that.

And I think, you know, we were also on this property here. I put the annexation petition together, and we were willing to pay for those utilities as well. And in fact, Jeff Mansell came in and asked to join on to the annexation petition. We were prepared to move forward without him. And so he was kind of a latecomer to the whole annexation. And then our project was rejected. But I think also to your point, you know, as far as what the vision is for this area, I guess I just don't understand if that's the vision why we're putting light industrial— we're surrounded by light industrial. And, you know, we're going to be backing the front-runner. We're going to be backing the freeway. I live in this area. I can hear the freeway from At least— At least from here, I can hear the freeway every day. And I look at, you know, what's coming as far as Lakeview Parkway. Geneva Road is— and I believe our property is also unique in the fact that we will be, you know, the last property basically fronting. And the parkway is going to cut in, I believe, a little bit quicker than it shows here. But we'll be the last property fronting The parkway. And so it's going to have a completely different complexion on our property than it's going to have on these properties down here. It's not going to have near the effect of— well, while we're going to be fronting it, these properties down here aren't really going to have to deal with it at all. And so I believe our property is unique in that, in that perspective as well. But I believe, you know, to your point, you know, there's— we're going to be surrounded by industrial. We have railroad tracks. We have the freeway. freeway that you can hear. We have, you know, a major parkway coming through. And so I believe those types of developments, if we look 5 years, 10 years into the future, it's going to have a completely different complexion than what we're looking at now. And I think that's kind of what we're trying to plan for. And again, also, I believe, you know, um, just the, just the cost of, of putting those single-family homes— I, I wouldn't feel good about selling I don't know that I'd sell a $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 home to somebody knowing what's coming in the future. They're going to be surrounded by industrial and they're going to have a huge parkway coming in front of them. I don't know that I'd feel good about selling that home to them.

You're not surrounded by industrial. What's directly to the north of you is a farm that's in an agricultural easement. There's not going to be any industrial there to the north of you. To the south of you is low-density residential. That's not industrial. 80% of your property is surrounded by low-density residential or farmland. You've got one part that's got a little teeny spot of light industrial, and you've got the train tracks on the FrontRunner that passes by every 30 minutes during the day and ends at 12 o'clock at night. Oh, yes, somewhere in there. I mean, I, I'm just not seeing this urgency of— we are surrounded by All these negative things. You are in the prime spot of the city of Orem for rural, lovable farming area Utah. It's not a negative.

Sure, and I appreciate that perspective. And I know there's some room—

I won't say anything because I've already said it all.

Yeah, I know there's some in this room that feel that way as well. It's just, I think, you know, we're— I guess it's That's where we diverge.

So do you have more to your presentation or are you—

Unless there are questions, again, we would just stress, you know, we believe we want— again, it's a price point. We want to provide homes for people that are in that price point. We feel that that will do very well. We feel that that will be a need that is not being currently met in the city. And I think, you know, considering what's coming in the future, I believe that that's a good fit. We don't believe the larger homes are going to be a good fit. If— and I appreciate the point that we do have, you know, an agricultural easement to the north of us. I don't know, you know, what the church will do, but I would imagine when they come in, they'll probably do some, some, some buildings. And then I would imagine that they'll probably be maybe requesting multifamily as well because they're bordering multifamily. I would imagine they're not going to be looking to do single-family. But I believe, you know, if we're looking towards the future, I believe what fits— I mean, we— I just would not feel comfortable selling a home like that in this area.

I just— Okay.

All right. Appreciate that. So we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment. anyone who would like to come forward, please do so, but keep your comments to 3 minutes and give us your name when you come to the microphone.

My name is Byron Taylor. Not long ago, I stood here to protest the planned industrial development across the Geneva Road from me.

Even though the outcome of the meeting favored the developer, I was encouraged by the logic of the final decision. The City Council chose to abide by the plan adopted when parts of the Lakeview area were incorporated.

Historically, farms have been established away from urban areas. I believe the reasons for this are intuitive. Let's not pretend that problems are not created by the invasion of cities into farm operations. On more than one occasion, I've heard someone in this type of meeting say, We can develop and they can farm as if everything's peachy.

Invariably, the observation comes from someone profiting from development and not from someone who wants to continue farming.

I would have preferred much less population density in Orem City's plan for our area. However, I appreciate the fact that it includes low-density residential areas that are more compatible with ongoing farming.

We already have an abundance of higher-density housing and the associated risks.

Just a couple more comments.

So yes, we own the 5.25 acres, my wife and I, that are not under an easement.

When the easements were created, we— they had to be lien-free, mortgage-free.

We had a mortgage at that time.

I can guarantee you we are not going to tear down our barn and rip up our alfalfa fields and develop it.

Getting that under an easement is on our list of things to do.

I think the elephant in the room here is that the developer purchased this property knowing full well what the plan was and how it was zoned. So I think it's either unwise or very bold speculation to develop their whole business model On this being changed.

I have to believe that they're smarter than that and that they have a backup plan that perhaps creates less profit.

Maybe they have to wait longer, but it's hard to believe that they are putting us in a position that nobody wants any kind of house besides what we're offering, therefore we are—

have to do it this way.

One last comment. I think the developer used the term shoehorn.

I think it's—

shoehorn is appropriate. Yes, we have nice open space down there, but to shoehorn in higher-density housing every other place we can get it is just not good planning and good development.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think, uh, Mr. Seistrand expressed well the feelings for the people in our neighborhood. Um, and I would add to that, Ryan knew when he bought the property what it was zoned. It's no secret or no surprise. He often has said you can't put individual houses by the railroad tracks, and that's why he had to put high density. I have 2 maps And then did some driving today. Off of 8th South and Orem, right next—

backing the freeway are really nice individual homes that back— not back the freeway, back the railroad tracks—

that are an established neighborhood.

I know people who live there who have stayed there since they bought their homes who intend to make it their forever home. And if you go 1.2 miles south, you'll come into Provo.

And in Rees Estates, it's the same situation where the homes are built right against the railroad access so that it's not a problem to have individual homes. And they're not inexpensive homes.

They're nice homes.

They're permanent neighborhoods.

There's trees.

There's— it's a wonderful place to live and people are happy to live there. So So the railroad tracks can't be a detriment to having an individual home there.

And as far—

we have worked with the church that are just north of us.

We're Klinger Family Properties Partnership in the agricultural easement.

And at the time, the church, we saw their plans, we were working with them.

They intended to put a couple of double churches and have soccer fields. They did not intend to develop into high-density housing or anything was going to be more open space. Right now we have an awful lot of already rentals in our neighborhood.

And they were supposed to be— when they were built, they were supposed to be owner-occupied and not be rentals.

And the developments of Countrywood, Chambray, and Normandy have all turned into rentals. They're right now about between 33% and 35% owner-occupied, and the rest is rentals. So our neighbor—

neighborhood is very much a lot of turnover, and we really want some housing that would be—

contribute to stability and to a good neighborhood. And I think there's lots of people that'd love to live in a million— half-million-dollar house next to some farm ground.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Christian Clark, and I just want to make my comments brief about how when we—

with all the talk about the housing being as what it is, I think we're also missing the fact that Even though the developer himself mentioned that a lot of people would not be able to afford these homes should they be developed. And even as it is now, like, it's almost quite— I mean, it's impossible for myself to be able to afford a home.

I'm fortunate.

I live with family.

But my current salary, I make 20% of the median average income of Orem.

And as a result, like, I would have no hope of purchasing one of the developer's homes or or one of the homes that in these rural communities or anywhere else, just because of what my job is as it is. And so all I'm saying is that when we consider all these rezonings and all the homes that are going to be built there, all I ask is that you remember that not everybody would have the financial capacity to purchase a half a million dollar home.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Adele Levitt. And Byron Taylor made, um, made a comment about how it is difficult as things are developed for the farmers to still function. And one issue that I feel, if the zoning is changed so it's higher density, you know, there's a token park—

pocket park there.

But what happens when there's lots of people, they ooze over onto the open space, which if you're trying to farm it, does not work very well. And, you know, Mr. McDougall made it sound very undesirable to live in that area. So why does he want to put more people there?

It doesn't make for permanent residents if it's not pleasant to live there and if it's that crowded.

And it's not set up like a PDR that has shopping and other amenities close by, it's just packing them in like sardines.

They have to go somewhere.

It's just a bedroom community where they come and sleep and probably get out of there as fast as they can the next day.

So I, I really think it needs to stay low density. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm one of the owners of the property. And it's not that it's a bad place. It's a great place. But it is going to be a different place. Just like the orchards you mentioned up on University. They're not there anymore. And when this big parkway comes through that's It's a major road with noise and pollution and traffic. And as you look at that map and you already see warehouses going next to multifamily, and as that works north, you're going to have a big curve. You're going to have a road that's going to be in comparison to University Parkway on a curve, which is going to be a lot of noise. And then you're going to have trucks and you're going to have bays and you're going to have docks. And that is going to be at your entrance to this development. It's not a bad place, but it's not a place for expensive homes, and people won't be happy with that. And then on the back side of it, you are— you've got the railroads and you've got industrial.

So it's just—

I don't think it's good planning long term.

I don't think it's—

I think the plan that Ryan's presented is a better plan.

Thank you.

Long-term.

And I think it's good planning for what is coming. And it's coming. It doesn't matter if what we say, it's coming. Because you've already got the light industrial that's going all along the west and that major road is coming.

As far as the farming, I can respect the farmers. I love open space.

I live down in a little area that's— or I'm trying to build a home that's got a lot of water and it's tucked down in a little spot, but the major roadways are missing it.

So hopefully—

but it's still getting developed around. But this is right in the path, and it's going to happen. So what's the right thing to be there with these trucks, with these docks, with this major roadway? It's not low density, in my opinion. The other thing that was talked about, I've worked with Garbett Homes. I've worked with I own stuff with Cowboy, and we've done townhome rentals. We've actually done detached home rentals that I know of. And when the people move into those projects, those with the 2-car garages and the 3 bedrooms, if they have the amenities, the people don't move.

They're there.

And I also own stacked flats. Now, there, the people move in and out. But in the others, they say they'll move in and move out. They do not move in and out. They are stable. They love the places. And the other thing is, I live in South Jordan, just east of the temple. And right below me, there's third-acre lots. To the north of me, there's third-acre lots.

And east of those, there's townhomes.

And Van Palmer has a dirt field. He pulls draft horses around that field right along the third-acre lots. Right along the townhomes. Do I have any time left? There is no more conflict. In fact, there's less with the townhomes. Those single-family third-acre lot guys are way worse as far as the farming conflict. They complain like no other. The people in the townhomes do not.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'd just like to mention one item. I go down and spend—

Can you tell us your name, please?

George Tucker. I'm a landowner. I go down and spend time in between the railroad tracks. And when the Southern Pacific comes along, it's loud, but I hear it coming. It's annoying. It takes a long time to go by. But it's not a big deal. It's It's loud, noisy, and it is what it is. But I'll be down there and the front runner will come by and it'll scare the ever-living heck out of me because I don't see it coming and it just shakes me up. But I know it's there and I go, ah, it's the front runner. Then I go about my business and every time it comes, whether 30 minutes, I'm not sure how often it comes, but I know it's coming. And it still scares the heck out of me every time it comes by. And they, oh, it's the front runner, relax. So if you put a real nice home, or if you had a lot for sale and a buyer comes, and if they're outside, I bet you they could be inside when that front runner comes.

They're not buying that lot if they have any other choice.

So I don't know what you do down there. I mean, low density would be great. Away from Geneva Road and away from the Frontrunner. But I don't think it'll work next to the Frontrunner because it'll just scare the homeowners to death. They'll never buy that lot. Thank you.

Anyone else care to speak? Okay, seeing there are no other people coming forward, We'll close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any more comments or questions from the council? Sam?

Got a few. So Jason, if let's say the Wilkerson Farm stays a farm as a charitable trust and it's never developed for, you know, low-density residential, Would that be enough units, essentially? It probably wouldn't be enough to satisfy what he's requesting now. Would it be enough to get them up to a PRD level of development as far as the 7 units per acre?

It's possible.

I guess my issue is that even though it's in a charitable trust, there's no guarantee that it would stay in a charitable trust. I guess some conservation easements, they may sell their rights and it would be very difficult to get them back. But I'm not sure how this charitable trust is set up. Same with the agricultural easement areas. I mean, those can be taken out. The property owners have indicated that they never will. But there is, like, the AC property and other things, we just don't know what that's going to— the future's going to bring. So I'd rather not speculate giving that away when we just don't know how it's going to work out.

And part of what I'm struggling with— this is not a very black-and-white issue for me— is We kind of have to speculate because we're talking about, you know, the long-term plan for this area for not just the next 5 years but the next 50 or 100 years. And I struggle to tell somebody, I'm sorry, you can't develop your property here because somebody who's indicated they have no desire to develop their property might develop it at some point in the future. But, you know, how do you kind of split the baby and be fair to all— I think that's a great question. all those parties involved. 4 years ago when, you know, you guys had the 2:00 a.m. marathon meeting for the annexation, I was sitting out there. I was running for the council, but I wasn't on the council yet. And I actually had a lot of concerns with, you know, kind of where we landed with the low-density residential plan. And it's not necessarily that I want to develop this whole area for high-density housing or even medium residential housing, but I felt like, you know, the Mansell project versus the McDougall project, it's like we were kind of using 2 separate sets of principles to apply to that. And so I had some consternation about that. As far as the current proposal as it stands, I think there are— there's just too many question marks as far as, you know, how do we figure out Transportation and utility infrastructure and things like that. I'm not comfortable moving forward as, as this is right now. I might be interested in looking more at like a PRD type area if we can balance it out with— if we have some degree of confidence, at least for the next several years, some of these other areas are not going to be developed so that we don't need to completely redo our utility master plans and upgrade our you know, our sewer lines and those types of things. I did have a couple specific questions. What elementary school boundary is this in, in this area?

Not my school, but it's probably—

Right, but Vineyard Elementary. Okay. Um, how far of a distance is— I'm— would, would those students be riding the bus Yes. Do you have kids that go to that school? They would?

Okay.

My son does. Okay. And as far as if somebody, whether it was this project or another one, wanted to develop and we found out that we got to that breaking point where the planned infrastructure was not sufficient to cover that whole area, is it— and if it was only, let's say, on the sewer lines, for example, I'm not saying this is the most efficient way of doing it, but is it possible for a developer to say, Well, I'm willing to install my own, you know, sewer line to get for our development to the treatment facility. Is that feasible, or is that— is it just like a non-starter because it would be—

I'd have to probably defer to— I think Sam Kelly's here, our engineer, but...

Is this—

Okay, it is on.

It's not that they couldn't do that, it's just that it becomes pretty complex to have a private sewer system running through, you know, our right-of-way and then getting to the plant.

I mean, it's not that Ryan couldn't do that. If he wanted to do that, he could. It's just it would be really hard and challenging. And we just don't—

I mean, the only spot that I know that we have some sort of a private system is down in the Gold Key area. They have a private lift station that actually feeds below 2000 South there and ties into our main. And it's pretty small.

It's only a 2-inch. But if you're talking in this area, it's going to be a much bigger line.

So—

What about the cost?

The cost would be quite a bit if He'd have to run a gravity line to do his own system all the way down. And he'd have to engineer that to make sure that he could get grade all the way to the plant, or he'd have to gravity feed it there and put in his own lift station if he wanted to do it all on his own.

But that's why I think we're trying to come to this nexus of, if this is something that we want to do, let's move forward and plan for this whole area and take the time and plan for it and do it right.

Thank you.

I mean, the gravity main in Geneva Road is sized to where there is extra capacity in the gravity main, but our lift stations don't have that right now.

And that's why we'd want to look at that and make sure we just create this equity throughout the whole area and not just look at this one little spot zone only to come back 3 months, 6 months, a year and do the same exact thing. It's less about the size of the pipe And more about the— we would need to upgrade the lift station? Is that—

Right.

Because right now, the gravity main that we just installed in Geneva Road has capacity because we needed to upsize it in order to have enough flow and lay it at a flat enough grade so we could maximize how far we could take that gravity line before the Mansell project could go ahead and lift to that area. The area that's along the north part of part, you know, next to that agricultural easement is undersized, but it's already been identified in our master plan that we need to upsize it. So that's not going to be a problem if we go ahead and do this. The big problem is, is we have 2 lift stations that probably are going to run $1.5 to $2 million by the time it's all said and done that are being sized for 1,250 ERUs. And if we're looking to go medium density in these areas and increase it by a third or a half, we kind of need to know that now so we can go ahead and plan that and do that.

But it's not just that.

It's also water.

We want to make sure we have enough water capacity, we have enough storage for this area. So, I mean, it's not that we're opposed to this development to happen. It's just that we want to plan for it, just like I think that was said before, we just want to make sure we're planned and we have the adequate capacity.

Wouldn't that affect your impact fees if you did all this?

Well, sure, but you're going to have more folks and maybe the water's fine and the sewer's going to be fine.

I mean, we went through this when we brought these scenarios to you guys, I don't know, 3 or 4 years ago.

We brought a high, a low, and a medium impact fee and densities.

And the fees themselves, they varied. It wasn't much in the whole scheme of things, but there was a huge difference in what needed to happen as far as capacity in lines, capacity in lift stations, and then if the treatment plant needed to be upgraded as well.

So—

but we just want to make sure we do it and we do it right.

Councilmember Spencer?

Yes, sir.

Oh, go ahead, Sam.

Go ahead.

Well, I just had a question.

In our study session, I mentioned You know, this area, we annexed it, and my thought process was, if we're truly looking in the future, if these people eventually want to build, even if it's low-density housing, do we have the infrastructure to be able to build low-density housing in this area? And I don't think we do.

Low-density housing in this area right now?

I'm talking about the agricultural easement and all the other properties that are here.

Right.

The big parcel there to the west of Geneva Road was not part of that.

So, right, if they decide to come in at some point and develop, right, that's a whole different story because they didn't want to come into the annex.

Right.

So that's what I'm saying.

So is there something we can do now to make sure that we are able to do low-density housing in the future in these areas that aren't—

we didn't look at?

So I'm assuming it's cheaper to do it now than later. Sure, sure. Yeah, we could—

I mean, and that's all part of that. When we master planned this area, we looked at that, we looked at what was going to happen, and yeah, we could go ahead and reevaluate and add that component to it as well.

That's not a problem.

So my thing is, it's all about cost, right?

So what is it going to cost us now if we do that?

Let's say we have to do our or lift station to whatever—

Right.

Bigger size, whatever. What is that going to cost now compared to, say, in the future?

And I don't know how big we're— I mean, I don't know how many units we're talking here if it ever did happen, but—

Right.

And that's hard to speculate because I don't know— I mean, right now, the way it stands, that property probably isn't going to develop at at least for another 10, 15, 20 years, or who knows.

Right.

So, I mean, if it finally does develop in 50 years, I mean, it could be triple what the cost is now. I mean, you could try and do some math and estimate and add 3 years of inflation for 50 years and speculate it. But yeah, the time to do it and be most cost-effective, yes, would be to do it now.

The risk you run, though, with some of that is You don't want your infrastructure to be too big to where it actually becomes somewhat of a maintenance problem.

So in all reality, it might not be a bad idea to have it designed and we know what's going to happen.

But I mean, with sewer, you need to have—

it's probably a little bit more info than you want to know, but you have to have at least a minimum of 2 feet per second of velocity. Because if you don't, then solids start to settle out.

And then you have maintenance issues and you have to clean it and flush it. So if we—

so in case if we want to design it and put that in and it's going to be a medium density, we had, say, a 60-inch pipe, it may not flow fat.

We may not have enough flow to move it and actually becomes more of an issue. So I guess I don't know if I answered your question. No, my thing is that now it's cheaper.

If we're looking to the future and if we're going to do it right the first time, I would like to do it right the first time.

So thanks.

Councillor McEachern.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but we look to the future, we build a master plan. Did we not do it right the first time? Is it— do we not have the adequate capacity based on the master plan for this area now?

Right now?

Yeah. So, so, David, we did it right the first time.

I'm talking about we didn't include certain areas that could happen.

We didn't because they made a commitment that they have no intention of developing that land. They actually committed that they would do it themselves if they ever wanted to develop. And furthermore, when you're— when you're thinking about saying, well, we need to think about these people, the people you're making pay for that development are these people that own the land down here. You're saying we're going to make you pay development— No, I'm not. Yes, because that's what this proposal is, is to change those development fees. And those development fees affect I was asking to see what it would cost to do this. But to me, it doesn't matter because why do I want to have them pay for something that has nothing to do with them down the road? Because no matter what it costs, they've got to pay for it. I think everybody has to pay for it. That's my point. And everybody— and everybody here is saying, wait a minute, they have no intention of building or developing that.

That's why the master plan I think Sam wants to be able to say something.

And I think just stepping back from the specifics of this particular property, and I talked about this a couple months ago, one of our key areas of focus as a city council this year was housing affordability. We kind of started with affordable housing, and I objected to that phrasing simply because when you say the phrase affordable housing, affordable housing, people envision a giant apartment complex where, you know, you have cheap apartments. And I don't think that was at all the intent that our city council had, but rather how do we make it affordable for people to live in Orem? And that, that covers people on a broad spectrum, whether they're renting or they're trying to get a starter home. And, you know, if you go back to December of 2016, there was a development called Orem Orchards right by Orem Elementary. where they were proposing to do a rezone where it was still single-family homes, but it was just a little bit more dense. And it wasn't really that much smaller than my own lot where we have our house. And I think David and I were the only 2 that voted for it because most thought that that was too dense to have single-family homes in this neighborhood across from an elementary school, whereas in my mind That made perfect sense. And so as a result, the zoning stayed the same. They still developed it for homes, but then those homes were much more expensive and you couldn't have as many families living right next to their elementary school.

But they sold in about 2 weeks.

Sure.

Yeah, I'm not saying that it was a bad development. I'm just saying if, if we believe that housing affordability is literally one of our top 4 priorities as a city council, These are those moments where we have the opportunity to make that happen. And again, I'm not necessarily saying that this specific proposal is, you know, shovel-ready and we should run with it. But the PRD, for example, in my mind, if we can make the numbers still balance out where if we have these areas that we believe that for the foreseeable future they're not going to be developed, and that means that We have single-family homes that get developed where people can actually buy them and own them to take care of the property. I think that's part of what we're missing is that middle ground on that housing spectrum.

It's—

we either want these giant mansions or cheap apartments. But that middle ground, in my mind, that's where we can most importantly focus our attention as a city council. How do we help people get into that starter home so that they can start building equity and building wealth as, you know, as an individual or as a family. In my mind, that's what creates long-term housing affordability rather than just trying to get into a cheap apartment right off the bat. So I'm not comfortable with the proposal as it currently stands, but if we want to continue it or just kind of pursue that PRD option, in my mind, that might be a better way to find compromise.

Okay.

Okay.

Any other comments from the council?

Debbie?

I am also interested in the PRD idea. And I know what we did with Baxter Gardens. I thought that there was a lot of good neighborhood input and the compromise was good. So— and it fit really nice in a single-family area. So I'm interested in the PRD. I hope that's a compromise from, you know, more of the townhouse and more of a twin-home-looking sort of thing. I mean, I'm comfortable with that. With that look and feel. I know it's 7 to the unit, but you said— to the acre, I mean. So you'd be looking at— let's see, you said 4.3 and go to 7. That's about 2.7 more homes, almost 3 more homes. And over 16 acres, that would be about 43 more homes. So I guess my question is, does 43 homes mean we have to rewrite all of the— is there enough in this area—

Capacity.

Capacity-wise, or do we have to rewrite everything?

So the answer is probably yes, but the question is then—

The future.

The rest of the properties. You got the neighboring property and the neighboring property and the other property. It's not just one development here you're looking at. It's the entire area. I guess if that's the direction that the council wants to go, then we just need to know that so that we can adjust our numbers.

Councilmember Sumner has a comment.

I think we're— and it's been mentioned before— we're starting to pick and choose who and what areas gets the higher density than what is already proposed in the vision. And one of my— I go back to the traffic— 2,200 cars, whatever it was, coming out of there. And we're already in a nightmare of traffic problems. And there's a lot of ifs correct that, and I don't think the developer has any answers on it. And you knew what you were paying—

what this was zoned when you bought it.

And it's been zoned the way it is. The vision from 2015 or whatever it was, you know, we went through a lot of expense and a lot of money and to redo that, I— I I don't think the developer wants to pay for all that. You know, the utility survey or study again and traffic studies and all that. I'm just comfortable with the way it is now. And, you know, as far as the agricultural easement, they had an opportunity to come into this and they I remember they denied it and they just wasn't even questionable on that. So I, I'm comfortable with denying this request. Got a motion?

Any— no, I'd like to make some comments. You okay with that?

Sure.

Okay.

Your meeting.

So I just like to go back to when this all started, when Ryan— and I appreciate what you did, Ryan— when You were looking at putting apartments where the Wilkinson Farm was, and Mansell came in a little bit later.

Mm-hmm.

We looked at the apartments, didn't really like the idea of a whole bunch of apartments there, but we did like the idea of multi-family homes available to buy, which is what Mansell is selling right there. And— but also, as a city, We looked at the cost of infrastructure. It was about $8 million, and we made a conscious decision that we did not want to take the risk as a city to invest $8 million and then see if we could sell lots and so forth, or see lots sold where we could get our money back. And I remember that was a big risk, and we told— Mansell— and I think we told you as well— to go back and we would consider annexing this property in if, in fact, the developers took the risk for the infrastructure and not the city. And so that's what we did. And Mansell came back and said, yes, I will go ahead and take that risk. I will pay that $8 million. And then you will go ahead and do the impact fees. And I will receive the money back from the impact fees to pay my part of the development. But this was all— this whole annexation was predicated upon the developer actually taking the risk for the infrastructure. And so we developed this as low density. We could have developed it as high density, and we could have made the infrastructure much bigger and the cost would have been much greater, and I don't believe Mansell would have funded it, and we weren't willing to fund it. So I think we went down a path that we were looking at what could be afforded and who would pay for it and who would take the risk and who is willing to put all that together, and that's the path that we've gone down.

Thank you.

And so we're now in the middle and saying, do we now want to change that path and do something different? And again, if we did that, we would have a lot of expense on our part, and we would take a lot of risk on our part to— for all the infrastructure. So I feel like the path we started down, you know, it could have been a different path. We could have gone—

I agree.

high density everywhere, put in a lot of infrastructure, taken a lot of risk. But we chose not to. And I feel like to change course now is not a good idea. I feel like we're going— in this particular area, we're going down a course that made sense. And I think that we should stay the course.

I have a hunch what motion Mark's going to make, and I'll probably vote in favor of it. But before we proceed with that, I'm just curious, the PRD concept, is that something that the council is willing to pursue, or is it just dead in the water, stick to what we have?

I'm not willing.

Tom, you're the swing vote, if you can unmute.

Tom, you awake or asleep?

Repeat the comment. Repeat the comment. I didn't hear it. I didn't hear you.

So the question was, if we vote no on this proposal today, would you be interested in pursuing a PRD concept at this site if we can do that without having to change all of our, you know, utility master plan and all those kinds of things? In other words, if we assume that the Wilkerson Farm or some of those other areas are indeed not going to develop and the PRD concept works within the existing Utility master plan, would you be comfortable pursuing that PRD option?

Yeah. I think you say comfortable exploring. And frankly, if those others aren't developing, shouldn't they be allocated fairly among all landowners? But yeah, I mean, at this point, I'm not in favor of what's being presented. But yeah, plan— what's behind door number 2, I don't know. But I'd be happy to explore it.

Okay.

That's all.

So it is important, I think, for all of us to realize what Jason has brought up is that we don't know what these properties are going to do. And we change this to medium density, they may want to all change to medium density, and a bunch of them may want to come in and be part of this, in which case our infrastructure is not big enough. So I think that's really important to understand that We, you know, we're either going to have to update and upgrade all of our infrastructure, and somebody's going to have to pay for it to do this, and we don't know the cost of that yet, or else we're going to have to stay the way we are.

But that's, that's still a big what-if to assume that—

It is a what-if.

People that acquired— they acquired this property specifically to keep it as farmland if we're building our plan around, well, when they develop it, it just doesn't— I don't understand that logic.

OK. Jamie, do you have a comment?

Yeah, I just had a comment, Mayor, just with regard to if, in fact, some of these facilities do have to be upgraded, in particular, most likely the sewer lift station would have to be upgraded. That's something similar to what we did with Mr.

Mansell and his development.

If developer was willing, we could enter into some sort of agreement with him that he would basically front that cost, and then he could potentially be reimbursed through impact fees as we collected those from developers.

But the question is, say Ryan's willing to do that, so you do that, but then all of a sudden Peterson says, well, I want to jump in, and Brian Taylor says, I want to jump in, and— I understand. I'm just saying— and you may not live forever. Somebody might live after you that says, I want to jump in and—

We just have it. It's already been sold for a house.

I understand that. I'm just talking about your 5 acres. Okay? You might have a child who lives beyond your years, and they may want to develop the 5 acres.

Understood.

I just want to make sure everyone understands, though, we do have conservation.

Those are all sold out.

Okay, fine. So all I'm saying is We don't know what's going to happen. So what happens if Ryan upgrades everything for him, but then all of a sudden you've got another 20 acres that want to come online? And then are they going to upgrade— have to upgrade again?

Well, you know, probably this is a question for Sam or Neil, but I would expect that we wouldn't do an upgrade that would only serve his additional units.

So then the question is, is Ryan going to pay for the upgrade for all the possibilities that are out there?

Yep.

And does that pencil or does that probably not pencil? That would—

that would be up to him to determine. We'd obviously have to determine what that costs. Say we wanted to increase the capacity of the lift station by 50%, you know, which would handle much more than just his development.

I mean, I think you need to realize we're going down the road of low density.

Yep.

If we want to go down the road of medium or high density, You have to prepare and have a plan to pay for all the infrastructure for that, of all the properties that could come available. And then if you're going to put that all on Brian's back, maybe he's got all that money to pay for that, but maybe he doesn't. But I don't know if we as a city want to. We made the decision before that we were not going to take that risk.

Right. And that's sort of similar to what Mr. Mansell did. I mean, he fronted millions of dollars In capacity—

He took the risk.

He took the risk. And it wasn't just to serve, you know, capacity for his development, but it was to serve capacity for the entire area.

Yeah.

It would be sort of similar, you know, Mr. McDougall, I would— if we went down this road, I would expect we would anticipate him to front the entire cost of, say, upgrading the lift station by, for example, 50%.

For his property, for Peterson's property—

For everybody else.

For Taylor's property, for DeLavalle's property. All the way down the line.

Right. I'm just— I'm just saying if that were the way it would happen, if that's the direction the council wanted to go, that's how I would anticipate it would be paid for.

Jamie, do you have a comment?

And I think, Mayor and council, that that would need to be initiated by way of another general plan amendment.

So there would be a process that we would go through even in advance of, for example, running the numbers.

We would go through a process of going through public hearings with both the Planning Commission and the City Council again.

Well, you're changing course.

Correct.

You're stopping everything we've been doing and saying now we're going to do something different.

So I would— and the reason I say that is I would anticipate that that process would probably take 12 months to get everything from where we are If the decision was made to proceed with the change of course to actually—

And that's really what outcome— that's really what we're talking about. We're talking about a change of course for this whole area.

So you're redoing what we did in 2015, basically?

Yep.

You're starting over? Yeah, all over. And so, Debbie, I think—

When I asked, is a PRD considered low density, I thought you said yes.

It is, but the IFP was specifically designed at 4.3.

So I'm not interested in going to medium or high density here. I'm trying to find a way to kind of compromise.

But I think the PRD within our existing zoning structure can include up to 8 units. Correct.

So the infrastructure would need to be sized not to 4 or 5, it would be sized to up to 8.

If other people want to join in, you've just doubled the capacity— the density for all of that.

You said 7 unless there was a structure on the house.

Well—

That made it 8.

The difference between city and this specific location is that this was designed and annexed at a specific density allocation, which was 4.3. Other city areas, there is not that specificity. This one was designed specifically for that 4.3, and everything around it was designed—

Yeah, I'm not interested in high density or medium density. I'm interested in some little bump up in this low density. That's all I'm interested in.

That's not what we're discussing.

Well, but that's what we're—

That's what I asked about. That's what I asked about.

I understand. That's— hold on a second, Sam. We have Mark Sreestrand first and then Sam.

I was just going to comment on something, but it was taken, so I'm fine.

OK. Sam, go ahead.

I think it's also just worth pointing out that if we're talking about developing more units on this property, That means they're paying more impact fees. And so it's as if we're imagining this fixed pie of impact fees that are coming in to address this growing cost. But if, you know, Peterson came in and wanted to develop, for example, it's per unit, right? So we would have more impact fees coming in. Yes, but the costs are not linear. Sure, right.

So there is a difference in, for example, sizing an 8-inch line versus a 12 versus a 16 or whatever. And I'm looking for Sam, and he's nodding his head.

8, 12, and 16 are good sizes for pipelines.

Yeah. And it— but my point is, if we can, I guess, make the numbers pencil on the PRD for this specific property and somebody else— again, we're speaking about hypotheticals and putting words in people's mouths, many of whom clearly do not want to develop their land in that way. We wouldn't be— it wouldn't be such a disaster as I think what we're making it out to be. And I'm not saying it wouldn't be a lot of work and there wouldn't be costs associated with that. But there would be more impact fees. Even at the current level of impact fees, there would still be more fees to help address that. But if I may. For example, we're in the process now of building a lift station to accommodate the current densities that were approved as part of this whole annexation area.

So if we move to something different, we can't just, for example, increase the capacity of the lift station. We have to build an additional lift station.

And so those are the kind of conversations that we would need to have.

Or we can't— we may need to add additional infrastructure. We can't accommodate— the pipes don't have sufficient capacity to accommodate some of what we're talking about. So we may need to upsize those pipes or add additional pipes. This doesn't even speak to the work that we potentially— we would need to do, for example, as related to sewer at the treatment plant where we potentially would need to— increase capacity to accommodate the additional flows that would result. I mean, it's kind of a— it's kind of a big puzzle that you can't look at one piece independent from the other. And that's why we need that time, for example, to update those master plans and the capital plans and the impact fees.

But if we're talking about taking this one property, which was planned at or 4.3 units per acre, you don't need all of the other properties to play along. You could have one of the— like, it could be Wilkerson, or it could be Taylor, or it could be AC. If they don't develop that, then for this— Yes, but I think then there's the argument that can be made that you as a council are picking winners and losers. But they did that 4 years ago with the blue area there. And I realize he took the risk But we already have high density in that area, so it's already been done.

That wasn't picking a winner or a loser. He was willing to fund it, and we went ahead with it. Nobody else was willing to fund it.

But nobody else has— I was. —to develop density. And he was willing to do the same thing.

It's a 6—

But he was willing to sell versus rent.

I will sell as well.

Okay, well, at the time, it was just rental versus sell.

It was, it was, it was for sale as well. They were townhomes, they weren't apartments. We're happy to pull the minutes.

Yeah, the Mansell piece is medium density, by the way.

It's not high. Medium density.

Okay.

Councilmember Spencer has a comment.

I just have a question for Ryan. Yes.

So hypothetically, if it went PRD and you could do 7 units, does that pencil for you?

Yeah, it does.

And at $300,000 would be the That's what—

yeah, that's what our builder is telling us. We've been working with Century Homes. That's what they say that these homes start at. And I would also just like to add, you know, when the impact fee study was done 5 years ago, that impact fee study included low density, medium density, and high density. So that study already has been done as to— so we're going off of right now low density impact fees. So if that impact fee hasn't changed in 5 years, which is what we would be paying if we developed now, then why has the medium density or the high density changed? Why does that have to be redone, I guess, would be my question, because it's already been done. But why can we not— why do we not have to redo it for the low density, I guess, is my question. So if we were to develop right now at 4-point-whatever units, acre, we can't go— we can't use that. So, so really, the impact fee study has to be done regardless of what we— No, we have, we have a requirement to update that study. However, if we were to transition to a higher density sooner, then that would trigger a need to update the impact fee study sooner rather than at the required timing, which would put us out— was it 5 or 6 years? Okay, I guess I don't— I guess I don't understand why it expires for the medium and the high and not for— You need to ask the legislature because they're the ones that put the requirements in place.

Okay, go ahead.

Can I ask one more question?

Sure.

Does anybody know offhand— I know this is 4 years ago— how much the impact, like how much higher it was for Medium residential, for example?

It's lower.

The fees were lower because there were more units to spread those costs around.

So under a higher density scenario, the impact fees are typically lower.

Okay, Mark, do you want to make a motion?

Yeah, my—

based on my feelings that when we did the annexation request and we had Many neighbors and property owners come to the process of being annexed into Orem. We came out with the master plan that I felt was adopted and agreed. We set forward on a pathway that allowed us to implement to that master plan. I think this, as was said, puts us on a different trajectory, and I think it's in conflict with what was discussed and agreed with the annexation, as well as with the current plan that we're on. I would move to deny the request.

Second. Okay, um, start with Councilmember Lentz.

Aye.

Aye.

Nay.

Aye. Aye.

Okay, Tom?

Aye.

Okay. All right, so the ordinance is— request is denied. And thank you, Ryan. And thank you.

It was a general plan change, so what the request was not an ordinance.

So I'm sorry, general plan. Okay, thank you. All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Jamie, do you have any items? Okay, we do have a birthday coming up, which is David Spencer's, so we are going to adjourn to Room 107. I would take a motion for adjournment.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, we are adjourned. Leo, can you come here?