City Council · 2019-11-20

Davidson, City Manager, City of Warren. Brent Bybee, Assistant City Manager. Marty Strand, City Council.

Steve Downs, Deputy City Manager. Jody Bates, City Recorder.

Brent Sumner, City Council.

Rob Smith, Assistant Superintendent, Alpine.

Tom McDonald, City Council.

Debbie Lorraine, City Council.

Jake Frederick, New Orleans Police Department. I'm here in place of Chief Giles.

John Patton, Assistant Superintendent of the Elementary Schools for Alpine.

Sarah Beeson, Alpine School District Board of Education.

I'm Rhonda Bromley, Assistant Superintendent of our Secondary Schools. I want to say congratulations to our state champion Mound View Bruins in volleyball. Wow. And good luck to the Warren Tigers Friday in football.

Yeah. Sorry to take you out of the way. Ada Wilson, your Mound View High School cluster Carl Bursch with Durham City Recreation.

Shane Barnsworth, Alpine School District, Assistant Superintendent of Operations.

Sam Sharman, Superintendent of Water.

No, I'm fine, thanks.

Well, and who do we have over there? Is there a ribbon?

Sissy, do you want to introduce yourself?

I'm Sissy Rasmussen. I'm a parent extraordinaire.

Okay, where do your children go to school? It'd be nice to have you here.

My kids go to school at Centennial Elementary. Baker Elementary and Orem High— oh, Baker Junior High.

And Cissy was part of the concerted effort to bring 2 schools together, and we very much appreciate what she does on a regular basis to learn about what's going on in Alpine School District and then try and, and support what's going on, but also look for ways to improve, and I really appreciate what she does.

Well, we in Orem appreciate having the Alpine School District here with us. We did want to mention that this is Councilmember Seestrand's last joint meeting. He's retiring after a decade. So, way to go, Mark. We appreciate it. Can I say something? Yes.

So, uh, it was with, uh, Jerry Lockburn that we started having these meetings back in, what, 2008? There was, there was a lot of stuff going on with, uh, citizens' requests to split the school district and to make Orem its own thing. And in that process, we recognized that the city and the school district were kind of on pages. And so Jerry had the foresight to say we really need to have these joint meetings and start to talk about how we can work together. And it's just been a real honor and privilege to work with so many people, how many superintendents have happened and changes and board members. I just have such a strong renewed faith in the benefit of collaboration and finding ways to work together. And I think The result has been phenomenal for both the city as well as how we've been able to work together with the school district. So thank you for letting me be part of this journey. It's been wonderful.

Thank you, Mark.

Appreciate you and your family. And Debbie is our— one of our newly elected officials. By 12 votes.

Congratulations.

Um, we'd like to go ahead and start discussing items. Superintendent, do you have any items you'd like to bring up?

We have a handout that we'd like to share with you. It's talking about a new option that our board has approved in policy to allow for a 2-hour delay And this is a— this is a draft. We don't have draft written on it, but this is a draft that we're getting ready to send out and make available to our public so that they will know what's going on. If we run out of copies, I apologize. I can hand mine around. Do we have enough? I think so. And so I've asked Dr. Barnesworth to go over this with you, and what we would hope is that because this is a draft, you could give some feedback. And if you receive your copy, and I know that we do have at least one spouse of those of you here works in one of our schools, and so not only will patrons but employees will be affected by this in the event that we have some tough weather. So Shane, would you go ahead?

Certainly, Superintendent. Thank you for the opportunity. And we are in the process— we've worked on this this morning as a cabinet, we'll continue to refine it. Appreciate the opportunity to get some feedback. Let me just give you a little bit of background. The impetus behind this was You really can't win on a school day from a snow day. There's just no way to satisfy everyone on a school closure or a non-school closure. You close and people are frustrated you should have stayed open. If you stay open and people are frustrated you should have stayed closed. So we are trying to come up with some options that say, how do we still ensure the safety of our students but not disrupt parents and their plans and expectations? We started looking at different options, came up with a 2-hour delayed start where we may, if conditions are such, we may give a warning the night before, before 10 o'clock, send out an advisory that we may consider a 2-hour delayed start in the morning. Or we may not have the opportunity to have that advisory and just by 5:30 that morning we would send out notification to all of our patrons and employees. So you're saying that if it's snowing, you're going to delay the start? That school would be delayed, the start of school would be delayed by 2 hours. You can see the information here that would be communicated there. We would just shift everything back 2 hours except for the closing time. We would still close schools, schools would end at the same time that they normally do. We would just shift everything back 2 hours. If your bus child typically is at their bus stop at 7:00, 7:25. To our delay, they would be there at 9:25. Buses would run 2 hours later. Our expectation is that our employees would get to the school as soon as they are safely able to do so, so that we would have personnel at the school. Our maintenance people would be out plowing, doing their work. That would allow the cities to have time to clear the roads, possibly to the extent that they can before we start. So we would When we can, we would make that determination the night before and just give a warning. Say, you know what, we may— or an advisory— we may issue a 2-hour delayed start in the morning. You would be notified by 5:30 AM. Superintendent operations team would get information to the superintendent, make a recommendation. He would review all that and make a determination. We would then have a robocaller go out with an email as well to all employees and all patrons in Alpine School district that are signed up on School Messenger. We would encourage them to continue to get signed up on School Messenger if they're not because that's our main communication device. Means that would go out indicating that there was a 2-hour delay and then all this would kick into place. You can read there through how they would be notified and then what it means. Means everything would start 2 hours later. We would cancel preschool and kindergarten, both AM and PM kindergarten. The reason we do that, obviously AM kindergarten, you do a 2-hour delayed start, you're going to significantly affect the amount of time they would even be in school. But when you push that delayed start to run those 400 buses, it pushes everything back and we don't have the buses to transport the students to PM kindergarten. Lunch would be served, breakfast would not be served in the event that a student, did not receive the notification and parents dropped them off at the school, we would have school personnel there to take care of that student until classes started 2 hours later. We would communicate this out through our school information system. We'd also go through Facebook, through our Twitter, through our other means, through local news media as well. We, in addition to this, we're looking at having a video that kind of goes through that protocol and process That parents, patrons, students, employees can access on our website, as well as a memo with additional procedures and policies that we would expect our employees to follow for transportation services, other maintenance services. So this is just kind of it in a nutshell, what parents would need to know in the event of a 2-hour delayed start.

You've got some positive press on the thumbs up zone today.

Down by splitting the district and having some schools close and some not. Would this be by school and not— so I assume this is also by school, right?

Great, great question. We believe— nothing you don't know until you run it— but we believe we could do a closure by school, a closure by cluster. Those are all the schools that feed into a high school or a district-wide 2-hour delayed start or closure. We're most concerned probably about the Suncrest area and the ability to get students off of the mountain.

Suncrest up on the Draper area, not Suncrest Elementary that's over here. We don't want the Highland issue to resurface.

You have the school in Highland. So great questions, we would do that. It's easiest for us to do a 2-hour delayed start district-wide, but it may not be necessary, and so we would, we would do that according to needs.

My question with not feeding breakfast for your lower income, would that be difficult or will you give them a snack? I mean, what does that look like for a child who doesn't normally eat at home?

Yeah, great question. So we always have some additional things. I think we would make our principals aware that, you know, on a 2-hour delayed start you may need to say, hey, if anyone didn't get breakfast, come They would come down, we'd have some supplies in place. We would try and get that there ahead of time to be sensitive to that. They are coming 2 hours later, so lunch would start with— at some schools probably within an hour, an hour and a half of when they got there, so they wouldn't go too long without a meal. But going 2 hours later, would the students skip those first 2 classes, or would you shorten them the other time you're there? We've allowed the site-based decision on that. Our secondary schools are looking at— Rhonda can comment on this— looking at an abbreviated schedule to still do all of those classes on that day.

Because we do an A/B, if you completely skip the classes, then obviously it's several days sometimes in between. So teachers, students, parents like it better to have every class, even if it's shorter.

So that's why. And then elementary school, John, you can comment to this. They would need to just adjust to say, okay, are we gonna miss out on Are some going to miss out on their specialties, or how will we adjust that?

It would be in our extended day schools, it would be the small group reading time too that would just be lost. I think each teacher would make the adjustments that they needed to do, but that would put them right in the very start of their specialty. Most specialties in an elementary school would be run then. They would just barely be starting 2 hours later.

So that would require a small adjustment. You mentioned kind of a notification system. Do you have an internal and an external communication system, or are all your teachers, your administrators, your school staff notified at the same time? The reason I'm asking is because that impacts us relative to crossing guards, school safety, and obviously staffing. That typically happens, you know, in and around 7 AM or later for elementary school kids, obviously. But that would also impact us. So I don't know, Shane, how that relationship will work, but obviously I think there still would be an expectation, and I'm assuming a number of kids would probably walk to school, right, and get out on the—

The lieutenant in charge of that. What supervisors, the crossing guards, would need to monitor this and make sure there's communication out to them. You know, it's not such a big deal if we're there in the morning, the kids are going to school. We would be more worried about them going 2 hours late and not having cars.

Yeah, exactly.

Appropriate thought, especially in bad weather.

Great, great point.

And tied to that is just that if somebody Goes earlier and there's not— if they, if they don't get the message or they don't make it, are there—

Yeah, kids don't try to go to school.

Are there additional exposures now that we need to worry about in terms of kids braving the weather, traffic, or even—

You bring up an interesting question, Councilman. Some districts have said we won't even— if this— if we're a 2-hour delayed start, we're not even going to open our buildings. Because of the liability. We're sending the message that we are closed. We don't want the liability of saying, well, you should have had a crossing guard there and you didn't. You should have had supervision there and you haven't. And so they're taking the approach that it's easier for us just to say, you know what, the building is not opening until 2 hours later than it did. Our approach right now is to try and accommodate those who may not get that message. We'll have personnel there. Is there a way to still allow them in the building, provide a safe, warm place for them to be until things start. So I— it's a hard—

it sounds though like, for example, your social media outlets are probably one of the best ways to gain information as to are you open, are you closed, which schools are open. So we probably need to just kind of make sure we're linked into that. Status—

okay, would this mostly be tied to weather-related issues though?

I would see Probably 90% of the time it would be weather-related. Certainly if there was something that affected the whole district in terms of a hazardous spill or something, those would be hard to anticipate, the 2-hour delay where you had something that significant widespread. We may have an area that has a domestic disturbance in a particular area and say, you know what, we're going to do a 2-hour delay start because these— we can't get access to this issue, there's a threat. Environmental concern or some other threat in that area, we're going to delay start this specific area. I think non-weather related, it would be rare that we would have a 2-hour delay start. Something that impacts—

We're going to have the same issues with weather too, with snowplows. And it's— so we'll be aware of what's possible. I mean, we probably have many of the same protocols you do, kind of ramping up to a storm event. monitoring the Weather Service and trying to get ahead of some of these things. So yeah, I would imagine a lot of what we're doing is really in parallel decisions.

And Shane, if you can get us the person's name and contact information, we can make sure that our secretaries who are there are reaching out to them as early as possible. I think that what you said was very good as far as how do we communicate with our cities, and that's a good suggestion all the way around. We've got 14 municipalities, and if we can get a hold of their— the people that are in contact with the crossing guards, great.

Mike Brown meets with all the chiefs and all of the SROs. Yeah, like he could be our link. Yeah, just say, okay, when Mike gets the key community groups—

That way we know all 14 are getting in.

We could do that one.

Just please go ahead. I was going to say, you could also recognize that our snow removal equipment has pretty good eyes and ears that they can share. If they're seeing an issue, if they're alerted to it, then they can become part of your—

That's part of our, I think, awareness as we send out our plows and say, okay, give us feedback. These roads seem accessible. This area of the district is more challenging.

Or if they're seeing kids that are waiting in the, you know—

Kind of our spotters are going out around. But with the 2-hour delay, I think it puts us in a situation where it's not— the consequences are not so significant. You can muck a 2-hour delay and still be, you know, not, you know, taken to task on social media as bad as you can a non-close-to-a-school And really, a lot of our protocols in a snow event, we prioritize routes and roads.

Most of your facilities are on pretty significant arterials or collector streets, and those are more often than not the ones that are plowed first. It's just getting into the neighborhood. So people can, if they can find their way to 8th East, they can get to school. Yeah. Or 4th East.

Our challenges are those buses start running at 6 o'clock. We're doing some pickups at 6:45, you know, and you see we don't— all the plows are not out by then.

Well, that's part of the challenge too, is we typically don't focus on neighborhood streets until later in a storm event because more often than not people are interested in getting to work, and so they'll focus on some of the big roads, and that's where we may have a A little bit of a challenge of your buses trying to get into areas that we may not necessarily have gotten to yet.

That's why we'd exercise the 2-hour delay start, to give you more time, another municipality more time to clear areas just to—

You know, one challenge I can see with this program, I like the idea of it, but that is we have quite a few families where both parents work. And so they oftentimes drop the kids off at school and they don't have the option to sit there and say, I'm going to go to work at 10 AM. And they have to be able to drop their child off. And so the idea that, you know, you're saying site-specific, they can make up their minds. I think you would have to have somebody there at the schools that could accept those children in. Whose parents work and have no other option but to drop them off because that is their program?

That is our intention right now, the expectation right now. And we feel like for those parents, saying I'm going to be a little late to work is a little bit more palatable for them to deal with than calling their employer and saying I'm not coming into work at all today because I don't have someone to take care of our kids. So that's part of this. What's the reasoning behind the 2-hour delay?

I grew up in a school district that did 2-hour delays. We used them. This is back in the day. We had a lot of fog delays. And so anyways, it really worked great. It was a good, good option. Didn't have to make up the school day, and the classes were so short we didn't get anything out of it, and lunches were still full-time. So it was, it was perfect.

But they used it, they used it a lot, and it did work out well.

A lot of these kinks got worked out, and I'm confident we can And let me, let me emphasize, this is not to become a regular thing.

This is when you have, like last year, as I'm sitting there getting ready to do a training for our new board members— we have 4 new board members that came on in January— one of the first things they experienced was last year's morning storm. How many times do we have a warning storm? It's rare. Most of the time that snow dumps at night. It's, it's then at 4 AM that you've got trucks out clearing, clearing the roads and everything, and pretty much we're able to function. So this, this is not something that we are planning on using regularly. It would be rare, but it does give— A heads up. that opportunity for our public to say, okay, we needed more time and the district gave us more time, especially if our part of the district was the one that was being affected by the storm. So Shane, I'll let you keep talking about it.

I think we're about done with this unless there are additional questions. It was interesting as we started working on this, sharing with different colleagues and friends, and I got a message from Texas that they went into a 2-hour delayed start because it dropped below 36 degrees. No rain, no snow, no storm, it's colder than they wanted. So they're going to— 2-hour delay so the temperature would warm up a little bit so kids would have a better experience. Wimps in Texas.

Jay, one quick question on the— you talked about encouraging parents, of course, to sign up for the— there's a school messenger. Do you have— so is it all— is it an opt-in thing, or do you— are you taking information that you already have and just inserting it into the system?

So when parents register their student to become part of Alpine School District, they have an account in our student information system. They have options to say, how do I want to receive notification from the school and from the district? Do I want it by text? Do I want it by email? And then they— Do you use EverRich? Not that I'm aware of.

We use Skyward.

Skyward. Skyward is our SIS. So they can, they can, and then if they go in and change phone numbers, say, hey, I no longer have a home phone, I'm using my mobile phone, kind of incumbent upon them to go in and make that change. We try and encourage that when every, the start of every year we're doing registration again. We'll also put on our website, and some suggest even on this form, Make sure to receive updated notifications, your contact information is correct in Skyward.

Okay. So it's how teachers communicate, how schools communicate, it's our whole community.

So there's a way if somebody hasn't specifically opted, basically on a 2-hour delay to force the hand and we're going to notify everybody we have information on regardless of whether they've opted in.

And we'll also communicate to local news and we'll use our social media. We have floor mats as well.

I'm just curious, what is our current method of communicating with our cross guards? Do we have something in place?

Oh, we do, and I don't deal directly with that. It's under the supervision of Lieutenant, and there's a system in place, and we have supervisors checking the boys now. I just wondered if we had something.

Mike Browning is the safety person from our district, and he has contact with the different chiefs of police on a monthly basis, so we would use MyGrammy.

So in an incident, I just wondered if it's fine.

And are there other districts in the state that are doing this?

Um, I have not heard of any. I know that, uh, well, I think Canyons or another district was considering it, but a lot of our resources came from out of state. We looked at other districts that were contemplating this. Adams 12 is a configuration of different districts that they use this. The idea for the graphic organizer came from them. Processing through some of the variables that we would need to consider if we were to do this came from other districts that had done this. And it seems to be a positive option versus the full closure.

We do get criticism because people move into our area from different states. And so when there is snow, they, they cannot believe that we're holding school. And so we were criticized quite heavily last year when that morning storm hit for, for creating unsafe conditions where parents were trying to get their kids to school, even though we were very clear Parents, you are welcome to keep your kids home today if that's what you feel is the most safe option for you. We want it to be your decision as the parents. We, we see this as a way to, to publicize that we have been— that we did go through an experience last year and that we feel like we can do a better job of communicating with our public and making sure that they are aware of, in this particular example, aware of an option that we can use when we're not going to cancel the whole school day.

Any feedback or questions?

And we're working with the—

when would you be looking at putting this into place?

This will likely put into place next time we have a significant snowstorm, but communicating this out would probably go out this week.

The board's already voted on it, so it's ready.

Yeah, the board approved it.

We're just now finalizing the memo and the public relations aspect of it, the communication options.

In the high schools and junior highs, the release time seminary, was there coordination with how that works with their schedule?

We do work with the seminaries. On individual kind of—

Yeah, principals work with us.

Basis on how that would work for this.

And most of our seminary school principals are tied into school communication options as well.

Would that be something we'd want to put on our Facebook to let our residents know about?

I think when they formalize their— I think when they formalize it, we will share it. And I think we'll make every effort too, in the middle of an event, to make sure we share and communicate communicate the same message.

So, but I think because we have the same metrics formalized. Yep.

So I think if we make the decision not to have crossing guards out early, I think we need to make clear— make that clear to our public that, you know, if there is a child that doesn't get the memo and you see them, you know, make sure you communicate. I, I just see that as something we need to coordinate.

And I'm, I'm Fully anticipating there will be some challenges the first time we do this. We hope to learn from it and get better at it, but it does give us some options that we didn't have before when it was either yes or no.

Sure. Well, good. Thank you for sharing. Thanks for listening. Anything else?

I think that was the main, the main message that we wanted to bring. Oh yeah, do you want to share that, Shane, since you've been one of the 3?

We are just— I think we have about 20 left. So we've done about 70 presentations throughout the district to all of our schools, school community councils, and PTA representatives. And basically it's about a 30 to 40 minute presentation on bond accountability. We just come back to them and say we bonded for this amount of money, this is where we spent the money, this is how projects have been used, this is what it means to bond, this is how we layer bonds, this is the taxable value of the area and how it's increasing. Really just accountability back to our schools, to our taxpayers to say we bonded, we committed to do these projects, we're in the last stage of the bond and finishing up those projects. And then we talk about the cycle, that this is part of that cycle of getting feedback, The bond committee will continue to look at options if the board were to consider. They're currently studying whether or not to go out for 2020 bonds. We bring this feedback back from our patrons. We bring a 2020 bond proposal to them of projects that we would consider. The bond wrestles with that. We also use Y2 Analytics that looks out at voter perception in terms of favorability towards a bond, feelings about the district. All that information is given to the Board of Education, presented to them. When that starts to hold still, they have us go back out to all 92 schools and say, this is what we're considering, give us feedback. Once we have that feedback, then the Board of Education determines whether or not we would go for a 2020 bond. So this is part of that whole cycle process.

So in this process of bonding with the school district, and I've seen a bond about every 3 years.

4 to 5. 5 years. 4 to 5. Seemed like it went on. 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, all on 5-year cycles. We're now considering a 4-year bond cycle to align with the presidential elections.

So my only question with that is, do you ever sit down and contemplate what's happening with the residents within the school district? In other words, outside of Your responsibility and your bond. Are you looking at what other organizations are doing? Yes. In other words, Utah County is has put forward that they're going to increase the property tax by $120 per year on your average home within Utah County. At the same time, the city of Orem has increased property tax by twelve. $12 a year. So, you know, when you look at that, that's $132 a year. If you come back in and say, all right, we need to add in another whatever it is, you know, $100 a year, $35 a year, to be honest with you, it makes it rough on the residents. And I think we need to be I was thinking your bond made it rough on the residents. What I'm saying is I think it's important that all of us look at this and say, you know, we need to be aware of how all of these— we're not in a, you know, in our own little bubbles. We're in a bigger organization and how all of these affect. I think it's important to look at that. I certainly understand the need for the schools and what the school district's doing, but I'm also aware of those people that are on welfare or Social Security or single fixed income that maybe they're only getting $1,000 a month. And, you know, you start to whittle away, you know, money here and money here. And of course, we as the city have fees, we have sales taxes, Sales tax increases, you know, statewide. And, you know, it makes it tough.

I do, if I may, I do think that the school district has had a good history of trying to shape their debt consistent with kind of existing tax expectations. Would that still be the plan? Yes. If you want to— Perspective. Yeah. We're modeling that right now, Rob. It won't, for example, create additional hardship, but rather maintain level of service.

The maintain part we understand. It's the increase and realizing that, you know, you are one of like an arm, 5 taxing entities. And then we have the state to deal with. And it's just like if we all put forward our needs and not pay attention to what anybody else is doing, the Port of Resident pretty soon has a really rough time.

So if I may, Mayor, I think that's a fair question. And not only do we maintain a pulse or keep a pulse of what other taxing entities are doing as we shape, but as Jamie said, very, very carefully we structure debt in such a way that our tax rate that we levy actually has the increase even though we have issued bonds that are significant.

And we try to do that very carefully to make sure that we're not asking the taxpayers for a higher tax rate than what we saw prior.

So you're thinking your next round of bonds would be replacement bonds rather than new bonds? It'll be new bonds. No, I know that. But we structure it so as bonds are paid off, we take the place with these new bonds. And layer it and adding up on top.

Yeah, and Alpine has always been known for the way we structure debt. If you look at our debt structure, it's been called out. Moody's recently did an in-depth issuer report, love to share that with you sometime, where they've specifically looked at the strategic and incremental way that Alpine's Board of Education and staff have looked at financing needed projects. And it's Moody's and Fitch and other ratings— they don't normally do those kind of things. And so it was really quite exciting for me to see them recognize the efforts of our team, our board, our team, our business team, our staff, trying to be sensitive to taxpayer needs. It's the very thing you're talking about. So yes, we do. Thank you. We will continue to be aware of what other taxing entities are doing and continue to try to meet needs. Not all needs. There's always way more that we could do, but we try to balance that in a responsible way to make sure the taxpayer is considered. It's their money, and we take that stewardship very seriously.

I think part of the nervousness is our neighbors to the south just went through through bond elections did not follow that path.

And so— 4 of 6 did not pass bonds in our neighboring districts. 4 of 6 districts.

Okay. But I think just, I mean, I think you have a good history of representing just that, not adding to the burden but maintaining.

Rob and his team are looking at that modeling right now and we're looking at projects and we'll try to find that happy medium that gives us enough resources to handle the growth and the renovations, rebuilds that we need to do, but not burden our taxpayers.

Can you remind me, I know that, you know, increased construction costs have made it an overage. What happened to— in my mind it was $30 million, is that right?

And how are we paying for that? I describe it a different way.

I wouldn't say it was an overage. It was we bond for a certain amount and then we cover anything that, that we need to out of 2 other pots of money. And those pots of money are our capital money and then our savings, if you want to call it that, other discretionary dollars. So did you use your discretionary dollars to pay the difference in the increase cost? Both capital and— but that debt, that debt amount has allowed us To not increase, like what Mayor Brunson was saying, what was the cost for your bond? It was $100 per year?

Ours was $12.

Property tax increase? $12 per—

it was the county that was $112.

County was $112. Okay, county was $112. And we would try and be very close to that, a zero type of a thing. I think one of our bonds, it was We figured it at a hamburger. Yeah. So there was a small increase, hamburger per month. So it was like a $5 or something like that. This last one was we— there was no increase, but there wasn't a decrease. And that's what Jamie was talking about. There wasn't a decrease in taxes. If we didn't bond, there would be a decrease, but because of our needs, We want to maintain that level, but that drops the rate down because of growth that's taking place in our area.

And that seems to have resonated with our voters to say we understand growth is coming, but if you're sensitive to taxpayer—

Did you recently raise your property tax level for salaries?

To do a levy increase?

Through Truth in Taxation, we did.

And one increment in the operations side and one increment on the capital side.

And how much did that average per household per year?

I can calculate it for you.

I thought it was like $30 per year, but I could be wrong.

I think too that having this conversation amongst us as some of the larger taxing jurisdictions is really a good healthy conversation. Compounding all of this is the whole tax reform discussion and what may happen relative to the amendment of the Constitution and the dedication of specific income tax dollars for, for education. And then we have the issue of truth in taxation. I think it's important, Mayor, that we, we always kind of have these conversations because The reality is it's not getting cheaper to run municipalities, to run schools. Right. I think there needs to be sensitivity and hopefully too cooperation like we've had over the years of trying to understand and appreciate where all of us are coming from, what each of our respective needs are, and how we can help each other and not necessarily hurt each other. I think at least I can only speak anecdotally for what happened in the South. But you had some big projects the city were working on, and then you had right after, on the tail end of it, you had the school district, and then you had this county issue. All of a sudden, people were staring down a lot of big, big increases, and they got nervous. I don't see that here, at least between the school district and the city of Orem. Well, I think, I think our residents appreciate that.

I think the Provo bond is a whole different item than really what we're discussing here. With what's— I mean, how the money was going to be used in the school, etc.

Well, and our board member Mark Clement did some math, and his figures were if we did the same percentage or amount that Provo did, it would be like Alpine doing a billion-dollar bond.

Yeah, that's— so that's a whole different conversation. The only thing I wanted to bring up is the county's doing $120 on your average family, Orem's doing $12, and Alpine's doing $30. So that's $162. And for example, somebody who's on a $1,000 a month income, so they're $12,000. Anyway, this means something.

Sure, sir. One other point, I think, Jane, you brought this up in the discussion, and that's tax reform.

Tax reform and restructuring, I think, is a huge deal, and we may want to talk about that at a future meeting because there are proposals that are property tax heavy that are being floated. And if that's the case, it exacerbates the issue that you're talking about because that's going to shift burden from a progressive tax like income tax to a regressive tax like property tax regardless of your ability to pay. And it's going to really put heat on locally elected officials when that's really your source of funds to go after to meet needs. And there are some districts in the state that are capped out. They can't, even if they wanted to, raise additional tax locally.

So I think this is really an important conversation for us.

I know our board's weighed in on it. We prepared a joint statement from our legislative committee, which we gave to the Tax Restructuring Task Force in Orem. Some of you may or may not have been there. They asked me to share that information, which I did. Our board is considering another statement as we get closer to a potential study session.

Would you mind sending me a copy of that?

I'd be happy to.

I'm very concerned over—

I just wanted to write, I'm concerned.

Yes, I'm very concerned over the legislature's wanting to change the Constitution as far as the income tax being devoted solely for education. And the only reason I see that they're wanting to open that up is to have that money available to them in some manner. And that I'm against. because we're underfunded as it is. Thank you, ma'am. And I would like to see us stay where we're at and actually add 2. And I'm, you know, I'm on the Envision Board of Utah Executive Committee, and we put out a study on teacher salaries. And you may have seen that. The governor touted it here a couple weeks ago. But, you know, right now we're only graduating half as We're losing as many people as we're losing in the school districts in the state of Utah, and the major reason is salaries. And so if you all of a sudden start to pull away your major funding source and start to have it open where people can play with it, I think you're asking for big trouble. Anyway.

I just want to say, you know, as the elected board, it was our decision, our initiative to do the Truth in Taxation so that we could give our teachers an improved salary.

Sure.

And I don't know that it is the chief driving force because I mean, you talk to any teacher and it's not salary that's the most important to them. It's, in our district, we've decided to use our state funding, it's called the TSSA fund, to give them additional support for emotional concerns in their classrooms. So thank you very much for your support. I appreciate hearing that from you.

And if I may too, I mean, one of— there's a very specific education perspective. There's also a municipal perspective. We have as municipalities been primarily kept out of the conversation associated with tax reform. So to some degree, the mindset of many municipalities is, let's not kick that dog. It's right now somebody else's fight. But at the same time, we recognize obviously that these partnerships are important, and us being able to build and fund and provide services is important to you. And so to the degree we can engage, we want to engage. Thank you. Yet at the same time, we don't want to get swept up in the tornado, so to speak, if it's possible for us not to. Things like truth in taxation for us, as, you know, we've been hearing lately, could potentially become a big issue. Yeah, we're supportive of having changes in that law. That law has been a challenge, I think, for every taxpayer. Thank you. Taxing jurisdiction in the state for many, many years. But as to whether or not we jump into the forefront of this conversation, frankly, on the part of cities, we're just happy that we're not in as deep as, for example, school districts and others.

But it could affect us if it starts to go to the progressive side and starts to change. The latest proposal will You'll be pulled into that tornado. It's going to affect—

That's what I mean. But that's what I'm saying is we're trying not to necessarily— we're trying to come into— we're trying to find a comfortable means to enter the tornado rather than being thrust into it.

Moving— yeah, this was just about 2016. Yes, I did.

But this discussion needed to be had.

And that's where it goes at the schools as well. But what about the future? So, uh, thank you, Superintendent, for giving me a moment just to comment on that. They've gone very well, uh, been very well received. It's been a great opportunity to get out to our schools and patrons and share accounts.

And you use your money wisely, and I appreciate that.

Rob, was there anything else you wanted to share with the council today?

No, I just think at a future I do think it would be wise for us— I don't know if the league is going to take a position, but I believe a special session will be called for the 15th of December. There will be a proposal that will be public next Monday that is property tax heavy, and I think it would be wise for us to come together and talk about it.

And we can share whatever document we send. I would love to share it with you. John Patton, anything? That you wanted to share with the group?

No.

Okay, Rhonda? Board members?

I have a couple of things, but I wanted to see Jamie or the council if you had anything.

I just want to express appreciation to the school district for your continued cooperation with us in relation to the fitness center and our rebuild of that project. And just the collaboration, cooperation you've had really has made a huge difference, and we're very appreciative of you, Superintendent, and the board for your willingness to work with us. We are on a very, very tight timeline, and we're making everything work thanks to the work of Carl and others here in the city.

I was looking at the sun there, we might get cement poured today.

Yeah, we woke up this morning, the day we were going to pour We were going to pour cement and doggone it, it was raining for the first time in how many months? But we really are appreciative of obviously your willingness to work with us. We do have a couple of other projects that we continue to kind of, you know, push through and really the challenge is on our end and with the federal government, not with the school district, and we're making progress.

And Jamie, Brandon and your team have been Fantastic to work with, so I appreciate their willingness to just be open with us and as we work through, and that cooperative spirit is—

you can give it. And I think, you know, the addition of Centennial Elementary has been wonderful. The work on Cascade is underway and well, well underway. I think we've buttoned up all of our public works projects for the season, and You know, it was a relatively good construction season for us, and we will obviously be hitting a few more areas next spring that will have some direct impact on obviously some of your schools, and we'll be sure to provide you enough advance notice you can make preparations.

Yes, the monthly meeting is a great opportunity to coordinate.

Just for my information, Can you update me on the status of that road going in front of Mountain View High School? Is it a 2-way road? Yes, it is.

What's its purpose? It is. I appreciate that you know all this, but I just want to hear it. So yes, it is expected to be a 2-lane road. There's parking that's tied to it, and it's, it's a narrow width, and so, you know, The intent is, and it kind of jogs, so the intent is not to have it as a pass-through facility, but rather one that will service patrons, our patrons, your patrons, from the south to the north and vice versa. The road has been paved. It will remain fenced. There are, there is just a small section that remains to be completed, and that will be completed As we make some of the other improvements that we've agreed to with the school district in the parking lot to the north. And then to the south, we anticipate that's kind of our staging area for the project. We anticipate we're going to have to do some pretty significant— I won't say replacement, but we'll have to do some work on that south parking lot to get back to— Where it was, or in a better condition than where it was in the past.

Okay, just know that that's a concern to the community, what that road ends up being.

Yeah, and that was something that was discussed quite a bit and agreed upon by both the school district and the city in advance. I know there's some who, who may suggest, well, what was the school district thinking, or what was the city thinking? We weren't acting independent of each other, we were acting in cooperation with each other.

Great. And if I might add, as part of those discussions, something that's been added is 3 cable speed bumps over the course of that connection. And like Jamie said, we made some jogs so that it's really— its purpose really is to improve connectivity and flow of parking, not going through from— is that 157?

Non-high-speed high school traffic.

Well, unfortunately, high school children— high school, not children— high school kids, they may attempt a little speed over those speed tables, but that will be quickly remedied when their parents get the bill for—

and you may have to recycle all the Okay, I've got a couple of items I wanted to bring up. We had a resident ask a question they wanted me to pose to you. The city has a soccer field south and to the east of Timpanogos High School. It's a soccer field that you guys use as a soccer field. It's actually a retention lot, retention pond. But with the new field there at Timpanogos High, he wants to know why it's locked and he can't go in there and run around on that.

Run around the track?

Uh-huh. I'm not sure why. He should be able to do that. Well, so supposedly it's locked where he can't get in to run around the track.

Yeah, our facility is for community use as well.

Check that out and we'll address it. Okay, that'd be great.

Is there a number that we can contact? Do you have maybe a number?

You can contact me and I'll contact him. His name's Martin Wright. I don't have his number with me. And he is a marathon runner. He's running the Boston Marathon here. The other thing is, I had another question from another person, and that is idle-free zones. At the schools. The employees are seeing a lot of cars sitting there where they're— the parents are sitting there for 20 minutes with their cars running and looking at the amount of pollutants going into the air. At the same time, and I brought this up before, but would love to have you consider the buses. So Granite School District has a device, runs $1,000 a bus. I don't know how that would even fit into your budget, but But for $1,000 a bus, they can turn the buses off and they can keep them heated for an hour without idling the bus. And with 289 buses in the district, if they're all idling out in front of the school waiting for students or other places, that's a lot of pollutants going into the air. As you may have seen, Provo was designated the number one worst polluting city in the nation Yes. They're putting out 11 tons per year per household, where the average is 6 tons per household. But that— some of our people are concerned about the amount of residents letting their cars run and the buses running. So there's a lot of pollutants occurring, and the suggestion would be, can we make the schools idle-free zones? Both for buses and cars. And that's all I have. I don't know if anybody else has anything.

Can I just ask a question of the status and future of Hillcrest? Have you made additional kind of plans for the property and for the building itself?

Right now we're using it to house Cascade Elementary. And we just will be looking at our options once that timeframe is done. Hopefully Cascade will be done and ready to open for the fall and we'll be in a good spot there.

But we want to consider whatever options come our way. I'm just wondering, for example, if recommendations or Are there potential opportunities for community use of that facility? Would you be open to consideration of that, or is your intent to use it as a district facility in the future exclusively? Are you looking to maybe allow others potentially an opportunity to lease part of the space or use it?

We would Entertain whatever need would be expressed. So if you have some ideas, that's great. We have, you know, the— there are several, several different potential options that, that we have for that site. And so if you have some ideas, that would be great.

Just speaking as a board member, we have an obligation As your elected entity to get value out of that.

And I know, I'm just, for example, we've been having some conversations with UVU and others and wondering if there's maybe an opportunity, if that building is going to sit to some degree idle, or a piece of that building, could there be some sort of partnership between higher ed, school district, city, other public partners or nonprofits to take advantage of space if it was available.

And also the concern is your seismic safety, your utilities in that building. I know part of the building, the gym as an example, great condition, beautiful facility, but other parts decrepit. So that would I think that's a legitimate concern if you were to allow others to use it, whether or not you tore part of it down and kept the other part. The other thing I wanted to bring up with— in regards to Hillcrest is once Cascade leaves the building next year, the question is who is going to do the snow removal out on the University Parkway and the ice put down, because that's typically been the janitors. For that school and with nobody being in the school, then that— and that is the responsibility outlined previously— with nobody there, who's going to take care of that in the early morning?

We continue to, when we have facilities that are not in use, continue to care for those facilities.

Okay, so as long as you have somebody on board in the morning? All right, if nothing else, we will— when would we like to meet again? Any suggestions what's good for you? Sometime maybe in February?

Does it depend if we have some legislative issues we want to— I mean, I guess Isn't it the end of January when the legislature starts meeting?

I don't know what the tax reform is going to be before they get in session to be ahead of that, or do I wait and be more reactive?

Well, like Rob said, it could move pretty quickly.

Yeah, they're doing tax reform in a special session this next month.

Jamie, I sent to you the statement. So you should have that with the board, shared with the task force.

Okay.

And the council. Yeah, those issues are coming up even before this. We could meet again. When would you like to meet? So Tuesday's— I mean, Wednesday at noon is great. What day of the week?

Wednesday.

Wednesday afternoon.

We do have— do you want to look at January then? Since you're probably going to be interested like we are with the tax reform.

Our USBA conference.

Is that the 15th?

That's the 9th. No.

What about the 15th of January?

It's open as far as I'm concerned. We just have that legislative breakfast with our legislators, I think, that—

When are we looking at our review?

It would be a Thursday— or excuse me, a Friday is that.

Okay.

Does the 15th of January work?

As far as I'm concerned, it does.

Okay.

Let's try for that. All right, and I'll make a motion that we adjourn. Is there a second? Second. Okay, everybody in favor? Aye. All right, we're adjourned. Thank you all very much for Thank you for coming.

You know, he's so cute. My buddy. I know. His pants, um—