City Council · 2020-01-28

Really, my daughters plan it and then I just go along.

So let's see, daughter, we're just missing the date.

And he's kind of around.

Is he doing the action poses?

Yes, he is. He's got football on his head right now.

So why don't we get started and we'll welcome everybody here. We do have some new employees that we'd like to introduce.

Terry and Jeff?

I am not sure.

We, you know what, if you have some other ones, well, we've got Heidi from dispatch. In fact, Heidi can introduce herself.

We had a couple officers that were coming too, and they may be on a call, so I don't know if they're going to make it or not, but I'll—

All right. We'll send Heidi over to you.

Um, hello, my name is Heidi Francis, and, um, I just started at the beginning of January.

I live in Eagle Mountain.

This is my first time doing dispatch.

And how's it going so far?

I love it. Do you?

I do.

Busy and interesting. Lots going on.

Okay.

She doesn't get a whole lot of time to sleep on duty.

It's pretty hot in there.

So we're going to introduce you to a few people here.

Okay.

So Jeff, this is one—

we have some other— we have several others, right?

Oh, we do? Okay. All right. Have a seat.

I'll introduce you in a second. Oh, Brian's back here.

He's got some Hi, so my name is Ronnie Johnson. I'm down at the sewer, at the treatment plant. I'm on the sewer lines. We just hired a gentleman here, Chris Bingham. He's been here since the 6th of January.

Welcome. Awesome, nice to have you. All right, who else is new in Troy, right? Yes, Char?

Um, this is Christina Reyes. She's been with us since last year. We just promoted her to associate librarian. She was hired as an assistant librarian, so she brings a lot of great skills that we really need to the library. She's going to do a great job. Christy Nuttall is retiring, so she's going to be taking over supervising the pages, the volunteer program, and all of our shelving inventory.

Okay, well, nice to have you back.

Yes, this is Troy Paxton. He comes to us from Payson. With many years of experience.

He's our new— our newest facility maintenance technician. We're excited to have him. He's a great part of our team. I'll let him take it away. Yeah, and I love it here, I have to say that.

Been here with Travis and Justin, great guys. So yeah, I have an electrical background. Do you live in Payson?

I do, West Mountain. West Mountain, okay.

So in my spare time, I raise elk.

I have an elk ranch.

Awesome.

Looking forward to our next barbecue.

Yeah, make sure you invite me. We're not really going to be doing it, but I'll invite you.

Okay, great.

Make sure you tell me the date.

Okay, great. Any other new employees? All right, we'll introduce you to the council, but we have the police officers.

We'll introduce them if they come.

Yeah, if you don't mind, I'll just tell you the names of them.

Sure.

We have—

if you look on Facebook, we actually have 5 new employees.

One started a little just a few weeks ago.

We had, we had 2 that were going to try to make it today.

They're out on the road, so they may be on a call and not able to get in here. But we've got Seth Schaefer, Kaden Bishop, and they're the ones that may come in. Tyler Mitchell, David Howard, and Dallin Kaysier, uh, just got out of the academy last Thursday, so they've just started. They're actually unfortunately on— they start Thursday, and so that's their, their Monday. And then Annalise Lanes is coming to us from Michigan, and she's a lateral employee that's going to be starting Monday. And then we have— and I don't have his first name written down and I feel bad, but Mondragon is his last name. He works at UVU and he'll be starting, I believe, in a week.

Good young man.

I encourage him.

Yep, he's a great guy. So we're going to be hiring him. We've hired him and he's going to start, I believe, in 2 weeks.

Great, appreciate it. All right, so I'm the mayor of Rensselaer. And Jeff, you want to—

I'm Jeff Lamson.

City Council.

Yeah.

Tom McDonald, on the Council.

David Spencer, on the Council.

Chris Shirkey, Public Works Director. Well, go ahead.

Oh, Grant Allen, one of the long-range planners.

Jason Batch, Planning Manager.

Jenna Elders, long-range planner.

Stephen Downs, Deputy City Manager.

Brent Sumner, Council.

Terry Peterson, City Council.

Brent Bybee, Assistant City Manager.

Debbie Larray, City Council.

Jamie Davidson, the City Manager.

Jody, do you want— and Greg, want to introduce yourself?

Jody Bates, City Recorder.

Greg Stevens, City Attorney.

And then, uh, Ken Matthews, Community Services Manager.

Gary Giles, Chief of Police. Brandon Nelson, Finance Director. Carl Hirsch, Recreation.

You hesitated for a minute, Brandon.

You weren't sure?

I got something caught in my throat.

I thought you'd been in the basement too long.

Okay.

All right, well, we appreciate having all our new employees and look forward to getting to know you better. So we'd like to have a discussion now on affordable housing, and Jason Bench is our presenter. He's going to solve the problem.

That's right. Thanks, Mayor, members of council, and all those that are here with us today. We appreciate the opportunity to come and kind of present some things that we've done as As far as working with the city as far as affordable housing. Anyway, we have a lot of things that we've accomplished. We want to share some of those things. I shouldn't say a lot of things. We've accomplished some things leading to Affordable housing. As you know, affordable housing is a big issue, not only in the state of Utah, but around the nation and other parts. We're just trying to do our part. We don't have all the solutions. We don't have all the answers. I know, David, you're thinking that I have all the answers, but I don't.

I think you do.

Yeah, we're working on that though, and that's kind of why we're here today, to try to indicate some things we're working on, some things we would like to bring up, things that have happened in the past with the Sure. Some other things that— some solutions that some of the neighbors or citizens of the city have come forward and said, hey, what about some of this stuff? So we're going to actually look into some of that stuff. We're going to show you what that is, and then we'll go forward from there. Just a brief recap of what affordable housing really means. If you're paying more for a home, including utilities, more than 30% of your income, that's not affordable according to the The state rules. So if you're— some of the issues we have in the city is that people are paying a lot more than 30% for their home, which makes it really unaffordable for them. And the reasons why it's, you know, you have reduced disposable income, you're having a hard time making your payments.

Or to get into a new house, to qualify on that 30% level is becoming tougher.

That is true.

You have to have a certain amount of down payment and all that kind of stuff. So we're seeing a lot of multi-generational housing, right? You're having a single-family home with parents or grandparents that have their kids, married kids, their families moving in with them. So it affects the city as a whole, neighborhoods in general. And so we're trying to think of ways or see how we can come up with solutions to kind of help this problem. As you can see, these numbers here just kind of shows kind of the issues. This is The last number on this slide here, from 2011 to 2017, shows kind of the issue that we're having. The blue line represents the housing units that were created. The green line shows the actual households that— or the housing units built.

And what's amazing about that, Jason, is everywhere you drive, you see all kinds of new housing units going up everywhere. And yet we're still behind. But part of the reason was that during the recession, Nobody— nothing was happening. And so we got behind, and then our job market's taken off. We're the hottest job market in the country. And so those two combined and made it tough.

I don't know if you guys saw the unemployment numbers that came out over the weekend. 2.3%?

2.3%.

Which is pretty—

Which is really not even— It's actually historic.

The state's never had a lower unemployment rate than that.

So you've got it. The economy is great. People are still having children. People are still having families, and we're seeing the green line there that shows the number of households, meaning marrieds and others that create a household, outnumber the pace of housing stock that's being built. So that's kind of an issue, and that's not only Orem-wide, that's statewide and even nationwide. If you look at California and other places, it's even worse.

Before you leave that, if you add up the overbuilds with the underbuilds, where are we?

In the '70s, '80s, '90s, and aughts?

You know, the blues are higher in the 4 decades and lower this. Did you— I— it looks like they're about even, but I don't know that by just looking at the picture.

I'd have to look and see. Yeah, they're very similar. I mean, at one time the blue obviously represents more housing starts, so they actually were building ahead of the curve, right? And with the downturn and others, that's kind of where we kind of got behind the curve.

You actually have the greens 4 of those are above your level there at the second to the top, and the blues, you only have 3. But who knows, you'd have to add it up.

Jason, Lynell knows some numbers.

Of course.

As of 2016, the state did a survey on all of this, Department of Workforce Services. As of 2016, the state had a gap of 50,000. Closer to 15,000 statewide.

Thank you. So the mayor's point is, you see there's a lot of housing going around. I mean, you just looked at some numbers about Saratoga Springs and others, the number of single-family building permits that are being issued, they're staggering, but it's still not enough to keep up with the demand and the housing costs of those single-family homes, even in Eagle Mountain. Spanish Fork are pretty phenomenal to be able to qualify for a $350,000 mortgage.

And I think people go where the jobs are. So it has been the case that the majority of new households are inbred, but that is not the case anymore. Just this last year, net in-migration is actually higher than local.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

And you have a few counties in Utah that are actually having net out, but the majority of counties in Utah are actually having people coming in.

That's right.

That's a good point. So just a number from 2018, almost 25% of the moderate to low-income housing households, so about 6,700 homes in the city of Orem, were— You're paying over the 30%. So you can see there is an issue that we're trying to— obviously we're not going to solve the issue overnight, but it's something we're at least starting. And the state is actually mandating that the cities look a little further, which we'll talk about more. We used to have a biannual report every 2 years we'd bring to the city council. Now we have an annual report that we have to submit to the state, and it's now tied to money. If you don't submit the report or do that on an annual basis, Then the city is liable to not get some of the state's funding. So that is— the state now is trying to come in and say, hey, let's— other cities, let's look at affordable housing overall and not just have certain cities try to solve the issue. So some of the things that we've done over time, we've— student housing developments. I know that many of you are familiar with those student housing developments. It does allow students to get out of the home, Get out closer to the campuses. We have done a lot of multifamily developments.

And Jason, one other thing I was going to say is that on the west side, there's a very large complex going in of new student housing, and plus the green on Campus Drive, which is on-campus housing almost, is going in as well with 1,500 units.

Yeah, we're hoping that will help. Yes, yes, yes. Accessory apartments are a big thing. We have a lot of legal accessory apartments. We have a lot of, obviously, unpermitted accessory apartments that we're going to talk about as we go through this process as well. Senior housing overlay zone, we do have 4, 5. I think the housing authority's bought 2 of the projects. We have 3 private-held fourplexes that are specifically earmarked for seniors. There's a cap on rent and 60 or over and stuff like that. So we have that in place as well. And then the council developed or adopted in 2018 the State Street mixed-use districts, which we're trying to develop as well. So some of the things— this is from our Modern Income Housing Report that was part of the general plan we adopted in 2018. The red checkmarks indicate the things that we've accomplished. We've updated the Modern Income Housing Plan. We've hosted an affordable housing charrette, which we'll talk about shortly. And then we've educated residents on housing affordability issues. We hope to cover that in our neighborhood meetings. We've developed these neighborhood plans, and any other meeting that we hold, we try to show that as well. So the charrette, upcoming meetings we're going to have, we'll talk about affordable housing issues within the neighborhood. Some of the other things in that plan to consider are inclusionary zoning, which means that Like a State Street development comes in, do we require a certain percentage of those housing units to be affordable? Right now they're just market-driven. So do we, as a city, do we step in and say, hey, you need to have a certain percentage? That's something we're going to bring forward in a future discussion with the council as well. Do we partner with other public and private agencies? We're in discussions with Provo and other agencies to work with them to find solutions in Orem and in other places. Do we fast-track affordable housing projects? That's something that we are looking at. We have a couple— I keep pointing over to Ken, I'm sorry. Ken is working with us to— with housing authorities and others to force some developments. How do we help them facilitate getting those projects through the city? Study lot size and housing unit size. Right now we have a minimum house size. Do we look at reducing that minimum house size? Do we look at reducing the minimum lot size? You have an item before you tonight that's actually going to reduce the lot size to a 6,500 square foot lot. Do we look at allowing more of those to get single-family homes built in neighborhoods so you get that homeownership, but maybe it's not such a big lot, a 12,000 square foot lot or a 10,000 square foot lot, maybe it's not an appropriate size in certain neighborhoods? And that's what we're going to look at. Exploring the community land trust. We're looking at that with Provo as well, working with Ken. And then focus on the missing middle housing, which we'll get into a little bit later. But right now we have an ordinance that allows up to a 20,000 square foot lot, if it meets certain parameters, to have up to a fourplex. If it's surrounded by fourplexes and other things, we do allow an exception for that. Or we have a PRD which allows an acre and a half minimum. So there's a discrepancy between a 20,000 square foot lot Acre and a half square foot lot where we don't allow any other types of housing other than single family. So we're looking at possibilities of coming back with some other ideas, whether it's a PRD spinoff or something like that, to allow for single family homes but still have them maybe in twin homes or townhouse type style. So we're looking at that as well. And then reinvest in older neighborhoods is a key that we're looking forward to as well.

Thank you.

So some of the things we've accomplished in 2019, many of you I think were attending the Catholic Church where we had the Affordable Housing Summit. We had a lot of agencies come and kind of give their pitch on what they do and how we can help citizens. We remember the turnout, we probably had at least 50-ish or so people in attendance on that one. We held an affordable housing charrette where we had about 45 people in the council chambers where So we basically sat down, and we'll go over that a little bit later, basically allowed them to come up with their own ideas of how we can help solve some of these issues of affordable housing. So we'll go into those as well. Grant is going to talk about the Utah County Housing Needs Assessment Report, which he kind of went to last month. And then the Moderate Income Housing, which Jenna prepared for us this year, which is our annual report that we're going to submit to the state in December. of every year, outlining how we accomplished the goals or how we worked towards these goals. And I'll show you what we accomplished in that as well. So first, the housing charrette. This is a good photo. There's Lynell Wright. Hi.

Participated in that.

It was a table discussion, tabletop, where they actually had plans and different ideas and basically amongst the groups come up with their own ideas of how to help solve some of these issues.

Yeah.

So they came up with 36 ideas. The staff was around to help address questions, but we did not lead the discussions. We did not try to influence in any way the discussion. Ended up with about 45 people in attendance. So I'm going to show you these lists. It's death by PowerPoint, so I don't expect you to read them all. But there's a lot of different ideas that they came up with. The ones that are outlined in the darker are something that we've kind of focused I have a couple of items that I'd like to focus on that kind of relates to how to address or relate to single-family affordability housing and things like that. So make accessory apartments easier. So look at the process of making it a little easier for people to actually get an accessory apartment, how they can afford it. A lot of people now buying new homes really can't afford, obviously, but if they can have that secondary income with a legal accessory apartment, then that helps them offset the cost of buying into an area. Inclusionary zoning we talked about, missing middle we talked about.

Well, I like the one in the middle, it says stop growth altogether.

And that is a solution.

That's well put.

That's not one that we're promoting, but that is one of their ideas.

Sounds like Planned Parenthood.

Impact fees decreased on affordable housing, and look at other communities and how they're doing that. Grand Rapids is kind of leading the charge on that. Looking at other communities. Salt Lake City has some good programs that he's looking at and some other things that we'll actually glean out and see what we want to bring forward and discuss in future meetings with the council. Maybe come up with some ordinance amendments and things that will help produce some affordable housing. The other issue, tiny homes, uh, not a big fan yet, but that's something that they came out with. Do we do it in a detached accessory dwelling unit? Right now we have it attached. unit, but there are some homes in the community that can't really physically break into an accessory apartment. My house, for example, which is accessed from the lower level, I don't really want an accessory apartment walking through to access my upper level. I don't want to go out of the garage up to the— so there are some houses that don't really lend themselves well to have an accessory apartment. But do we allow them maybe in a Portland area or Eugene? I mean, they had tiny homes in the backyard where people had the main dwelling And then they have— my daughter lives up next to one up in Portland, where it's— you walk by that street and you don't really know that it's a tiny home. But it is, in the backyard. And people, you know, pay good rent to live in that downtown area. So that's something that we're going to look at as well. Smaller lots, multifamily homes, larger rental homes. And those are types of things that we're going to look at as well. Any questions on these before we move on?

Jason, today on the City Council, we're talking about a little home that they want to take care of, knock down and build 2 homes, each of which would probably have an accessory apartment. That's the very nature of what you're suggesting here, and yet I don't know how the neighbors embrace that. I know the Planning Commission approved it, but how did the neighbors feel about that example?

So there were a couple of calls that we did receive. They weren't quite understanding what they were proposing. It was more of, why are they building these attached units or multifamily housing? When they understood it was single-family homes with an accessory apartment, the Planning Commission ended up with one gentleman that came. Once he— he just wanted to understand the process of why they went through the rezoning, why they're going through the rezoning. Once he understood that, he was fine. I think the neighbors—

I think the plan is to remove a 70 or 80-year-old home and put in 2 new homes, each of which will have an accessory apartment.

So that is a good instance of how we're trying to say, is it— does it make sense as a city to downzone some of these properties? That it makes sense, you're still at a 6,500 square foot lot, it's still a decent-sized lot, and you still have a decent-sized home, and it's a single family. Does that make sense? And that's what we're going to come back to in the future to say, maybe it does make sense in some of these older neighborhoods to downzone some of them to allow for, or at least allow the option for owners to come in and say, hey, let's take a 12,000 square foot lot that has an older home on it, split it in 2, and get 2 new homes that may have accessory apartments instead of one older home, which is a really underutilized lot.

But there's no way where we're talking about the tiny home, although you have it up there.

You're not proposing that, are you? Not in this instance, no. That is something we may bring forward in the future. So Pleasant Grove, for example, Salt Lake City, they do allow a detached So in a backyard, for example, they could have that. My inclination would be that if you have a detached accessory, you would not be able to have an accessory permit in your main dwelling. So it's one or the other. You can't have—

But your home could— you have enough room to build a 600-square-foot home out back, and you could in theory build a tiny house and rent it out.

Right.

Or do a flag lot and sell it, depending on how your property is all set.

So that's what we're going to look at, to see if there's some issues or some zoning maybe encumbering some of these redevelopments to get people— we're not talking about high-density housing, we're talking about single-family homes to rejuvenate and kind of redo some of the older neighborhoods. That's what we're looking for. Do we take a couple of older lots that have older homes on it and allow them to build a new twin home, for example? Maybe we do that on a major collector street instead of internal. So we're trying to come up with ideas that we'll obviously come back to the City Council to present. But these are just ideas that we're coming up with and moving forward with to try to help solve some of these issues that we see.

So Jason, on that one we're talking about on 4th West, how do we protect the neighbor? So it's an accessory apartment— there will be 2 accessory apartments if the owners will live upstairs. How— what happens when the owner sells and it's now a duplex? How do— what do we do as a city to make sure that's not a duplex, it's still an accessory apartment?

So that is an enforcement issue, so the neighborhood preservation or others would have to go out and make sure that it is owner occupied. So if for whatever reason they're just renting both sides, that would be an enforcement issue we would have to go out and rectify.

And if someone's violating that, what happens to them?

Go ahead, Chief Jones.

I mean, so what, you sold your house and it's a duplex now?

Does— what happens? So police department, I'm not going to speak for them, but they go out and actually say if they can just show that it's too— the owner doesn't live in one of those units, then they need to move out and have the owner live in them.

So they do have to move.

There's a cure period.

Yeah, we'll issue an administrative citation with a period of time that they— I mean, because obviously the renters of the home, sometimes they don't even know that they're in violation.

They just rented a home.

And so we don't want to go in there and just say, hey, tomorrow you're out. We've got to give them some time to look for another place. So, so we're going to go in there, we're going to give them a period of time, maybe a month, that they can bring it into compliance. At the same time, we can refer the owner for renting it out illegally. We'll refer them to our administrative law judge, and they can have— it kind of depends on how the officer— every situation is going to be a little bit different. So we could, we could treat it criminally, we've treated it civilly with the administrative law judge, or we can do both. And so the officer is going to go out and weigh everything and Bring it into compliance, but at the same time taking into account the renters, the owners, the, you know, what the situation is, and then get it all fixed and again refer it over to the administrative law judge with some consequences as well.

So if I was, if I lived in it and I was renting out my basement and I sold it to someone else, is there any way they know it's supposed to be an accessory apartment or do they— They don't. When I sell it, whoever moves in, I mean—

The process that we have in place is very much a reactive process. So if you were to sell your home and the new owner would purchase it and then rent it, based on a, for example, report that we would receive into our Neighborhood Preservation Unit, they would advise, for example, the city, hey, you have 2 occupants in the home, they're not related, then it becomes an issue that we would respond to. But proactively, there's, there's no way for us to know whether or not, for example, a property owner is complying with our ordinance. And frankly, I would, I would probably suggest that not every seller is open about the fact that this is an accessory unit. This is an accessory unit. And you have to live here in order to have a renter.

That very thing's happened in our area.

They said, well, realtor said it was legal. Yeah. And, you know, amendments back and forth.

And obviously not everyone does this, but a lot of times real estate agents will call us to verify that it is a legal accessory apartment before they purchase it. But again, as buyer beware.

And you can actually go online.

Yeah.

On aurum.org and see if your unit is. A legal accessory unit.

So we have a system that keeps track of all legal accessory requirements. So if somebody calls in and says, hey, I just want to make sure this is legal, we look it up. No, it isn't. And they'll be aware that it's not. Or yes, it is.

And I will add too, I think, and Stephen can speak better to this than we can, but this new licensing program will provide us one more kind of check where we have somebody who pulls a rental license And then all of a sudden, if for example we have a property owner who's also— who holds the license, but you have different names of tenants in a building, then that potentially can be a flag too to say, well, wait a second, Johnson, you're the owner of the property, but Davidson and Bench are who the names of the utilities are in. There's a problem here, obviously.

So on, on this discussion of affordable housing, is that, is that going to roll into Southwest Area Planning too, with looking at tiny homes or affordable homes down there? Because that's, that's not what we're— I mean, that's not what we did with the infrastructure.

Correct.

So we'll have a separate discussion on that.

So that, that— I mean, this is going to tie into that.

Could potentially, yes.

I think it will.

Jason, has that builder said what it cost him to make that accessory apartment, the one we're talking about?

Is he indicating— Oh, the one that's building new?

Yeah.

I haven't, no. I don't think we have that information. They're building newer, so it's probably a different cost than trying to retro an older building. And that's something worth Something we're looking at as well is where, as a city, we've already talked to the building official and others of what are some regulations that we can minimize, if at all, and come back to the city council and say, hey, these are some changes that we want to propose, whether that's reduced building fees, permit fees, whether that's reduce certain types of requirements. I mean, that's still— we're still vetting that information, but that's something we're seriously looking at to making it easier, loosen up a little bit. Thank you. I don't want to say loosen necessarily or easier, but I mean make it more easier for people to convert legally rather than just converting and hopefully not get caught.

I think we also need to exercise caution though, because we obviously adopt building codes, and when we adopt those codes, we represent that it's our intention to follow those codes. So if we deviate from those codes and we relax for example, requirements, then more responsibility rests on us in the event things don't go right, for example, on the property. So there may be some things that we can do, but we can't, for example, relax a building code requirement. That's something that's specifically built into the code.

Steve and I had a discussion earlier today about if we catch somebody that has an illegal Accessory apartment and they have a full lease for a year, we just caught them into the first month, do we allow them to maintain that lease or sign an agreement saying, hey, over the next 11 months you need to convert it to an accessory apartment? Or if you decide in that 11 months, nah, it's more expensive and I'm not going to do it, then you need to move out, type of thing. So allow them some time because a lot of the funding that may be part of doing those improvements are probably coming from the rent. These guys are paying to them, the landlord. So we really don't want to cut off their legs to—

Sure.

As it's—

while they go through it.

So those are some of the issues we're going to come— maybe the process will change, but that's something we're going to obviously bring to the City Council before we actually make those type of changes. So, but we're definitely looking at accessory apartments as a way to facilitate some of these redos in some communities that really need some revitalization as well. So as you're aware, the SB 34 state law requires cities now on an annual basis to submit, and it's called basically an Annual Moderate Income Housing Reporting Form. That's the state law requirement. The E, K, F, and G that you see up there are taken from the 23 categories. The city of our size requires at least 3 unless you have a fixed Rail station, which we do have a commuter rail station in Orange. So then we're required to pick 4 of those. So we picked those 4, basically create or allow for or reduce regulations related to accessory dwelling units in residential zones. And so on the number 1 on the opposite, basically we're expanding our list and hopefully trying to continue to provide accessory apartments and find alternative ways to help them to convert them into legal accessory apartments. Utilize strategic Strategies that preserve subsidized low and moderate income housing units. As you're aware, we have a senior housing overlay zone which does require them to be subsidized with age limits and different things like that. So we'll continue to do that, continue to encourage people to develop that. Allow for higher density in moderate income residential developments and commercial mixed-use zones, which are district zones along State Street, help us accomplish that. hopefully promote that and get some developments along that. As you recall, the reason we did the State Street districts was to eliminate the pressure in single-family neighborhoods for high-density housing. So as we've gone through the neighborhood programs and neighborhood plans as we've gone throughout the city, the majority of the people, as we came out with them as far as the neighborhood plans, were okay with density along the major corridor of State Street. So that takes it out of that, and the council As you recall, voted to eliminate the option for PDs in single-family homes or in single-family neighborhoods. So this kind of focuses that on the corridor, and that's where hopefully we'll have some of these higher-density developments. Any questions on that? So we will on an annual basis— now we've got these 4 criteria, we can add additional ones, but every year we're going to monitor what we've done, what we've accomplished over that year, the related EAs, and then we may add a We show that we've actually had, I think, 4 or 5 that we actually comply with. So we may add as we go forward of how we're continuing to comply with requirements of the state law. And I'm sure the state law will change over time as well. The cities either comply or don't comply. We may have different rules as we move forward.

Can I ask a question? I heard— I was listening to KSL. They do think affordable housing is going to be an issue during this session. So we could have more things in mandated from the state obviously coming through. Are we following some bills? Are we looking at some things that they're proposing? I'm assuming they'll get more policies that we'll have to comply with.

And we'll follow them as the session progresses. But yeah, that's something that we're— in this case, we're more than exceeding the requirements that they came in with this bill. I think Warren, Provo, and other— Salt Lake City and other communities are— because they've allowed these types of units over the years. I mean, New York, Alpine, those types of places don't typically have that, which can be harder for them to comply.

Are there any laws out there that we're concerned? Greg, is there anything out there that— have you looked at any of the bills for affordable housing yet?

Heather, Heather Schreiber, our Deputy City Attorney, she's our legislative expert. She tracks the bills on a daily basis. And there's nothing in the report that she has provided. Of course, we're only day 2 of the trip.

I know.

That suggests there's something we need to really start watching.

I was just— it was just interesting yesterday when I was listening that affordable housing would probably be an issue that will rise to the, to the top of the— so I'm just saying, are we gonna— I'm assuming we're gonna follow it closely. Yeah, we belong to Utah Housing Coalition and we get updates. It's almost every day.

Okay.

So the amounts of things we should be watching, like a rental bill came out today, um, so we're getting those updates.

Okay.

But, you know, Jason, on what we as a city can do, uh, if you look at like a new house, there's really 3 parts to it. There's labor, there's lumber, and there's land. We can't do anything about the labor costs. We can't do anything about the lumber costs. But the land is an area that we can address. You know, your idea about R-6.5, are there areas in the city that we could do that that would not be a detriment to other zones around there and other landholders? You know, and certainly the idea that maybe some houses could be smaller. I mean, 30, 40 years ago, the average person Lived in 450 square feet. Today the average person lives in 1,000 to 1,100 square feet. And just because of the nature of the beast, people wanting nicer, bigger homes, everything's gone up. But it's not to say that it can't go back down in some areas.

We're not really touting we change all the rules for everybody has to now have a 6-bedroom house. That's not our point. Our point is to try to have a mix.

But I'm just saying, maybe there are areas in the city where an R-6 would work. I'm not interested in doing an R-6 next to a 7.5 or an 8, but as an example, on Geneva Road, and we've talked about it before, there are a couple of subdivisions that were built as R-6.5, and most of the homes started out at 1,200 square feet. So that would be affordable in today's world compared to what we're dealing with in 2,400 and 3,500 square foot homes on R-8 lots. So, you know, certainly it'd be worthwhile to look and say, are there areas that that would work? And you're also gonna bring up or talk about, I think maybe, the idea of community land trust I know the provost is working on it. And I, we've been there in meetings on it. I think there's some room to work on that.

We're trying to coordinate a meeting together so we can sit down and try to see how we can best help each other.

Right.

So, on that direction as well.

Right.

Yeah, Geneva Road, to your point, Geneva Road does have an R-5 subdivision as well. I mean, at one time the city did have an R-5 zone. They've since taken that out. But that's— that could be an option for areas that may allow for smaller homes as well.

But Jason, for example, on tonight's City Council agenda, this 2-unit project, isn't it— I mean, we're talking about downzoning that property to 6-5, but it's adjacent to another 6-5 neighborhood, right? Or so it makes sense in close proximity, so it makes sense to do stuff And have those kind of conversations.

So on Palisades Drive, it may not make sense to have an RFI, right? But it does in certain areas of the city. But we're still talking single-family homes. We're not talking—

Right.

Even a twin home, in my opinion, is a single-family home. There just happen to be 2 side by side. So, I mean, there's, there's going to be some education of general public as well of what constitutes a single-family home versus what constitutes multifamily. And does it make It makes sense in a single-family neighborhood to have these types of PRD, for example, twin homes, which are, you know, now by the word perfect home or perfect area are going for $650,000, $700,000.

Those are our new affordable senior housing, the $650,000.

They just happen to be attached, right? So it just depends on your—

Dave, we got a spot for you there.

Oh, okay.

I'm not a senior.

So we'll shift a little bit to the housing needs assessment, and I'll have Grant kind of give you a heads up on what happened with that.

So the home consortium for Utah County brought in Civicus Consulting Group, and they did extensive research for this. They kind of pulled local, federal, state data, and then they also did many interviews with local housing providers, and their report kind of identified first 6 impediments. The first being supply of rental units for large families. Utah County is the youngest county in the nation, actually, in the report, and large families. So that's one of the first impediments. 2, limited land for development. I mean, that's, I think, not only Orem, but this is the countywide, kind of countywide-focused report. So even countywide, there's limited land. As the mayor mentioned earlier, labor and land costs and construction costs are high. So that's an impediment. Zoning was identified, which we've kind of already addressed. So the ironic— I guess not ironic thing, but this assessment that was done, we've already kind of identified many of these same impediments at our local level. But then 5, Hispanic and minority mortgage denial rates. And then just housing costs.

And what is the reason behind that?

So they're kind of saying that 2015 analysis, You mean, is it income or? Yeah, well, they're saying so. One of the impediments was Federal Financial Institutions Council Mortgage Disclosure Act database shows white non-Hispanics in 2015 denial rate was 14.6%. Hispanics was 25.9%. 2019, that rose all the way up to 18.6 and 31.5. So they're just calling out that those rates are fairly high, and that maybe has different reasons to, you know, to why. But what we're going to do is— the entire report is quite lengthy, so I'm kind of pulling just some summaries. We're going to get this up on our housing section of the planning website so you can all refer to that if you want to read through some of the—

This just came out, right?

Yeah, we got it in, I think, the end of November, right, Kenna?

Yeah, so, or December.

We'll talk about this in February. We're doing the consolidated plan for federal funding. We have to do it every 5 years, and so as part of that consolidated plan, we hired Civica's You know, we entitled it to Neoga County to do 3 housing studies. Um, one— and so there's 3 actually different ones, impediments to affordable housing and some other things, and that's where these—

those reports are from.

Thanks, Kim.

And then the last impediment was just high housing costs. So, um, they kind of call out average rents in May 2019 Orem average rent was $1,274, so net year change was $74, and net 5-year change was $256. Provo was $1,424. It doesn't say what size, unfortunately, in this little chart. So, and then Pleasant Grove was $1,150. So just housing costs, rents are going up and they will continue to go up.

So that's a real problem. Not only is the sale price high, but the fact that the rents continue to go up 5% per year. I was watching a thing, a news blurb on TV where this one gentleman is living on the street and he's just saying, I can't afford $1,100, $1,200 a month for rent. I've got no place to go.

It's pretty—

it's a pretty tough situation.

With the housing crunch that we have as far as the number of units available, it's pretty— landlords can do whatever they need to to make it pencil for them because there is a shortage of housing. There's always renters available for them. That's kind of the issue that we're dealing with in affordable housing is the fact that you don't have enough supply.

So then the other section of the report has 12 recommendations that they called out. So this is kind of independent through their own findings. Reminder, this is countywide. So they recommended a Utah County Housing Trust Fund, affordable housing bonds, affordable housing revolving loan fund, Similar to actually an outcome for our city research was fast-track permitting for affordable housing, aggressively pursue use of publicly owned property, utilize inclusionary zoning, utilize incentive zoning, provide tax incentives for rental property owners, employ marketing efforts to improve public perception of small homes. Create laboratory housing developments, improve transit-oriented developments, and then make bicycle pedestrian improvements. Those last two kind of support different kinds of housing choices that typically would lead to less car ownership, which could also reduce the burden on housing costs. So that's kind of the review of that. And like I said, I'll I think follow-up will for sure send you an update when this has been posted so you can refer to it, the full report.

So kind of what we're looking at now is, uh, where do we go from here, right? So as part of the Mayor-Council's 2020 areas of focus, the one that I want to focus on is homeowner focus, including focusing attention on the execution of the neighborhood plans, which we are in the final process of the last neighborhood plan, 2 plans that will come before you hopefully in April. But what we want to do is focus on finishing that as well, but then also look at essentially farmers that we talked about. Is there a way to make that process a little smoother? Is there a way to get some regulations out of the way to make it a little easier, not compromising on safety or other types of things? And then maybe fast-tracking some of those to get them the ability to do that a Work with them to process the development that allows them time to convert, to make it legal. And then we're going to look at exploring changes for affordable housing, including the gap between the 20,000 square foot and the acre and a half. Is there something in there? Is it a different down zone? Is it some type of hybrid PRD? Is there some type of way we can make— whether that's townhomes, twin homes, cottage courts, So, I mean, some way to make— it might include, you know, the bad word density. But we're not talking about high-density housing. We're talking about single-family density within a depressed single-family neighborhood. And then looking at inclusion, for example. That's what we're going to be working on. And hopefully in the next 100 to, well, couple months, we'll bring something back as far as affordable accessory apartment programs. Some of the things we're shooting for as far as meetings, this housing events, affordable housing forum, meeting together with different staff and others to hold for citizens future housing workshops, surety with citizens, and affordable housing developer. Kenna had this idea that maybe we get some affordable housing developers into the city and have kind of a meeting together with them and say, hey, what is it going to take, you know, barring free, to get people to come in and do these types types of developments in the city to help us solve some of these and come up with solutions to the housing issues that we have with affordable housing. So in the future, we will be coming back. We're hoping to do this on a regular basis, whether that's quarterly, whether that's annually, to come back with the council just to kind of give you an update on where we are and some things that we're going to bring forward. We will be proposing some ordinance changes which obviously will bring in these types types of meetings before we come to a full-on public hearing. And then kind of what are some practices from other communities. I know Grant's working with some other communities to find out best practices that they're doing, and maybe we can implement some of those. So that's what we're working on. Hopefully the next, you know, come back on a regular basis to give you updates. So any questions?

All right, any comments, questions?

Ryan? Yeah, are you hearing things here that you don't want to hear or that you think are good ideas? We'd appreciate any feedback and directions to some of these solutions that have been proposed. We're happy to develop them further and bring them to you to be evaluated, but up front, is there anything that catches your eye?

So no, I like what I see. You know, it's not a— there's not a panacea to say this is How it's done and it solves all the problems. It's kind of an intricate situation, and you've got to look at your own city and where things are at and what you can do and can't do. We want to protect our neighborhoods and keep our bedroom community in good shape. But are there areas that we can do something? In other words, is there an area we could do an R six and a 1,200 square foot home kind of thing? So I'm really encouraged. I think we ought to be pursuing. It's not easy.

It's a long-term process. I'm not going to guarantee we'll come back and solve every problem in a year. It's going to be a long, drawn-out problem that we solve. But we are committed to coming with some solutions to try to help.

I mean, I think we need to partner with the residents to figure out what works. And, you know, I often sit and look at homes that I know of that are You know, 4-bedroom, 5-bedroom homes and only 2 are filled, or that have a very large yard and it's not used anymore. And you just wonder, are there things that we can do? And, you know, are there, again, smaller lots, smaller homes that we could set up where it'd be more affordable that would not damage current zone areas?

Anyway.

We're encouraged.

I mean, with the neighborhood plan that we're going through right now, I'll be honest, I thought it was going to be a little more difficult, but it's actually— the citizens are very engaged, they're very thoughtful, they're very looking at how we can best help our neighborhood, which is a very, you know, nice thing to see in this neighborhood. In general, in this city, as people come and try to help the city, we're finding a lot of good suggestions.

And I wonder, you know, we have the Geneva home area, so when Geneva Steel came in, They built a lot of homes for their workers, which is on the west side of Orem. So these are smaller homes and smaller lots. I noticed you talked about reinvesting in those types of homes, but to be honest with you, I don't ever see those homes come up vacant hardly at all. And if they come up for sale, they sell fairly quickly.

So—

Yeah.

I like the idea. I'm just not sure if we've got homes to reinvest in, but You know, if we did, it'd be interesting to see if the city has some kind of incentive we can help with or whatever, because, you know, I think you can do a lot of great things with those homes.

I also think you're on the right track. I mean, I deal with people in need every week when I'm working at the food pantry. There's lots of different barriers, and I was telling someone my own children can't live in the dorms. It's too expensive. So I welcome any, any solution. It's going to be, like you said, a mix of different things, and certain neighborhoods it may work. So I think you're on the right track. So I appreciate the effort and the work. Certainly can, you know, if you have certain barriers, we can certainly work with food pantry to give you more information, or, you know, if you need more data, I'm happy to help you with that.

So as a city, we're not trying to solve the 50,000 We're trying to solve a small piece of that. That's where we come up with some diversity or some different options to kind of help with our portion of that gap. Great.

Good. Well, thank you.

Appreciate it.

Can I add one more question to it? In the past, when people couldn't afford to live in the city center, they went farther and farther and farther out into the suburbs. And frankly, that's how Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs and Payson and those towns grew. Is that the answer to some of the growth though too? I mean, if you're not gonna buy the land as cheap in Orem as you are in Saratoga Springs or Eagle Mountain, isn't that a natural tendency? And how much of that will fix the challenge?

I would suggest that that may not be the norm in this day and age, that those homes are not affordable now.

Good, well, because they're big.

They are, they are big because the land costs— to make up your land costs, the builder's got to build a big enough house to make his return on his investment. So yes, they are cheaper. My brother lives in Saratoga Springs. A house out there, you'll pay $100,000 more in Orem for it because of land costs. But they're not building cheap for what they're building anymore.

Frankly, one of the reasons the bill that we were talking was put into place is The state is tiring of spending so much money on infrastructure—

To get them hauled back into the city.

To get them hauled back. So what's happening is these communities are developing, there's no transportation network, the communities are then turning to the state and saying, we need transportation, we need water, we need utilities, we need, we need, we need, we need. And the state is saying, wait a second, we've got to be smarter about how we develop because You know, the whole idea of, if, you know, if you build it, we will come, meaning the state of Utah. We don't have the means to extend the reach of the infrastructure your way anymore. And it's a huge problem. Specifically with transportation, you look at some of the kind of the frustrated bottleneck areas in this county, Saratoga, Eagle Mountain.

Yep.

Pace in some of these places where people arrived before the infrastructure did, and now the state is having to catch up. Frankly, the state doesn't have the means to build the infrastructure. I see a question also. Um, thanks for all the work and the vision going into this, um, and I'm grateful to hear that we're focusing more on single-family homes and making that more affordable and easier for people to get into. I wonder what this looks like 20, 30 years down the road. Is anyone aware of other communities that have done this that we can kind of look at and say, okay, this is what this would look like 30 years from now?

So to answer part of your question, Ogden City years ago developed whole city as an RDA. And the city— the RDA authority went out and actually bought some of these older homes or lots within subdivisions and basically sold it to a developer with the requirement that they had to build a certain type of home. So if you drive through certain parts of Ogden, you will see new homes that look like the cottage or they look like whatever design that they came up with. They built them, sold it to a developer at a lesser price, and then the single family was able to build But they basically set the standard of what that house needed to look like. And they've been very successful. I think the council—

it's been years ago—

we took the council up on a tour up there and showed them some of that. But they had the foresight to actually go out and buy some of these homes and then basically regulate how that was redeveloped. And it's actually turned out very nice. So I think Ogden is a good example of taking older homes, dilapidated, tearing them down. The city going in, buying them, tearing them down, and reinvesting by allowing developer to come in. They dictated what type of home to build that fit into the old area of the neighborhood. But as it turned out, it might be able to be a nice asset. That's just one example. I'm sure there are others that you can look at and get ideas.

All right, well, thank you, Jason. Appreciate it. We'll now move on to a discussion of the Southwest Area Planning, and Jason is our presenter.

615-3381. So Southwest Area, we saw this a while ago, right, when it came to the council, but the church had a different story, right? They're proposing a temple at this location here. So this is a 15-acre roughly piece. They bought one home, a bunch of neighborhoods. They did not buy this one, but they bought this one here. So 15-acre piece. The initial layout was to build the temple in this location, the stake center in this location. So that's kind of brought up—

Did we initially think that was going to be housing of some sort?

It was owned by the church. It has been owned by the church.

I know it was owned by the church, but when we said, hey, we're going to build out that way, did we initially see that going into housing of some sort?

About 15 years ago, they came in for 2 churches, so we always assumed there would probably be something to do with a church.

Okay, so in our master plan, we weren't building a lot of water use or sewer use for multiple homes.

It was always going to be fairly light use, like a church. Thank you.

And Jason, maybe we could mention that the lot, the land just south of the temple site, is owned, and the owner came before us last year wanting to change that to high density, and we refused. And he at the time said, well, I don't know if anybody's going to want to build homes here because the only thing that's going to work is high-end homes and nobody's going to want to build them there. And of course his life has changed dramatically, but just so we know that.

And Ryan McDougall is the applicant, is here tonight too. Hi, Ryan.

Recognize you with the hat there.

The applicant for what, the property to the south?

Ryan owns the property to the south.

Yeah.

And he's here in the corner.

That's the parcel. There's a parcel in between the church and the parcel.

This parcel here. So not this one.

This is the Klinger's right there next to it.

Okay. So the question tonight, I guess, is to see if the city wants to look at other alternatives other than what we currently have. And let me just show you. So this is the current master plan. The church, which is the rural mid-city residential, would have to be rezoned anyway to get the heights that the temple Needs to go in that location. You can see the property that's not part of the city, which is the cleaner, and comes over here. So the colored part represents a portion of the city that was annexed back in 2015. So right now it's low-density residential. You've got the UTA tracks, you've got low-density housing, you've got the artistic school, you've got a low-density subdivision that's going in right here, and you got the PD zone that's going in there. There's light industrial. City Council rezoned a portion of that about a year and a half ago to M.

About how far south does that map start?

This is 2000. 2000, thank you.

And the church property is about 1400 south.

Yeah, so the question that we had a preliminary discussion when Ryan was here before, as far as, you know, maybe doing some type of PRD, right? So staff sat down and said, okay, so if the church is coming in, then we're going to get a lot more demand. We've had a few phone calls from property owners saying, hey, now that the temple's coming in, can I get more housing?

That's right.

So we decided, well, it's probably best to come back to the council and say, hey, let's discuss it one last time, hopefully, to see whether or not this council is interested in looking at upsizing or changing the general plan to allow a little bit more density. So that's the question we're here tonight. We still have the issue with infrastructure. We still have the issue with sewer and things like that.

So— So when you say higher density, are you talking more than a PRD?

I'm talking PRD. I'm not talking PDs or anything like that. We're talking, is the council interested in doing that? So what we're looking at is maybe we come up with a Southwest area type PRD. Where we allow townhouses, or we have a 3-story stacked townhouse. That's a typical townhouse. Right now we don't allow it in a PRD. We allow 2 stories above grade or a basement. So you can have a single story and a basement, or you can have a single story and a second story, but you don't— can't have all 3. So do we allow something like that? Years ago we used to— we modified our PD zone between 12th West and I-15. You see there was a few houses built there. I Yes. think that's a good question. There were some housing developments that were built there that allowed a little bit bigger density, 16 units an acre, and we've since taken that out of the city. The question we have, I guess, is the City Council interested in doing some type of— keeping it low-density residential but allowing applicants to come in and apply for a PRD, and maybe we just allow them a PRD, the current standard PRD, or do we allow a hybrid and not go any denser but allow a different type of housing? This represents, of course, the parkway that's coming in, the potential of Geneva Road T-ning to that road. Do we do something different with the light industrial that we have in this location? Because now we're going to have 2 major intersections with Geneva Road.

And Jason, if the parkway comes in or if the temple comes in, basically Geneva Road's got to be widened because it's only 2 lanes right now. So probably to at least 5 lanes.

I think the plan in the center, I think it's 5 or 7, I don't know which.

So the future cross-section for Geneva Road right now as it stands is a 5-lane section.

The temple's—

if the temple comes through with their concept plan, they'll have their front meetinghouse set back to accommodate that, but they'll only be required to build their half of the 3-lane section through their So they wouldn't necessarily build the full 5-lane width, but they would have their buildings set back such that they wouldn't have to purchase those setbacks. Sam, when we, when we talked with Eric Rasband, who's the transportation planner with UDOT, he was actually studying this area. Yeah, because what's happened now is, is now Provo is interested in widening Geneva Road from the parkway down to their center street. Probably in a sense to help provide more access to the high school and their airport. So, whereas initially south of where the Lakeshore Parkway was going to tie in right in the middle of that M, or that light industrial zone, it was going to be a 3-lane section. Geneva might actually continue all the way down south through Warren through there at a 5-lane section.

And one thing I think that's important to bring up is In Provo, just below 2000 North, which is our 2000 South, there are 2 large Ivory Home developments going in. That's going to add a lot of traffic there.

What's the timeline on widening Muchneba Road?

I think now they're just going to look at an environmental study. I don't think they have it programmed for any money as of yet. So they would have to do the study. So we're talking 2 or 3 years out. And that's— and you have to realize too, they're also trying to figure out what they're going to do at 8th North or 820 North, or if there's going to be some sort of a frontage road system. So really, EGOT's priority is to handle I-15, and then they'll look at Geneva Road. So Geneva Road is probably a 10-year out.

So Geneva Road is not on a priority list right And as Sam's saying, you've got to do an environmental study, and then you've got to get it on the priority list and try to move up where you can get funding. So funding may not be available to take care of a lot of what the need is when the temple comes in.

I think it's fair to say 10 years ago, Provo and Orem were not thinking long-term that Geneva Road would continue And we would need to expand. There were a number of historic properties along Geneva Road that actually made it very difficult to expand. Now some of those historic properties have been removed. A temple has been announced. Provo High School has been built. And the nature of the area in and around the high school, for example, has changed dramatically.

Yes.

And now Provo is having a little bit of a change of heart Wondering, okay, well, maybe we should be looking more at Geneva Road.

Exactly. So we have 2 concepts for you now. One is to look at maybe addressing the LDR and allowing up to a 7-unit PRD.

Before— Jason, before you show that, can our sewer and water handle more growth?

So we'll get into that.

You're going to cover that?

Thank you. So I'm just going to give you the high level and then we'll talk about the nuts and bolts of that. As we open that up, do we really want to then open it up maybe to do a commercial center at this location? So the intersection of these 2 streets, do we now look at, instead of having maybe light industrial, maybe we allow some type of city center-like district where we allow maybe a mix of housing, but we require commercial, we require a mix of that. Do we open that up and look at that as well? Still keeping the option for the— Up to 70 units an acre. And then do we look at a corner? This is already in place. Do we now look at Jenny Road and that corner to say, hey, maybe that is a good commercial spot? So those are— we're not saying one or the other. It could be a combination. We could just leave it the same. We just want to give out ideas of how that may— Jason, before you move on, could I add where the intersection is, the commercial, that's a significant parcel in the south part. It could be an ideal location for a grocery store. We need one. Yeah, that piece. This part of Orem and Provo is kind of a food desert. The closest grocery store is the Walmart, and so a grocery store in this area would capture a lot of that residential housing and cut down on traffic trips across the freeway to grocery stores.

A lot of Provo would go there.

Oh, that's, that's my area. We definitely need a grocery store.

So the next map, if we decide, or if the council decides to give us a look at pursuing that, then we want to look at increasing some trails and trail capacity throughout this area. Is this bike and walking? So it's a combination. So we nicknamed this the rail trail. There's the UTA, and so if you have some type of trail connection there, the right-of-way now engineered the road, the cross-section does allow for, I think it's a 10-foot multi-use trail along there. And then we look at having some interconnectivity so you have some cross connections between those trails. So if the council chooses to reopen this, we have neighborhood meetings, we have all the bells and whistles that goes along with that general plan. We will hope to introduce some of this as well. So just giving that as an idea that that's something we, as a— with the temple site and other things, and Additional density, we think that maybe some trail systems maybe need to be a little higher priority than it was in 2015 when we came back and actually annexed it. Where's that future road going to, the blue one with the arrow, Jason? So this is Geneva Road.

Right, to the top left where it goes off to the left.

So there's a potential, you know, that it's— right now it's not annexed into the city, but potentially that could be annexed and there would have to be some type of road system. So it's just more of a future.

We do have a problem, as you, you're familiar with the Orem Industrial Park. There's really kind of one way in and one way out.

Yep.

And we have talked for many years about finding an alternative road. In case of an emergency. Because you go there, for example, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and you have employees stacked for, you know, I don't know how many cycles through the lights, but it's frustrating for people. Because there's only one way in, one way out.

Yep.

Okay, so really quick, so this is kind of a synopsis of what the numbers mean. So 1,284 is the entire area that was annexed to the city, or the service area of the IFFA, whatever that's called. So that's the total number. So we're just looking at the colored area that we're looking at. So the 956 is just the representation The 1,248 is the entire area, the service area. So if you go to Concept A or Concept B, we're looking at, you know, the maximum 800 ERUs or equivalent residential units within that area. So that's the difference between keeping it status quo or raising it into— what are we basically up to, an 8? So if we went to the Southwest Area PRD, if they had a couple of homes, they So they took down, they would get a bonus. So they could potentially get up to 8. The standard would be a 7-unit-per-acre area.

So Jason, low density is a quarter-acre lot. Is that basically what that means?

So low density is roughly 4 units per acre. So a quarter acre, yeah.

That's what we currently have on that whole strip.

Yes. Well, it's unit plan boundaries. That's correct. So the question is, if we go down the route of modifying any of this, Then the impact fee analysis and the impact fee facilities plan would have to be updated. Look at the fees associated with that, because we did it a specific way. If we're going to add it and allow additional densities, then that fee should be reevaluated.

So you recall too that this area, the southwest annexation area, was a standalone impact fee area separate from the rest of the city. So they were assessed a different fee Based on the fact that there was no infrastructure there at the time of annexation.

And maybe we should bring up as well is that one of the developers actually has paid for the infrastructure, and then through the impact fees, we're paying him back. So the city did not go out and risk and put in a lot of investment. He's done that, we're paying him back.

We entered into a pioneer agreement where we— and Steve is here who can speak to that— Where we agreed that as the program— as the area developed, we would reimburse the developer by way of the impact fees that we collected from the infrastructure.

I just wanted to get that out there for Terry and Jeff.

So that would need to be looked at. As far as the size of the sewer in that area, the size of the sewer is okay. It's actually the capacity at the end of the line lifting it into the sewer is the issue that we have. So if the council decides to Yes, let's allow PRDs.

You'd have to have a different lift station.

Then the designs of the lift stations would need to be modified. It's not the sewer pipe that's the problem, it's actually getting it and lifting it.

It's the volume lifting it.

So those would have to be looked at, have to be redesigned. I think they're in design now, if I'm not mistaken, staff. But they would have to be redesigned at a different density if we choose to do that, because you're looking at 800 different, 800 potential units in the area that we did not accommodate before. And of course, we implemented some trail system connectivity, potentially looking at some commercial district area, and then looking at potentially coming back if the council chooses to change the density. Our general plan is looking at maybe a hybrid PRD for that specific area alone, or leaving it a PRD and allowing PRD. So that's kind of the discussion we want tonight. Is it something we want to reopen? Is it something we want to look at?

I think And it's a good idea.

that's why we're here so that we can settle this because we do have a lot of increased property owners that say, hey, what are you going to do now the temple's coming in? Are we going to change the general plan? And that's why we're here tonight to say, let's find out what the council's— If we actually adjust the impact fees, how would that impact Mansell? Mansell, yeah.

We have to— I'm assuming we would have to amend the agreement. Yeah, there'd have to— he's paid some impact fees. I think he's probably maybe 65 or 80 units where he's actually paid impact fees on. His main interest actually would probably benefit him because more impact fees would be coming in and that helps him get reimbursed. But overall, the overall impact fees would probably go down in that area because you have more units then to spread those fees across. It would probably actually be a benefit for those property owners.

So you'd have to renegotiate with him.

But who would front the money?

For what?

If we had to do additional infrastructure down there.

Uh, well, that's a good question. Um, we probably have— uh, we either have developers pay for that up front or we would, uh, we would front the money.

That's what I'm saying. If we stayed on our current path, We'd have to talk to Brian or Mansell or whatever, have them front it. If we were going to change, then we would do it.

You know, maybe Sam could speak to this. If we're talking just the lift station, you know, that's not the major component of the infrastructure that's gone in there. Most of that infrastructure is already in. The lift stations are relatively small components. Right, right.

You know, we could talk about different—

How much money is a lift station?

I mean, the lift station runs about $700,000 to $800,000. Right now, it would be essentially funding a small amount of change order money, figuring out how we can build that. And when it's at full capacity, if it's a function of we design it so the wet well is there, we remove a wall, add a few pumps, that's something that we can probably do as we collect fees.

Understood.

Understanding that it would just be a function of if Jeff has been reimbursed, then we can use those fees, or it's just a function of using fund balance or things like that.

What about water?

Water, we're actually pretty good for water. We have the size capacity for the pipe. It would probably push up putting a well for that area, probably a little bit sooner than later. That's really the only thing that would be weak down in that area, because we have the 16-inch pipe. We're calling for a well, and if we have to— and if this is something we want to do to go to immediate density, it would just move those things up a little bit in the schedule. But we've already accounted for those things in the fees that we already have. There's really not much that's going to change. And I don't want to be a cloud on a rainy day, but I think one of the things we need to be concerned about is if we are going to change the density And the ERUs in this area, then we need to be mindful that there is a formal process that we would go through in making those changes. So right now we're talking, we think we can accommodate. We would actually need to go back to the engineering studies and the master plans. We'd have to update the models to in fact guarantee that we could do what we're doing. After that, then we would also have to amend our capital facilities IFFP. What do we—

Impact fee facilities plan.

Impact fee facilities plan. And then based on those impact fee facilities plan, then we would have to amend our impact fees, and that is quite a lengthy process. And I haven't even talked about what we would need to do before all of that, which is amend our general plan. So I'm a little concerned that some may get the impression It's a simple pivot and we'll go from 1,200 units to 1,800 units and next month we can begin construction or moving forward. This is a lengthy process. It would require us to systematically go through and make some changes, and it could be well over a year before we can accommodate what we are talking about today if you made a decision. today to proceed with the General Plan Amendment. So I don't want to give anybody a sense of false hope that, yeah, if we make a decision to amend the General Plan beginning tonight, then come March we can turn dirt and it's a whole different world. There is a process that you would need to go through.

So one thing I'd bring up, and Jamie, you could maybe answer it, maybe not answer it, but this is all being developed because the church is going to put in a temple there. And I know that you and Jason have been in discussions with the church with regards to access to that temple site. And I know that when it was originally set up for some church buildings there, you had mentioned that you needed both— not a— you needed a north and south access as well as a west access because it's a long 1,500-foot lot so that you've got right-of-way availability for first responders. It's my understanding from the last time that you had brought this up with the church, and the church said, well, if we'd known that, we wouldn't have announced this site. We wish you had known that ahead of time. But in fact, it was on the plans 5 years ago, and they— I think one group had not talked to another. And so the church said, well, we've got to go back and talk to the presiding bishop. And I don't know, have you heard an answer back on that yet?

No, in fact, I followed up with Jason today. And I don't know if you could, if you could bring that up a little closer to Jason, you can see it. The real concern that we have is when the church came in, they suggested that they were going to build both a temple and a stake center on this property. And they were going to limit access to the property in and out through Geneva Road, and they did not want to have any other access to the property. You'll notice that there's a residential subdivision to the north, and we would anticipate that Geneva Road will not be the only road that runs north-south in this area for, you know, Obviously, when we're running and building a community, there's transportation connectivity that we need to consider. So you can see that that temple site is— there's kind of a cross in it. Yeah, Oakley Street is right there. And we had discussed with them a need for some sort of connectivity between the parcels to the north and the parcels to the south. The church has expressed concern with that. Because they worry that this street may become a through street that will encourage people to essentially, you know, use the access road to gain access to the south and to the north. Well, the reality is, in part, that's the whole purpose of a grid network, is not everybody jumps on Geneva Road. To go up north a few blocks and then to access property. In addition to that, we're looking at a property there that's 1,500+ feet deep. And if we ever were to have an incident on Geneva Road and we had to close down, for example, a section of Geneva Road, we need to provide access in the event there's any sort of emergency situation or medical issue or— And so we have talked with the church about this road and the necessity of some connectivity from the north to the south. It doesn't have to be a direct connect. It can be a connection that is a private road. That's another concern that the church has. They have other temple facilities where, for example, if it's a public street, they then free speech is permitted on that public street, and they worry that people whose ideas are different than theirs are going to occupy space on that public street and frankly take away from the, obviously, the special nature of what they feel this site is. And, but we've talked with them. It can be a private street. It can be kind of a circuitous route through the property.

property.

We could build in a speed bench. We could put in chicanes along the way to discourage traffic. But we need to have some sort of access. And that's where we kind of reached the point where the church said, well, we weren't aware of that. And our response respectfully was, well, we weren't aware you were going to build a temple here. So we have provided them with copies and information of our transportation master plan that speaks to this grid perspective, as well as a copy of that concept that they came in with years ago for a dual stake center project where they actually did program the road from the, the north to the south. So there was a time where they agreed with us to the point where they actually submitted it on a concept identifying the necessity for that road.

So I would suggest that we continue this discussion after we receive responses back from the church that this is a definite go on this site, because I think that's a big part of what we're discussing.

It sounds like, Mayor, we want to be studying the liquor station simultaneously with that, don't we?

That's not a problem. I mean, that's an easy thing to study. But as far as doing everything, starting the process Of redeveloping and changing this whole area, I think we have to be certain that the temple is going into that spot and the church is not going to have heartache with what the city's requiring. So that's why I'd like to continue until we get an answer back from the church on what they're doing.

And we will.

I mean, the church has not— the church has not represented, it's not our intent to build a temple here. What they have represented is, okay, this is a little bit of a different conversation than we thought. We need to go back. We need to have the conversations with those— the folks that they work with and get back to us. And, and, um, you know, as you remember, we were anticipating that this announcement and the property and such would happen later in the spring. So when we received the phone call that they were going to make this announcement This also caught us off guard too. So we thought we had a little more time.

And now that—

And some more discussions.

Yeah.

And now that the announcement has been made public, we're, we're trying to make sure that, you know, this discussion about connectivity, this discussion about the general plan, this discussion about density and utility infrastructure and stuff is something that we can accommodate for whatever use you decide Trying to visualize what that would look like. I mean, I'm thinking of the Provo Temple where you have the temple and then there's that through street directly west of the temple.

But it's not through the temple grounds.

It's not through the temple grounds, and I'm sure that they would block this off.

Well, if that was a public road—

But that's what I'm saying. There's a public road that goes through there, so you have 2 Church properties that are connected by a public road.

The temple site will actually be like Provo, where they have the gates on their parking lots. That would be what this would be designed like.

Yes.

So the road would be west of that.

So it would be sectioned off, but there would still be a through street to go through it.

Outside of the gates.

Outside of the gates. It would probably be a little bit more similar to the one at American Fork, if you could pull that up. I've looked at that. There is a road that connects from North County Boulevard to the next public street. And it's concrete, it looks like a public road. The temple area is actually gated, it's fenced, but there's small little signs that say this is a private road. There's not an easement on that flat. I mean, that's obviously an amicable solution to us, and for them to balk, to think that we're the first ones ever to ask for this, to me seems a little silly. We're very sensitive to the fact that the church spends obviously a great amount of A lot of resources building these facilities. We want to respect the nature of the facilities. We want to accommodate what they intended it to be, which is a special and sacred place. But at the same time, if we ever have some sort of incident there, we need to make sure that law enforcement, we need to make sure that fire and EMS can get there.

Have a right.

And frankly, we need to make sure that patrons can get in and out of the facility too. So we are sensitive to their concerns, while at the same time we probably don't share the same level of concern that they do, because obviously this is the first temple we've built and they've built hundreds of these things. And so they have experience across the entire world of obviously some of the concerns associated with these kinds of things.

So can we wait until we You both receive an answer back and then continue on at that point.

So I've got a— can you go back to the picture you had? I think when we discussed this last year, my point was the stuff, the property that we've annexed, we still have a bunch of property to the west. So if we're going to redo this, are we really looking at the infrastructure to include If we do annex another portion, are we able to handle that with our infrastructure, with the lift station, all that stuff? So if we're going to do this, my preference would be we need to look at it as we build. Maybe it's 20 years or 10 years from now where we have the capability to do it, because if not, we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot. It's just like we wanted the mall, but we didn't want the mall. We took the mall and look where we're at today. So I think we need to think outside the box and really look long term and say what is it going to cost us? now to be ready for that because it's going to come.

It's going to—

it might be 10, 15 years, but it's going to come. So I think we need to really look at that and say, long-term, what is our plan? Do we have the infrastructure? If we pay for it now, it's going to be a lot less money than it is 20 years down the road. So that's my 2 cents on that.

Thank you.

The property to the west is in unincorporated Utah County, so it's not in Orem proper. So that's, that's one of the convers— you know, we have had conversations, for example, with some of these property owners. And you can see property to the kind of the northwest. We, we've had some conversations with them and they've said, no, it's, it's not our intent. We don't— we're not interested in being a part of the City of Orem.

Mm-hmm.

So I know Sam has had multiple conversations with these property owners. In fact, we have a significant sewer easement that runs through that property. Now that property, it's already in the city and it's already included in sewer and things like that. I think what we're kind of speaking to is the Klinger property, and we can look at that. We can provide options to see how, if and when that develops.

Right.

We probably want to have like an ancillary system because we don't want to have such a large pie share that we don't have enough—

I'm saying we should think about it because if not, I mean, people pass away, kids want the money, it's sold. Or, you know, so I think that if we're going down this path now, we need to be smart and look at it for the future.

I agree.

Jay, question on that.

We'll come back to you.

I mean, if this is a stumbling block for the church, do they— and I don't want to get all developers all excited with this question— but do they have Plan Bs and Cs in the city? We don't want to lose them if they— it's like this is major.

They have not represented to us that they have Plan B and Plan C. We did know they represented to us that they were looking at other properties, but, you know, from From the perspective that we have now, all of their attention has been focused on this property. So I would seriously doubt that they have a well-developed Option B. But I don't—

There are other lands—

I don't want to represent that they don't have. And again, I— this is, this is not really about the city trying to be difficult. It's more about Trying to accommodate some needs that really will benefit the property. And part of, part of the suggestion that the church has made is, well, we're just not sure that the benefit is really something we should be concerned about. The concern we have to some degree is a level of consistency and setting a precedent in relation to one property owner. What happens, for example, we have another property down— owner down the road who's interested in doing the same thing and only having access to their property from Geneva Road? How could we say yes to one, no to another?

We should say yes to all temples in the area.

And part of the problem is that lot is 1,500 feet long. So that creates some special problems as far as first responders and the public All right, well, let's go ahead and move on. Thank you, Jason. Um, looks like our food is here. Why don't we go ahead and, and, uh, Terry, could you give us a prayer on the food?

Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful for the opportunity to meet and to be part of, uh, Orem City. We pray this food we're about to partake of will nourish and strengthen our bodies, but We pray that we will have clarity and be thoughtful in considering those issues that affect citizens of Oregon. We say this in thy Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

That's good, that's good then.

Ladies from my former marriage, I'll just say that. And Jim's former. Mostly Jim's. Actually, no, I think it's just Jim's former marriage.

Do you want to write one?

Read about yourself.

Yeah.

Or we could even use the questionnaire we sent out.

Yeah, I'm actually going to do that.

If you do that, we could just use that as your message. Just kind of get to know you.

Okay.

You want to just do that? Much easier.

Yeah, that'll work.

Okay.

I think you should write about rec.

Come on, Dave. You should write about rec.

No one's going to write about ballet.

Give me $5 if you write about ballet.

Your conversion to ballet.

Yeah.

And how a real man can stand My body shape can also do that.

But my ankle strength, I couldn't.

So you will not be able to.

Just ankle strength, you're going to have to have.

All right.

That's a shock to me. Nobody else knew that.

He took it in stride, though.

One of your friends.

What can you do?

As they always say, drive for show, putt for dough.

Of course, you know, Bubba Watson's won the Masters twice. That's what people say about Dustin Johnson.

It's great golf for you. If we could get one over them, because it's a problem.

We go to Walmart Saturday anytime from 4 in the afternoon till 3.

You're waiting 20 minutes just to— every aisle. I mean, it's just crazy. It is, yeah.

So I would welcome some changes in your world.

You know, Proco tried to put a grocery store on the end of Geneva Road where it cuts off the center street there.

What do you think?

And they've had land there, they've tried, they've tried, they can't ever get anybody to move.

Well, grocery stores, it's all about rooftops. Once there's enough of them, what they think is enough, it'll build. I mean, that's how it's always been.

Well, that one hasn't gone in.

I'm telling you, we would use that.

I literally—

I either have to go to Walmart or I go all the way down to Costco.

Those are my 2 choices.

Occasionally I'll go up on Center Street for something, but the last time I went to Smith's, I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna avoid both those crazy places.

I'm just gonna go to Costco. Costco's a lot cheaper than Walmart. Yeah, they are.

I don't always love their produce, but Well, why don't we go ahead and get back in and get started on our agenda. Um, if we could have everyone's attention. Um, we don't have a report from a council member today, but we do Seriously, you want to do it?

Or Steve?

I did last time. Yeah, we only do once a month.

Well, we'll do another one.

You want to do it every time? Dave wants to do it. Okay, he's got another—

Dave's got another half hour to go.

So Mayor, I'll give a report. I went to the Planning Commission and Jason covered it very well.

Good, good. Uh, we do have an upcoming event, and that is tomorrow at the Utah League of Cities and Towns. Local Officials Day from 7 AM to 2 PM at the State Capitol and at the Salt Palace Convention Center. On the consent items, we have approval of the meeting minutes, January 14th, 2020. We have appointments to boards and commissions. We have reappointments of Sarah Bateman and Darren Hawkins. And we have the Arts Council, an appointment of Nathan Christensen, and a reappointment of Nancy Peterson. So Nathan Christensen states that he has experience in the leadership of a charitable 501 that focuses on the preservation of American musical style, and he's familiar with the production of shows and organization and legal requirements continue to put on these shows. So anybody know Nathan?

Sure, yes, he's actually been attending the Arts Council meeting for about the last year and a half, just coming as a citizen. He's expressed a desire to help with audiovisual needs if you have them, especially coming up with the hall. He'd like to be a resource there, and I think he would be very been working with some of the arts and cultural programs out at Stage, and then there's also been some opportunity to help with some information sharing with arts.

Is he younger, older, retired? He's not retired.

He's—

I don't know.

How old would you say he is, Debbie? You know, I've never noticed him. I'm sorry. 45, 50?

Yeah.

Mayor, I noticed that when you send these out, you block out the addresses, and sometimes I might know who they were if I knew their address. Is there some secret code we're not allowed to know where they live?

It also goes out to the public, so we're trying to keep their personal email and their personal private.

Yeah, maybe they can just send us on the side.

Yes, anyway, it'd be helpful if I knew where they lived to kind of say, oh, do I know who that person is? Occasionally you'll hear a familiar name like Nathan Christiansen and you say, oh, I wonder if I— oh, I don't know where he lives, I can't place him.

It's Christiansen.

Christiansen.

It's Christiansen.

Christiansen.

Okay.

I do know Nancy and she'll be a great reappointment.

Okay, and then we have, uh, City Manager appointment to Mickey Cochran to serve on the Planning Commission.

That's a renewal.

Yeah, it's a renewal. Mr. Cochran's obviously been on the Planning Commission. He ran for City Council. He actually was elected to serve as chair of the Planning Commission.

He has great knowledge. If you, if you listen to him, he really is very competent and really understands planning.

Is the previous chair still on the council, just not chairing?

Yes. Ross.

Yeah, because he looked at developing some property and didn't get it developed the way he wanted. He was the owner of 10th East.

He's still on it. Thank you.

Okay, everybody okay with those appointments? Okay, our scheduled items. The first one is a public hearing, uh, amending Section 14-3-3, Wall Signs, of the Orem City Code by adding the CM zone as a permitted zone for wall signs.

Jason, it really is a cleanup item. It's just something that It was overlooked for whatever reason, and so we're just codifying it so it's— we have a lot of wall signs in that zone. For whatever reason, it just wasn't included, so we are fixing that problem.

Okay, that's a good catch.

Those are details that are easy to miss.

Well, on occasion. They don't happen all the time.

And, uh, at the mall, when they finished the new parking garage with the new office building up on top, They're looking at some very large wall signs that are permitted. Do you want to describe what they're looking at at all, or are you familiar with what they're looking at?

Yeah, and there'd be screens on the structure itself, the parking structure portion. They're pretty substantial screens.

About the size of the ones on the corner?

Maybe the one side. They're not as big as probably that, but they're pretty tall.

It's like the ones in California that won't.

Yeah, similar. I think these would be digital, wouldn't they?

They will be digital, yeah.

Whereas the ones in California were not.

They were just— okay.

So there'll be—

yeah, substantial, but it is permitted in the zone to have those type of ones. That's because it's internal enough that you wouldn't regulate those. Okay.

And then the next one is a public hearing amending Section 22-5-3 A, and the zoning map of the City of Orem by changing the zoning on approximately 0.28 acres for property located generally at 166 North 400 West from the R-7.5 zone to the R-6.5 zone.

And Jason, he just has over 12,000 square feet. He wants to tear the old house down, divide into 2 lots. Now there will be a small section of city Well, look, a correction of the property line, I guess, boundary line between the city street and the forest. So there is some discrepancy there that will be corrected with this plat in order to get this 6,500 lots or sizes per lot. So then he's going to build 2 homes on those. Okay, appreciate it.

So you haven't seen much opposition?

Like I said, there were a few calls up front until they understood that it was single family homes with accessory apartments, and they kind of backed up and said, okay, that's fine.

And we—

they did not come to Planning Commission. There was one gentleman that came over. There wasn't fighting against it, it was just more of understanding why you had to go through this process, purpose of the process.

And is— does Joyce Johnson live right next door?

Yes, in the area. Okay, that's what I thought.

All right, um, and do you have anything for us coming up in a couple of weeks?

Currently we don't have any items coming Okay.

And Jamie, do you have anything?

Just a couple of things, if I may, Mayor. Obviously yesterday was the start of legislative session, and a number of us will be busy tracking bills and trying to understand how certain pieces of legislation will impact us. Heather, our Deputy City Attorney, serves as kind of lead in that effort. We also have others, for example, in the City Manager's Office. I know Chief Giles is very involved in those that relate to law enforcement. And then we also have employees that are tracking everything from land use to water to other bills. I think, um, I think there are already 500 or so bills that have been filed. And some of them obviously will have an impact on the city.

We're just in the process of trying to figure out what some of those are.

Does the Utah League of Cities and Towns have any that they're really concerned with yet, or?

Well, obviously the focus in recent months has been tax reform. And so there's a question as to what the legislature is going to do with tax reform. Are they going to try and tackle it again this session, or are they going to try and wait until we get a new governor and new leadership and tackle it again? I think the sense is—

Tackle it later.

Tackle it later. As well, they are also having conversations about, you know, continuing to talk about infrastructure issues tied to, for example, water. They're also You know, I know Representative, Representative Dau, for example, had a bill that related to sunbathing and the use of tanning beds for minors. Representative Stratton continues to be a strong advocate for federal, you know, federal versus state authority on lands and the like. There's some public safety issues. In fact, Chief Giles Ford and There's probably already about, what, 50 or 60 bills on that list that were everything from, you know, DUI amendments to retirement amendments to forfeiture of property to—

1,400 bill files.

Is that how many there are?

Yes. Becky Lockhart, uh, 6 years ago said she really wanted to whittle it down from We went from 400 to less bill files per year, and we're up to 1,400 now in a 45-day session.

So as we get deeper into the session, obviously we'll bring you more up to date as to how things are going there.

Did you see what Kevin Stratton was noticeably the only person who didn't vote to appeal the tax?

Is that right?

Really?

Only one in the House or the Senate.

I didn't see that. I know they voted this afternoon.

He was the one.

They didn't say anything.

You had to dig a little deeper. Did he say why?

No, I mean, he may have said why.

I didn't catch it in the quick reading I did. Uh, just, it's been a few, a little while since we've just given you a little bit of a Utopia UIA update. Just so you know, they've announced West Point City in Davis County has contracted with Utopia for the build-out of their community. And they just announced that and are underway. A similar arrangement to what they've had with Morgan City, what they've had also with Layton, where— and Woodland Hills, where those cities specifically will back the debt. And the— if, for example, projections are less than anticipated, then— They'll pay it back. Each of those cities will serve as the backstop for those debt service payments. On tonight's agenda at Clearfield City, there is also a motion by the city council to move forward with a contractual relationship with Utopia as well. We continue to generate more than 500 subscribers a month on the network. I think our net subscription base right now is right around 28,000 subscribers, which is very good considering just a few years ago we were at around 11,000 or 12,000 subscribers. We also have developed, or are in the process of developing, a plan. You recall back in, during the recessionary period, each respective Utopia UIA, well, Utopia City was working towards towards supporting Utopia and the organization by way of contributions to help them fund their operational expenditures. Now we're in the situation where Utopia is in the process of now reimbursing cities for those operational expenditures. And Orem contributed $968,000, or has an outstanding balance of $968,000. That's correct.

It was a loan.

That they, they essentially loaned to Utopia for OpEx. And they've identified essentially a 3-year plan with interest to reimburse the city for those operational expenditures. And those dollars, obviously, we have been using to help pay down the Utopia debt. Because as you may recall, The debt service on the Utopia bond has a 2% a year escalator on it. So actually, the contributions that Utopia has been making to us are bigger year over year, and we're using that money to apply to the debt. We're going to reach a point though in 3 years where all of the OpEx obligations to all the cities have been met, and then we will look to a mechanism where we continue to provide a dividend program to each of the cities to continue to help them offset the debt service costs of UTOPIA. So we continue to see growth in the network, and we continue to see increasing interest on the part of non-UTOPIA UIA cities in essentially following Layton City and their model in pledging their own revenue and building the network within their respective cities and having Utopia operate the network and have these cities as essentially contractor or contract with Utopia to provide high-speed internet service. Do you know how many subscribers you want? You know, I can get that for you. But we continue to have very strong growth. I just don't have it up right now.

Seems to me, and I was watching Sam Lenz just got in his home and was excited about that, seems to me that they're doing more quicker than they initially anticipated. Is that, is that something that's accurate? Is it months ahead?

So they have kind of put forward on their website a 4-year 4-year plan to build out the network, complete it in all cities, and they have remained on track with that. They do anticipate, though, that in order to complete that 4-year build-out, it will be necessary for them to take down one additional tranche of debt, about an additional $40 million, and they will do that. And just so you know, given with what they've done with Layton and other communities, the last tranche of debt that they took down that debt service payment. First payment is due and payable in July, and they already have the money in the bank right now to meet that debt service obligation. So it's positive and encouraging that Utopia UIA is moving in the right direction, and they continue to see solid growth both on the residential and on the commercial side of things, and they're also very pleased now to have access into Canyon Park. So they have actually a couple of big customers who are using the Utopia network on Canyon Park, so that's encouraging as well. And those are the things that I have.

Okay, um, I wanted to bring up an item. How many of you know about La Cora Way?

Have you ever heard of La Cora Way? I've heard of it.

No, in Utah County. So Acura Way is a consortium of private landowners and cities. There's about 500 acres along the Utah Lake east side of land that has been in phragmites. Phragmites are the large weeds that grow up And you might think that they're growing up out of the water, but they're actually growing up out of the land. And so, Acura Way is a group that's come together. The Holdaways are the ones actually driving it. The City of Orem is participating, Provo is participating, Lindon is participating, and the Walkers are participating, the Holdaways are participating, and put together an easement there Whereby a trail is going to go in along the Utah Lake, and there will be ponds there, there'll be some parks there, there'll be stopping-off points. The best access to this land actually is going out through our industrial park down there on— just off of University Parkway headed west. Anyway, this is actually moving along. There's a bill in the legislature to see if we can get this funded for about $15 million. They've already gone out with rolling machines and rolled down the phragmites, and the phragmites are food that cows like. So they're going to put some fences up, temporary fences right now, And they're going to put cows on the property here this spring and summer to start eating the phragmites. So once they start to do that and start to keep them down, that area will become a much more beautiful area. It will actually help with the mosquito problem that Vineyard has out in that section. I don't know, Debbie, if you have any—

We do.

We have lots of mosquitoes.

Okay, so that should help lower that. But this is going to be a beautiful trail that will connect from north to south, connect to trails going all the way up to Salt Lake. And a lot of excited people. Utah County is on board with it. I don't, I don't know if you want to speak to it, Jamie, from Orem's side, but Orem is involved.

We've had multiple meetings, and frankly, we were a little reluctant at First, and as the conversation proceeded, we too gained that enthusiasm and are excited for the project.

Yeah, the trail map Jason showed actually had an arrow pointing to connect to Lockhart Way.

Okay.

Yeah, on its southern end.

Okay.

So we're thinking about it already and kind of tied it in.

And Orem owns, if I remember correctly, about 25 out of the 500 acres that go straight Straight out to the lake. And Orem's area is probably where they would want to put a couple of the ponds because we have some of the water going out that direction. And, and then you can also access right there.

We've even talked about potential development of an urban fishery in that area where we could build a facility where kids and families can come and and fish and take advantage of the ponds that are there.

Right.

But obviously we see tremendous potential and we're excited for that trail system.

So I'm on the committee working on that, and I can just tell you in the meetings that I've been in that there's a lot of excitement on it. Yes, Jeff?

Oh, I was just waiting to say—

Oh, sorry.

But since you did give me a second, there was an email that went out After the last meeting, there was some discussion about reading a statement before public comment.

Yes, and I will do that.

Yes.

Yep.

So, uh, when you raised your hand there, I— just a side note, I was in the old missionary home north of the temple, and at that time they were really crowded, and I was sitting in the They put the Swedish missionaries on the stage, and LeGrand Richards was speaking, and I was really sleepy, so I leaned back and put my hand to my mouth, and he stopped in the middle of his speech, and he said, Elder, he said, can I answer a question? And I said, no, I'm just yawning, and everybody laughed. So, any other comments? I have a question. Mayor?

Yes.

I just have an updated version of the fundraising letter that we're doing for the fitness center.

Okay.

Council members, it's just a targeted mailing to some individuals who might be interested in making a personal or corporate donation. So feel free to read it if you haven't read it in the past. And then if I could just ask you to sign your name above your— sign above the printed name.

Sure.

And then No, you're good. Um, and this pen was a, was a good one for the printing.

Yes.

And if it, if it can't get around, I can send it down to ISP.

Okay, great.

There's no other comments. Let's go ahead and adjourn over to the City Council chambers. We'll be there after. We'd like to welcome everyone out to our City Council meeting this evening. I would like to call this meeting to order. We would like to begin by having a prayer by Greg Carlisle, after which the Pledge of Allegiance by Debbie Carlisle.

Our Father, who art in heaven, Father in heaven, as we come before you this evening, we are very grateful for this country and our freedoms. Thankful for those who are on the city council, all the hard work and time and sacrifice that they put to represent their own blessing and insight and vote on all the issues that they look at to preserve the quality of life And the love of all, and the ability to wish you the best for all. And we're all watching. We're grateful for this great country we live in, just to be united instead of so much division. And we're very thankful for all our many blessings. And we say this in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Greg and Debbie. Just like to read upcoming events. We just have one at the moment, and that is the Utah League of Cities and Towns Local Officials Day tomorrow from 7 to 2 at the Utah State Capitol and at the Salt Palace Convention Center. We'd now like to go into the personal appearance portion of our program. I'd like to read the paragraph that we have on the agenda concerning that. Time has been set aside for the public to express their ideas, concerns, and comments on items not scheduled as public hearings on the agenda. Those wishing to speak are encouraged to show respect for those who serve the city. Comments should focus on issues concerning the city. Those wishing to speak should have signed in before the beginning of the meeting. And please limit your comments to 3 minutes or less. We have 2 individuals. First of all, we have Murray Lowe, and second of all, Mitch Wilkes. So Murray, if you'd like to come forward.

I read a January 14th Gazette news article—

Not sure if that's on. Is that on?

Jody? Oh, there we go. That sounds better. So I read a January 14th Deseret News article regarding the absolute necessity for higher-density housing in Utah. And I wanted to add my thoughts and feelings about Utah County and Orem. 15 years ago, I was living in Indianapolis. And virtually all suburban housing was low single-family density. And while the city had a pretty liberal inner city, this surrounding suburbs were all very, very conservative. I had coworkers with families and without. Most of them without families lived in the city, and those others lived on the edge of the city or suburbs. And I assume that's still the case today for many people. What the article doesn't say is what percent of the suburbs surrounding large cities in America are single— are zoned for single-family density today. And it's seems to imply there's an unstoppable movement towards high-density housing across the country, which I don't believe is happening broadly across America. I see significant differences between cities and states based on demographics, politics, the availability of land, economic growth, and other factors. For example, in Phoenix, it's a lot of low-density housing, but all of the land there cannot be used for agriculture, and so It's a very simple solution there. Research data on homeownership shows that over 95% of Americans who were raised in a single-family home will choose to do that once they have children. My 3 married children all began living in apartments. As soon as they had kids, they moved into— they all bought homes. 2 of them had very modest incomes. Due to low interest rates, my daughter's mortgage payment in 2015 was identical to mine in 1985. And her home was 3 times as valuable as mine. So, despite the increase in house prices, I think the dream of owning a home in Utah County is still achievable for most people. I think the issue we're facing here is not— is space, it's not affordability. But if we mandate high-density housing here in Orem through legislation, and yet people still want single-family homes, they will go to a community or suburb where they have freedom to live the type of life that they are choosing to live. So what can the city of Orem do about this? John Curtis, he's our current representative, he moved his family to Utah County because he thought Salt Lake County was losing its values. And he warned us. He said, I think this is happening in Utah County. So I think this is fundamentally a question of who we are in Orem. What's our identity today and in the future? I think if we move down the path this Deseret newspaper article suggests, Orem has this Family City USA, that's going to go by the wayside. And we need to send a message to what Orem stands for, for us in the future. And it does matter to us deeply. I believe we need to do everything we can to make those choices. Thank you very much for your time and your service.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mitch, I noticed that you've signed up, but are you interested in the rezoning of some land on 166 North, 400 West?

Yes.

Okay. If you would hold off, we have a public hearing, and that will be time for you to speak then. Okay. Thank you. So we'll now go ahead and close the public hearing and move forward with the consent agenda. I'd just like to read a statement. The consent agenda is a meeting management tool to allow the City Council to handle several routine items with one action. Once I have read each consent agenda item into the record, either council or staff may request an item to be pulled off the consent agenda and be considered separately under the next agenda item in the order that they are listed. And the 3 items we have is 8.1, approval of meeting minutes. of the City Council meeting of January 14th, 2020. 8.2, appointment to boards and commissions. To the Natural Resources Stewardship Committee, a reappointment of Sarah Bateman and Darren Hawkins. And to the Arts Council, an appointment of Nathan Christiansen and reappointment of Nancy Peterson. 8.3 is the City Manager's recommendation for the council's advice and consent on the reappointment of Mickey Cochran to serve on the Planning Commission. Is there any desire to pull an item off the consent agenda by the council or staff? Seeing none, then we'll proceed with one motion and a second, followed by a roll call vote approving all consent items. Is there a motion?

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember Spencer.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the consent item agenda has passed. We will now move into our scheduled items. Our first one is a public hearing amending Section 14-3-3, Wall Signs, of the Orem City Code by adding the CM zone as a permitted zone for wall signs, and our presenter is Jason Bench.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council.

Tonight is a simple update to our ordinance to allow— assuming this comes up— the CM zone as part of the wall sign requirements. Currently, the CM zone—

if I can get to the—

we have 2 locations in the city that have CM zoning. One is the business park which is down on Business Park Drive, which is west of Geneva Road. The other one is the Olmsted property, which is currently owned by Central Utah Water. Those are the 2 CM zones which would currently— this allow— would allow them to have wall signs. And so that's the simple request that we bring before you tonight. The Planning Commission did make a recommendation, and we support that recommendation.

Any questions or comments from the council? Okay, if not, this is a public hearing. We will open it up for anyone of the public to make a comment. If you come forward, please hold your comments to 3 minutes and give us your name. Seeing none coming forward, we'll close the public portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Councilmember McDonald, do you have a comment?

Yeah, Jason, could you give us a little more idea about what it means to have a wall sign, what they're limits are? Are they the same as limits in others as far as size, etc.?

So wall signs are permitted on 20% of a specific face of a building.

So if your wall faces the street, then 20% of that wall can be some type of wall sign, or it could be multiple wall signs as long as it don't— does not go above the 20% collectively.

And as you explained this before, we just kind of left CM code or classification off a previous document, right? Maybe for the benefit of all of us, you could tell us what a CM is different from these other locations.

So controlled manufacturing, so that's kind of a manufacturing zone. M-1, M-2, and CM are our manufacturing zones. So we have Blendtec, those types of larger manufacturing facilities out there. Those are the kind of businesses that we have in the CM zone. And they do have— if you look on some of those buildings, if you've taken a drive out there— do have wall signs currently on their Thank you.

So this is kind of a cleanup action to—

It is.

Bring the code current?

Yep.

Okay. Any other comments from the council? So I would accept a motion to move on this if someone would like to make it.

Mayor, I so move that we amend Section 14-3-3, Wall Signs, of the Orem City Code by amending the CM zone as a permitted zone for wall signs.

Adding the CM zone.

Adding that. Did I not say that? Amending, adding the CM zone. Thank you for listening.

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember Spencer.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, that passes. We'll move on now to the 9.2, which is also a public hearing, amending Section 22-5-3 A and the zoning map of the City of Orem by changing the zoning on approximately 0.28 acres for property located generally at 166 North 400 West from the R7.5 zone to the R6.5 zone. And Jason Bench is our presenter.

Good evening.

We're having such problems, but— So it is a corner lot. You can see on 170 North, 400 West. The applicant is here to try to rezone. It's just over 12,000 square feet. I'll just speak and we'll see how it goes. That's not the right one.

Let's just see. See if I can— we'll unplug it.

I just bought that connector too. I don't know.

Anyway.

So right now, the property is surrounded on the— in the R-7-5 zone. The request to rezone it to R-6-5 is simply to take the 12,000 square feet and have the ability to divide it into 2 lots. Right now, they're proposing, like I say, 2 lots, taking out— taking down the existing home and then redeveloping it into 2 new lots. This is the current Lot configuration. You can see the older home there on the corner.

Do you know how old that home is?

I don't. My guess would be in the probably '40s-ish.

Sure.

So they did receive a concept plan. The council is not approving, obviously, the concept plan or subdivision. It's simply the rezone. This will go back to the Planning Commission for the actual Subdividing of the property. This is just simply what they're proposing. They are proposing to have main units with accessory apartments along with the single-family dwelling.

And Jason, are the current owners going to be owning one of those 2 homes?

Mr. Wilkes owns the property, and he'll explain that. I think they're wanting to sell them.

Okay.

But they fully understand— we've talked to them quite some time— that it has to be owner-occupied in one of the units.

Can we have the applicant come forward then, if you'll join Jason there? And if you could give us your name and tell us how you're related to this request.

Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Mitch Wilkes. I've lived in Orem for the past 4 years while attending university at UVU. I'm a current homeowner on the property at the corner. I purchased Okay.

The Planning Commission did make a recommendation that the council do rezone that property, and then they will go back, if approved, and rezone it through the Planning Commission— or, I mean, subdivide it through the Planning Commission.

So did you have any opposition from any neighbors at the Planning Commission?

Not an opposition. There was one gentleman that came to the Planning Commission and just had questions on the process and different things, but To my understanding, the neighbors were— once they understood it was a single-family home with an accessory apartment— were okay with the request.

Okay. Councilmember Sumner.

With the accessory apartment, it always seems to be a problem that there's not adequate parking.

Is there adequate off-street parking?

Yeah, the plan that they're proposing— so they have 2 one-car— well, one-car garage here, one-car garage here, and then they have an off— Behind the setback. So the requirement for the single— the main dwelling is 2, which is the single-family or single-car garage, and then the other one off to the side would accommodate that. The accessory apartment would have its own single-car garage, so they do meet the parking requirements.

That means our—

okay, thank you.

Councilmember McDonald.

Just in answer to your question, Mr. Mayor, according to Zillow, it was built in 1948. So 72 years old, and it's currently about a 1,000-square-foot home, right? 948 feet is what it says.

Exactly.

It's about 1,000 square feet, non-livable right now. It's been condemned. I had a contractor come through. My initial— when I actually purchased the property, I'd been flipping homes, residential homes, for the past 4 years. And so my initial— when I purchased the home was to renovate it and then put it back on the market. And when we went through the initial walkthrough with my contractor, we found that there were immense problems with the foundation. So that's where we came with the conclusion that it's, it's just safer and a better opportunity for the city to take down that property and redevelop that area.

Thank you.

Yep.

So a question, does that property have issues with asbestos as far as popcorn ceilings?

So there aren't popcorn ceilings in there right now. Before we do any demo, We do have to do— with our demo checklist, we do have to have a specialist come in and do an asbestos check. So that's just part of our process. So we'll plan on doing that as well during those.

And, and if the popcorn asbestos ceiling is a problem, you will then adjudicate it the proper manner?

Exactly. I actually did a property in Mill Creek City up in Salt Lake. We had the same issue and we took care of it. So we've got a good contact that can come in and make sure they do a really good job.

You have a contractor that you use?

I do, yep. So I have a general contractor that I've used for the past 2 years.

That's certified in asbestos abatement?

No, no, it's different. So the asbestos abatement is, is a third party that I have contacted.

Okay, okay, fine. Councilmember Lamson.

Well, I noticed in the, the minutes from the Planning Commission that there was a question about the size of the lot, if it was actually large enough. Do we know that that was actually verified that the lot is large enough to do 2 lots?

It is. So in talking with the city engineer, this piece is what I think the Planning Commission was having a question on.

Over time—

this was probably done in the 1940s— that they were— the way they surveyed back then was a little bit different, right? The chains and all that kind of stuff. So the way that things lay out, there is some discrepancy with how it comes behind The sidewalk— a typical subdivision today is a foot behind the sidewalk on either side. So this has a discrepancy issue that can be resolved by the platting process. So the city engineer is comfortable with their proposed plat.

Councillor MacDonald.

So you will verify— because you said it was roughly 12,000, and somehow it's going to be magically 2 6,500s, which equal 13,000. You will verify they have at least 6,500 feet in each of the lots?

Absolutely. So when they come back to Planning Commission, if you look at the lot, one lot is a little bit larger in size.

I couldn't read the fine print on the plan.

I apologize. That one is about 6,900 square feet. So there is enough to make sure that they're at least each 6,500 square feet. And we will verify that when it comes to Planning Commission.

And on your diagram there, the— to the And then to the south, it appears that there's an R-6.5 zone that butts up against this. Is that correct?

It is a little bit. So there's a church prop— one property and then the church property and then—

And then the R-6.5. Okay.

But all of it was— is within the medium density general plan designation, which allows for all of these lower zones. R-7.5, R-6.5 all fit within that designation.

Okay.

All right, this is a public hearing, so let's open it up to the public. Anybody wishing to come forward and, and talk about this issue, please do so. Hold your comments to 3 minutes and give us your name when you come forward. Seeing as how no one is coming forward, we'll close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Are there any other questions or comments from the council?

Okay.

Councilmember Larey.

So one of our concerns is making sure that these are owner-occupied because they're going to have apartments. Um, I'm assuming when you market them, you'll make sure that the owner has to live in the property. Um, our concern is maybe not the first owner, but maybe as time goes on that they'll become, you know, rentals for the whole property. So is there any way that you'll ensure that? Will you make sure that that's communicated to your— whoever purchases these?

Yeah, absolutely. The benefit of me actually heading the project, I'm licensed with the state. I'm a licensed realtor with the state as well. So I'm doing the exclusive rights to sell. So I'll make sure that in contract, before anything is actually signed, that they're well aware that if they are to use the accessory apartment for a third-party family, that it does have to be owner-occupied.

What is the size of the new homes?

They're a little under 2,200 square feet. So the main is going to be about 1,200 square feet, and the, the accessory apartment is a little above 900 square feet.

And what are you planning on selling those for price-wise?

So we're sticking into the high 3s, which is right around that area for comparables on new construction.

Okay.

Any other comments from the council? Councilmember Pedersen.

So I'm looking at the houses to the east. What would the size of, you know, like, if you went to the 2 or 3 houses to the east of you compared to what you're going to build, what are their sizes?

So the majority of those properties to the east are duplexes and fourplexes. It's interesting that that entire road is actually kind of grandfathered in multifamily. And a few of those lots are actually nonconforming in the R-75 as well. They're a little bit smaller. So I don't know the specific size for those duplexes, but my property shouldn't be— I mean, if I had a best guess, I'm assuming it's 800 to 1,100 square feet each side on the duplexes. So right around the same size.

So to the north, is that duplexes also?

North is a single-family on that corner lot, and then Right above, so the street right on 170 on the northeast side is multifamily as well.

Yeah, okay.

Okay. So I'm just across 170 North. That home's a little— I'm just trying to get a feel for the neighborhood as far as size of homes versus what you're going to build.

Well, this right here, what I'm highlighting, that is a fourplex. Or duplex.

That is right.

OK. Yeah. And so you got— this is a similar size. That's about a 6,500-square-foot lot, single-family.

Yeah. So that's a single home.

But it's about the same size of lot as he's proposing.

And is the home about the same size as what he's going to build? Roughly.

OK.

The same with one next to that, right?

1,800 square feet.

That one is near 2,200.

OK. OK.

And it's a rental property right now. Yeah. That entire 170 North is pretty much owned by one investor. It's a family that's actually owned that street for 30-plus years now, the Rawlinson family. And so he was the one that actually sold me that property, and he's looking to offload the rest of that street in the years to come. So, but yeah, the majority of 170 North is duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes.

Okay, any other comments from the council? Okay, I would be open to taking a motion. Anyone care to make a motion?

I can do it.

Okay.

I move that we amend Section 22-5-3A in the zoning map of the City of Orem by changing the zoning on approximately 0.28 acres for property located generally at 166 North, 400 West from the R7.5 zone to the R7 To the R-6.5 zone. Oh, to the R-6.5 zone.

Okay.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. We'll start with Councilmember Pedersen.

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay. The zone change passes. Thank you, Mitch. Appreciate it.

Thank you. I appreciate my service.

You bet. Uh, Jamie, you have any comments? Uh, that being said, um, I would take a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

We are adjourned. Thank you.