City Council · 2020-02-11

You're going to show me how I can't afford to rent your place for very long, right?

Right.

All right, Philly, you ready?

Sure.

Okay, we'd like to start our work session. Jamie will be in in a minute. Dave is out of town, uh, he's excused. So we appreciate having everybody here today. Uh, I'm not aware, do we have any new employees? Uh, Hello? Okay, we're good. So we want to start out with a council work session, uh, discussion on our 2024 Consolidated Plan for HUD-funded programs. And, uh, McKenna Matthews is our presenter.

We'll turn the time over to you.

Well, good afternoon. Good to see everybody. Um, I'm going to let you spend some money today. So this is actually going to be a work session. You're actually going to work a little bit. So, um, I sent the presentation out, um, last night due to timing, and so I was just wondering if there was any questions on the CDBG process. Any questions?

Is it going well?

It's going well, yes. So I'd like to— I forgot to introduce the 2 people that are here that are helping me make it go well. So I have Dan Gonzalez from Provo City and Jessica Gahorka. Yeah, and then Jessica LaValora from the Mountainland Association of Governments, they actually run the Utah County and Lehi CDBG programs. So, and they've been very helpful in our process. Yes?

In that, you read, or I read something about you reducing the awards from 60 to 9.

Is that what you're doing? So, yeah, I can explain that. So this year we did some collaboration with the other entitlements, the other entitlements in our area. And because we were able to do that, we were able to reduce some of our subrecipients down because we kind of shared the wealth a little bit more. So what we did is we— if we could, if someone was serving a large amount of people in our area, then we were able to just have them apply to us. So some of those that serve across the board, so they serve the entire county, We kind of split that up a little so we were able to reduce some of our recipients. We also capped— we also said that they had— people had to apply for $5,000 or more. In the past we've done a lot less than that and we just felt like $5,000 is a better limit because of the paperwork. It's easier just to go get a grant at Target if you're only going to ask for $1,000. It's much less paperwork.

Really quick, I think This is a discussion we've had before. What we did was like, for example, there's PERC, which is in the library. They used to receive a $2,000 grant from us every year. This last year we gave them a $5,000 grant and asked them to not come back next year. So we reduced it that way. We gave them more money than they get generally, but we've asked them to not come back every single year. So they don't have to deal with the federal grant every year, but they get more money if you average it out in the past. And then as she was talking about— But how is that received, Steven? That sounds brilliant.

Yeah, it's—

But if you give me $5,000 instead of $2,000, next Next year I might say, well, I want 5 again. Yeah, we don't know how it's going to work out.

It sounds right.

So far so good.

Okay.

Yeah. And then the other part of it was just the— where it used to be that Utah County, Provo, and us would all fund, for example, Center for Women and Children in Crisis. We were able to give them the same amount of money but only have one organization fund them. So they only do one out, you know, one reporting, one monitoring. So we went from 16 to 9, but nobody didn't— no, there wasn't anybody that didn't get funded. It's just that Some were funded by one organization now rather than 3.

And most of the time got more money than they would have across the board.

And they appreciate it.

And Dan, Jesse, I think that's going well. People really do like that a lot.

That's been helpful.

I've gotten feedback. All right, any other questions about CDBG? So we're going to move to the consolidated plan process. So every 5 years, the entitlements in Utah County have to be put together what they call a consolidated plan. This is a plan that allows us to set priorities for the community of where federal funding should be spent. And so we're in the process of doing that right now. It's quite the process, but it's a good process, and we've been able to do some things to get some information to be able to set those priorities in a better way.

So.

Thank you.

So some of the things that we have been doing is we are required to include results from effective citizen participation process. So we can't just say, well, we as entitlements think we want to spend money on public services in the mental health area. We have to have citizens give us input to help us make those decisions for the consolidated plans. We've done some— What are some examples of that? Things to get the citizen participation. So we hired all 4 entitlements. So the entitlements in our area are Orem, Provo, Lehi, and Utah County. And we hired Civicus Consulting to do 3 reports for us. So they did surveying, they did some focus groups, they did a lot of research, and they put together 3 plans for us. And that is in Granicus for you if you haven't read those yet, or I can send them to you as well. So those included the analysis of impediments to fair housing, the housing market analysis, and the housing needs assessment. So it really gave us a lot of good information in regards to housing and some other things as well. We also sent out a priority survey. The survey was actually sent through our social media, and it was sent through Provo, Utah County, and Lehi. to set some priorities. And we'll go over some of those survey results in just a minute. We're still compiling some of the survey results. We did do paper copies to some of the service providers and asked service— asked clients that we've been serving with our money to take these surveys. So Jessica's been working on compiling the rest of that survey data. So the survey data we have now, which was in Granicus, is mostly the online surveying. But we're hoping to have more surveys from—

And 100% of your targeted surveyors were people currently receiving some kind of help?

Not right, not the online survey. So the paper surveys are people receiving help.

Okay, but who was targeted for the others?

So just general public, general community public, yes. So, um, and then we also had a facilitated discussion here at Orem City a couple of weeks ago with Mary Delmar Schaefer from UTA. great facilitator, and we brought in all the service providers. So a lot of the directors or frontline staff came in and talked about what priorities they had. So they identified issues in our community and their priorities, and so we were able to also do that with them and kind of see what their priorities were. Housing came out pretty much on top as a priority, but there was a lot of other priorities as well. And then you and the County Commission and other city councils participating in a priority setting process, which we're going to do right now once we go over some of the survey results. So we had 415 surveys done online. Most of them were done in Orem because we sent it out through social media. So we're hoping to get a few more surveys from some of the other areas. So 312 of those surveys were actually gotten in Orem. So most of this data is Orem-related data. Really just a couple of things to point out. There wasn't a lot of something that just fell out saying this is the most priority that we have, especially in the public service realm. Most of it was just very equal or, you know, equal in a lot of different areas. One thing that did come out in the housing area though that was kind of interesting, and I know that's one of your priorities this year, is the restoration and renovation of of homes, so existing homes. And that kind of fell out as one of the higher priorities in the housing arena as well. And then streets for the public works, public improvement area, streets was a little bit higher than most, but most of them were pretty in line with, you know, whatever the needs were. Did you guys have any comments on that? Is that kind of a good overview of what the survey said?

Those are in Granite Kiss as well.

They're in Granite Kiss, yes, and I can send those if you need those, but those were there as well. Hopefully we'll We'll get some more data, and I can send out more data once we get these surveys compiled. We get a few more online surveys as well. So what we are going to do now is I've given you all $1,000. Okay, and so— you're welcome, that wasn't a bribe.

I already took a picture of it and deposited it.

Oh, have you? Okay, great.

It's called Orem Bucks.

Orem Bucks. We have some Orem Bucks. And so, um, we have Jessica has put together these boards, which is awesome for us. And what I would like you to do is take the next 10 minutes and look at these different areas. So I can tell you what areas we have. We have public improvements, housing, public services, and economic development. And these are all things that CDBG money can be used for in these different areas. And I'd like you guys to take your money and, and—

I'm sorry.

Prioritize what you guys would like the priority to be. Prioritize the one we want the most, pick the $500? I would say, yeah. So you have $500, you have 4 $100s, and then you have $50s, 2 $50s. So you can kind of set where your biggest priority is, some of your smaller priorities. Oh, Tom's already ready.

He's ready to—

I stole Dave's money.

Oh, you stole Dave's, great.

I'm gonna win.

How do you win?

The person to solve the problem. The person to solve the problem. So then what we're going to do, once you do that, if you have any other questions, we can just— we have a few more things to discuss. Then Stephen's going to do our presentation on the Neighborhood Partnership Initiative Advisory Council, and I will add up the money, and then we'll have a discussion at the end on where our priorities are. Does that sound good? Any questions? Okay, and I was going to tell Terry and Jeff, if you ever want an education on CDBG, you can call me. I will explain that to you. So, um, get up, move around, spend some money.

I've got one thing here for you. Um, so I had a gentleman come in.

The boards are here and then economic development's up here. We don't know what some of these cost, right? We don't. I mean, you could actually— they could actually cost as much as you wanted.

But I, I have—

That would be like Section 8 housing. So like if someone was to get rental subsidies so they wouldn't pay, they would get a voucher from HUD or from the Housing Authority. Residential rehabilitation. So what we do right now is we have a few local plans.

Golden Corral, so people could add more. Is that over here? That was a different refund model. Because they have similar pets.

What did they say? Yeah, well, 10% or less of their educational costs. Especially if they're onesies.

It just feels like it's too much money. And, uh, I've got the card there if you want to look at that when they're done here and talk to Madison. Meaning, meaning the city is buying that?

This would be, this would be for commercial. So say we, or we helped a developer acquire, acquire commercial industrial property to build jobs for low-income people in our city.

This is—

is this run by the city? It could be, or we could run like a car dealership. It's better.

Yeah, we do. But our team isn't with the city. Oh yeah, they're always not always cooperative, are they?

She needs a break.

She can call my daughter saying, kind of that wit says, you know, you're right, somebody. Yeah, that's what I should do.

Call and vent to your mom. Everyone done with spending their money? I need to take them for a walk.

Oh hey, I just found another $100.

Oh, Jeff's got another—

You've been hiding money, huh?

Oh, yes, it is. Well, thank you. Um, I hope that was a good activity. So you can kind of feel how our commissions feel, our CDBG commissions feel when we're having applications. We have to spread the amount of money we have along these applications. And so it is a, it is a big challenge, but we do have a lot of great things that In our community to do, and we have a lot of great need, and it's just prioritizing those needs to make those happen. So what will happen now is we're compiling all this data, the reports that we receive, these survey data, some of the other data that we have, the priorities, and then we will work together— the 4 entitlements work together to put together the consolidated plan. So on April 14th, we'll bring back that plan. Um, for, for our first public hearing. So we'll introduce that plan.

Um, I know, sorry.

Yeah, well, that's better. Um, and then, and, and we'll introduce the plan, and we will also present our CDBG recommendations for this year as well. We have to have 2 public hearings, have to be within 30 days of each other, over 30 days of each other. So this second public hearing will be March— or May 26th, and then you will vote on the consolidated plan and on our CDBG recommendations. So we'll bring all this back to you. This is kind of preliminary, and then we'll bring all this back to you in April and May. I hope— does anyone have questions on that?

Yeah, can you tell us who the big winners were?

Who got the 5 million?

We will at the end. We're going to do it at the end. The other thing is we received word today that President Trump has released his budget. As part of the budget, he's eliminated CDBG again. He does this— he's done this every year as president to date. However, most of the community's representative senators feel like it's such an important piece of community development that last year we actually got funded more.

I'm sure Mitch—

We did get funded more, but United States-wise there was more money available in CDBG. Today we belong to what we call the NCDA. It's the National Community Development Association. And they have asked us to sign on to a letter encouraging these programs to be funded. It's not just CDBG, it's other federal programs like HOME funds. We receive HOME funds through the consortium, through Dan, through Provo City, and we use— a lot of people in our community use that for housing. So a lot of our people, yes, Mayor.

So, Kenna, has, and I'm sure this has occurred, but have there been groups that have sat down with President Trump and done an education piece as to the importance of CDBG?

Yes, I mean, like with the NCBA, that's one of the things that they're doing. So there is this letter we'd like everyone to sign on if they feel like they would like to, and I can send that link to you today after the meeting if that's something you'd like to do. It's really easy, you just put in some information And send it on. But we'd encourage you to do that because we feel like these funds are very important and they do a lot of good. They help our public service organizations, but they also help our city, our county, and our state help people in our community as well, especially in lower-income neighborhoods in our communities. So we appreciate you being here, and if you have any other questions, feel free to give me an email or whatever.

Just a quick question. If you have Like, if the county has a different—

if their priorities are different than the city's, how do you go about working through that?

Yeah, so each entitlement sets their own priorities. We participate together in the Consolidated Plan process to some extent, but when it comes down to actual funding priorities, each entitlement sets them for themselves.

So ultimately, ORM will decide what their And with this collaborative effort, what we're trying to do is where do those priorities overlap so that we can collaborate.

And public services is one that typically lends itself for that.

But because we're very similar communities, most of our priorities end up being pretty much the same or close to the same. McKenna, last year we did the Geneva futsal courts and all of that.

Do you remember how much CDBG funds we used on that project?

Yeah, so for the futsal courts, we actually didn't use CDBG funding. And the reason for that is because we were the only futsal court in Utah, or Utah County, and we cannot show that only low-income families or minority families would be using that court or that neighborhood. per se. So we use, we use private funding and some general funds on that, so some donated funding and general funds. And then we are renovating Geneva Park. So we put in the new playground with CDBG. We'll be putting in a new parking lot this spring, and we'll be using CDBG funds for that.

Okay.

So CDBG funds are very limited to areas of low income, and so we have 6 low-income neighborhoods in our community. So parks and things in those neighborhoods can be renovated or built or whatever with CDBG funds. It's just they wouldn't let us use CDBG funds on the foot salt project because it was the only one in Utah County. But as you get more, if you ever wanted to build more, could you? Potentially, because like Mapleton's looking at building one and Provo was looking at one time building one. So the more they get, then they don't see it as— they see it as more of an area benefit. not a countywide benefit.

Thanks.

Didn't we use CDBG dollars for the pickleball courts? So there's a— that probably is a project that kind of meets the criteria. It's not exclusive.

It's not an exclusive. And that was because it was in a certain neighborhood that qualified.

Yeah.

So it was in Sharon Park. So we were able to do pickleball and renovate there because there was other pickleball courts in the community.

How much was that total bill? And how much did the CBDG pay for?

You're talking about the pickleball courts?

Yes, sir.

There's a few hundred, I think like $340,000.

I'd have to look.

And there's—

yeah, I thought it was $360,000.

But okay, yeah, quarter, third of a million. How much did they pay roughly? Who's they? Oh, this was all theirs. Oh, I mean, we did some— we did add some money to the pot, right? That's the majority of it. It's not a token amount. That's what I was trying to clarify.

Right. So our part are the playground, the parking lot. We are getting some funds from Head Start for the parking lot, but we'll put in about $343,000 into the Geneva Park for the playground and the new parking lot.

Thank you.

CDBG funds.

Thanks.

Any other questions? All right, well, I'll add things up and Stephen will give the next presentation.

So, okay, thank you.

Now we'll go ahead and go on to our Neighborhood Partnership Initiative. This is the Neighborhood Initiative Advisory Board proposal, and Steve Downs and McKenna Matthews are our presenters.

About a year ago, we came to you with a— in a discussion about how we should handle our neighborhood program moving forward. And there's some history on it, but back in 1980, and this is an update for our new council members, but in 1980, we started having this discussion about creating this— what became known as the Neighborhood in Action. Officially, it was created in 1998, and how it was set up then was the city was divided into 22 neighborhoods that perfectly aligned stake boundaries, with each of them having a neighborhood chair, an assistant chair, and a secretary elected on a 2-year cycle. And then each neighborhood from there was divided into smaller groups which mirrored LDS ward boundaries, with a neighborhood chair, assistant chair, and a secretary elected for a 2-year cycle. This neighborhood program, if it was full functioning, would have 250 or so positions to be filled. As that program continued to evolve, it became very, very challenging to keep that many spots filled. And during that time, how people wanted to be communicated with began to shift too. Electronic methods came into play, and we were struggling. So we got to this point where we're struggling to fill spots. People are saying, I'd rather be communicated other ways. And we have people that were acting as neighborhood chairs who would, you know, many of them well-intentioned, but they would give their opinions about what should happen on a neighborhood issue, but their opinion was only as broad as their interactions with their neighbors. So rarely were they able to really say, I have the pulse of the entire neighborhood. Here's what I would do. And we also ran into the challenge of Is it perfectly aligned with these LDS or ward boundaries and stake boundaries? Is people feeling excluded into— this is clearly a church program. We had people that were getting called by their stake president to be a neighborhood chair. Just kind of became challenging that way. About a year ago, we decided we needed to do something different in order to be effective with communicating with the neighbors. And what we found was we have electronic ways to communicate with the majority of— the supermajority of our citizens. We have an email list of 9— 10 million. 19,500 email addresses that we have access to email. We have a way of taking those and determining what neighborhood they're in. And so if we have a specific neighborhood issue, we can survey all of those people in that neighborhood that we have email addresses for and get feedback. And we can do it quickly. We've used this a couple times. We've done it multiple times with play— like new playgrounds. We get a few designs together. Reed Price usually coordinates this. He gets a few designs. We take all the email addresses we have, for example, and we're about to do it in Westmore, in the Westmore neighborhood. We'll email them the designs, ask for their feedback, ask for comments, and in a matter of a few days we'll have about 350 to 400 responses, which is far greater than we were ever able to get under the old system, and more people feel like they have an ability to communicate. That was kind of the model that we've developed for our Neighborhood Partnership Initiative. It's still getting the input from the citizens, but it's doing it in a way that we feel more effective and efficient and gets further reach. So that was the history. Again, this is what we went to. I kind of summarized that already. The other thing we've done with this new neighborhood program is we know generally who some of the neighborhood leaders are, whether it's through the schools. So we'll have— in fact, we have our first one Thursday night in the Sharon Park neighborhood where we'll invite the school principal, other people from the school like guidance counselors, ecclesiastical leaders, the leaders of the Catholic Church, because they're also in that neighborhood as well. And we'll bring these neighborhood leaders together to discuss the issues that they're seeing in their neighborhood. So we continue to have some input from individuals in those neighborhoods. So that's really what the Neighborhood Partnership Initiative is. It's just Basically modernizing the Neighborhood in Action program, trying to get the same results that we were getting, but doing it in a more effective and efficient way.

Is this different than when we went around to each section and discussed plans and whatnot? Is this different than that?

So the districts, the 9, mirror this. So that's all part of— this is all kind of a coordinated effort to say— in fact, what we'll be discussing this coming year with all the neighborhoods is All of your neighborhood plans have been drafted. Here's what your goals are. Help us, you know, give us some additional feedback, but here's the progress we're making in those goals. So it really coordinates 2 efforts and really, again, makes sure we're communicating to the same group of people the same information.

So Steve, question. Do you have a list of the current chairs and names and phone numbers? And then who is invited then?

Yep.

So we don't—

so we no longer have any chairs. There's in any of these—

It says current chairs have been invited to participate.

Oh, who were the current chair at the time? This was a year ago.

Okay. Yeah, whoever was— You're just saying the current chairs were invited to participate.

Yep.

And we did it through all of them. And this has changed.

Exactly, exactly. Through the neighborhood planning process.

I was just gonna say I'm a little unclear what you're saying.

Yep, yep. So sorry, this is a slide from a year ago when we created this. So we did at that time invite everybody to be a part. These are the 9. Again, we're consolidating these 3 into 1. You can kind of see how that—

And our email list, how big is that?

19,500.

Okay.

So since they're— can you go back one slide, Steve? Since they're no longer aligned with a stake, if you will, and prior you were concerned that They weren't really representing their neighbors. They were just kind of putting their own views or one or two views. They now have a bigger landmass. How will they better present? First of all, you're going to have fewer people, hopefully more committed, all that. That's all the good side.

How will they get the opinion of that many people?

So our— what we believe we'll do is we'll actually take care of that when it comes to let's ask the entire nation.

We'll share polls. We'll do—

yeah, we'll do all those surveys. So that we can share with them what their neighborhood might be.

Thank you.

So Steve, just a comment.

I'm on—

I'm in 6.

Yep.

And that became so big, the issues at the south end of 6 is a lot different than the ones up on the north end of 6. So I don't know how to resolve that, but, uh, yeah, I know I had a lot of input. I mean, a lot— I had no input, but I had a lot of comments I shared. from neighbors about the frustration because the comments people might be saying in Orem and Sharon might be different than Hillcrest.

Yeah, and I—

and that's a point I'll take. And I— we see the same with, you know, this Orem Park area is a more affluent area than Geneva Heights, etc. So it is— it's a balance of kind of, um, we wanted to create few enough that we can administratively manage it and the number of plans. But, uh, it's fair. And I don't know, Jason, Yeah, as you went through the neighborhood planning process, that obviously is an issue. Some of these neighborhoods have kind of a maybe more affluent pocket and a less affluent pocket. Any kind of thoughts on just how you manage that to try to identify the needs and meet the needs of both of those areas?

Typically, we started out— each of those started out about 50 people coming to the initial kickoff stakeholder type meeting. It whittled down.

Typically, all of them whittled down.

down to about 20, 15 to 20 people that were committed. And each of them, for the most part, broke out into different neighborhoods. So we had pretty much a good representation from the entire area. So those that wanted to continue, we had probably an 8 or 9 week— every other week for 9 weeks, 9 meetings, excuse me, for 18 weeks. By the time we ended, pretty much all of the neighborhoods, we had about 15 to 20 people It was a fairly good representation of the type of neighborhoods, not just one neighborhood. So that's how we kind of determined that. And of course, that came to the council and got approved. So for the most part, I think we have decent representation.

Well, and Terry, I think the other thing is we're really— with CDBG especially, we have to do above and beyond activities in those 6 low-income neighborhoods. And so one of the things we do is these neighborhood leader meetings so that we're capturing maybe that, that one neighborhood that has different needs than some of the other neighborhoods. So we do those individually, and then we do one citywide neighborhood leader meeting as well. But we really focus on those neighborhoods that may not have a voice with the other neighborhoods, and we're able to work with those neighborhoods directly.

How do you deal with— well, in my area you've got splinter groups. How do you deal with those that have city problems and they're not really part of the city's plan here?

So, could I address that real quick?

Yeah, please.

So we're right in the middle of that plan right now, right?

We're in week— meeting number 7. We actually have some decent representation of, you know, the SWANA and all the different types of groups that are actually coming and participating and actually are a very good part of our meetings that we're having. They're very involved. And coming up with really good ideas and goals that you'll see as we move forward. So I think this meeting kind of allows them to— I don't want to say vent, but allows them to be involved, allows them to see the process, see how all the different parts of the city work. I think at the end of the day, they'll find out that they're going to be a little more understanding of what we're trying to do and then be involved in the goals that you'll see. We're trying to be— as we— this is a learning process. The first one was a little more broad on our goals. We've learned, and now we're going to be more specific. So as we get down and try to implement these goals, we're going to have them to be a lot more actionable, a lot more specific. So as you can see, this plan coming forward in April and May to Planning Commission, City Council, you're going to see a lot more specific goals and how they can resolve some of their concerns. But to answer your point, they're heavily involved and actually are very constructive in their criticism.

I wasn't going to say SWONA, but thank you.

Well, you know, we basically purposely wanted them to be involved. Obviously, we have a couple of the different major leaders of that group come to almost every meeting we have. They actually have been very helpful and very involved. So it's actually turned out to be a good opportunity.

Jeff, I'd love to hear that there's that much public In the surveys that are sent out, is there— are there opportunities for people that may not come to those meetings to put forth ideas or suggestions that they might have through the survey process? Yes, that's a great question. I'll let Jason in. He's eager to answer that one too.

Well, so during all of our meetings, we have 2 main big meetings. We invite everybody there. We send out Postcards to everybody, invite them out. And we also— anybody that wants to give us their email or part of our forum, we actually will send out plans, send out surveys. So if they don't want to come to the city to meet, they can actually, you know, review it from home and give us feedback then. So we've been trying our best to not only mail everybody, you know, invite big— 2 public big meetings so they can actually come and give their input. So we've really tried.

So is that for one group or for all the groups when you say 2 big public So all the groups.

So the neighborhood meeting for this one that we're doing right now, we had a kickoff meeting where we had about 150 people come.

But it's for all the neighborhoods?

All the 3 neighborhoods.

The 3 neighborhoods.

Okay. The group. And then they'll have that same opportunity. We'll actually send them the plan so they can review it.

How often are you going to do those meetings?

So for this neighborhood plan that we're doing right now, we have 2 big neighborhood meetings.

I'm sorry, and for going forward after the neighborhood plan? How often would you have a meeting to involve the neighborhood?

So we'll— that's still in the works and how we want to do that as far as working with Steve, as far as implementing goals and things like that.

And in doing that, we've assigned the council members to various neighborhoods throughout the city. I don't know how that correlates now with how it's been reorganized, but could you look at that, you and Steve, and determine how You know, how that's going to work. I can look at it as well, and maybe we get together and make— remake those assignments and then make sure that those city council members are invited and come to the meetings that you hold.

Yeah, I think going forward, the first neighborhood plans that we did, I could see us going back and trying to get together and try to regroup and redo some of those goals that were really too broad, try to focus them to But I want to make sure the council is involved as part of their assignments to those neighborhoods.

So recently some council members have approached staff about setting up committees. So one of the things that this doesn't have is— so we have these 9 districts. there still isn't any one person that you would go kind of communicate with. It's still just, you want to talk to that neighborhood, here's 500 email addresses or however many, and you can email them. So some council members approached staff about setting up a committee that might represent the neighborhoods throughout the city, kind of an advisory committee, if you will, that represents all 9 of these districts. So what we're proposing— this is a proposal based on some of the feedback that we've heard from From council members. We would create an MPI advisory council that would be made up of 9 residents, each representing one of the 9 neighborhood districts. Members would serve for 3 years. That's common to most of our commissions. Would be selected through an application and interview process and would be approved by the city council. The screening and interview committee would include assigned employees from various departments, NPU, and a couple of council members. The mayor would then assign council members as part of their yearly responsibilities. Mayor, as you kind of spoke to. So this is, again, this is a proposal, but this is what we're looking at. The kind of— the criteria is we're looking to make this up as we look for people that have been active in participation in the city before. These are people that are going to work well with others, will be a good team player, have interest in education and city happenings. They have an idea of what's going on in the city. They have the ability to be constructive, creative thinking, and kind of a leadership ability to be seen in their community. That would be— this is kind of what we would propose though that makeup would look like. This is a group of individuals that again are— they have a history of working with the city and working well with the city, working well with neighbors. They're constructive. Again, both like Jason has seen in his, both for good and bad. Those that give us constructive You know, constructive feedback on things we can do better, but also help us understand the things that are going well and have an interest in that. We would meet a couple times a year, in the spring and the fall, or as necessary. And we could call meetings at any time if there's a specific city issue that we want advice on. The meetings would be held under the direction of the Community Services Manager.

Please.

A secret to no one here is there's a group trying to form to be a voice for ORRM with multiple neighborhoods. That used to be Suwannee, now it's Olney. How can we handshake them with this and bring them in and have them help us instead of— we don't want to fight against them, we want to work with them. Of course, of course. How do we do that best? Do you have a solution that you've thought through, or— Well, I mean, we'd obviously invite them to apply and be a part of it, right? I was going to say there are some members of that Everywhere.

That would be—

I mean, they fit that, the description very well.

Some really great people.

Yeah, and we'd look for, you know, we'd look for those in that group or any group that are the ones that are going to come to the table in a constructive manner and really help us shape policy that benefits our neighborhoods.

Just need a balance.

Just, yeah, just need the balance and making sure that it's representing really the entire city, not just a specific part of the city. So that would be some of the thoughts.

Now does this have anything to do with the neighborhood cleanup?

No, Christy has done an incredible job with revamping our neighborhood cleanup. We used to have it organized through the NIA program. And what would happen often, not always, is somebody would be assigned by their bishop to do the cleanup, or their stake president. They'd get the cleanup, they'd pass the flyer around church, And then those that knew about it would show up and take care of it. What Christy has implemented is a program that actually tells everybody in the city when the cleanups are. We just direct mail and we assign where the dumpsters will be. And Brad can speak better, but our participation has been significantly better than it's ever been. So we wouldn't see the cleanup going through this program.

So over double, probably approaching 2,000.

Yeah.

I just want to say, when I was When Brent told me about this a couple years ago, I was a little hesitant, and it's worked out really well.

It's worked out really, really well. So Steve, a question as far as how we relate with NPU, how we're relating with nuisance properties within various neighborhoods that some neighbors— and we've seen it a lot— have very strong opinions of and want to see something happen. Tell me how we're going to interrelate on that.

Yeah, I think we'd still work on those specific— what we see this is more of a, hey, we're seeing a bigger issue with, for example, illegal rentals, or we're seeing a big issue with these things. This wouldn't be the meeting where somebody would come and say, hey, I've got this neighbor and somebody's got to get this thing taken care of. That's a very micro issue. We want to talk macro in this. And so our hope would be we take kind of bigger policy questions to this group about How do we strengthen our neighborhoods as it relates to rentals? How do we better integrate, you know, those that maybe have English as a second language or whatever kind of macro-type issues is what we would like to bring to these kind of groups. And I think some of you probably could picture some people that you know in your neighborhoods that really could serve well and a purpose in a situation like this. And you may— you probably already mentioned this, I'm sorry.

You're fine.

But so are we trying to pull people from each one of those Yeah, yeah, we'd have representation from all of them.

It would be the 9 districts, not the 22 neighborhoods.

Yeah, yeah, so mirroring our neighborhood plans. Yeah, and some of those people are probably people we maybe would even invite to apply based on their participation in the neighborhood planning process.

You're still trying to do the same thing that was our goal originally back in 1980, but in a different manner.

Yeah.

In a more efficient manner.

Exactly, exactly. I think we saw that there's an opportunity to To work directly with people and let them brainstorm, let this group get together.

It's—

but we're managing a group of 9 instead of 250. Any questions on, on that or direction or thoughts? So 2 weeks ago we had a real-life example of a home that was no longer inhabitable that they wanted to knock down and build 2 lots. Okay, that's an issue that could affect the neighborhood either for good or for Would there be a way to say to the neighborhood chair, hey, this is what this person has requested, can we send a survey out to your neighborhood and see how that would go and you get response? Is that how you would envision something like that working?

Yeah.

Even before it went to the Planning Commission, maybe? So yeah, I think we could absolutely do that. We could use our resources to do an email survey. And so I think here's— to that example where this would come in is we would say to this group of 9 that represent the whole city is, hey, there's an issue in this one neighborhood. Should we be looking at this at a bigger— should we look for more of these opportunities, though, to say, for any— you know, I know what there's in my neighborhood. There's some corner lots that are pretty big that the home is not well taken care of. If somebody had the opportunity to subdivide and create 2, we'd probably clean that corner up. So that would be the macro-type discussion we would have with this of— And another young developer, that guy was a gritty, great kid who was here last time. We could tell people, yeah, here are some other ones that would be pegged. And I mean, it would just— he took the initiative to say, can I push this through at City Hall? We could let other people say, if you want to push this through City Hall, we've got open ears for this type of project. Yeah, assuming the neighbors like it.

Yep, yep.

It felt like they did, and we all kind of thought they would, so we voted, I think, in favor. But it'd be nice if we had a grassroots saying, yep, we want to do that. I like that.

Jason, so this would be an additional step because we did require the same.

Yeah, the same. So, right.

So, yeah, definitely. We would, in addition to that, send out a blast saying, hey, by the way, this is coming forward. So if they didn't get invited to that meeting, they would have opportunity within the whole neighborhood to know that this was going on and they could then give us feedback. So there'd be a 2-step, 2 different processes.

Yeah. And, and to Jason's point, I mean, I can see us saying For example, even now that we've had this issue happen, is this something that you would entertain in your neighborhood? Are there— and they may say, yeah, there's some homes that I think we could really benefit from this. And then again, we're trying to then not solve neighborhood problems one parcel at a time, but we're trying to push this into a bigger discussion about things we can do citywide.

But at the same time, you'd have to be very careful about discussing somebody else's house.

Oh, of course.

With neighbors saying this could be something that ought to be done. And that neighbor finds out the city's pushing their neighbors towards that.

No, I think you're right.

I just was saying we might like this type of thing, not the Brown home to the Smiths' home. I think that's very— and again, this is what we're trying to do versus NIA. We're trying to elevate the discussion to a higher level of citywide type policy, not— because NIA had turned into, hey, I got this neighbor on the corner of X and X. Somebody's got to get it cleaned up. And that is just not a— it's not going to drive the big changes you need.

So what's interesting is the house on 8th South and 8th West that has been discussed ad infinitum by SWANA, that has sat there in disrepair with trees out front, with high weeds, fire liability, abandoned vehicles. That's my house. That's your house, yes. And interestingly enough, I see a lot of activity going on there where that house is being redone. So I know that, I believe the city went in and cut down the weeds and trimmed the trees, but it seems like now there are lights on, it's being remodeled. Refurbished. I don't know who's doing that, or, you know, it was my understanding the owner was out of state and didn't really care. So I don't know.

So that brings up a question, because I've got this guy that keeps calling me about— there's these 2 houses right across the street from the post office.

Yes, right.

What do you do about it?

So those— I mean, just so you know, there was a gentleman who came to the city and said, I have the ability to refurbish these, and I would like to contact them. He actually did contact the owners and gave the information back to the city. The 2 homes you're talking about are owned by an individual who lives outside of the state and does— has not wanted to do anything, and I think he's still of that mindset. So you can't— if he doesn't want to sell, he doesn't want to rent, And he doesn't want to do anything with them, they sit there. But I believe that he has been contacted.

But does the city—

are there ordinances that say you've got to clean up the mess?

Yes, we have ordinances for that, and if it becomes a hazard, we can force it to be cleaned up. In my understanding, we can actually go in, give them notice. If they don't do something, we can do something and put a lien on them and get paid back. I don't know, Jamie, you want to mention?

No, I mean, there is a certain process we have followed that relates to nuisance properties. And you recall, and maybe Steve can speak to this, we actually changed the way we handle these, uh, these problems and concerns last year when we gravitated from a criminal process and going through the justice court system to a civil process and working through an administrative law Judge, where we can accelerate, hopefully, the opportunity to cure some of these issues.

But unfortunately—

not unfortunately, but given due process, we do provide individuals an opportunity to cure the problem before we essentially take on that responsibility ourselves, where we actually move them through an administrative law process where they can be fined and—

And fined.

required to fix the problems or to correct the nuisances.

Mayor?

The 2 homes you're talking about, Chief Giles, I think, can vouch for this, they were a problem when I was first on the council. I mean, they've made great strides.

These were the ones on First North you're talking about?

Yeah.

Well, I'm sorry, I was thinking of the 2— the 2 I'm talking about are the The 2 over next to the Sierra on 4th East.

Oh, I mean the one just across the street.

I'm sorry, I did not realize that. I was talking about these other 2. The 2 that you're talking about across the street, we have made great strides on.

Yeah, they've come along.

So the, the one family, there were mental issues, and the children got more involved and helped to clean it up and to work with the parents that had some issues.

So, so, so the process, if someone's concerned about it, what do I tell this guy to do?

Call 311 and make a report.

And make a report, and then it's okay.

Yeah.

The mayor does bring up an interesting point, and Chief Giles can speak to this too. There's not always just somebody who's wanting to leave their property and let it fall into disrepair. There may be other issues associated with the challenge. For example, mental health. And we've actually had our mental health unit engage with our neighborhood preservation unit because sometimes that coordination and trying to get an individual property owner to fix the problem, there are other deep-seated, more challenging issues than just the tall weeds and the junk and the debris. There's actually mental health issues that are at the core of some of these challenges. Thank you.

Well, if I could also just speak to the fact that some people's standards are well above what we can go in as law enforcement and say, okay, here are the minimum standards. This is where it becomes illegal. That's a really gray line sometimes. You know, somebody— we've had people that have put toilets out in their yard and put them as planters. That's a tough one because, you know, one person's art is another person's junk. That becomes a little bit of a difficulty. And we've had that here where literally—

It's a dummy.

But we've had some, you know, for example, some of the ones that you're talking about, and I don't want to talk about in this meeting necessarily about any one in particular, but we've had some where, you know, we've had landscaping that wasn't necessarily a very quick growing. Somebody didn't put down sod, they put down a very slow growing grass. Well, we worked with them for a good long time, To bring it up to a standard. But again, we're just trying to see that progress. We're just trying to make it, uh, we're just trying to bring it into compliance. But again, we're going to get continual complaints because one person's standard may be here and they want to see it here, whereas this is where kind of the legal definition is. And, and that's going to be a tough one because we're going to get calls wanting it up to here, and we're just not going to be able to bring that there. Sometimes. And that, that's not always, but, but a lot of times that's what we get, is that, that constant complaining of wanting it to come up to here, and I just can't make them bring it up to that. Does that make sense?

And Terry, one of the things that we've— NPM and Community Services has been working on is some positive things to help people so they're not feeling like they're being attacked all the time. Because, you know, oftentimes people get so overwhelmed they don't do anything. And so we try, like, we've created a brochure of like how to maintain your property monthly, you know, so do this in January, do this in February. And so if someone gets, you know, someone is complained to, MPU goes to their home, they can give them this flyer. If MPU identifies that this family might need some help, you know, there's some mental illness, seniors, disabled, single moms, things like that, then they'll come to me and then I will look, usually through the LDS faith, I will try to get people help them, you know, do that. We're also starting a new program called the Property All-Star Program. This is kind of an award program. So if someone has had MPU involvement on their property, this will start in April. They'll be— the MPU officer, if they've cleaned it up, can nominate them, or they can nominate themselves, or their neighbor can nominate them for this Property All-Star Award. Really get a sign in their yard, look at a certificate, They'll get a letter and then they'll be highlighted on social media. And it might not be the best property. It doesn't— that's what we're not looking for. We're not looking for the best property. That's the beautification award. We're looking for someone that's actually made the effort to clean up their property. So we're trying some positive things to make it better for these families.

Chief Giles, when, when you— when the unrealistic complaint comes in, Does your officer communicate with— if I phone it in, come to me and say, hey, this is all we can do, and kind of explain to them? Because I think they're unaware of how far you can go.

And I want them to.

I would like to say yes, and I think that they do. A lot of times what we get is we get an anonymous complaint where there's no way we can communicate back. And so we'll get an anonymous complaint, we'll go out there, check on the property, there's just no way we can An update, and then people will come to you guys. And this is this is the kind of the experience that I've had a lot of times. Is somebody? I was in the neighborhood preservation when we first started it, and and a lot of times I would get anonymous complaints. I would go check a property. There's just nobody I could update, and then they would people would get frustrated, and then they would round about be able they would communicate with with council members whether it was in a church setting, whether it was in a social setting, or whatever whatever it might be. And then they come back and ask what about the property, and then we can finally communicate with the person. My suggestion would be is leave your information so that we can. If you do have somebody that wants to leave a complaint, we'll keep that anonymous. We're not going to go out and just say, hey, you know what, Bob Smith down the street complained on your property. We don't tell them that. But it's nice that we do have somebody that we can call back because then at least we can update them and let them know, look, this is where the legal standard is. This is what we can hold them to. And then we don't get that constant, I guess, the same complaints on the same houses. We want to bring them up to standards, but sometimes when we get constant complaints on the same house where we've already dealt with it, it does kind of clog up the system. So if they'll leave us the information so that we can get back with them, that helps.

I know I've stressed when they've come to me to do that very thing. I don't know if they do it or not.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

It just depends.

But again, I do stress it with the officers, and I hope that they do get back with them. I'm not going to say we're 100%. I'm sure that there are times that we move on to another case and maybe it gets dropped, the ball gets dropped, but most of the time we do try that.

Maybe if I can add to Chief Giles's comments, Kenna, can you tell the council just a little bit about the coordination meeting that happens on Wednesdays, that return and report relationship that you're, you're inquiring about? I think some of that does in fact happen at the internal level Through this coordination meeting?

Yeah, so we meet every Wednesday morning. We call it our MPU meeting. So we have the MPU officers, we have— I attend, Christy attends, our zoning planning and zoning attend. We also have people from DCFS, from Adult Protection, and some other community groups that come in, and we discuss these situations. So, you know, if we— if they've gotten a complaint, a zoning complaint, they can ask Jason or Whoever's there. Jason has an issue, he can communicate with them. If I have an issue, I can communicate with them. It's a really good meeting, and you learn a lot about what's going on, and we're able to help each other in those situations. If PCFS is dealing with a situation that they can talk about, then we're able to help them as well.

So, because frankly, it's, it's not fair to just say, well, that's an MPU issue, here you go, MPU police officer. You take care of it, because the scope of the problem may extend well beyond his or her ability to affect change. And so we involve all these different departments and these different outside stakeholders to try and really get at the core of these problems.

And then we can also give resources in the community, you know, so, oh, I know someone that does this, um, why don't you give them a call or something like that.

I would also say not only have we improved kind of the in-person and verbal communication, but we've also done a better job of documenting the process and where it's at and inserting essentially software programming to better track the progress of these higher-profile and more frequent cases. Great questions.

There's just some pictures. This is kind of how we see hopefully the Haverhill program evolving. This was our park staff did a workshop on how to winterize their sprinklers, and they had, you know, a decent number of citizens come out that don't fully understand winterizing their sprinklers. They kind of stepped them through it, and they actually got excited and built like a little sprinkler system on a board and showed them, showed them how to do it. We've done our police picnics. Many of you have been to those. Those have been really, really successful. And then this was a neighborhood cleanup that Ken organized at the Altogether Playground. We see opportunities to make the neighborhood a— not just a who's on my street that's giving me problems, but let's come together to build our neighborhood.

Is there one that you could hold, maybe in conjunction with Central Utah Water, on how to properly water your lawn so that you can conserve and still have a nice green lawn? Yeah, I think a lot of us don't— may not have the best knowledge on how to water a lawn.

Yep, and they— Central Utah Water, in fact, just this week on our social media channels, we pushed out the classes that Central Utah Water is offering on some of those.

So I'm just thinking if you were like to do that over at our Public Works facility and do it in the early spring and invite everybody out so that everybody gets a feel like, all right, what's too much, what's Not enough? How often?

How much?

Those are great.

Yeah.

And Mayor, I think too, with our transition to these automated meter— this automated meter infrastructure, we know the Public Works—

You tie that in?

The Public Works Department also is putting together an educational campaign to try and kind of forward that message of how do we, um, how do we help you benefit from these new meters? How do we help you save? As it relates to water and to use of water resources.

And we're also working with the UVU digital media class to create some how-to videos to put on our neighborhood page. They're creating Gardener Walter. It was going to be Gardener Pete, but now it's Gardener Walter. And he will be, you know, talking about some of these things that need to— that we are seeing that need help with.

I mean, I'd really like to see that on the lawn. I would love to see that on the automated meters. So how can I read my own meter and determine what's going wrong, what's going right, you know, on the computer?

Well, we're looking for a spring workshop, so—

Great ideas for it.

So when we deploy that and everyone receives that and it's phased out over a period of time, there are some self-helps and videos And interactive wikis, so for you to learn more about how to do a variety of things so you can conserve water or reduce your—

So the, you know, with the automated meters, the one thing that we've learned, like with Margaret Black and with others, is, you know, if you actually look and see what your usage is, you might realize you have a problem that you never realized was there.

Exactly.

So we'll have tutorial helps.

Well, any questions?

The next step would be for us to draft, like we have our other commissions, uh, you know, the information we would need to make this formal. Any, any issues with us proceeding with kind of this 9-member advisory council and organizing this way? As with all, we'll learn along the way. There's, I'm sure, some little adjustments we make, but we feel like this can kind of bridge this gap, bridge kind of the old NIA and the new NPI to something that meets the needs of today.

So will there be a councilperson assigned to that committee like other committees?

Yeah, we anticipate probably having a couple, but that's something we'll work with the mayor and make assignments like we have in the past.

Sounds good to me. I don't know how the rest of council feels.

Great idea.

Okay, well, I just got to stand here and give the presentation. Jason knew most of the answers and kind of put it together. Anyway, appreciate it.

We look forward That's called delegations.

So I have some totals for us, some priorities. So under public services, it was really across the board, but cleanups came out on top at $250. So that would be, you know, neighborhood kind of cleanups, things like that. So that would be our top priority of public services. In housing, we kind of had 2. At $1,100 would be homeowner assistance, so this would probably be like down payment assistance, things like that. That came in at $1,100, and then public housing improvements came in at $1,000. So those are probably 2 of the priorities there. Everything else is a little bit lower than that. For public improvements, there was a lot of different choices, but streets came out as top, and that is what came out in the survey as well. Now it's at $350. And then in economic development, infrastructure development, so developing infrastructure amount in economic came in at $650, but commercial and industrial renovation came in at $600. So these are the different priorities of things. And I can— I'll put these in order and send you an email so you can kind of see what they came in at. come out at, but that's kind of what we're looking at. Pretty similar to what this survey says, some of the surveys were saying.

Survey says.

Survey says. Any other questions? Yes, Jeff.

Thank you for doing that. I mean, that's a good visualization of what you have to deal with, and it's a good teaching moment.

You're welcome. Jessica put it together, thank goodness, so it was a learning moment. It was great.

One thing I was going to mention in the same realm, you know, I've been up at various meetings at the legislature for the last several weeks, and Kurt Bramble was sitting in one meeting with the Chamber of Commerce from Utah Valley, and he said, you know, the problem I have is he asked each one of us around the board to list what our needs and wants were. So we did, and then he said, this is the amount of money I have. You've just listed 3 times the amount of money That I have, and that's the problem we have as the legislature is how do we figure out where to spend the money because they're all good needs.

The needs are great, and it's just, you know, whatever the priority is. The issues are great too. I mean, when we had this social service facilitation, it was interesting. Housing really did come out on top with all service providers because it affects everyone. You know, if someone doesn't have a place to lay their head, you can't get really mental health, can't, you know, beat your addiction, you can't, you know, the, you know, kids can't be educated. So housing really continues to become a priority, but there's so many other needs in our community as well. So, well, thank you.

Great.

Well, thank you. Appreciate it very much. Uh, let's go ahead and break for our food at this time. Um, let's see, Terry, would you like to give us a tour of the room?

Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful for the opportunity to be together tonight and to deal with the issues that face us as a city. We're grateful for the opportunity to serve, and we pray this food will nourish us this day and that we will have clarity and be able to work together and solve issues in our city.

And we say this in thy Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

$250,000 to $2.5 million. So I'm not quite sure where he's coming in with that.

They're all good. Do they have a certain area that he's like— sometimes people have a certain thing that they really like.

I don't know.

He actually brought up to me that he would like to name it after his brother. That works for me. That was not my suggestion, but you know, he has to go through a board and people.

Hey, but if he's behind them, that's great.

Well, don't count on it.

Oh, I won't pass over there.

Hey, I wouldn't mind that. Starts with a dream, right? Yeah, that'd be great. Think of Michelle Capuzzi.

That would be great.

That'd be good.

I really like center cost, but that makes me double think about—

So, um, with Klein Company, they originally were talking about in-kind, and we were trying to do in-kind for, uh, the site work. Site work.

Okay.

And it seemed like you were going down that path, but then Wilford changed and said, no, I want to listen to any quotes.

Okay, so I don't know.

Keith died a long time ago, but she's great.

She's eighty nine.

Very good.

Not just not worth it.

Just shopping.

After the fact, it's just had a good.

So we're around town.

Naming rights for the auction?

Or are we doing gallery?

Matter of the word.

Please don't keep.

So one of my neighbors just got called to be mission president for Eugene, Oregon.

Yeah, he's coming over our house.

Oh, really?

I taught him at Sunday school when he was a kid.

Who's that?

President Weeks.

My dad.

He is really— I was just commenting to my wife 2 weeks ago, I said, You know, he just really— he's got so much to give, and we're not utilizing him fully. If there's a position that he could be better utilized, I'm sure he's found it.

They didn't give us specifics.

His mom was a Gloria.

No way.

Okay, so back when we were in the same congregation, they were neighbors of ours.

So, did you know this Brother Weeks before?

I mean, I've long since forgotten him. I knew his family, his parents. I knew the parents. I didn't know this person you're talking about.

He'll think he's back in England when he saw the trees.

So Scott, have you figured out how this works?

Well, my— okay, my daughter had a baby 12 years ago in April. That was around my 40th wedding anniversary.

Hey, don't give Greg any ideas. Tell him he can't get it.

So you've been married for like 2 years?

4 years.

You've been 4L, right?

Church insurance. Do they provide— That is a great retirement strategy.

Oh, you did?

Oh, okay.

You get to buy into their plan.

Yeah, I see. And he was sound asleep on the couch.

But that's a cheap one. Do you know what's his desire? What's he working against?

I would like to speak with her again.

Do you do legal stuff?

No, no.

Okay.

He specifically said no legal stuff.

Okay.

So when there are new terms that teenagers use and they're kind of foreign to us, right?

Like, uh, like so fresh or—

You have to do the last one. We have a friend who owns a second home.

No, this is just for my book club.

She has a lovely home that overlooks the valley.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I was trying to be middle of the night on the bathroom.

Self-sufficient.

It's certainly working.

Yeah, he's a hard worker.

Does he have a running mate?

I'm serious, no discussion. No discussions here.

But if you're gonna— if you're—

that's what I was gonna say. If you're gonna run, you've got to have a female on the ticket because that's how it's playing out. Well, no, I can see him tagging Amy and having her for like— when did we bring in— where she would— There's a lot of speculation Governor Huntsville will choose John Duggar because he's spending a lot of time with him in different events.

Were you surprised to see her choose Michelle?

I was. Smart choice, good choice.

Did you change it around?

Yeah, I mean, the Confucius name can't hurt either.

She's championing the 800.

I see Mary Confucius bringing a lot to the table. Thank you for your integrity.

Yeah, there's a couple women's groups who are supporting him. Of course, the Central Committee, not so much.

Yeah, Central Committee is probably feeling that.

I noticed you like Mike Cooper. He's in whichever light bulb shows me.

Jamie, I'm a big Mike fan.

We'll see how tonight goes.

Well, it's, it's not Big Mike anyway. So he has—

what's he call him?

Mini Mike? Trump calls him— Trump has a name. Well, he has— I'm sure you're right, but he has a name that starts with an M. Yeah, you know, like the match to Mike. It's like Mini Mike, except shorter.

I think—

I look at all these candidates.

So Mike Bloomberg's got a lot of baggage.

He's got a big crimp in it. Who doesn't, by the way?

No, I know, but Bloomberg, you'd think— look at him, he has a lot of baggage.

I mean, let's not forget, he was a Republican mayor of New York.

Yes.

Well, why don't we go ahead and get started if we could.

Let's go back over, let's go back over our agenda if we could. So we're going to have some upcoming events. The first one is on March 7th at the Sarah Center for the Arts, the annual benefit Arts Gala. And then March the 19th, uh, the Pillar of the Valley, the Chamber of Commerce at 7 PM. Um, and then we have this evening several recognitions. First one is the Medal of Heroism, and our fire department is going to be doing that. Chief, are you—

Yeah, so we're going to recognize Miss Tuttle, and she's a A resident of the condos there at Garden Park, uh, 3-story. That morning woke up by an alarm, a smoke detector, and as she was leaving, she immediately went around to the other 11 units.

She knocked on all the doors.

Knocked on all the doors and making sure people were out, helping people out.

And she did drag one lady out that couldn't get out on her own.

Very, very frigid, uh, 3 o'clock in the morning. So, uh, we'll be recognizing her. A little bit delayed, but we're always happy to catch up.

I appreciate you doing that. And then we have a recognition on state champions, uh, for 5A, not only Orem High School football as well as Mountain View High School girls volleyball. Carl, you'll be doing that?

Yeah, we can turn to both of them.

I'll turn it over to the coach to give just a few minutes on how they're seeing it.

I suspect for the football team we'll have a lot of folks here. Okay, and then a presentation by Judge Parkin on the Orem Justice Court annual report. Then we have approval of meeting minutes for January 28th, 2020 on the consent agenda. Consent items, and also reappointments to the boards and commissions. Public Works Advisory Commission, Casey Shaw, Carol Walker, Todd Hadley, who have all been working well there. Everybody okay with those consent items?

Yes, sir.

Know them all.

They're all great.

Okay. Unusual, but we have no scheduled items this evening. It's my understanding that it is Debbie's birthday this week.

Next Tuesday.

Next week.

And we are going to adjourn to 107 afterwards for celery and carrots.

Our usual, uh, chocolate-covered celery and carrots.

Okay, um, Brent, uh, we would like to turn some time over to you if you're ready.

Yeah, I got a couple things. This is about the committees, right?

Yes, uh-huh. Your response.

January 21st, I attended the Public Works Advisory Commission. And I know on Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's, when I go to visit my kids, I drive out my cul-de-sac and I expect that 8th West to be Clean, clear of snow, and so I drive my vehicle and get on the freeway. After this meeting, I, I really— these people that work for Chris down there just do an amazing job cleaning snow. And those 3 nights, if you remember, were 3 of our worst snowstorms, and they were all out, I don't know, midnight on. Anyway, they didn't have a very good Christmas or Thanksgiving, or at least a late one they had to have. So anyway, a presentation was given by Cody Stegall and Dan Peterson, and I was very impressed with their PowerPoint. In fact, it's on the website, isn't it?

Yes.

I'd encourage all of you to look at it. It talks about the snow and ice control plan they have. A couple of things that I didn't— I guess I knew, but it didn't really hit me. 529 lane miles in the morning to clear. Is that right?

That's right.

And you think about, that's from here to St. George and back. That's a lot of miles. And they— their policy is, they have different categories, but their policy, basic policy is, is within 24 hours all the streets in Orem are clear and you can take your vehicles on them. And as far as I know, they meet those goals every time, don't they, Chris?

Yes.

I haven't seen any problems. But one thing unique about Orem is Yes. Up where the mayor lives, he can get a lot of snow, and down where I live, there's none. So there has to be a coordination between drivers and weather watchers. It's not the same all over in Orem, so they have to go where the problem is. And they have, let's see, 15,000 salt spreading units. And I was really shocked at that. That's quite a few that they have. And those are vehicles that are, in my opinion, difficult to drive. And, you know, there's a lot of safety there, concerns that they're trained on. They have ABCD storms categories and AV and A light one, I guess, and the D one, the worst one. And they adjust accordingly. And I know Cody and Dan, they're watching the weather all night when something comes in. And if you want to know who the best weather reporter is, it's Channel 4. That was just their opinion.

Prediction.

But anyway, yeah. Which usually is not accurate just for Orem. So that's why they have to just keep in touch with the public safety people and Chris and those that monitor that.

They didn't think the school district was the good predictor.

We were not coordinated with the school district.

But they, you know, we got talking about retention and Employees, and I talked to a couple of people after it. We talked about public safety, retaining or keeping their employees and not having constant turnover. But it's just not alone in public safety; it's it's it's in public works as well. And you know, to train people to run those big machines, you just don't do that overnight.

So.

I think it's a universal problem within the city, with all cities, that with the low unemployment, it's an employee market at this time. So, you know, when we're addressing this, I think we ought to kind of keep the window open for all city employees and not just public safety, even though they're very important, of course.

Thank you.

Anyway, I encourage a lot of you, or all of you, to go on the website and look at that PowerPoint. It's really informative. It's under Public Works, if I remember right. And yeah, any questions you can ask me or Chris while we're talking about snow removal. Anyway, it was a good meeting that day. And then—

I have a question.

Will Public Works Advisory be looking at our water rates in the spring sometime?

Will they be having a workshop?

They'll be looking at it in conjunction with Lewis Young Roberts and Birmingham and our coordination with them.

Okay.

And then I'm certain that we'll have multiple options that'll come back as a result of our review of the financial model as well as the master plan updates.

So they'll be intimately involved with those. The commission will be talking about this?

Yes. Okay.

And then I'm over the Library Advisory Commission, and they weren't assigned when they had their meeting in the first week of January, so I missed that. But I listened to the minutes or the audio, and Charlene does a great job with that. Just a couple things, maybe, I don't know if she wants to give any more detail, but they talked about the new library, of course, and that's going along very well. And then the ebooks, is that— we talked about the ebooks. I don't know if you want to say anything about those. That's just a— they coordinate with the state. I didn't quite understand the process there, but it's an ongoing relationship with the state on those.

Yeah, the state library has decided to remove about $500,000 worth of funding from the program. So it's gone back to the member libraries to try and figure out a fair way to keep it going. And we've received an assessment, every library has received an assessment for— it's based on circulation. And so we got our bill and then— $500,000. We will buy above that. The biggest challenge with ebooks is one, funding the demand is just really an upward climb that we are not going to be able to conquer. So we will have a lot of availability, but it's going to be very hard to just have on demand for particular titles. So we encourage our patrons to load up their hold lists, and we are struggling with a lot of publishers who are putting significant restrictions on ebooks, like they won't release new releases to libraries for e and e-audio circulation for say 6 months. So the state library has actually joined in a ban on Macmillan. They're probably the biggest publisher that's leading the charge because there's just no point in having these restrictions on libraries if you truly don't want to lend your books, then the state doesn't want to participate in the buying model for it. So that's a real challenge. We're hoping that that industry will make some headway. We will try and keep a tighter eye on new releases to have in physical hard format, but it's just one of those challenges that it's kind of the insatiable beast that you just throw money into because people We love it and we recognize that love and we want to participate in it, but we just, we don't have the money.

Okay, thank you. The other commission, the UCCU at UVU, they haven't met yet, so I'll— I think it's in March they meet for the first time. And then the other assignment was the historic, and I chatted a little bit with the mayor and And very little with Steve, but I want to get with him. And he had a good idea on a time capsule.

Yeah, I think it'd be fun.

I think we ought to consider that.

Put Steve in it?

No, but we'll put a picture of his family in it.

Have you seen Blast from the Past? It works out well.

So anyway, that's a topic that we could possibly address.

Yeah, I'd love to see that.

I don't know where we'd put it, but that could be decided.

Right on.

We did, we did time capsules with the kids at the library during our centennial summer reading, and so they were kind of by decades. And to watch kids open this box and pull out, you know, some kitchen item, or we had a regular typewriter or a rotary phone because they've never seen one.

And were these buried underground?

No, no, we compiled them and then You could just come in and—

They used it.

That didn't work so well.

If you wanted your kids to look through one. But it was really fun watching kids, because parents or whoever was with them would just get a box and then try and explain what was in it. And sometimes parents didn't know.

You know, young parents are like, ah, I had no idea what was in there.

But it's kind of fun. I mean, it'd be fun 50 years from now to open it up and say, wow, didn't know, you know.

Yeah, well, let you open it up in 50 years. Anyway, that's in the planning, hopefully. And those are the 4 commissions I'm assigned.

Okay.

One thing I was going to mention, I did have one council member who went to a committee meeting and the people in the committee meeting said, it's great to have you here, we haven't seen anybody for a couple of years. So I would just ask and encourage that all of us with our assignments attend committee and commission meetings whatever our assignments are. Because I think the people that are there really appreciate that.

Well, and like, I listened to the audio of Charlene's committee, and you know, if you can't make it, that's a good resource to review.

Sure, of course.

That's great.

A couple of things I wanted to mention. We have a lot going on as far as transportation goes. MAG is working with UDOT and UTA. At the state legislature right now, they are— they have a bill going through to do a study. Jake Andraig is sponsoring it to do a study on transit, specifically on Frontrunner, to electrify and double-track it. And so they're going to try to see if that's actually feasible. and what that would do for traffic on I-15. The other thing is, on the master plan for MAG is the 8 South overpass here in Orem. So originally it was looked at, could it be an exit off the freeway? Now it's strictly an overpass. And it would be taking 8 South from about Not quite 8th West, but somewhere over there, and then going around that park area and around the education building and then going over the freeway to where the Frontrunner area is over there. And it would strictly be an overpass. So UVX would be rerouted that, that way, and it would help with a lot of traffic for UVU. It's something that I think is gaining a lot of— Support. Support, but of course it comes down to money. And so that's the question. The other thing is we have—

did they say how much cheaper this would be than the interchange? It would have to be.

Yeah, I don't know the figure, but it's astronomical. Yeah. And Jamie's been working hard on the center transportation group looking at the idea of trying to to do BRT from University Parkway down State Street all the way up into Lehigh. The problem with that, and I went to a meeting on that, I shouldn't say the problem, there's a lot of competing cities' ideas about where it should go. So, you know, we like the idea, and Brynn was there, of going down State Street. Vineyard, of course, wants it to come through theirs. Pleasant Grove wants it to come through theirs. Anyway, American Fork wants it to come through theirs, and it doesn't work, so it has to be determined one way or the other. But there's a lot of discussion, and they will be coming out, I believe, by the 20th with a website on that showing what's being studied and what's being looked at. At the same time that's being studied, the idea of BRT down to Payson is being looked at. The idea of actually doing a BRT-type bus rather than light rail from Draper down to Lehi is being looked at, and the Point of the Mountain Commission is coming out this week. I just spoke with Beth Olbrich, one of the 3 members of the—

Board of Trustees.

Board of Trustees, thank you. And she's waiting to see what they're gonna say as well, What they say is gonna relate to, could they actually take the railway, the right-of-way for the rail, and actually pave it and make that a BRT at a quarter of the cost versus light rail, and then do some smaller shuttles within Thanksgiving Point. And that may not be feasible. They may go light rail. That may not be feasible anyway.

They're looking at—

I think they're looking at And all of that. This morning I was with Envision Utah at the Capitol and met with Speaker Wilson. The 2 big things on his mind right now is they have a bill for mental health for the state of Utah. They don't know how they're going to fund it, but it would really help. And then the other area that he's concerned about is smaller lots for houses in the state, trying to Make housing more affordable by making land more affordable. So anyway, those are 2 items that have come up. Jamie, do you have anything you want to bring up?

Yeah, a couple of things. One of them, and I think Stephen has forwarded information to you about the Geneva restoration update. This is a, this is a big deal for many of our residents who are Concerned about the smells, the mothballs, the ongoing work that they are doing down at the Geneva Restoration Plant. Can I just give a minute to you, Stephen, just to maybe give the council an update as to where we are and where we're going to go with that?

Yep.

So they—

what I forwarded was a mailer that, in fact, I don't know what the radius was. I know one came to my house. Jason, did you get one up at your house from—

so they— I got it.

Okay.

So anyway, so they sent this mailer out to many of the houses. We took that and sent it out in an electronic email using these email addresses. We sent it out to about 19,500. We had— this is really high for our emails, but 45% of people opened it. So almost 10,000 people opened that one. And so we have— I think we got good information out that way. They have a website, genevarestoration.net. They have a 24/7 hotline. They also have an email address. And they're just encouraging, if anybody calls you, send them that way so that all the information is getting directed to the right people. They have a day and night crew. Night is when they're doing the kind of cleanup that has in the past taken the smell on, but they'll be doing that overnight in hopes that that'll at least limit the number of people that have to be exposed to it during the day. But it's still going to be a 6-month project. But they— again, they continue to look for ways to mitigate it. And To be honest, props to U.S. Steel. They've passed all of the tests. They're doing this to—

And they're legally bound to do this cleanup.

They have to do the cleanup, right? And they're willing to spend this extra money to help try to make it the best they can. So props to U.S. Steel for how they're handling it as well.

So I know there's a smell.

There's also the question of, is that dangerous?

Yep.

Are we comfortable with that answer?

Not comfortable.

We're learning from them.

Do we have a second opinion?

No, we haven't. I don't— we don't have any of our own research.

The State Department of Environmental Quality is monitoring them. It has a series of monitoring stations.

And they certify that it's safe.

Yeah, well, you'll— third party.

Yeah, what it is is being exposed could be unsafe if you get it at very high levels. The levels just aren't near high enough to get it to a dangerous state. Now, some people that are very sensitive to smells, it could cause Sorry, Brent is really interested in what I have to say.

Terry's debate.

So anyways, they continue— they have monitoring stations, in fact, in some of our parks. They have them out and they continue to look at that. But as it is now, it's unpleasant, but it's not to levels that it's dangerous.

We've in fact added a couple of monitoring stations Like Steve said, in our parks, just because depending on day or time of the month and how the wind blows, it's practically essentially how strongly you're sounding or not.

We are getting down to brass tacks with Big D Construction on our fitness center project. We had a good meeting with them last week where they presented bid package number 4, which is kind of the mother of all bid packages. in relation to this project. So there will be a 5th bid package, but the 4th bid package was the most comprehensive, the most inclusive of work, and the bid numbers looked actually favorable. And now the project is trending at about $260 a square foot. And we budgeted near $300, $280-something? No, we— well, Yes, and I will qualify by saying within the price now that we're including, there's allowances that are included there for an indoor playground.

There—

the swimming spectator seating is 1.5 times what we initially thought it would be, and the like. So yeah, there are some— there's a climbing wall that's included in there. There is still a limited contingency that's in the project. So we are, we are trending in the very— in the right direction as it relates to this project. But we're not— we didn't budget, I don't think, Ryan, $300 a square foot. But we're, we're in the area where we're feeling more and more confident that we can make everything financially work. We were worried that it would be as much as, you know, $280 plus. Yeah, so— Yeah, so I'll just— I'll cover some other things later, but that's the good news. The bad news, unfortunately, has been the weather and the increase in rain and snow when we're at a point in the fitness center where we actually have to pour concrete and do work on these precast walls, and we can't do that if the temperature if the weather and the precipitation is a problem. So the project has gotten pushed back. Facepalm, she's praying for moisture. Yeah, please stop doing that.

Watching the wrong weather channel.

Yeah, exactly.

We need to watch Channel 2 apparently, not Channel 4. So that, that's a, that's a problem which is going to push the schedule specifically of our pool locker room Nothing like a couple weeks out in the cold that will make the new place look even better.

Yes.

And finally, because of the concrete work we're doing, we actually are going to do some early morning— and by early morning, even earlier than you, Tom. We're starting at what, 3:30?

That was this morning.

So if you do hear some feedback, it's not for—

we don't want to do it in the middle of the day.

It's just we need a certain span of time to do the work.

Concrete.

And then how noisy is it for the neighbors?

Um, there's beeping, backup noises. They can't turn those off. So yes.

And we have notified— the contractor was good about notifying the neighbors, letting them know it's a 2-day—

That was just today. They're pouring again Friday morning and then standing walls next week.

Those start at 5:00 AM.

So it'll be a temporary inconvenience But I wanted to let you know just in case you get an angry call from a citizen saying—

We're allowed to make the exception.

Another contractor wouldn't be on a private property.

No, they approach us and they make similar requests.

We did it on Midtown.

All right, we need to adjourn and go to City Council so we can start this.

We're doing it. I'm not paying with my rewards card for city.

That's what I do. City money, not going to do it.

We have some people that have these huge accounts like the trailer parks. This guy's paying a $14,000 bill with his rewards card, right?

So why?

Because he's taking his vehicle to what?

Backhoe. So we're going to implement that. And you know what?

We talked to Provo and most people, because it's free if you pay with ACH.

Yeah.

Most people are like, okay, I'll just pay.

I only paid credit card because it was—

I could.

Yeah, yeah.

And there's no reason we should be eating that cost and raising rates at the same time.

I've wondered that for years on that.

Brad, thanks, man, for all your support.

Honestly, since there's nothing going on, I just want to hold Do I have to lift it?

We would like to begin our meeting. We would like to welcome everyone here to our City Council. We would like to call this meeting to order. We'd like to begin by having an opening prayer by Heidi Waite and a Pledge of Allegiance by Lynn Waite. And so we'll go ahead and— Heidi, if you'd like to come to the podium.

Our Father in Heaven, we're thankful that we could gather here tonight. We are so grateful for this country and we're grateful for the opportunities and freedoms that we have. We're especially thankful that we can assemble and have our voices heard. We ask that thou wilt bless the proceedings, bless those who have things to say, that they will have clarity of mind and they will be able to share the things that they intend. Bless those who are making decisions. That they will have open minds and that they will be able to listen and hear the intent of those who are here talking about issues. We're grateful again for our beautiful community, and we ask that thou wilt bless its citizens and that everyone here will work towards making things the best they can for all involved. And we say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Amen.

Will the audience please stand and repeat the pledge? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Lynn and Heidi. Yes, we're going to go over the upcoming events. On March 7th, we have the Sarah Center for the Arts, their Star Awards Arts Gala. And then on March 19th, we have the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce Pillar of the Valley at 7 PM at the Utah Valley Convention Center. We would now like to recognize and have a couple of recognitions. The first we would like to begin with would be a recognition of the Medal of Heroism given by the Orem City Fire Department, and it is being presented to Amanda Tuttle Reynolds. So if Chief Gurney could come forward.

Mayor, members of the City Council, it is a privilege for us to be here tonight as we recognize one of our citizens for her efforts on the night of October 12th, and also to recognize our firefighters. Every time we have an opportunity to do that, we want to do that for the efforts in which that, that they do. I've asked Chief Earl if he wouldn't mind coming up and explaining the, this award and the events that happened at that time.

All right, good evening. I'm just gonna read just a portion of the commendation that was sent from another one of our citizens. That'll be all right. I apologize, got a cough drop in so I don't lose my voice with this, but I'll read through it. In the early, early morning hours of Saturday, the 12th of October, 2019, Around 3:00 a.m., a fire broke out on the 3rd floor of the Countryside condominium complex near Centre Street. While most of the residents were sleeping, Amanda Tuttle was awakened and made aware of a fire directly above her unit. Amanda put on a robe and ran out of the building with no shoes on her feet. After seeing what is— what was happening, with significant fire conditions near her, she immediately began knocking on residents' doors on her side of the building, then ran to the other 6 residents' doors on the opposite side of the building notifying all the residents there was a fire in the building. After alerting the residents, there was a— after alerting the residents, there was a single mother from China with a 6-year-old daughter that had just moved in on the top floor yelling for assistance to get out and down the staircase. Amanda, without hesitation, immediately ran up the 3 flights of stairs, braving the thick black smoke and fire coming from the neighboring apartment, picked up the 6-year-old daughter, and assisted her and her mother down the stairwell to safety. All this took place, mind you, before the fire department arrived. Amanda asked that we also recognize Coco, and I hope I say this correctly, Liu.

Is that correct? Could she stand?

Is she here?

Okay.

Amanda stated that she had wrapped her daughter in a sheet up or some sort of protection and started yelling. Had she not done that, Amanda wouldn't have known she was there, and that alerted her to go back up and help her down. So with that in mind, if we'd like to invite Amanda to come on up.

Yes.

Hi.

We'd like to recognize Amanda Tuttle with the Medal of Heroism Award. The Medal of Heroism Award is the civilian version of the fire department's Medal of Courage, and we, we like that award. This is one of our favorite parts of our our job, at least it is for me, to have the opportunity to recognize citizens for extraordinary acts. And I let Amanda know, I've been communicating with her over email, so it's the first time I've talked to her face-to-face, but I did let her know over email, let her know that not many people would do what she did that night. You know, other than, of course, firefighters, obviously, but not many people could do that in those kind of conditions. And And it is our privilege and honor, really, to recognize her for her actions and with this award. So thank you.

One more round of applause. After Amanda comes, can you follow her? The council would like to shake your hands.

So well deserved.

Can we ask that the crew stay up here for a picture, please?

Thank you.

Yeah, you're in.

She is the pitcher.

Thank you to our firemen, and thank you. And it's my understanding, luckily nobody died in that fire due to the good efforts of all involved. Thank you. We'd now like to go on to a different type of recognition, and this is of 2 state champion teams in high school: Orem High School football team and Mountain View High School girls volleyball teams both took the state championships in winning the 5A division. And Carl Hurst is here to help make the presentation to them.

Mayor, City Council, you've heard me say it before, if we keep our kids dirty, tired, and wet, our young men and women in our city seem to turn out pretty good. We're here to recognize 2 groups that have taken that to extreme. The, the Years of dedication, the hours of work, the competitive spirit that it takes to become a state champion is, is way over the top. And Orem has a long history of excellence. So if I could invite the Mountain View High School volleyball team up.

Women's volleyball team.

From what I understand, the, the coach has a sick child, and so our team captain's going to give a little synopsis of how the season went, and then we'll recognize you.

Hi, I'm Kaylee Cinema. I'm a senior at Mountain View, and I was one of the team captains for the Mountain View volleyball team this year. Um, our season this year was so much fun. We had a blast. Um, a little recap, um, our overall record for this season, we went 27-5. Um, we were in the toughest region in the state and we placed second in region. Um, we were seeded second in going into the state tournament. Um, we won the state championship game with 3 match— 3 sets to 1.

And our—

that was our first volleyball championship for Mountain View High School in over 30 years.

Wow. Congratulations.

81.

Okay.

So almost 40.

Great job. Great job.

And then if, if we could also have the volleyball parents stand, because everybody knows if you've got a state championship, you've got usually a really tired mom somewhere. So if we could have mom and dad stand up, we'd give them a quick hand. And we're lucky to have another state championship football team here, or another state championship team. If I could have representatives from the Orem High football team come up. And I don't know how often we've had 2 of them. So this is, this is kind of a big day. And I just barely grabbed one to say if they could give a short recap of the season. So I'm not sure who's going to.

Oh, man.

Oh, okay.

Sorry if I sound like an idiot right now. I just barely wrote this down on my phone. Sorry, um, we'd like to thank you guys for recognizing us and having us out here and taking you guys' time out to recognize us. And, um, sorry again, we don't have a lot of kids here tonight. Um, a lot of the kids are at the basketball game for the senior night. So, um, as you guys know, uh, our team won 3 state championships in a row, and it was a big accomplishment for us because we went from 4A, winning 2 in 4A, to to winning 1 in 5A. And our team's really small. So then we went up to 5A. It was like a David and Goliath scenario. Our team was small in size, but we were big in heart. And so, when we went up to 5A, we knew what our goals were. And proud of the kids on my team for giving their all. And we went out there and did everything we knew we, we had to do. And yeah, thank you for having us.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, if I could, before they go, 4 of the members of this City Council are Orem High alumni, and none of us know what it's like to win 3 championships in a row.

Hold on, we got one right down here.

Have the alumni come down there.

Go for it.

You want your alumni to come down?

Sure, let's do it.

Brent, come on.

Go.

You want to see the orb type lights on? Yeah.

So one of the— 2 on that side, 2 on that side.

Everybody come together closer. It's small.

Come on.

Brett was the kicker for the team. I remember. He's a kicker on the city council now.

Okay, come up and shake my hand.

I like warm high.

And if we could also give the parents, football parents, a round of applause, I'd appreciate it.

Way to go, Orem!

We appreciate the efforts of our fine youth and of the parents and of the coaches. Thank you. We now would like to have a presentation by Judge Reed Parkin on the Orem Justice Court, and he's going to give us his annual report.

Before I get started, just a comment about your public safety officers. Unfortunately, the last couple of months I've lost 2 brother-in-laws to heart attacks, one of which was in Orem. My 60-year-old brother-in-law passed away unexpectedly. My sister was there. Grateful, though, of the excellent service in which they received by both the fire and the police station—

police officers.

They were patient, helpful, very courteous, and dedicated to service. It made an impression on my sister, and I wanted to pass that on.

Thank you.

Mayor Brunst, Richard Brunst, and members of the City Council, it's a privilege here tonight to provide to the City of Orem Council this report on the state of the court. In presentations past, I've typically given a slideshow or some kind of interactive presentation with even the audience in the group, and tonight I've chosen to simply read an address, comments that I have put together. This report is mandated by statute and is to occur at least once annually. I'm accompanied today by Jody Tenno, the court clerk, who is also and most commonly known as the court administrator. I have served in several courts and have traveled the state while serving in judicial capacities. I can say that she is second to no one, and we are fortunate to have her and her staff who attends so competently and completely to the needs of the court. Thank you, Jody. You are key to the success of the court. City and county governments are not constitutionally or statutorily responsible for judicial work, but there is a statute, a mechanism, which provides a way that they can be, with the permission from the state judiciary. To this issue, I desire to make a few remarks. Approximately 10 years ago, the City of Orem petitioned the Judicial Council, the governing body of the judiciary, to form a justice court. The Judicial Council approved the request upon the commitment to comply with to a set of standardized conditions set out and defined by both statute and by rule established by the judiciary. The City of Orem has continued to meet these requirements over the years, and recently this body petitioned the Judicial Council to renew their commitment to run a court. This was codified in your resolution passed October 29th, 2019, and as an update, your resolution and request for recertification was brought forth to Judicial Council a few weeks ago, in their January 2020 meeting, and that body has certified the court for another 4 years. Interestingly enough, today I received a copy of that letter, and Mayor, it was addressed to you. You may have received the same letter, and—

Yes.

Mr. Davidson as well. Today the court receives the appropriate support and coordination from city managers and his designees. The court receives a sufficient budget to run the court's operations, And the court enjoys, from the other branches, the appropriate separation needed to run an independent court. Justice courts are the workforces— or the workhorses of the judiciary. In fiscal year 2019, the justice courts had case filings statewide of over 428,000 cases, while district courts had a total filing of just over 260,000 cases. These totals amount to the fact that justice courts during this time period handled 62% of cases, all cases filed in courts in Utah. During my 15-year tenure on the bench, I have seen the percentage of the cases handled in justice courts in a given fiscal year as high as 73%. Now, realize this number, this is number of cases filed. It does not take into into account the complexity of a case. District court cases handle felonies and Class A misdemeanor criminal cases, family law, and civil cases. These generally are more complex and take longer times to reach a disposition. Nonetheless, the sheer volume of cases that justice courts handle and the number of people seen every day makes it clear that justice courts are the face of the judiciary. A citizen is more likely to have a court experience in a justice court than in any other court in Utah. With this fact in mind, it is paramount that we deliver an excellent service model and interact with the public appropriately and with the highest degree of professionalism. By way of statistics, our Justice Court had 12,437 case filings of the 428,000 cases filed in Utah for the fiscal year 2019. We disposed of 12,765, which calculates to 103% of cases filed in this time period, came to a disposition. This high percentage reflects efficiencies, timeliness, and cases not being held under advisement for long periods of time. Of the 12,437 cases filed in this court, in our court here in Orem, it comprised of 13% of them being criminal misdemeanor charges, 5% of them were small claims filings, and 82% were traffic cases. These percentages are rather typical for justice courts. Where have justice courts been in the past, and what is the future of justice courts? It's unknown, but if we take the past into consideration, we know there will likely be changes made in the future. Consider the following history where justice courts have stem from and led us to where we are at today. A historical overview tells us that justices of the peace had been in existence in England since the mid-1300s. They were historically judicial officers elected or appointed to serve local communities. Utah followed this practice, as did other states, for many, many years. In September 1850, the United States Congress passed an Organic Act organizing the Utah Territory. The organization of the territory included the creation of courts, of a court system, which included a territorial Supreme Court, federal district courts, and federally appointed judges. And local justices of the peace courts were also created to handle ordinances and small claim matters. On January 4th, 1896, Utah was admitted into statehood. Federal territorial courts transitioned to state courts. With the authority provided by the Utah Constitution, Article 8, Section 1, this constitutional framework provides guidance for the Utah courts today. Circuit courts were created in 1978. This court system was created to handle misdemeanor and other cases through the preliminary hearings and civil small claim cases. In 1984, the Utah Constitution was revised with respect to Article 8. This revision included many significant changes regarding the rulemaking authority of the Supreme Court, the role of the Judicial Council, and the authorization for an intermediate court of appeals. In 1989, Utah State Legislature passed legislation creating the Justice Courts, eliminating Justice of the Peace Courts. Think about this for a second. 1989.

1989.

2 now. They were eliminated in 1989, and now it's 2021. It's been 31 years since Justice of the Peace Courts no longer existed in Utah. But old terminology is hard to break. As I travel around, some people still refer to courts as Justice of the Peace. Oh, you're the Justice of the Peace. They have not been around for 31 years. That's hard to imagine. In 1996, Circuit Courts were eliminated, assigning all Justice Courts to jurisdiction to hear Class B and Class C misdemeanor offenses, traffic, and small claim cases. In 2007, the Neering Commission study on justice courts was established. The Judicial Council charged the committee to make recommendations for improving justice courts and independence. Many of the recommendations were made into laws. Those changes include: the judicial selection process was changed, nominating commissions are now used, for the initial selection, with judges sitting for retention election following completion of a 6-year term. Selection and retention are now done in the same manner as for district court judges, and I might add, all judges in Utah, but done at the local level. Justice Court judges' pay is now determined with a range and based on a caseload and governed by statute. What is the future of Justice Courts? While it is unknown what the future may bring regarding justice courts, know that the Judicial Council recently commissioned a committee to study what, if any, further issues should be considered or recommended for change. Such topics for consideration may include requiring part-time courts to consolidate with other part-time courts through interlocal agreements. That wouldn't apply to us. We're a full-time court, very busy. Whether to require higher education requirements for smaller counties, like Class 1 counties now are required to do. Should the Justice Courts be bifurcated into both a court of record and a court not of record? Currently, Justice Courts are courts not of record, which means, on appeal, the defendant starts over in a district court with a new trial. This process is known as trial de novo, or fresh start. If justice courts become courts of record, then the record would be appealed to the Utah Court of Appeals for review and feedback to the lower court. If this were to occur, then it is likely misdemeanor cases would be treated and dealt with cases of record, while traffic offenses would remain eligible for a trial de novo appeal process. Stay tuned more on that, Assistant. Commission at this point. Some highlights I'd like to bring to the attention of your court, our court. The court runs an intensive supervision calendar, commonly referred to as an ISC calendar. The special calendar gives extra emphasis and services to individuals with which— in which the judge, the prosecutor, and the public defender have identified as having a high risk of reoffending and who is likely to perform poorly on probation. These individuals often deal with mental health and acquired brain injury issues. We discuss weekly with caseworkers at Wasatch Mental Health the progress of these individuals. We have found that participating— these participating defendants do best with this level of structure and service.

Technology.

The court continues to thirst for technology and to be a leader for courts. Our court, with Jody Tenno's vision and the responsive and capable IT team assembled at Orem, continues to put forward technology initiatives to make the court more efficient and increases our ability to provide services in a professional manner. Our court has, from the day of its organization, been the most technically advanced court in the state of Utah at any court level, and we still maintain that reputation today. Many state-run courts' initiatives are the result of implementations we have made here first. Another highlight is something new. It's called online dispute resolution, or ODR. In August 2019, Orem Justice Court became the second court to test pilot a new way of resolving small claim disputes between parties. The state judiciary spent resources to develop easier ways to access justice. This technology initiative has the plaintiff, after filing their case with the court, to go online and meet up with the defendant who is also online. They are then assigned a facilitator, and efforts to communicate and resolve the case begins. This process can even be done with their mobile phones, allowing for easy and convenient ways to access justice. We are seeing promising numbers. seeing many more cases resolved between parties with this structured process. For those who still end up at trial, we find that those litigants, all of which are usually self-represented litigants, are better prepared, making more efficient use of the court's time. More to come on this project in the future as more data is collected and evaluated. Lastly, a privilege to serve. The most important portion of today's address, at least in my opinion, is to publicly express gratitude for the opportunity to be in public service. After spending 20 years in the executive branch and now having spent the last 15 years in the judiciary, it is this desire to serve our community that makes difficult tasks fulfilling. Regardless of our duties, each of us has the responsibility and the obligation to keep our community safe and enjoyable, securing an opportunity for all, for all to pursue liberty and happiness. To this common goal, may we all continue to work towards it. May we enact laws and policy that improves and preserves this important foundation. May those in the executive branch who enforce and deliver government continue to do so with the utmost levels of integrity and prudence. And may those of us who sit in judgment do so with fairness and objectivity. I thank each of you for all that you do, that your service that you provide and strengthens— that strengthens this community. It is indeed an honor to be able to serve.

Thank you.

Thank you, Judge. We appreciate your integrity and your ability and the high level of integrity that you bring to the court. So thank you very much. We'll now go on to our personal appearance portion of our program. I would like to read a statement that is on our agenda. It states, 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, not individuals. Those wishing to speak should have signed in before the beginning of the meeting, and we do ask that you limit your comments to 3 minutes and give us your name when you come forward. We'd now like to have Hal Johnston come forward, after which Craig Doxey.

Had I known I had 3 minutes, I would have written a 3-minute speech.

I'm here for—

on behalf of the Geneva neighborhood and requesting that the City Council put to close a request we have been working on for the last 30 years, and that is to see that the south side of 800 North be landscaped from State Street to 1200 West.

And we were—

many years ago, 20 years ago, in fact, we worked and landscaped the area bordering Orem Junior High from 600 West to 900 West, but have been told for many years we could not do the rest of it because it came under the jurisdiction of the state. And we ran into dead ends. However, a couple of years ago, you'll notice that the area from 900 West to 1200 West Was landscaped. Extensive rock work was done. There were some bushes put in, and there was a very nice sign introducing people to Orem. I asked how that was done and was told Orem City did it, and that the city could now landscape that area. So I'm here tonight to request of you to finish the project.

Thank you.

And that is, there is one strip of land from 450 West to 600 West on the south side, which is 10 feet wide, which has not been landscaped, and which is a weed patch every year. What we're asking is that some of you drive by there and see what the area I'm talking about— 450 West to 600 West, just East of Orem Junior High on the south side of 800 North. And please, budget funds, put together a plan, and let's get that landscaped. Our neighborhood is willing to do the labor if the city will provide the, the plan and, you know, the grass, the rocks, whatever we need to get that completed.

Thank you.

So that's our request. Please finish the project from State Street to 1200 West so that our neighborhood doesn't have a weed patch 10 feet wide again this year. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now hear from Craig Doxey.

Hi, I'm Craig Doxey, and Mayor and City Council, thank you for giving me this opportunity, and I really appreciate your service and all you do for our city. I'm here today with a suggestion. I've talked with several of you about it, and I wanted to kind of make it official so that you could all understand what I'm trying to, to suggest here. We in the city have many different advisory commissions or boards that have been organized. Many of these include citizens of Orem who provide volunteer service to assist in various areas of city interest. Here's a list of some of them. As you know, most of you are on some of these committees. They're represented like the Arts Council, the Beautification Commission, Community Development, Heritage Commission, Historic Preservation, Library Advisory Commission, Natural Resources Stewardship, Recreation Advisory Commission, Senior Citizens Advisory Commission, Summerfest, and Transportation Advisory Commission. There's a lot of different groups here. Who's missing? And that's what I'm here to suggest, and I give you an idea today.

That would be the—

our first responders. And Just to give you a sample of a charter for the Transportation Advisory Commission, it states for them, as the City of Orem and surrounding communities continue to grow and develop, the City Council recognizes that transportation issues for the city will become increasingly important and complex. The City Council, desiring more citizen involvement with our transportation issues, established the Transportation Advisory Commission. It consists of 7 members. The mayor, with the advice of the City Council, appoints them. They must be residents. They serve for 4 years. Just as issues of transportation are becoming increasingly important and complex, we also feel that issues involving our first responders are also increasingly important and complex, given Utah County's growth and Orem's growth. We have discussed with several of you already the idea of forming a First Responders Advisory Commission. We feel that our first responders should be our first priority as they work to assure the safety of all of us as they put their lives on the line for us each day. This commission could have a similar charter as the one I just read to involve more of the citizens in public safety issues with the intent of listening to our first responders, working with them, learning of their concerns, and helping them to feel valued, welcomed, and appreciated. The primary purpose would be to restore Orem's reputation as the premier first employer in Utah County. It could involve organizing some appreciation events each year. It could also serve as a conduit for open communication and community engagement on issues relating to public safety. This commission, as with the others, would have a designated representative from the City Council who would also represent these issues and concerns on the council. So in conclusion, now is the time to take action. to form a first responders advisory commission to assure that their needs are understood, that they are represented on the city council, and that they feel the appreciation from the Orem citizens. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now hear from Lisa Wilkie, after which we'll hear from Eric Wilkie.

My name is Lisa Wilkie. Mayor Brunch, city council, it's good to see you and to be here tonight in our continued concern for our first responders in our city. I understand Chief Gurney is retiring. This is a pivotal point for our city and fire department because the last time this happened was before the World Trade Center attack in 2001. The disappointment of this current leadership has caused some of our most highly trained firefighters to leave at a high cost to our city. Orem is an ever-growing city with high-rises, highly traveled roads, and exploding population. We cannot afford to lose one more of our trained and experienced experienced to other departments. Recent decisions by our current fire administration put our city and all first responders at risk by exposing them to dangerous situations, such as personal protective equipment being taken while still on duty to the worst defense, leadership not showing up to command and support in one of Orem's biggest fires. This is unacceptable, and I consider these involved to be neglectful and careless. These decisions were not made by just one person. The decisions were discussed, Carried out and should be investigated to ensure those involved do not continue to these critical positions.

Could you hold it to the issues rather than pinpointing individuals?

Well, this is an issue to me that they have been led into these risky situations.

We've asked that for personal comment it be on issues rather than discussions of individuals. So if you could please hold it to that.

So this is just the leadership. I'm not naming individuals.

So if you could talk about—

All right. And that's not even to mention the trials and difficulties our first responders— and I would expect that I will have more time since you've stopped me talking, right?

Sure, keep going.

Okay. And that's not even to mention the trials and difficulties our first responders have faced from mandatory overtime due to lack of staffing. In meetings, they've been called names. We know by who. You have this one critical time to get this right. How does leadership command to earn trust when they are unwilling to show up to the call? This is now your chance to answer the call. Our first responders need you to take immediate action. I know your families and personal safety is most important to you. Therefore, the utmost care and thought should be given when discussing who will be hired to replace the leadership or dismal leadership we currently have. I plead with you as a council to approach this decision with great consideration to the employees and their families. Families as you interview and hire new chief and battalion chiefs. When an entry-level candidate seeks employment with the Orem City Fire Department, they are met with a board of fire department employees from all ranks to be tested, interviewed, and evaluated. The same or more should be performed for such a high-level position as chief. I implore you to form a panel for all parts of the hiring process. Seek out the opinions and suggestions of our own highly trained and experienced firefighters and paramedics who know the challenges within our department. They know the difficulties firsthand. They will be the ones most affected by these decisions and by default will want the absolute best candidate. Choose the firefighters not afraid to give you an honest answer to the difficult questions. Your own combat-level trained firefighters and paramedics fully comprehend this pivotal decision and will be the sum of the most strongest assets you will have asking the right questions. This should not be one man's decision when it affects so many, including all of our residents here in Orem. The newly hired chief's leadership should be one of the best, a leader who can gain the trust of his crew immediately. The citizens look forward to the new changes and positive future in our city's public safety departments. I was reading, and C.S. Lewis wrote to a friend one time, he said, there are far better things ahead than anything we have left behind. I truly believe with the right chief We will have a much brighter future in the fire department and city. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Now go to Eric Wilkie.

I can have just a second. I would like to apologize. There's a group of us here who are trying to get to a basketball game between Timpanogos and Lehigh. That's for the region championship, and my son's playing. I'd really like to be there. And, uh, Councilman Peterson, I hope your grandson plays really well, but just not that well. Go Timpanogos! So anyway, thank you. Uh, my name is Eric Wilkie. I've been here before. Thank you very much. A change of scenery here in the council is, is a nice thing to see, and thank Thank you for your service. I have 2 questions that I'd like answered, but obviously this is no time to do that. One is, as far as considering the new fire chief, is this something that is decided by the city manager's office, the mayor's office, the city council, or is it a cooperative effort between everybody to choose this person? The second question is pertaining to any advancements or to any promotions within the fire department at this point, will those be halted until this chief is put in place? Those are the 2 questions I have. Now, what I would like to do is just share something that's been very important in my life. It was a statement in a friend's office. He was a mentor to me. He was very successful in all aspects of his life, much more than, much more than almost anyone that I've ever ran into. His family's very productive, beautiful family, very faithful and understanding in his religion. His business was just phenomenally successful all over the West. He had over 1,500 employees. He employed people, mentored them, built them, and they have gone on to be successful people in their own rights. In his office, there was one statement. He had some pictures of his family, all of his accolades and everything were shoved off in corner on a desk. This one statement on the wall, it was a desert scene landscape and it had partially exposed a little skull of an old cow in the desert, just white as could be. And it said, here lies the bleached bones of the countless millions who upon the dawn of victory stopped to rest and resting died. 25 years ago, I really did not understand the significance of what that means. Now in my 50s, I do understand that. Human nature makes you want to just relax, take a breath when you're approaching the end of a very laborious task. Now is not the time to do that. We are so close to being able to install and place a new chief in this fire department that the men will follow, who can lead, who can lead by example, who can lead by knowledge, and who will always lead side by side with them. This individual needs to be scrutinized, and this is why I ask how this will be applied here. But he has to be able to lead these men and women. We've already heard some of the situations. These men and women go from eating dinner, cleaning trucks, doing whatever, within a few minutes they're half inside a vehicle that's crumpled. They're shielding a person between all of the metal and glass that's being broke as his buddies are trying to extricate him out of there. Doing all of this at the same time he's consoling them as their deceased family member sits next to him. This is what they're asked to do. They need a leader who is pinpoint on task, who is not affected by upper management and things, and who will fight for them. We have one chance to do this. I thank you.

Thank you. We'll now go ahead and close the personal appearance portion of our meeting and move on to our consent agenda. The consent agenda is a meeting management tool to allow the City Council to handle several routine items with one action. Once I've read each consent agenda item into the record, the council or staff may request that that item be pulled off the consent agenda agenda and be considered separately under the next agenda item in the order that they are listed. First one is 8.1, approval of meeting minutes, City Council meeting January 28th, 2020. Second one is 8.2, appointment to boards and commissions, reappointment to the Public Works Advisory Commission, Casey Shaw, Carol Walker, and Todd Hadley. Is there any desire to pull any item off the consent agenda?

No.

Seeing none, we'll proceed with one motion and a second. Is there a motion to proceed?

So, move to approve the consent items.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. I would like to mention that Councilmember Dave Spencer is out of town and unavailable to be with us by phone. We'll start with Jeff.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the consent agenda passes. We have no scheduled items this evening. Uh, Jamie, do you have any items?

Yes, thank you, Mayor, members of the City Council. Just a couple of, um, updates relative to some issues that you have inquired about in the past, and also maybe in response to some of the, some of the questions that have been posed tonight. We talked just briefly about the legislature earlier in our, in our meeting. There are a number of bills that, for example, Chief Giles, our Deputy City Attorney, Mr. Bybee, Mr. Downs, myself have been following relative to public safety, impact fees, development issues. But one bill of particular note that you may be hearing about because of its relationship to you as members of the City Council is HB 273, which relates to property rights and the property rights ombudsman here within the state. Now, the ombudsman is just that. He is one who on occasion comes and intervenes in primarily developer-government type issues. Historically, within the state code, a property owner who has a particular concern with, for example, something that a city may be asking or requiring of of them can appeal to this property rights ombudsman for a decision and for essentially an opportunity for that ombudsman to review the matter and to offer an opinion as to the appropriateness of, for example, what a city is asking a developer to do. Historically, those decisions have been non-binding And they have more often than not been taken by municipalities and others as sound, credible legal advice relative to development laws within the state of Utah. Right now, we have a situation pending where the issues at hand with the property rights ombudsman That what is being suggested is if a municipality or if a developer, for example, brought an issue to the ombudsman and the ombudsman had an opportunity to review that matter, and thereafter if a city still disagreed with the ombudsman and proceeded to hold the line, so to speak, and this matter went to court, And the court decided on the matter in favor of the developer that the developer could then go after not just attorney's fees associated with this issue and this action, but with compensatory damages. So a city could be held liable for compensatory damages as a result of this opinion— of this process. In addition to that, the suggestion has been that the governmental immunity limits be lifted in these matters as well, allowing the compensatory damages to exceed upon— exceed past the statutory limits that have been set in state law in regards to these land use decisions. It's a challenge and a problem because it potentially sends a message to cities specifically that you need to be very, very careful about essentially contesting and reviewing matters that are in opposition or counter to opinions of the Property Rights Ombudsman and potentially the mindset is we can discourage individuals from going to court and trying to find a solution to a matter like this via the court. I mention this because it is seen by the Utah League of Cities and Towns as one of their key issues this year because it does jeopardize local government authorities ability to regulate land use in the way it sees fit. In addition, it potentially scares local governments from going to court to try and adjudicate land development type issues. Does that make sense? So it's HB 273. It's entitled Property Rights Ombudsman Amendments, and it is actually sponsored by Representative Val Peterson here of Orem. I've reached out to Val and I've said, Val, help me understand, is Orem the problem?

Do we need—

I just want to make sure because we value our relationship with Representative Peterson and we want to make sure that what we're doing is not running cross with some of the language in that bill. And he has represented to me that, no, in fact, it's not the City of Orem but other jurisdictions where there may be issues with disagreements between developers and governmental entities and that governmental entities may be using, for example, the process that is currently in code to slow developments down. But you may be getting some conversation or you may be getting some feedback from other elected officials and other individuals because it is an Orem legislator that is sponsoring this legislation. Our plan is to go and to meet with Representative Peterson again to have this conversation with him to say, what can we do to improve this situation? We have the blessing of the Utah League of Cities and Towns to do this, and we're very interested in listening to Representative Peterson trying to understand what's at the core of this bill and trying to make sure we can appropriately respond to the language in the bill so that we can hopefully maintain the process that we have with the Property Rights Ombudsman and continue to use that office as a really good arbitrator, so to speak, or negotiator, so to speak, in helping developers and cities understand the law from a third-party perspective. We'll forward some additional input in relation to other pieces of legislation here in the next couple of days.

Yes.

Mr.

Mayor, if you could, Jamie, when you forward it, tell us what you'd like us to do or how we can be helpful. Most of us know various state representatives and senators. We'd be happy to I would like to call and be a voice if you can help lead us in the right direction.

I will do just that. In fact, I have something already drafted that's in draft form that I will get to you. You have inquired in the past about the temple and where we are in that discussion. We have reached out to the church. We have heard back from the church. They have gone through and they have modified their site plan. But they are not ready to share it with the city as of yet because they need to go through their internal approval processes to grant the necessary permissions and the necessary approvals. So we anticipate that that is coming our way. I know there was some concern that we hadn't heard back. Our planning manager, Jason Bench, reached out to the church and was able to hear back from their internal staff to say, no, it's in process, we have a plan, but it just hasn't yet received appropriate approvals from all the levels of approval at the church office building. In addition to this, you may be interested to know that the Mike Dunn property on Geneva Road at approximately 500 North Geneva Road— this is the transfer station that Mr. Dunn has been operating— and several years ago we reached agreement as to continued operation of the facility and what would be required of him in continuing to maintain that site and to make it a workable transfer station for him, the citizens, and the adjacent neighbors who are many important businesses in our community, including UPS and, and others. You may be interested to know that he has actually listed that property for sale. So it is not his intent to apparently move forward with his plans and what we agreed to do several years ago. We continue to have quite a bit of struggle with the property in terms of just fugitive debris that finds its way off property and trying to manage what I would represent as a messy site. 500 North Geneva Road.

So, Jamie, in relationship to that, China and several other countries have discontinued receiving a lot of the waste products from the United States, one of them being cardboard, and which they've moved a lot of that, and that's why they're there. So I would imagine what's occurring in the world markets are affecting their operation and thus the desire to sell.

And we would— we also believe that that site has been for the last number of years a drop-off location for residential solid waste for one of the big 3 haulers in the state. There's really 3: Republic Waste Management and Ace Disposal. Waste Management works and does all of their transfer and meets all of their transfer needs at the North Point Transfer Station, as do a number of cities that work with Republic and ACE. But in recent times, meaning the last 12 months, both Republic and ACE are constructing additional transfer stations in Pleasant Grove. And so we believe some of the tonnage that has historically been going to Mr. Dunn's property is probably in the future going to find its way to a different landfill loca— or a different transfer station location.

Well, that will certainly be, I think, an attractive property out on the marketplace. And I think this is actually news that could bring some changes and improvements to that property.

I just had a question on going back to 273.

Yes.

Where— That just doesn't come up. There must be a tie somewhere. And the first thing that comes to mind is the high density up in Herriman with those developers. I mean, there's— do you have any history on that? It seems like somebody's upset over—

I don't. And that's kind of the conversation that I want to have with Representative Peterson to say, you know, it'd be nice. We see the smoke. We get where you're coming from. Help us understand where the fire is. Help us core down to what the primary concern is so that we can address it at its core rather than, for example, imposing laws on jurisdictions like the City of Orem and other municipalities that really limit a city council's ability to make land use decisions. Our intent— our relationship, for example, with the State Ombudsman has been very positive. We have gone to him and have been a topic of conversation at the Ombudsman's Office in the past relative to some of the decisions that, that we have made. We've sat down with their office, we've gone through their decisions, we've tried to understand what we need to do, and more often than not, we've, we've made changes accordingly. So there's something that's going on there that is not specific to Orem, but maybe specific to other cities. And I will represent as well that there is a strong developer presence at the legislature. So I don't know, this may be the result of frustrations that a number of developers are bringing to the legislature. And given Mr. Peterson's— or Representative Peterson's role in leadership. Maybe he has been the one who has been asked to take on this challenge, and, and we're committed to, to working with the Utah League of Cities and Towns and finding out what, what's at the core of the problem.

Okay, thank you.

Just if I may, the last, the last series of questions relative to the fire chief recruitment and, and what the city's intent is relative to that recruitment process, I think I've shared with you in specifics what my intent is to— in relation to the fire chief recruitment. I see what is happening right now with Chief Gurney's retirement as being an opportunity to pivot. I appreciate Chief Gurney and his commitment to the city and his dedication and I believe that there are many legacy programs and pieces of the department that will carry forward, and we are the beneficiaries of many, many great things. I think this is an opportunity for us to build upon what we have. My intent and representation to you has been that this is going to be an inclusive process, not an exclusive process. We've already made— I've already made the determination that we are going to spread and cast a very wide net relative to the recruitment of the chief. And by that I mean we are going to seek out the best candidate. And we are advertising not just, for example, within the city limits, but we're advertising across the country. Of course, as we advertise and we spread the net, so to speak, then that takes time.

time.

And it takes, for example, a couple of weeks to even find an advertisement into a publication. And so we need to extend the length or the duration of the recruitment. And I've had that conversation via email with the entire fire department, as well as I've been meeting individually with firefighters for the last 3 and a half weeks trying to understand what their interests are, what they're interested in seeing as a fire chief, what they think are important characteristics and attributes for the chief, and I will continue to do that. At the same time, though, I don't want to hit the pause button on what we have going on in the fire department right now. For example, we're right in the middle of a budget process. We're right in the middle of a compensation review. We're right in the middle of an operations assessment, a master plan. I don't want to hit the brakes on any of those. I've talked specifically to Chief Earl, Deputy Chief Earl, and I've asked him if and when— and I do anticipate and know that the recruitment process will run past the date of Chief Gurney's retirement.

Thank you.

I've asked him to serve on an interim basis as the fire chief to keep these programs and these efforts moving forward. I don't see the recruitment of a department director as being a, a standard recruitment process where, for example, there are 3 or 4 individuals that sit behind a conference room table, they ask a series of 5 to 7 questions or the same questions of every candidate, and from that point we make a decision. In the spirit of inclusivity, my vision of that recruitment involves members of the elected governing body as part of that review and evaluation process. It involves other stakeholders in the community who have a vested interest in the department, whether it be prominent business leaders, whether it be Timpanogos Hospital, or Orem Community Hospital. It involves other fire professionals who we do business with. It involves our other contract relationships that we have, namely Vineyard and Linden. It also involves the department itself and the firefighters that are in the department. So my intent in moving forward is to collectively include all of these voices and all of these resources in this assessment. And when an announcement is made as to who the new fire chief is going to be, it is going to be one who many people have had an opportunity to vet, to converse with, and to get to know and understand who they are, what their leadership style is, what are some of the ways that they might handle situations into the future. Where they want to take the department. I think we owe that to the fire department. I think we owe that to any department that, that we go out and we recruit for. This is a process that we have followed in the past with other department directors, including our police chief and the recruitment of Gary Giles a number of years ago as our police chief. I think that is the best way to go to buy to build buy-in, so to speak, in, in the new department director. I will also represent to you that I do not believe that this process is one that is a democratic process where everybody will take a vote like historically they've taken a vote in a volunteer fire department as to who the chief will be. But I think the input, your input, the input of many others is going to be part of that package, part of that data set that will be used in the selection of a new chief. I, I've reached out, I've reached out to, as I mentioned, representatives in the department. I've had conversations with stakeholders in the community already. I've met with other fire chiefs and neighboring jurisdictions.

Yes.

Asking them about, you know, what we should do, how we should do it. So we're not doing this in a vacuum. And my hope is that as people look to the effort that is underway, they can understand and appreciate that this will not be a decision exclusive of the city manager, but will be one that includes a collective number of people, and that when a name is brought to you for your advice and consent that that name, that individual, has been appropriately vetted across many parts of the community, including our department itself.

Okay, thank you. Appreciate that. I look forward to that process and for I and the council participation in it together with the firemen and, and members of the community. Debbie, would you like to say something?

Do you have a timeline?

Are you thinking—

I know Chief Gurney is going to meet in March.

Are you thinking by May?

What are you thinking?

As I've been meeting with the employees, I've represented to them that I would be very excited if we could have a new chief in place in the month of May. With that said, though, I think In order to make that happen, we've obviously got to go through a recruitment process. We've got to provide the individual time to transition from his old job to her new job. That, that is typically more than 2 weeks' notice. And so, yeah, I do anticipate, and my hope would be, I would be over the moon happy if we could have this in the rearview mirror by May. I perhaps think that's maybe a little too optimistic. That's what we're shooting for.

I think May is a little ambitious. Be that as it may, I think the most important thing is we get the right individual.

And I've represented— I think it's more important that we hire right than hire fast.

I agree. Thank you. Any other comments or questions from the council? Yes.

Nice, Councilmember. Larray on her birthday, her birthday, and please join us in room 107 for some treats.

Yep, I will accept the motion to adjourn. Is there a second? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.