City Council · 2020-02-25

It looks like you've got some here if you'd like to meet them.

We do.

So in Public Works, we have 110 full-time employees, and we've been struggling between 5 and 10% of turnover and churn. But we have 3 new employees, we're down to about 6% for that. And I don't even know these gentlemen very well, so I'm going to have them introduce themselves, their names, and tell you where they are and where they're working.

So 2 of them are in water, and one is in concrete.

I'm Josh Clements. I'm working in water distribution. Been there for about 3 weeks now.

And where did you come from?

I was going to college at UVU. Prior to that, I was in the military for 8 years.

Great.

Thank you for your service. Thank you for your support. I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Good to see you.

I'm Jordan Fisher, also in water distribution.

This is my second week. Before that, I worked for a software company called Proofpoint. So it kind of changed up career paths a bit, but very happy.

Good.

My name is Gavin Beasley, and this is my first day in the street department.

Good.

Well, welcome. Glad to have you.

Looks like by the time you're here 3 weeks, Mayor, they have warm gear too.

Yes.

Chris will hook you up, okay? We'll get you going.

More than half.

Well, nice to have you here. Thank you.

Do any of you live in Orem, or do you live—

I live in Orem. I live in Provo.

How about yourself?

Lehi.

Great, great. Any other new employees? Okay, we'll go ahead and move on then. We're going to have a discussion on City of Orem compensation philosophy. And Carrie is one of our human resource managers, is going to lead the discussion. It'll be a philosophical discussion.

I think they're for you. Okay, Brent's going to be passing out our old handbook policy on compensation, and then we will also be discussing our suggested changes to the policy. While he's doing that, I also want to mention that this came from our national third-party consultant that we have contracted with to do our compensation and benefit analysis. They recommended that we look at our comp philosophy and make any changes before they actually go out to other entities to make sure that they are following the philosophy that we want to set forth as far as comp and benefit goes for competitiveness. So the first thing that we did after NFP recommended that we look at our comp philosophy is that That's because I have music playing in my office.

There it is, that's the noise. Right?

Peace.

I need that a lot in my office. So we also have a steering team that is helping us through this comp and benefit process with NFP. And so between the steering team and we spent spent several hours with exec staff the last 2 weeks. We have come up with a revised compensation philosophy program for the handbook. And so, um, I think what I would like to do is just highlight some of the big changes that we've made to the comp philosophy just for you guys to review. The first one is on bullet point number 5 under 3.4. And that's this section right here where it says the employee experience team will meet regularly to discuss changes to the city's total comp program, including changes to external comparable entities, performance evaluations, benefit offerings, and other employee experience matters. This is a new team that we're recommending that we implement to improve employee engagement and get more feedback when we make changes. Changes to make sure that departments have— each department will have a representative there to help us be a sounding board when we're recommending some changes so that they can go to their departments and bring back good ideas. I think improving the employee experience altogether would be a positive movement and help improve transparency. So that's one of the big Changes. And then in 3.4.1—

I have a question. What regularly are you— is that like yearly, every twice a year? You know what you're regularly—

And we left it at regularly because until we start the team, we won't know how often. And, and sometimes if we have a big project going on like this, this compensation and benefits, it might be weekly. Or if we are looking to move to a new program, let's just say maybe we wanted to move to PTO instead of vacation and sick leave, that would be a good sounding board place. And if we were implementing a big change, we would meet with them more often. I would think maybe monthly would be, would be a good amount. I don't want to take away from their regular job too much, but you know, enough that they are aware of city happenings. And I think we can also use them for positive things, like if we're having an event Like the pie event that I hope all of you can come to. Maybe they can help us come up with ways to make sure that we maximize participation, things like that. Okay, and then a lot of these others are just changing a lot of the specific wording, and I don't want to waste too much time on the specific wording, but I do want to mention number 3 is instead of performance-based, we changed that to merit-based pay. That's because we also want to look not just at their yearly performance but their overall performance when it comes to merit increases. And then number 4, adoption and priority. This is something new that we are asking the City Council and executive leadership to recognize the importance of competitive market In order to recruit and retain the city's quality workforce. In that spirit, the City Council and executive leadership pledge to make total compensation a top priority annually in the development and adoption of the city's budget. So this, this is what we want it to be, is just a collaborative effort between the executive team and City Council and Human Resources to make sure that our employees are a top priority when it comes to budgeting. Any questions on that?

You've done this other places, I'm assuming, or have had review of this. Are we getting— I mean, I think we're all pretty concerned that we don't get caught semi-flat-footed, and that's unfair, Jamie, to you and the staff. We weren't totally flat-footed, but we want to make sure we're a step ahead. In your professional opinion, are we getting there with this, with these additions and corrections to the—

I do.

And I think it also improves transparency between HR and exec staff to the city council and vice versa, right? So if we have a lack in budgeting so that we can't hit some of these major issues, it's a collaborative effort to try and resolve those issues instead of And all department heads see this, right? Yes.

So we expect department heads to be way ahead of the game and bring this to the attention of the city manager so that we don't get surprised as the city council.

Yes, I think it benefits the council and it goes both ways. I think, I think it just improves communication all around.

So this on the merit-based pay, Are we going to talk about the cost of living increase? Or, because it just says merit-based pay, meaning it might be what, 3%, and the cost of living is 1%?

Yeah.

Really, the focus of the conversation that we had with our executive staff was, do we want this compensation program to be, to some degree performance-based, that if you meet certain objectives, then you are eligible for compensation increases. Now, for different departments, it may mean different things. By that, I know we've had recent conversations about, for example, a step and grade program. For other departments, it may mean something different. I believe as we looked at this, the whole idea of merit-based was it's performance-related and whatever we structure in the organization or in portions of the organization, a piece of that program needs to be performance-based or merit-based. So yeah, I mean, I would— It's sort of ambiguous because it's— we don't know what the percentages we're going to do each year, I guess. Yeah, and part of the discussion we had was We need to kind of talk about the what and not the how with this policy. So this policy kind of identifies key expectations, the what. How we actually do it gets down into the nuts and bolts, and that's a conversation that we have every single year. But the thing that we wanted to make sure collectively between the council and those that are leading the departments is there's a collective understanding and agreement as to what we want to do. How we do it, you'll be involved in on an annual basis as well. But I don't— we don't want to head down a path, for example, where we're emphasizing, let's say, market competitiveness and you're saying, well, that's not something that we're concerned about. I'm not suggesting that that is. I mean, I know you're concerned about it, but we just want to set expectations as to this is what— when people say, what is your compensation program? What is the what? This is the what. And this has been in our employee handbook. So in many respects, the old—

I'm sorry.

Policy that we've had, there are five bullet points. The new policy, there are five bullet points. In every one of the up in the updated statement, a discussion of market competitive competitiveness, internal equity, performance-based or merit-based pay, and flexibility is included. We have actually excluded legal compliance. because that's just kind of a general understanding that we're going to comply with the law. And in lieu of legal comp— and this even had the blessing of Greg. And in lieu of identification of legal compliance, there's just greater emphasis on communication and trying to make sure that education takes place relative to our programs so people know what we do, how we do it, and some of the why behind it. And I'll use as an example, we actually on an annual basis work and evaluate our wages externally. So we actually go out and do salary studies and surveys with the help of a professional consultant. As we've been having some of these conversations, for example, with Carrie's Engagement Committee, this group that is steering this national compensation effort, that was a comment that several on the committee made, was they weren't aware that we did this on an annual basis. Well, we do, we just need to do a better job of communicating that. So that's why we replaced legal compliance with this communication goal expectation.

Thank you.

Can I ask you to raise up? So when I worked for other cities, they had a goal that their market compensation would be 60% of the average. Do we have a similar goal that we try to make sure each job is a little higher than the average, or are we just more broad based on—

I mean, do we have a goal to try to get there?

In previous years or in the past, we've always tried to hit that 60%. 60th percentile, but with talking to NFP, the consultant, they said that really is an unobtainable goal. So us putting us— putting that out there on paper really is not— because once you catch up to one position, another position is going to fall out of place, and we will always be playing catch-up to try and make it hold for everybody, and it's just really impossible.

And that's why we want to be So we're not going to define a goal to at least work toward?

But the other thing I will represent too, and we've had this conversation quite a bit within the organization as it relates to the 60th percentile. Those that are in the world of human resources understand what that means. Many of our employees, and they have told us this, Don't understand that 60th percentile. What they understand it to be is, wait, you want us to be paid to 60% of the market? No, of course we don't. We actually want to pay to market and a little better than market. But the way it's been communicated, the interpretation on the part of employees is, well, you want us to be paid 60% of market. And so we decided to carve out that percentile language and just look at market competitiveness because it releases some of the confusion that we've had with employees relative to working towards the 60th percentile. I think too, James, with the communications goal, it's in all of our benefits starting to talk in ways that everybody will understand, and so there's no confusion about how something So I guess my question then is, what is our—

are we still going on a case-by-case basis, or do we still have kind of a goal that we're always going to try to pay more than the average person?

Market competitiveness.

I'm trying to define market competitiveness, because— and how are you going to determine that? It's a question I'm trying to— are you just going to say— is there going to be a discussion on a certain job, or— Are you still gonna in your mind think, well, at least gonna be trying to move it 60-ish, 65?

That's what this study does, is it does in-depth analysis on a per-job basis.

So I think, I think if you, if you read just a little deeper into the first paragraph, when we assess market competition and competitiveness, we're setting an expectation that this is something we're going to do annually.

Okay.

So we're gonna look at it on an annual basis And determine whether or not we are market competitive and if we need to make adjustments.

So, so Tom, I'm going to see if I restate what you've said. If not, correct my errors. Well, I'll correct you real soon.

Can I say it better, Derek?

No, I want to make sure I understood it. But I think a key to this is number 4, where it says a top priority annually is the development of the budget. Is the compensation. It's a top priority. And that's a big difference from what— it's not— that's not in the previous statements. So I think what you're saying is we don't want to get caught surprised that we're not competitive and we're losing people and we didn't even know we're losing people. Is that kind of where you're going? Because I mean, that's what I— that's the thing that I think we don't want to do as a city, find out we're not competitive.

So— Obviously we're very competitive in paying a city Absolutely, yes. But some of the other positions, not as deep.

But if it's a top priority, that's a huge sign, message, I think, to us as a city council.

And to our staff.

Well, and that, I think, frankly, as staff, we want to make sure that that's the message we're hearing from you.

Yep.

So let's codify it, so to speak, and put it in policy so that You know, we know, and our employees know that this is a top priority. Now, I will also qualify in saying we specifically made it a top priority and not the top priority.

That's fair.

Because we didn't want to paint you into a corner.

Yep.

But we wanted to always say, look, of the big rocks that we're working on, Compensation and benefits is always one of those big rocks. It may not be the only big rock, but it is one of the big rocks.

And Jamie, in the past, I've either— I don't think I've known enough ahead of time, and maybe it's an indictment on me and not you or the budgetary process. I don't know that I've known beforehand what percentage we were working at before it kind of was in motion. Could you help wave a flag of, hey, we're thinking of 1% or 2% or 3%? And maybe you've done that, but I'm gonna pay more attention because now it's one of my top priorities. And again, I think that might be an indictment on me more than you. But before the staff knows, hey, we're thinking about 3%, and we say, no, no, no, the market's only 2%, then they're all mad at us or some other number, right?

So we, the, The program we have as it relates to budget discussions, we're required to present to you a recommended budget by the first formal council meeting in May. We have always taken the approach of we want this to be more of a collaborative process. We want you to be more engaged and to know what's coming at you before you actually see the budget. So we actually do have time scheduled in March to have this conversation so that you know kind of what is fast approaching you. And frankly, a lot of that to some degree is driven by market. It's also driven by, well, it's also driven by what we can afford.

Definitely.

Financially where we are. And we're just getting to a point, as Nicole and Brandon can attest, that the last kind of big puzzle piece of our revenue program for next year we got in the last— in our Christmas sales tax returns just a couple of days ago. So that revenue picture is starting to take shape just beginning this week. So we're only a few weeks away from giving you that number, so we're not really kind of holding anything back, but we still don't know yet what we can actually afford.

And I'm sure that Carrie will provide us with, hey, we've done studies, this is what, you know, the market's at, and if we could get a little bit of that voice, a little bit of that communication from her or through you, what HR is telling you.

So in years past, We have contracted with a compensation consultant different than NFP.

Okay.

But NFP has represented to us that they're willing to give us kind of the relative temperature of the market this year to assist us in this kind of budgeting effort.

Carrie, is that somebody you've worked with in the past?

Not for this study, but I have worked with them as a benefits broker before, like our GBS here. So I'm familiar with the, the team we're working with.

Okay, okay, go ahead. Well, I'm just saying, is that something that they would continue to do? I think that's important to be able to know what that temperature is so that we know where things are outside of our, outside of our little bubble. Um, I think that's helpful. Well, I mean, I think I think the commitment we have made and continue to make is an annual review. So yes, I think we will need to. Now, the level of review that we're doing now is not, at least in my estimation, something we need to do every year. But there needs to be a tune-up of sorts, or a look every year to make sure that either we're on the right path or we need to make significant changes. So yes, I would expect that this is a part of an ongoing effort. Whether we use the same consultant over and over again or not, that kind of remains the question.

So Jamie, that doesn't put anything— that doesn't put everything on hold for a year because—

Oh no.

Because of the 6-month study.

No.

We're going to go ahead and build? Absolutely.

So my thing is, in March, hopefully we'll be able to discuss, since we know maybe where the budget is and what we have, on a cost of living increase instead of 1%, it might be 2% or 2.5%, and then the merit goes up to 3% or 4%, whatever it is. But I'd like to have that discussion to see year by year, depending on where we're at financially. 'Cause I think those that are just 1% COLA, Well, and I—

Sorry.

And I think frankly, part of our conversation today after we have the good fortune of hearing from our friends at Timpanogos is going to be some of, I guess you could say, the strategy we need to put into place prospectively so that we can have these meaningful conversations because a lot of these conversations have historically been driven Not by what we need, but more by what we have. And frankly, if— and again, I'm trying to take my cues off of you. The message you're sending is this is a priority that we need to make. So my response is, how can we help you? How can we get there? So yeah, I completely understand it.

Thank you.

agree, and our intent is to come to you with, uh, hopefully a discussion as to what we may need to do and how we can get there.

Well, for your first couple years it was, don't think about pay raises here. I mean, you've gone through the whole spectrum.

Well, yeah, I mean, it was 5—

Actually, our first year we did adopt a 2% pay raise in 2014.

We did, but I mean 5 years. During these first couple years here.

5 years there was no pay raise.

Yes.

First year we were in office, we adopted the 2%.

And then my other question is, if we find that some of our jobs are way below market, there's also gonna have to be a— not the cost of living merit, just a total— they're gonna have to go up just to be competitive. So how will we base a pot of money for competitiveness versus merit versus COLA? Are we gonna have to just— Give it our best guess, because I think some of our jobs are going to come back, they're not competitive, and we're going to have to raise all those besides their merit and COLA.

Yeah, and I think especially this year going through the big comprehensive study, I think there will be some outliers that are not competitive. I, I don't think it's going to be as large as you would think since we, we do look at our external sister cities every year. And we are competitive, so I think there will be a few positions that are out of line, but I don't think it's going to be a huge significant amount of positions that will be.

Perhaps one point of emphasis though on that market competitiveness and defining what that means.

I think that's something that we've emphasized here is that we're going to be looking at market competitiveness both for hiring and Attention on employees. So essentially trying to look on over the course of a career in a specific title or position, we need to remain competitive. So I think that also speaks to the tenure concern.

And we look when we do look at the ranges each year, we also look at years of service in position too, because sometimes we might have a position that they're all new, right? New incumbents where we're comparing against people that are later in their. So we want to look at the ranges as well.

And Carrie, at the same time, I think it's important to see if we're getting involved with what you call salary creep. So in other words, some that have been here for a long period of time, their salary is now not below but actually above the range of competitiveness with other cities.

Look, have you got a question?

I had a different question from the beginning.

But is that our market that we're comparing everything against, is cities?

We're not looking at anything in the corporate world? So this is all city by city, similar sized cities?

So with our consultants, our steering team has gone to their departments and asked for input. For example, for Char's division, department with the library, they better compete with Salt Lake City where we might not compare them to other things just because the library in Salt Lake City is more comparable to us than any other entity. But they will do— they do have a database where they can compare to not just public entities but also private. They'll run that through the database, but it's a lot easier to get other cities to participate in a, in a PER question because I do that all the time for other cities. So it will be more comparable to other cities, but they all will also look into the private market as well.

But we have— I guess we have qualified that by saying, look, we're going to look at selected peers, but we also within the policy have identified other factors deemed necessary in the current compensation environment, including private sector competition, full employment pressures, and the demand for experienced and skilled labor. So, you know, there's certain positions that are uniquely government, uniquely municipal— firefighters, for example— but accountants and attorneys and other professionals engineers, they prep construction-type work. That probably can, you know, probably requires a little greater look, but our primary focus is on our peers, and then we would look to expand as some of these market pressures deem necessary.

I mean, just thinking of our new friend that is hired to do concrete.

Yeah.

You know, that's a booming market right now, and how do you compete with that? Well, and frankly, is Chris here?

Yep.

Chris, you should speak to that.

That's actually a very specific conversation we had with this employee.

He has 15 to 20 years laying concrete, of experience laying concrete, and his specific goal was to get on board with a community or with an organization He wanted to be in an organization where he could obtain some retirement benefits and look to the future. And that's what he felt like the city could do for him, and he knows that he could provide a good job for us. So it was a good marriage.

And it was a negotiated hire. By that meaning, we didn't just look at the bottom of a pay range and say, okay, this is where you start. We've done that with police, we've done that with fire, we've done that with engineers and attorneys and others. It needs to be commensurate with what their experience is, what our needs are, what the market demand suggests. Jamie, one other example of this that we recently had was last year we hired an IT pro—

a software developer for the first time in years because somebody retired. And the IT—

the software development market in Utah County is far different than it was the last time we went out for And so we had to look at all that then.

So it's something we do talk about regularly because it comes up.

The challenge that we face, if I may too, is there is to some degree an expectation that we can move on a dime. That if all of a sudden the market goes one direction or another, we can quickly adjust. Well, we're in annual budget cycles. Our revenue, there's only very limited opportunities for us to increase revenues if necessary. We can't essentially, if the market is increasing by 20% in a very limited time span, oftentimes we just can't accommodate that same shift within that same time period. So there is a little lag. what we do, but to some degree I think this policy and this program speaks to our intent and our focus that when the time, the opportunity arises, we're going to step up to that expectation and we're going to meet that obligation.

From what I'm hearing, we're just talking about compensation.

Now, in the study, is there anything that goes along with, you know, Chris's department is not losing as many people as Chief Giles' department? Is there any comparison there on why, or— Well, within the, within the statement, we are looking at both internal and external equity. So yes, we're We're trying to create a compensation system, we're trying to maintain a compensation system that's responsive to the external market, while at the same time paying like positions in different departments like wages. So, yes, that's the intent, that's our policy statement. At the same time, that's our practice. Now, there are unique positions in each of our departments.

departments.

We only have, for example, police officers in the police department, librarians in the— obviously the public library. So we need to look externally first to see where we are, but then once we have that data, we need to bring it back and make sure that it's not going to create internal problems for us as well. And, you know, I wish I could say it's a complete science. It is not. There is some level of subjectivity to it. At the same time, we also recognize in many positions that our primary focus is on external equity, and in other situations, we spend more time and attention, or other positions, more time and attention on internal equity.

Okay, Carrie, what else have you got for us?

Uh, the last thing is just communication. We just want to be as communicative as we can to employees, but that also reaches out to you as council members too. If you have questions on the process at all, I'm, I'm always happy to speak to you about that too. So if you have any questions on how we come to these determinations, I'm more than happy to have those discussions.

So as you communicate, will this be through the City Ditty, or will this be through Separate emails or both?

So my vision is through the Ditty all the time, but also I think we need to have town hall type meetings as well, you know, at least once a year as we explain, you know, maybe during the benefits season, explain some of our other compensation type things. It's also, it's always good to educate employees as much as you can so that they know when it comes to benefits too, a lot of them don't know about some of the benefits that we have, and it's a great opportunity to explain to them how great their total compensation package is here, not just their compensation but also their benefits.

Okay, well, thank you.

Mayor, if I could make one final comment. So I, I would ask and invite you to review what we have put together. I would also state that Carrie's steering committee for this survey group. We, we asked them to put together what they thought should be the focus of our policy here in the city. They brought those issues and those concerns to us.

I know this is long.

We incorporated them into this document. We then sent the document back to her committee and asked for further follow-up. And we incorporated— in fact, we didn't get any feedback or additional feedback. So this is representative not just of our executive leadership team, but it is representative of the steering committee that is guiding this compensation benefits study. And we would ask you by way of resolution to consider adoption of this by resolution at a future meeting. future council meeting. So the expectation is clear that this is the document that, for example, myself and our team are using, and it has been endorsed by you as the governing body of the city. So we can communicate with the employees, this isn't just Carrie's plan, this is the city council's endorsed compensation philosophy.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Appreciate it.

We're going to move on to a discussion and some information on a pediatric trauma care unit at Timpanogos Hospital. We do have Kimball Anderson, the CEO, here, as well as Roger Walker, the pediatric specialist. One thing I wanted to mention is Timpanogos has been very progressive and has been moving forward on a couple of fronts. A couple of years ago they put in a NIC unit, a newborn intensive care unit, which was not there before, and it's doing an excellent job. They've also purchased the property to the east, the farmland of that building, and will be expanding the building for some of the things that they want to do. And they're moving forward with putting forward a pediatric trauma care unit. similar to what you would see at Primary Children's Hospital. And so they would like to get a discussion, give us a discussion on it, and they are asking for our support for their— and encouragement for their desire to put in a new pediatric trauma care unit. So with that—

Can I also add?

Yes.

They have been one of our great Summerfest sponsors. And they've done our baby contest for years, I think to the tune of about $10,000. We work with Nate and some of the nurses, and I think it's been a phenomenal partnership, and we just can't thank you enough.

Well, that's a, that's a great sponsorship for us because, as we all know, most of the most beautiful babies are born here in Orem.

So that's an easy thing to sponsor.

But I'm Kimball Anderson. I'm the CEO there. Thank you for having Lee Trotter, Dr. Trotter, is the director of our trauma services, and he's actually been going around to all the communities with this presentation. He's been involved in this for 8, 10 months, and we just would like to let you know what our, you know, kind of—

Why don't we have you come up front, if you would?

Well, I'll have Dr. Trotter come up.

Okay. And then Roger, you want to just raise your hand back there? Mayor Rogers, our pediatric service line champion.

Yes, 2 of 4 of my kids were born in Timpanogos Regional.

They are the cutest. I'll tell them that.

I won't tell the other 2. Well, they're the ones that look like Becky.

I want to thank the council for giving us a few moments to, to go over a few things so you You know what's going on in your community and also what we would like to pursue within the county as far as the needs. What I'm going to talk to you about is trauma, particularly for children. This process started perhaps 4 years ago with a Dr. Monroe who's a pediatric intensive care specialist who then started a pediatric intensive care unit in Timpanogos and then kind of set the framework from the medical perspective. And then recently I was brought in, and my specialty is pediatric trauma specifically. So that's kind of where I come into the mix. And just to give you an idea— well, just first of all, disclosures. I'm independent. I'm part of Surgical Associates. I have been hired by Timpanogos's their, their trauma director, but I have staff privileges and I operate at all the facilities. So I'm kind of— I'm into it for the kids.

Could you define trauma? In my mind, I'm thinking of a car accident, a child run in. I mean, what's your definition?

Trauma is any kind of injury that's sustained. It could be trauma from a car accident. It could be trauma from a fire. It could be any kind of injury from chemicals. that is inhaled to stab wounds, gunshot wounds.

So it's not necessarily a disease, it's more of a—

Well, we consider it a disease. I mean, it's a problem. But no, trauma is just what it sounds like— anything where people get hurt. You know, for kids in particular, our biggest things are falls, whether it's from a height, bicycle, you know, motorcycles, and then Orthopedic injuries, fractures from, you know, all the above. So we, we take all comers.

We did activate our trauma protocols when the chlorine leak occurred in Linden a few months back.

So yeah, it's a great, great question.

Thank you. I just wanted to—

Yeah, it's— so when we look at the county, there's, you know, a little over 600,000 people As you may be aware, and we're growing. Orem is kind of like the heart of the growth. It's kind of in the center right off the interstate. We're— we can almost consider this county the kid capital of our nation. About 40— over 40% of our population is under 18, whereas the typical would be under 20% for a typical community. So we're over double. Provo and—

and I—

everyone says they're the fastest growing. I've looked this up. We have 2 in our county, 2 of the top 10 fastest growing communities in the country. Vineyard is number 1, 2 years running. Provo and Orem, for some reason, get combined and they're number 10.

And that's just looking at this That's because Provo wants to come along our coast.

They do.

I get it. Yeah, I get it. So we've got a lot of children here, and, um, and there's no slowing down. Um, from a trauma perspective, uh, when you look at it, it's, it's the number one cause of death in all age groups 45 and younger. You're looking at trauma Number one.

Number one.

When you have over 100 traumas per year, the American College of Surgeons, which collects, you know, all the data for our country, says you guys really need to consider a formal trauma center when you're over 100. We're somewhere in the 300 range. Most of these are shipped to Primary Children's via ambulance or Helicopter. When we look at all the transfers, the state has actually started a pediatric initiative trying to keep people, appropriate patients, at home. We spend nearly $10 million a year on transfer costs, and half of them go home within 1 day, 1 to 2 days. And there's like 10, 10 or 15% of them go home from the ER, so they get a helicopter ride into And then sent home. You know, so there's a lot we can do locally. This is not to be real busy, but to show you the age groups on top, and then kind of what— where the deaths— where are all the deaths occurring. And if you look, you know, this area here from 10 to 34, between unintentional injuries or trauma, suicide, and homicide, that keeps— that takes a major chunk. And so this is, of course, this is national data, uh, and here locally we may not mirror this exactly, but it's getting pretty close. We had started— we're having more penetrating trauma every year, uh, that this, this county didn't have. Um, again, we talked— we have a lot of transport costs, um, that are unnecessary. Um, it's a burden financially to families. When children are taken care of remote from home, whether it's time off work, hotel costs, food, and all that. It's just better for families if they can have their care locally. And the survival is increased when kids have access to quicker care. Now, when you look at the— just so you understand where our world is, Trauma hospitals are leveled. Number 1 being the most resource that's available. For us, for kids, that would be Primary Children's. University of Utah is also a level 1. The IHC Hospital in Murray is a level 1. But those latter 2 are adult hospitals. We only have one trauma hospital in this state, primary children. It's the only one. Then as we go down, Level 2 is a very capable facility. That would be, um, Provo.

Utah Valley.

Utah Valley. Utah Valley is a Level 2 adult, and so most of their children are sent north. And then we go down to Level 3 where, you know, you've got an emergency room physician, you have a surgeon available, but they don't have all the, you know, the needed resources as a Level 1 and 2. Level 4 is currently, uh, Timpanogos would be a Level 4 at this point where there's care, but generally speaking, it's expected that those patients are transferred elsewhere to a higher level of care. Since I've been here at Timpanogos, we're functioning more along the 2 to 3 range now. We, we're slowly pushing our capabilities up. I'll get into that in a minute. And then 5 is, you know, would be a small facility out on the outskirts. When we look at mortality rates, if, if you're treated at a more specialty center, you can look at survival rate improving by upwards of 25%. And these are real numbers, you know. So when this is my family, I like the idea that they go straight to a higher level of care to begin with and not get bounced from a lower, you know, level of care and retransported. Complications rate drop significantly as well. When you compare adult trauma centers to pediatric trauma centers, what you're You do well at what you do well at, and we found that you don't do well at both typically. Adults do really well at adults, and kids do well with kids, but combined centers don't have the same abilities to give that additional care. Improved access is really important. You want to be— you want to have, in our world, availability of an operating room within Wow. From the time you hit a hospital door. And that's, that's, you know, something that we need in our county. When you become a trauma center, there's a thing we call the halo effect. Not only do you do well at trauma, but you do well at everything else because all the departments within the hospital have to step up their game to accommodate the most severe injuries. patients that occur acutely. And so the whole hospital gets better. You typically have expanded services from neurosurgery, urology, radiology, all these different subspecialties you need to be a trauma center. Without that, again, that's part of that halo effect. And then when you put it all together, the cost of care is reduced. When a community brings in a trauma center, it gives— there's a clout that kind of goes with it. There's, you know, it's just part of a community halo effect that would affect, you know, Orem and our areas. Then rural hospitals have access. At Timpanogos, one thing we just put out was a telemedicine. So there's multiple hospitals that they can— it's, we call it a robot, but it's, you know, it's like FaceTime. And I can see the patient, the patient can see me, and then I can zoom in right into their eyeball, literally, and as clear as can be.

Mm-hmm.

And so I can do examinations, you know, remotely. And, and so, for instance, a hospital like Moab You know, they can have access to our expertise right then and there. And so that's something we just rolled out at Timpanogos. And so there's multiple hospitals that are already utilizing this. One of the things to consider is when, when you transport patients, your ambulances are out of service. They go to Primary Children's and they're gone for half a day or better. And now we We need them locally, but they're not here. And so the transport affects our local EMS capabilities as well. And it's just something to consider. And I've heard this from the fire chiefs. They like the idea that our ambulances stay put and they serve our community. Some of the smaller communities, when 1 or 2 ambulances leave, they have nobody. And it's really put them in a bind. So, And then locally, you know, we always have a vested interest in, you know, what's going on locally. You know, we've had the chlorine incident, we've had— we had a carbon monoxide incident, and now we're working, you know, with carbon monoxide with church leaders on how do we fix public buildings to make them safer for our community. You know, I want— I'd like them to do do it worldwide, but, you know, we can affect our place right here. And so we're working with them to get that. When we look at, you know, why, why would I suggest Orem and Timpanogos? When you look at it where all the growth is, and I don't know if it's just serendipity, but the location of Timpanogos Hospital was beautiful. It was perfectly placed. It's right off the interstate. It has great access For this, the whole corridor where all the growth is taking place. We have a helicopter pad, so we've got access to the air ambulance as well. And strategically, it's actually a very, very nice location. So whoever was involved in that, you guys picked the perfect piece of ground to do that. So that's Timpanogos. Again, this— why, why would I suggest Timpanogos as This has been in the making for many years, and now we're finally kind of getting to the point where we need to push forward. The state has been notified already of our intentions of being a Level 2 pediatric center. That's a big deal. That's a real big deal. The resources to go into a facility to make that happen is substantial. I'm not here to ask for for any economic help, but if you want to provide it, we'd be happy to accept. That's not our point. The point is, is that part of the state requirement is that there's community support for such a center. And I believe Timpanogos is a great location to do it. It has the resources, that we need to do it. I'd like it— when it was originally built, they stopped at the 4th floor. We were able to go up 2 more floors and expand to some 200 beds, which would be a wonderful capacity as we need.

Doctor, with— aware of the neonatal and the pediatric intensive care unit, does this kind of give us a platform to build on to do this Pediatric trauma center?

It is the platform.

Okay, thank you.

It was the foundation. I, I have to— This was always in the plan? This was in the master plan from, from the master. And, you know, yeah, this, this has been in the making for some time. Now, I'll tell you this, this has never been attempted in the state of Utah to pull off a Level 2 trauma center outside of Primary Children's. It's never been done. And I, I, you know, I've had a lot of eyebrows raised. Can you really do it? Is it something that should be done? Should Tippenogos be the hospital to do it? I can't answer all those questions for you. Personally, I believe it is. I'm coming from a level 1 pediatric trauma center out in Virginia, so I, I understand the Primary Children's environment. That's where I was raised. That's what I do. And Timpanogos is a good place, and it doesn't act like a small hospital. They do things from open-heart surgery to complex spine and joint surgery to shoulder replacements.

They do that?

The whole thing. So it doesn't function like a small community hospital. If you were inside, you wouldn't know that it was 120 hospital. So, but yes, the pediatric intensive care unit is the foundation, the medical, and now we're bringing in the surgical element. We have orthopedics already online. We've got pediatric surgery online. We've got ENT, facial plastics, all for children. The one thing that we need, kind of our last little block, is pediatric neurosurgery. Those are rare people to find, but we've got, we've got 3 online that, that would like to perhaps move here. So I think we can do this. Um, and so I'm really excited about what, what we can do. I, I believe we can pull this off, and I think it's going to be good for Orem. You guys, you know, are, are citizens. You know, I didn't do it for my kids. and my grandkids, that we've got a good place to go. This is not to compete with Primary Children's. That's not how the trauma system works. It's a graded level. We can keep probably 95% of the children that are injured and provide them equal, or in my opinion, perhaps better care than Primary Children's in the sense that it's more of a community. I know my patients. They get my cell number when they go home. They call me directly. In big, big level 1 centers, you can't do that. So it's a lot more personalized care. So we're trying to, you know, provide a different experience, but not one in a competitive nature. We want to keep our kids in our community, and those that are not appropriate— than we need to send on as the trauma system has been organized to do.

So to that point, since the first time that you and Kimball and I spoke, Primary Children's has announced an expansion of a new facility out in West Lehi. But in talking with Kimball, your hospital feels good moving forward with what We're looking at, and that this will be a benefit to our community.

This will be a benefit to your community in this county. Now, I don't— I can't speak much on the Lehigh Hospital. It's supposed to be a 66-bed hospital, and some of that's psychiatric. I don't know what their intent is, but it really doesn't matter to me or to what we're talking about. If they wanted to be involved involved in trauma, you know what, again, it's about good care. And if they want to provide that resource and it works, I'm all for it. I have talked with the pediatric surgeons from Primary Children's and have invited them to come join us, you know, be part of this system. We're not trying to be competitive in that. We want to complement that system and just be, you know, part of the trauma. But yeah, whatever they're doing doesn't affect us. We would, we would be up running full blast probably before they get a shovel in the ground.

Sure.

You know, so I don't know what they're doing.

And in our discussion, one thing that Kimball has mentioned, I think that we have a copy of here, is a possible resolution that we could pass as a City Council in support of what you're proposing.

I would appreciate that. It's, it's, again, the state is requiring us, or anybody that goes to the next step, has to demonstrate community support. Their definition of that is just what you brought up. You have an example that came from Mayor Wright in Payson.

Sure.

Who came up with— again, it's, it's, it's not specific to Timpanogos. That's not what we're asking you to sign on and say, yeah, we bless Timpanogos and that's where it should be. It's the fact that we need pediatric trauma care for our community.

Sure.

And I believe that this has been— this, you guys are— and I say you guys, I haven't been here that long. This is 10 years late. This should have been done a long time ago. And it wasn't until about 4 years ago that Timpanogos Welcome to MyTeleconferencing.

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And as we have seen and have heard, our county is set to grow to— from 600,000 to 1.6 within 30 years.

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Our county by, you know, 2 additional counties coming online, and, uh, population-wise.

Mr. Mayor, all that's noted in the Payson City's resolution—

Yes, yes.

Were they thinking it was going to be built in Payson?

No, no.

So they, they have another hospital, MountainStar does, in Payson. So they have one there and they have one in Orem.

But this is a, this is a resolution for trauma center In the county.

In the county.

That's what I'm saying.

This is a county issue. It just— this is a unique body.

They will play into that as well.

Yes, they, they all recognize the need. Payson is one that said, we have our ambulances leave and we're, we're bare. We don't have anybody for 2 and a half hours or more. It happened like half a day depending on traffic.

Yeah.

And they're saying they're getting hurt by the lack of local care. You're a unique body in that Timpanogos happens to be within your city, and it's something that you all can be very proud of.

And we are. Timpanogos Hospital is a tremendous asset in our city and does a lot of work, does a lot of work with our police and fire departments, and is a great benefit to our citizens. So we're proud and happy to have Timpanogos Hospital as part of our community.

Mayor, a couple questions.

That resolution, Tom, was adopted by the South County Mayors Association.

Okay, okay.

So when Dr. Trotter—

And also the County Commission. I've had a visit with them and the County Commission has also signed off on it.

And your request is that we pass a similar resolution, correct? Yes.

Or identical resolution.

Or similar, whatever.

So the question, we've got the Orem Hospital. Listen, they don't do trauma. trauma for children. So this doesn't impact their business at all?

No, the— in fact, uh, you're referring to Utah Valley?

Yes.

Or Community Hospital.

Oh, that's the surgery in that is, is just disappearing. I, I don't know what they're going to do, but there's— with, with the Spanish Fork Hospital being opened and everybody else beefing up, I don't know what's going to happen to that.

The plan was to close it down. I don't know if that's—

Yeah, they were going to close it, and then it was— so I, I can't speak to that, but they, they have nothing to do with trauma. The EMS system would never take a patient there.

Okay, and then just one other comment. Welcome to Utah. My son-in-law went to VCU.

Oh, is that right?

Okay. And we love these kind of jobs. You know, have all the doctors move to Orem and all the nurses and all the people that are going to work in there. We'll find houses for them here.

Beautiful.

So we want them all there.

Terry's got 10 you can buy from.

He is, yes. Real estate. Yeah, no, it's, uh, it's a great community. It's growing really fast, and, and I think we just need to keep up. Even if, you know, we're— we've been collecting data for, uh, 6 months. We're required to keep it for a year before we can even apply to the federal the, you know, the national people to come in and review us. So we've got about 6 months to go, but it will take— to mature a program, you're looking at probably 3 to 5 years to really, you know, make— to have a nice mature program.

How many employees— I'm sorry, how many employees would this hire, additional employees?

Well, I've already hired because of this about a dozen.

We're looking at about 50 to 60 additional people.

Yeah. Yes, sir.

Now, what level is IHC in total?

They're adult Level 2, and they, they do keep children, uh, but they're— if they keep more than 100 children a year, they're mandated to, to become a Level 2 pediatric center, which they don't want. Nobody, nobody's interested So their census per year is they typically keep about 70 to 80 kids reluctantly.

So would they support this? They'd love to have us over there, would they? Or would they not support it?

My partner— okay, like I say, we're independent. My partners run the trauma over there. Dr. Cook, my partner, is the medical director at Utah Valley. I'm trying— I don't understand, to be quite honest with you, The whole HCA, Intermountain Healthcare, this whole debacle thing. It's just very interesting to me, more so on the Intermountain Healthcare side. And I, so I'm staying out of the arguments. That's why I've gone up to them and say, hey, come and be with us. Let's, our community is in dire need. And so, My partners are supportive of it. They're just, they just don't know what's happening with Intermountain Healthcare. And so there's some corporate interest in this that I'm— I just want to stay clear of it.

Are there insurance issues as well with IHC where people couldn't be insured here?

Well, generally speaking, and again, that's a complex question. Generally speaking, Generally speaking, trauma, you go to the nearest facility. EMS takes you there. You don't have a choice. And most insurance companies will cover it. But I can tell you from personal experience that Intermountain does not— the Blue Cross and the Aetnas and that, they do not accept that as in-network. So the patients get a balance billed. If Blue Cross says we're only going to pay $50,000 for that stay and your bill's $150,000, you get balance billed $100,000. That's what happened to me personally.

Yeah.

With a child that fell on a skateboard. And he was Blue Cross and they went to Utah Valley. And we got a $100,000 bill. And so our system Accepts them as though they're in-network.

Okay.

So, and to take that financial burden off families.

Even if IHC is not part of this, it doesn't matter.

That's what we do. And that's been an AHCA, you know, blessing to our community is they, if they come through our ER, they've been accepting it as in-network.

We have an agreement with all of the physicians that practice there too. they don't, can't balance bill for out-of-network.

Okay.

And that was quite an interesting discussion that I had with the physicians. But in the interest of the community and the patients, if they don't have a choice where they go, then we don't want them to be penalized financially for that. So interestingly enough, When we— when I first got here a few years back and recognized that this was a serious need in the community and recognized the growth trends and everything, when we started down this road, the first thing we did was open up a PICU, a 4-bed, okay, 4-bed pediatric intensive care unit. I recruited Dr. Monroe, the intensivist. I recruited Dr. Brunson, who was trained, fellowship trained, St. Louis Children's Hospital. And as soon as word got out that we had this capability, these other surgeons, these other specialists came to us and said, we want to work there because we think there's a need for the service in the county and a need for an alternative. So we've been able to grow just by— I mean, it's kind of like build it, they'll come concept. You don't usually do that in business, and we can't get away with that a lot. in the hospital business either. But that has been the effect, that we've been able to recruit a number of specialists. In fact, we had, I think we had 27 surgeons operating last year that had never operated at St. Thomas, partly because of this. Now, interestingly enough, as soon as we opened our PICU, Utah Valley opened theirs. They said they were gonna open a PICU, 'cause ours was the only one outside of Primary Children's. Initially, and then they opened a PICU. And I'm not sure what they're going to do at the Lehigh Hospital, if they have, if they have trauma services there or not. But I'm like Dr. Trotter, I think it's good for the community, whatever. And I think the competition does that just a little bit. Not that we're in a competitive mode, but it keeps everybody kind of on their toes.

Has your PICU been pretty busy? Has it been full?

Actually, today we're overflowing into the adult side. And not only that, but it also, it also feeds the regular pediatric units because pediatricians in the community are confident that we can take care of kids that they admit if they go south. And Dr. Monroe, who takes care of the medical problems with them, is so good to manage those kids that the community pediatricians, their lives are a whole lot easier. Interestingly enough too, when, when Yusa Valley opened at KPU, American— they shut down all pediatric services at American Fork Hospital. And I mean, I know why they did it, it was a strategic move, but the physicians up there were really upset and they came to Timpanogos and said, this is where we want to be because you guys are taking care of kids and we like what you're doing. And now pediatric department is one of the most vibrant, engaged medical departments that we've got.

Have you fundraised for this addition?

No, no. This—

we're happy to build it and we're happy to pay taxes to our community with the services that we provide and the property that we own.

Jeff has a question.

So 2 quick questions. So the PICU, is that still at 4 beds or is that Is that expanded? It's still at 4 beds. We have plans to expand if we need to. With most, most of your traumas don't need critical care. They're there for a short time.

Yeah, or it's a very short period of time.

Kids are so resilient. The kids that we've got there now are— one was an overdose. We had a little kid down in Payson that was run over by the truck. coming down on the sidewalk. And then we've got a couple of kids that are just really, really sick with medical issues. But most trauma kids don't need the PICU. We've got plenty of room, I think, until, like Dr. Potter says, when, when we need to, we can expand. We purchased the orchard to the east of us, 6 acres, and we can expand over there as well.

The other question has to do I have a question to do with the ambulances.

So do you have your own ambulances?

No, we don't.

How does that work?

Because I know that's a concern now with our first responders.

So Orem City covers all the EMS for responding to Timpanogos Hospital.

So we do transfers in, we do transfers out. based upon the request for services.

But to Dr. Trotter's comment about keeping the kids here, from a fire chief's standpoint, it's keeping my firefighters here.

So when you say that, you're talking about keeping them here in Orem rather than Salt Lake?

So when I—

when we do a transfer up to primary or the VA or whatever hospital it is, I'm not just losing I'm losing a firefighter for a substantial period of time. And an ambulance.

And an ambulance, advanced life support unit. So having this type of facility here to keep— it's good for the community, it's good for our kids, but it's good for our firefighters and the community for fire suppression and EMS response too.

And as well as from a grandfather, having a trauma center here, it's good for parents to be close to their children here because when you put parents up in the primary children and they got a family down here, they're going back and forth and it's tough on them. So it's a—

for me—

Thank you. So the location is really kind of an intangible blessing and a benefit that you really don't take into consideration until it happens to your family.

Yes.

And it's right here in your neighborhood instead of— There's a big difference. There's a huge difference.

And that's one of the things that I looked at when I put the proposal together. First of all, did the data and the research, talked to parents of families, you know, of kids that were transferred. And that was the big— there were 2 big issues. Number one was the inconvenience and disruption to them to have to be up there with one of their kids, or the guilt that comes from not being able to be up there with them. And the second one was the additional financial burden.

Those were the 2 big issues. I never knew how I could drive until my daughter was life flighted for 10 billion miles to Primary Children's.

We won't talk about that.

Anyway, uh, I'm amazed how fast a minivan—

You know what, I've driven that fast too trying to get to my kids.

So yeah, we want to provide a service there that It is not a step down from Primary Children's. That is not the intent. And I mean, Primary Children's has been a state icon for 100 years. And it's, you know, the feeling is that if you don't go there, you didn't go to the right place. And that's not the truth. That's not the case. We can provide very, very good care. And again, For perhaps social reasons that are even better than what you can get up there.

Well, all the specialists that we've attracted have come from Children's.

Yeah, it's a lot of them are the same docs that are now coming down here. So, but I appreciate your, your time on this and consideration.

We're really excited about it, and I think we can pull this off and really have a facility that, that's gone way beyond what I think Well, I appreciate Kimball's vision on this and your vision on it, and it'll be a tremendous asset for our families and our residents of our community.

So you're the lead on this, right?

Yes, sir.

So who do you work for?

Well, I work for myself. I buy his time and then he buys my—

he—

I'm acting I'm really as a consultant kind of director. So I— my, my role in this is to make sure that all the, all the gears that are out there all come together and that this engine hums and that the kids get the care. We're responsible for making sure that the care that's given is appropriate. We review 100% of the cases, everything that's done. We sit as a committee. And and make sure that if there was something that perhaps didn't result in a bad outcome but still was suboptimal, it needs changed. And so that's the oversight I provide. 35 years of doing it.

You came from Virginia?

I came from Virginia, Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters, Norfolk, Virginia. We were a level 1 center, so I was Like, we'd be primary children's. So that's where I came from. Trauma's been what I've done for over 3 decades. You know, there's a right way and a wrong way. I tell everyone I work with, that means it's your way and my way.

I'm just kidding.

Dr. Trotter, is this going to cost a bunch of money?

Well, it is going to cost a bunch of money. I mean, you're talking of millions of dollars a year in addition to what's already being spent. But, you know, we've looked at the volume, we've looked at what it's going to cost, and we're going to get corporate support. But I think we can pull it off, you know, with what we do here. And that's not increasing prices or anything. We can actually— my goal is to lower the cost.

Yeah.

That's what happens when you— Yeah, when you, when you start doing it and that's what you do, the costs actually come down some 15%. So I, I think that, you know, the money's already being spent. In fact, the state's already upset. They're spending $10 million, literally $10 million a year on transport costs that don't benefit anybody. And there's $10 million right there. And I'm not— I'm I'm talking about, you know, 20% of that maybe.

So I just, I would add that we are starting a foundation, a nonprofit foundation that will benefit families of kids that are in the hospital. Either they don't have insurance or, you know, they need other help and support. And we are starting to do that.

We did have some of our good citizens from Orem with their name on that. possible withdrawal. It'd be good to have them move that up.

Don?

Peter?

Tom?

Yeah.

Tom.

Oh, Tom.

Oh yeah, I see now.

Peterson Tower down there.

I know another Peterson. So, Council, if, if it's okay, I— my suggestion would be that we draft a resolution similar to what has been provided to us already, and then we put it on your agenda for the next council meeting. We work with Dr. Trotter, sending him your support for this.

I would like to make one simple comment about that. The resolution wording could be whatever you would like. This was just an example. We've gotten similar papers from physician groups, supporting physician groups and others that have reworded it in their way.

I think this fact sheet becomes a great template to mix it up a little bit.

Thank you.

Sounds great.

Let's do it.

Well, thank you very much, Dr. Hodge.

We appreciate it. Great to have you here.

All right, let's go ahead and move on. We have Laura Lewis here and Cody Hill. It's LWRE for Prison presentation on financial sustainability.

Yes, if I may just—

Sure.

As Cody and Laura get set up, for those of you that, uh, I'm not sure when exactly we did this, but it was probably 5 or 6 years ago.

2014.

2014. So understanding that finances are a huge part of what we do on annual basis. We have, and we continue to monitor year over year where we are going financially. What are some of the pinch points? What are some of the opportunities? But every once in a while, we think it's important that we look at the bigger, broader picture, the long term. So back in 2014, we initiated the development of what we called the Long-Term Financial Sustainability Plan with Lewis Young, which is the city's financial advisor. About 6 months ago, we thought this is probably a good time for us to freshen up that long-term sustainability plan and frankly see where we were in 2015 and where we are today, and if in fact we have essentially achieved or completed what we thought we might do. Back in 2014, a lot of the conversation we had centered on University Place and what would happen there. And there was an opportunity for us to refresh a number of businesses along University Parkway and the like. And some of what our financial future was predicated on Which was just those very things. Well, now we're in 2020 and we're looking at what the future holds for us and how can we appropriately plan for the future. We connected— reconnected with Laura and Cody and we asked them to update this financial sustainability plan. And they are here today to give you an overview as to that effort.

Thank you.

And how things look today and where we are going into the future.

So welcome.

Thank you.

We'll turn the time over to you.

Okay, thank you. For your new council members' benefit, first of all, welcome. Um, it's, uh, nice to see you and have you here serve your community. I know it is no small task. I'll give you some idea of who I am and why my thoughts on this might be of some importance to you. I've been in the public finance and municipal services industry in Utah for 30 years. I hate saying that because I don't feel as old as I am. I keep wanting to believe I'm not as old as I am. But it's a great career. It's been an honor to see, you know, our— the cities within our state grow. I primarily serve cities. I work with some water districts. I'm sorry, Some sewer districts, but, you know, my core clients are cities.

Any Utah County besides us?

Yes, yeah, we work with Vineyard, American Fork, Lehi. I'm having a brain tap of any others.

I did a—

We help North Bend do stuff with Pleasant Grove.

Yeah, so we work with a lot of cities.

Mostly it sounds like North Bend. Any in the south?

We did a fiber financing for—

Woodland Hills.

Payson and Woodland Hills financed theirs with cash. They actually paid cash for theirs. Anyway, so this gives you an idea of who I am and my experience. I have a degree in finance from Westminster College. I have more securities licenses than I need, in my opinion, but it's not what the industry that I work in needs. So with that, that just gives you a little bit of a heads up of who I am. My colleague Cody has done a lot of the heavy lifting on the modeling here. He's been with us for 5 years now. What's the name of the firm? Lewis Young Robertson Burningham. We sound like a bunch of lawyers, but we're not.

And just so the council knows, we have gone out On occasion to competitive bid for financial advisor, and we have a contractual relationship with Lewis Young today to serve as the city's financial advisor, and they have been a wonderful partner with us for many years.

All right, so with that, um, we'll run through— we've got kind of the PowerPoint presentation and And then there's a detailed Excel model. We'll get into a little bit of that, not too much into the weeds. But I will let you know that with, you know, Cody has spent a lot of time putting a lot of data into this model. We have reviewed it on a couple of occasions with your administration, with finance to make sure that, you know, if something looked out of whack, it's like, ah, what have you we entered the data wrong here or something like that. So we've probably spent a lot of time perfecting this. There are a lot of numbers, a lot of data. Could there be, you know, an error here or there? Possibly, but we have tried to, you know, make it as perfect as possible. So we've got a few—

oh, go ahead.

And I just want to add, we've had tremendous support from staff, more so than any Comprehensive financial sustainability plan that I've done. I feel like the staff and us have gone through this a number of times, fine-tooth comb, and very confident in the data. So also kudos to staff for tremendous support. This model wouldn't be nearly as keyed in as it is today without them.

And kudos to you as both staff and elected officials in looking at this. Prior to the economic decline that we all experienced experienced in 2009, 2010, most cities really had a mentality of budgeting for a year, and that's about how far they looked out. I mean, it was good now, okay, stamped, let's go ahead for the year. And, you know, then we all saw what happened with, you know, businesses people thought would never go out of business frantically going out of business. Put a lot of economic stress on cities. And the credit rating agencies that rate cities became keenly focused on, you know, what are cities doing to do longer-range plans. And some of those rating agencies now have very specific metrics that when we go for a rating, they test what they think is going to be like, you know, the worst-case scenario. What kind of, you know, declining GDP and what is that going to— how is that going to impact you and the city? Resilience to look through that again. So it's, uh, it's great to be able to go, uh, you know, with the city and say, look, they have this long-range financial plan. Um, uh, it's something they really like to see. So with that, we'll, um, uh, we've got an update to the original model. We've looked at the historic revenues. We brought all of those historic revenues from 2014 through your audits of 2019 with both expenses and revenues as well as the projections now from now going out for 20 years.

Is that how long we went out?

20 years.

20 years.

It's important to understand that the purpose for this, it's not going to be a perfect predictor of your future. There's no doubt about that. It's a guide for your budget planning. to align your financial capacity with the level of service objectives. And it's important for you to understand that what we've done in this model, we have not sought to increase level of service. So whatever number of, you know, police officers you have now, we're seeking to keep them employed. Whatever fire office— fire officials you have now, we're, you know, We've— the model adjusts for, you know, increases in— when I walked in, you were talking about salaries, right? And benefits. The model does adjust for that, but we're not bringing in a whole bunch of new personnel. And I think when you see how that might increase over time, you might be a little bit stunned. And so I want to make sure that you understand that we're not seeking in this particular model to increase those levels of service. That gives you, you know, the goal here is to give you some idea of, you know, if I make a certain budget decision, if I decide to bring on 5 new police officers, right, and we were to plug that in this model, you'll say, oh, hmm, look at those blue bars rising above the green line, right? And what can we do about that? As you go through this model, I would— Remind you to think about, think of it in terms of what can I impact and what can't I impact, right? You cannot force people to shop. You have done a lot to make sure you have a great place for people to come and gather and shop and do business in University Place, but you cannot put a gun to people's head and make them shop. They want to shop online, that's their choice, and that's something you and the state than others are going to have to grapple with. So as, you know, Cody's going to walk through the model and then we're going to talk in more detail about what can you do in terms of sales tax. Are you, you know, able to push the needle on that anymore? What can you do in regard to property tax or other things just to give you some ideas of what you can and can't control.

So Laura, just a question for you. In working with mayors of other cities, For example, in talking with Mayor Wes Morlan of Eagle Mountain, one of his—

I work with them.

One of his great concerns is trying to bring in sales tax revenue. They have a couple of companies that are moving there, Facebook and Tyson Foods, et cetera, but they're not great providers of sales tax.

Not at all.

And they don't have a lot of businesses to provide sales tax revenue. sales tax. So that's a real concern for them. There are other cities that I work with that, you know, are decidedly underserved by the retail world and areas that they can receive additional revenues. So revenue is a really big item that they're trying not to just sustain but try to move up to achieve. And so it's just interesting, I'm only bringing this up, that a lot of cities actually are facing a lot of stress as far as increasing or sustaining their revenue models.

Right, that's very true.

We're facing that same stress.

Yes, you do have the benefit that, you know, a lot of cities don't of having a great retail center. I happen to live in Murray and I haven't done like store-by-store, mall-by-mall comparison, but from what I see down here at University Place seems to be very much in tandem with what's happening at Fashion Place. And it's sort of like the super regional place to shop. I mean, I used to go to Fashion Place sometimes and to Cottonwood Mall. Well, that's now a field of dirt, right? And yet it is rare that I go to Fashion Place that it is not really pretty busy. Because again, it's well, where else am I going to go? So I think it's going to be harder for the Eagle Mountains to attract places because the stores kind of want to be where that synergy is. You know, so it'll be it'll be interesting to see how you know some of those cities tackle that. So you do have a benefit of having that. But again, what you'll see is from the last time we did the study until today, you'll see great growth in sales tax. Right? And it's going to be easiest in your mind to go, oh well, sales tax is just going to keep on growing, right? But I'm here to remind you, in those last 5 years, you've had auto dealerships that have expanded. Is that going to be repeatable? You've had University Place come online. Is that going to be repeatable? You've had the, you know, the fastest growing city in America in Vineyard that has no home building places, where are they coming to buy their wood and whatever else? Well, they're coming to Orem. And they're going to be built out in—

Partially to Lynden as well.

Yes.

Home Depots and Lynden.

So, you know, some of those things that are really driving your sales tax, again, from a long-term financial sustainability, you can't just sit back on, you know, your laurels, if you will, and go, oh, it's just going to keep on going. So kind of keep those things in mind.

So I'm going to give you a little preview of the model itself, and then we're going to just kind of show elements of the model and then go into big takeaways that we, we saw looking backwards at your historic revenues, the mix of revenues, revenue sources, as well as your expenditures, and then how we project things going forward. So here is just the, basically the dashboard of the—

That is not there.

Okay.

Why, I don't know, but—

Let's go. What was that fancy Windows P, right?

Right on top of that.

There we go.

Perfect.

So this is the, uh, we kind of just refer to as the dashboard, and it shows, uh, historic from 2009 going all the way to, uh, today, fiscal year 2019 or 2020, and forward through, uh, 2040. And these are all impacted by, um, So this is the assumptions that went into that pretty happy picture, as Laura put it. So if we were to go to zero annual property tax increase through Truth in Taxation, so no property tax revenues at all—

No property tax increase.

Yeah, sorry, no property tax increase. You're going to get additional revenues through new growth, but if you just Yes. If we have no property tax increase at all, it doesn't paint a very pretty picture. But all of these cells are plug and play. That 7.89, that was just in there because that gets us a balanced budget in year 2040. But you can play around with revenue assumptions here, property tax new growth, sales tax new growth, franchise fees, growth rates, as well as personnel costs. This assumes 1% salary cost of living adjustments, 3% salary merit increase, 5% benefits increase. So this is basically the main— we call it the dashboard where you can plug and play and see how different revenue and expense assumptions impact your total budget going forward. All of these line items are your various categorized expenses, and then that green line is your revenues going forward. So we're going to jump back over to the presentation and show our main takeaways.

So the sales tax formula, if you've been reading the news in the past, you know, 6 months, you may not know what the formula is, but you do know that the state is struggling to sort of You know, figure out this new economy that we have that is more service-driven than sales tax-driven. The formula is 50/50 share currently. 50% of— you get 50% of point of sale, and all of your point of sale goes to the state, then they redistribute that. They redistribute that based on 50% point of sale and 50% based on your population. So again, from a sustainability standpoint, you need to think about What is your population doing relative to the population of the state as a whole? If, you know, if there— you look at Vineyard, what might happen in Bluffdale, Draper, what's happened in Claremont.

Saratoga Springs.

We work with a lot of high-growth cities, and while Orem has seen, you know, a lot of growth, when you think about, you know, your landmass of where people can build homes versus other areas of, you know, the state surrounding you where they have to build homes, that may at some point, you know, become a concern for you in terms of that sharing formula. Right now you are a net provider to that formula, but it's just something to be aware of. The revenues fluctuate quite wildly, but certainly they fluctuate Quite significantly with the economy. We'll show you a graph of that in a moment. And again, if you've been reading the paper, listening to the news, the state tried— maybe not in the best way possible, but the state tried to change that formula. If they change that formula, there could be implications to you that you don't have a lot to say about. And here's, you know, one example. Even without that change occurring, a year-ish ago, so not this current legislative session, but last legislative session, there was a, you know, what was perceived as a not very big tweak to the sales tax form. And they gave a—

Exemption.

Yeah, thank you for the word. They exempted large machinery and basically, you know, the fiscal analysts said this will have no, you know, big implications on people. Well, guess what city has a mine in it that's along the Wasatch Front? Oh, can we say Kennecott, right? Well, they— that one change was, you know, the cause of a— South Jordan is the only city in Salt Lake County of, you know, 8 or so that we looked at for them quickly, that saw their sales tax revenues decline. Everyone else's percentage went up a little bit less than it had previous years, but South Jordan got whacked in the head because the state decided to give this exemption, right? So again, from a sustainability standpoint, if the state comes back with something else that goes service-based, I don't know whether it will have implications on you or not. You just need to be aware.

Thank you.

aware of it, and if that were to happen, we'd want to all rejigger and go, okay, what do we think is going to happen with this, right? So be aware of that. I touched on the fact that the historical growth that you've had, that you'll see in a moment, is not likely to be— I think the revenues you're currently at will be sustainable in terms of sort of on an average day. They will fluctuate with the economy. But what I don't think is the trend line where you've seen something like— was it 8.7%? I mean, it was a— it's a large growth figure, right? If you look at the last 5 years, that kind of continued growth is not sustainable. Does that make sense? All right.

Did you have a 3.5% in your model when I was looking at your sales document?

Yes.

Yeah.

You think—

you think 3.5% is sustainable, or you think I—

it might—

Or you still think it'd be leveling?

I think it's maybe a little bit on the aggressive side, but I, I certainly for 5 years, I— from what I see, I think it's defensible. So as you can see, um, uh, oh, let's see what happened in 2009 and '10. Oh, let's see, the economy didn't do very well, right? So you can see, and, and again, if you kind of keep this in your head, right, that funky curve shape in your head, kind Compared to— well, we'll look at franchise fees in a minute when— and it's pretty much like, you know, steady as she goes. So certainly it's more volatile. When the economy gets bad, this is going to hit your revenue. As you can see graphically, it looks like from 2007-08 where you hit a high of close to $20 million in sales tax revenues, in 2010 that was down by almost $5 million. And when you think about that That is, I mean, you all remember the— most of you remember the days, right? Oh my gosh, what are we going to do, right? And then you see the growth that you've had in the past 5 years. So, you know, to your point, I think it's still going to keep growing. I don't think it's going to keep growing at that trajectory, right? Yes.

All right.

Do you— well, do you see an imminent recession on the— I mean, I follow a lot of economists and they love to say we're in a real recession.

the days of— I just saw, you know, the stock market go down 2 days in a row rather significantly because of the fears of what coronavirus is going to do. I've listened to a lot about that.

Mm-hmm.

The, you know, one of the concerns I have is, you know, with that, I mean, they were talking today in detail on NPR about, you know, we haven't seen the impacts of that yet. I mean, we've seen it sort of in the stock market, but in terms of what goods cannot be made because components are not going to be coming out of Korea and China. That, you know, Apple's saying we won't have parts to, you know, make our iPhones. Well, I won't tell my kids because they'll be, you know, the sky is falling. But that could have some pretty negative impacts to us. The, you know, the bit of a worry I have is that, you know, Unlike the previous— I mean, again, I'm not predicting recession, please don't quote me on that. But unlike with the previous recession, the Fed had some tools in their toolbox. They could lower interest rates. We don't have a lot of way to go lower. I mean, they can lower some, right? I mean, it's not like it's, you know, at zero.

But they are planning on doing one in March.

Right. But we—

But at a certain point, you're right. Yes.

Yeah. So, um, I'm not predicting recession, but I think this coronavirus thing is real and we don't know the effects of that yet.

Slowing at least.

Slowing is probably a good— yes. And this is, oddly enough, this is one of my favorite slides because I think secretly I wanted to be an educator, although I love my job and I do get to educate a lot of people.

I'm—

I've been stunned throughout my career how often I will ask people, even, you know, in the know, people that are sitting in your seats, so do you— do your property taxes go up when your property values go up?

No.

A lot of people think the answer is yes. Oh, my house, you know, was worth $400,000 last year, it's worth $450,000, I must be paying more taxes. I mean, that really is what people think. And if you live outside of Utah, in many places, that's correct. In Utah, beep! That is not correct. Due to this thing that was— I don't know why— legislation was put in place called Truth in Taxation. I want to say it went in place in 1997, but I can't swear to that.

1997.

The whole idea behind truth in taxation was to keep a level revenue to the city, the exact same dollar. So think of it this way. If there's not one new house built, not one new garage built, not one new store built in Orem City, but property— all the other property values go up just because life is good and we have inflation and whatever, the city will get the same dollar. Same dollar amount that it had last year to live on this year. That means the tax rate goes down so that you generate the same dollar amount. And people say, oh, but yes, we get to capture growth. Yes, you do get to capture growth, but guess what comes along with that new growth?

Expenses.

A new house, a new office, a new Walmart, whatever. Exactly right. You've got more police officers. You need more fire. You've got to have another street sweeper. Whatever it is, right? It doesn't come along without those related expenses. So, you know, to try and live off of the revenue that you had ever so how many years ago while you're dealing with inflation becomes very problematic. Many cities in the past 10 years when we've done a lot of these have really had to to grapple with that, quite frankly.

I have a question. Do you think we could ever get inflation adjusted where we're going to have to hold a Truth in Taxation every year just so we don't lose buying power?

I have heard it discussed legislatively.

It's a topic of discussion every legislative session.

Yes. Do you actually think that we'll get some? I would hope so.

In recent years, it has been a topic of conversation But it also has always been tied to a look at the redistribution of the sales tax formula. So potentially moving away from the 50/50 split, which is a very dangerous box to open.

That's pretty heavy. You know, it's interesting though, in the last 28 years, the property tax I pay on my house has gone up by $500. $1,500 total, but that's not to the City of Orem.

Exactly, we've got to apply it to that effect.

Yeah, that relates to the school district but not to the municipality.

Yes, sir, that's exactly right. Now, if you'd have told me that I would ever be quoting Howard Stevenson—

You would have fallen over.

I would have fallen over. When we, when we prepared, um, a presentation to give at the Utah League of Cities in town about sort of how taxes work and inflation, whatever, we ran across this quote and I thought, wow, no kidding. So Howard Stevenson was, uh, is a tried and true truth in taxation, um, head—

headed up—

I don't know if he's still the head of the Utah Taxpayers Association. And, um, he stated that for the record, Utah Taxpayers Association does not oppose Absolutely every $10 increase over the certified tax rate. Because in my world, it sort of feels like that. In many cases, local governments are recouping inflationary losses. Certainly that is not always the case. But he does recognize in this statement that there may be a need to, you know, recoup inflationary losses. And in a minute, you're going to be— Stop, don't go there yet. If you read ahead, you're going to be stunned that if you had kept the same tax rate in place, if you'd have just had a Truth in Taxation to hold the rate the same as it was, right? Not— I mean, in Laura land, it would not be viewed as an increase. Now the way the state forces you to advertise it, you have to advertise it as an increase, but you're just trying to maintain the rate. You're just trying to keep up with inflation, right? If you had done that every year for the past 10 years, you would have $1.4 million more every year in your general fund budget today. If you had kept it the same rate as 20 years ago, when my oldest daughter was born, you would have $3.9 million more in your budget.

Each year.

Each and every year.

So people would have had a tiny increase, but it would have been 1% to 2%.

Oh, but we're talking dollars. I mean, again, the state forces you to advertise in terms of percent, but I'm here to tell you that, you know, if and when you decide that you need to tackle this issue, you need to really be mindful about educating your constituents in in terms of dollars. So yes, you have to do what you have to do for the state, right? But you need to think about it in terms of dollars, and the state makes you advertise in terms of percent. And one of my favorite, and again, I don't know what they'll ever do if they decide to do this, at one point in time, Riverton City decided that they would join the Salt Lake Civil Leagues, the police service that the county provides.

Unified.

Unified Police. Thank you, Unified Police. And they said, okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to go to— so the city has zero tax rate, and their tax rate is 0.0000, right? And so they had a tax rate, they dropped it to zero because they effectively, you know, said, okay, citizens, instead of us charging that, providing police service, we're going to let Unified Police do that. So if they ever need to raise their tax, What are they going to do? What did you all learn in math? Can you divide by 0?

No.

No.

So if you try to come close and divide by 0 by saying, oh, let's take it out 5 decimal places, 0.00001, well, that means it is a 10,000% increase in your taxes, and it might be a dollar, right? So the theory of Percentages, I believe in my heart of hearts, was meant to make people go, ahhhh, right? It's this sort of panic thing. So if you decide to tackle this, it's going to be very important that you think about it in terms of dollars. What does that mean to my average citizen? We've got some information about that for you. So here are your historic property taxes.

But can I say something? I mean, the Utah County is trying to raise our taxes and Yes. And they're trying to— and they don't say dollars, they go 69% increase. And they, they do it to sensationalize the absurdity of it without educating what that means in real dollars. And I had a really good discussion with a gentleman. He just looked at me and I said, but remember, the county is only this percentage of this, and it's only this little. And but people, they don't like to educate that because it doesn't help them get signatures.

But to some degree, yes, that is correct.

In part, this conversation relates to wanting to strategically approach these issues differently in the future, because what the county has found themselves doing is every year they've kicked the can, kicked the can, kicked the can. So rather than—

Having a day of reckoning.

A 4 or 5 or 7% increase on a year-over-year basis, It's now a conversation about 100%, now back to 69%. And there are referendums, and people are thinking, how can you go from, you know, ground zero to 69% more? Well, you probably needed to be doing it incrementally over the years, but you've led it to the point where now it's this sensational 69% number.

And you're right, that is what the, you know, the signature gatherers like to, to see that. So it really does take a fair amount of education. I mean, first of all, you all have to understand how it works, and then secondly, you've got to figure out how to get that, you know, that message out broadly to your constituents.

And I will say that the newspapers like to sell, so they'll put the headline of—

Yes, they will.

The biggest percentage instead of saying— I mean, eventually in the small print they'll say, oh, it's $5 per month or some sort of Okay.

So years ago, it was when, you'll remember, Ricky Horst was in South Jordan and they needed to advertise. In my head, it must have been for a property tax increase. Anyway, he, you know, said, okay, what do we have to do? Follow the law, follow the law. And they put in their half-page ad or whatever that prescribes the percentage increase or whatever. Well, the city took out a full-page ad On the page opposite of that, no one said they couldn't, right, that said what this means to you in terms of dollars is X, right. So again, you know, we've got a lot more social media now, but it really is going to be important that you educate people. This is the historic property tax revenue line. You'll see there's a bump in 2015. We did a refunding of the general obligation bond for your roads that year. It had an odd bump because we kind of pushed the savings forward and you were able to capture that property tax. So kind of level that out in your mind. It was a unique event, if you will. Okay, you know, it's sometimes people like to be number one and sometimes they don't, but in this instance I would argue that you probably don't Really look great being number 9 or 10. This is how you compare to your, you know, the cities that we've selected in Utah County relative to your tax rates. And, you know, we've got some data as to how your rank has declined over the years. Now again, your Howard Stevensons of the world would go, oh, you know, Yay, you've got the lowest taxes and you've been able to still keep your doors open and whatever. But again, think about that from a sustainability perspective, right? Is this sustainable long-term? So compared to the cities in your area, the tax rate that we're showing at the top is just each individual city's tax rate. And how you come So when you compare to those, you are 34% of what Vineyard charges, which is the maximum. You are number 9 out of 10 in terms of those rates. When you add in the total tax rate, so now we're taking into account the, you know, water districts and mosquito abatement districts, school district, county, et cetera, et cetera. Total tax rate, you are 10 out of 10. The message here is that I would argue, certainly philosophically, I mean, again, I know you've got to educate constituents and that's never an easy thing, but philosophically you have room to raise your taxes, right? I mean, you, your rank has deteriorated over time. Do you have that?

So, like a $100,000 house, give me a number to understand the difference between Springville and Orem, or $200,000, you know, just pick a number and—

Okay, I'll have him do the math because we have to— so what we'll do is we've got in here a slide that assumes that your average household is about $302,000 in terms of the market value. That is reduced by 45% for a primary residence, and then I'll have him do the math to give you an idea of what that difference is.

Okay.

Yeah, but 10 years ago they were number 6. 6. You're the 6th highest property tax of the 10. And in 1999, you were number 7. So you've gone from 7, 10 years later, 6.

And with last year's small bump with our police and fire, are we still number 10?

That includes it.

That includes it? Yes. Okay. So, you know, the message there is that you were 6th, not, you know, middle of the pack-ish, right? And it's just deteriorated because you haven't been making increases in your property taxes.

Have you done the calculation to Terry's question?

Well, it's—

I just did it too.

Go back. It'll be one—

it's, uh, because you picked a good even number.

Springville would be— this is on the bottom, total tax rate— $1,211 because you're the $100,000, and then $943 for the home. Okay, so difference of a few hundred bucks a year.

And that's—

but that's total tax rate. That's not what the city—

Oh yeah, yeah, we're talking—

so the Springville comparison, I was thinking $2 and everything else you threw in.

Yes.

Yeah, I do that for just the city.

$127, $378. I mean, I think that this conversation about property taxes is only a piece of the overall pie, right? But when we as a city look at things that we can control versus things that we can't control, it becomes a significant point of conversation. Because while we can't control people's buying habits, we can't control the economy, we can't control whether or not the construction industry is going to grow the way that it has grown, we can't control how often you're going to replace your Honda.

Right.

We can, to some degree, control our property tax rate.

Yes.

And that's the— and that's part of the conversation that we're wanting to have with you is we can subject ourselves to the economy and everything that is associated with it and hope things work out. Or we can, to some degree, insert ourselves into the overall conversation and try and affect change to some degree. But if we just let the market dictate or drive, what has happened is the market has driven and we've gone from number 7 to number 6 to number 10.

Right.

So how's that working for us? If we allow the market to continue to dictate and drive the conversation and stay out of the conversation, We are on a trajectory that's going the wrong way.

And I would argue that, again, city councils statewide for years have avoided that because it's not as fun, right? I mean, it's, it's not going to be the funnest part of your job, but again, you're elected to, you know, help the city to be financially sustainable, and so at some That's something that I, again, I think you do need to grapple with.

Okay. So Orem, this is a $305,000 primary residential, so you get the 55%.

And you all give the same 55%?

Every primary residential does. And so you're going to pay $213.37 for Orem. And then if you're in Vineyard, same house, same deduction, it's $634.

Per—

versus the $213,000.

That's just the city's portion, correct?

Yes.

And I, and I will, because I'm proud of what our staff does, that $213,000 gets you parks, gets you libraries, gets you a cemetery, gets you a fitness center.

But where—

but without a good sales tax, it wouldn't do that. Oh, it wouldn't.

Darn right.

Absolutely not. So that's, that's the point we're discussing. Right.

Sales tax take, we're being told— Something after.

Yes.

Correct. And also note that while property tax, you're not getting any benefit from appreciation or inflation, that's baked into the sales tax.

Right.

So maybe you put this in there, I don't know, but once the CDA comes off the mall, then that property tax is gonna go up by 3 times from the mall. So it's a 20-year program, and at that point it jumps up by 3 times.

Yes, that is correct.

That's how far away?

Well, 18 years.

Yeah, we're— I'd say 17 years.

It jumps up for that project area. For that project area, yeah.

Okay.

Jeez.

Let's see. So I mentioned I mentioned a minute ago to think in terms of, you know, the dollar per average household. So your rate decreased, again, because we've just been educated on if you do nothing, your general operations tax rate, and that does— so again, that doesn't include the rate for the general obligation bond, it's specifically dedicated to that debt payment. Your general operations rate went from 0.001 to 0.0012. 0.00098. What that means is by not, you know, holding the truth in taxation, to keep it at the 0.001, that your citizens all save a big whopping $5.54 a year. And if you seek to capture those little increases every year, that's again how you, you know, are trying Trying to be ready for, um, to deal with the impacts of inflation.

Essentially to do what everybody thinks is happening.

Yes, well, again, what I think most people think is happening. Um, this is an important point. When you, again, and it's sort of a just think about how your citizens think about it. When they hear, to your point, when they hear 69% increase, right? If you ask most cities, or most citizens, excuse me, What portion of my total tax bill goes to the city? You will either get a blank stare or they'll whip off, oh, half of it.

Or, I mean, they've—

I mean, they— I mean, it's true, they do not know, right? I would not know were I not in this business, right?

Yeah, we have 5 taxing entities.

Yes.

That comprise our property tax.

And I was stunned to, um, see one, how low the counties is here because it's sort of abysmally low compared to most counties. As well as I was stunned to see how high the school district is. It takes something like— I took notes—

65%.

I think it's above 70%. And again, what we looked at, we don't have this up in the graph, but we can. So was it 10 years ago? Did we look at 10 years ago? So 10 years ago, if you look at a— if you think of, okay, my The total tax bill is a pie chart. 10 years ago, the school district was taking, you know, 70-ish, 68-ish percent, and the city was getting 13% of that pie.

I thought we were 15.

You were 15 then, you're 13 now.

Okay.

Again, so the message is your citizens are still paying, they're paying more taxes, you're— you, city, are getting less. less of that total tax bill. But that's how they think of the tax bill.

Like I said, my tax bill is up $500 in 28 years.

But what's going for us is down. That's exactly to your point, Mayor.

In honor of my former colleague on the City Council, he would want to know if on your, your sheet where you can make assumptions, your assumption sheet, did you put in additional money coming from UIA or Utopia if they were spinning off cash?

We adjusted it so that the UIA— excuse me, Utopia's debt goes up by 2% a year, right? But they are now paying you that 2% increase.

So you'd assume that we won't get any more than that or less than that?

That is correct. Correct. That is what we assume.

But we have the ability to play with that. I assume that's one of the numbers that our finance people can play with. And we also Sam, listen, that one's for you.

There was a point where UIA required a loan from the city relative to operations. That has been— is being paid back or has been paid back. We no longer have that going out either. So again, when you're educating citizens, right, it's going to be really important to Because if you say, oh, a 10% increase or whatever the number is, right, they think of 10%, oh, I could do that. My tax bill is $2,000 or whatever it is, right? So I could do 10%. Oh my gosh, that's $200. So you really have to educate them again. And I think the best thing to do is to try to drive it down in terms of dollars per household.

So this keeping up with what the costs are is not really A huge amount at one particular time, right? But if you let it go and you don't pay attention to it, then it becomes a big number later.

Yes, it's been years ago, but when West Valley City years ago built a rec center— it's probably been 18-ish or so years— and they opted to go through Truth in Taxation to raise the the tax rate to cover for that rec center. And you might say, like I did to them, well, why don't we just do a GO bond? Brilliant idea, except for in a general obligation bond, you cannot increase the tax rate under a GO election for operations. And they said, look, we— our citizens are in support of this facility. We're going to do one tax rate so that we can cover operations and the debt. But they haven't had a tax increase for years and years and years. And so they put this tax increase— I don't remember the percent, but let's, you know, for sake of discussion, let's call it 40% or something. But it was a big increase, right? I was at the public hearing with a bazillion people, you know, flowing out into the hallways, and I was really surprised to hear how many people said something to the effect of, why— I mean, to your point about Utah County— why did 60% all at once? Just do a little bit at a time, it'll be easier to swallow, right? And so the city now quite regularly has a truth-in-taxation just to maintain the street.

So really, I mean, what we will continue to show you is we believe that the cost curve that we are on is unsustainable with the revenue That we expect into the future.

Yes.

We have expenses that are going to well exceed revenues. Much of that cost, as you will see, is driven by people. It's driven by staff compensation. What we also experienced last year, though, was an interesting conversation because you raise taxes, You did it for a specific purpose. You identified a need. And when people got looking at it from the perspective of not percentage but amount, then they said, that's pretty reasonable.

I don't even know what the percentage was. And I mean, I'm on the council.

78.

So you as a council continue to have these conversations where you're wanting to to say, and you are saying, look, public safety, for example, is super important to us. It needs to be a priority. But the concern that I have as a manager, and Nicole and Brandon have as finance folks, is, yeah, but we're creating a path here that I'm not sure we're going to be able to afford that commitment into the future. But if we go out and we talk to the public and we say, Look, we're just looking for a little incremental increase year over year so we can maintain that quality of service that all of you have come to expect. And it's going to be about a buck a month, uh, and we can maintain the good police and fire programs that we have. We can retain the personnel that we have because we're paying them commensurate with the market, so on and so forth. Very consistent with conversation you're already having, I think the people of Orem are very reasonable and they'll say, yeah, I get that. I get that. It's going to cost me $10 more a year so that I can have the same level of public safety that I have had for the last number of years. The conversation changes when all of a sudden we start, for example, talking about utopia, or we talk about something that maybe not the entire community thinks we need, like we're going to build this mega skate park and we're going to charge everybody for that mega skate park. Most people are not going to relate to the skate park, but they will relate to police and fire and quality parks and a well-maintained cemetery. And collections in the library and and so on and so forth. And so as we started looking at this as staff, we thought we've got to head this discussion off at the pass where we continue to say, well, we'll deal with it next year, we'll deal with it next year, because we're going to find ourselves in the same spot the state of Utah is finding themselves in right now, and the very same spot Utah County is finding themselves, where we're not having this conversation about We're having conversations about hundreds of dollars.

But it's a worthy discussion because you can't have your expenses going up and not have your revenues to cover those expenses not going up. And at a small portion, it's doable. So I think it is something that we ought to address now rather than later.

I mean, the very police car we budgeted for last year was $40,000. This year it's $46,000. Exact same need. Granted, it's a, it's a different vehicle than it was last year, but the $46,000 vehicle is the cheapest vehicle we can find to put our police officers in. That, that's completely out of our control.

Yeah, I mean—

So we've got to meet that need.

I've been told by a couple of other cities that they're seeing costs go up in water and sewer improvements something like 12 to 16% a year, which is stunning.

Jeff?

Even—

So yeah, I loved the way that you started this conversation by saying you've always been or always wanted to be an educator.

And I think really that's what we want to do is present it in those terms instead of, you know, like you're saying, the percentages are scary. But I think, you know, most people, when you present it in a manner of, you know, so that they can understand it like your personal home budget, yes, you know, or your personal small business, if your expenses increase, you've got to You've got to make that up somewhere. You've got to prepare for that. And I think that would be a huge difference.

Do we still have that presentation?

Yeah.

So we have a presentation. Again, I'm happy to come down and give it to you and you can say, oh yeah, parts of this might sell great to our constituents. But effectively—

It's not that we're trying to pull something over on them.

No, no, no. We really are trying to educate them.

Yes.

And this is what we're trying to do to be good stewards and fiscally responsible and save for the future.

Prior to the small tax increase, I would argue small tax increase, you just had, I don't think you've raised taxes for 30, 40 years.

40 years.

40 years. So in this presentation we had a couple of, you know, we didn't name any cities by name, because we were giving it to the whole, you know, cities in the state of Utah. But we looked at, you know, some silly things. What was the price of a car 40 years ago? What was the price of, you know, a home 40 years ago? What was the price of bacon 40 years ago? And I mean, all of them have gone— Right? Oh, what is the city living off of? What it had 40 years ago.

Well, except the public is saying what the mayor said. My taxes went up $500.

Right.

What do you mean you're not living more? So that's the education that I think you're referring to.

And one point to that, when we did the CDA with the mall, and there was a referendum, we didn't try to fight the referendum. What we tried to do was to educate the public what the referendum— what the CDA would do. And when they learned that, they They stopped signing the referendum, they stopped carrying it, the referendum went away. A question I have for you is how much more time are you gonna need? 'Cause we're running out of time.

I'll try to speak. Okay, there's again the scary 7.94% increase.

So maybe we won't ask or have discussion if you can stay with your presentation.

The last paragraph is $1.08 a month, okay? If you do that, Every year, and again, some years will be easier than others, some years you might not be able to, but again, this model is if you do that, then, you know, that's the kind of trajectory you're going. Your citizens will pay instead of, you know, the increase will be $12 a year, and in roughly 10 years it's going to be a total then of $24 a year, right?

Still—

Is this the inflationary one?

Very affordable.

This is the—

with the 7.94% increase every year. Okay, but this— because this year we had that public safety. Yes.

So is that—

It's in there and then it would go up.

But that public safety, that public safety does not address this. That public safety was an increase in level of service.

Yes.

So if we were to do additional public safety officers and things in the future, you'd have to go higher. That wouldn't be incorporated.

That's what I'm going to go into speed talking mode. Franchise fee revenues come off of gas, electric, telecom, and cable. They historically are very flat. You're charging the most you can charge. We're seeing some decrease obviously in telephone and cable as people are cutting the cord, but you don't see the kind of increases that— you remember the sales tax going, right? Because people in a bad economy, they still want a warm home or a cool home in the summer. So you can't do a lot to impact those revenues, quite frankly. Here are the total general fund revenue sources that we just talked about, property tax, sales tax, franchise fees, and other revenues. Other revenues are typically tied specifically to another service. Ambulance, right, ambulance has a cost with it. Building permit fees has a fee that goes through it. It doesn't come in to be used for general purposes, if you will. So this is a look— when we made this pitch in 2014, I reminded those that were seated in your seats then that ideally the financial world would like you to have a well-balanced stool, either a 3-legged stool, 4-legged stool, right? We've sort of broken that here, you have a 4-legged stool. And the idea was we made a similar, maybe not as passionate of a pitch, if you will, because we knew that you had sales tax that was going to be growing because of those things that we've talked about. But to try to make that property tax piece of your pie a little bit bigger.

Hmm.

So the good news is, which it is good news, you've had great sales tax. Tax growth. But if you keep letting this deteriorate, Jamie's right, you're going to be looking at a Utah County— you know, you or someone sitting in your seats in future years are going to be looking at a big increase. This is a breakup of, you know, other. Other is a big pot, so we thought we'd show you what comes into that, but move along, we're in a hurry. Your general fund expenditures. Here's something I think is Really, really important. Your expenditures decreased from their high, which is 2010 when the economy was great, right, to a low in fiscal year 2014. Your expenditures went down by 19%. Because one of the first things your constituents want to say when you're going to have any property tax increases, just do more for less. Tighten your belt. Be more efficient.

Right.

Those are all the things you're going to hear. And I'm here to tell you, you've already done that. 19% decrease from 2010 to 2014. Measuring from 2010 to today, again, it's still gone down by 3%, your expenditures. Look at that bottom bullet point. Over that same time, you have decreased expenditures by 3%, inflation has gone up by 19%.

That's right.

So that's a pretty good belt tightening, right? I mean, maybe there's more you can do, but it seems to paint a picture to me that you've done a lot of belt tightening already.

All right.

Zoom.

The city's only increased their expenditures by 3% or less.

It has decreased, decreased.

We're spending less now than we were in 2010.

In the different parts of the budget, there's the government side and then there's enterprise funds.

You have to look at that.

Our total budget is up a lot higher.

So here's your expense mix in your general fund. Salary is 54%. You can see you've cut those down. By 49% in your general fund.

By 5%.

Benefits are about the, you know, roughly about the same, and your operating expenses have gone up some in percentage. But to Jamie's point, that slide just shows the same thing. If you have constituents or if you yourself are of the mindset of we've just still got to tighten our belts more, we've just got to figure it out how to tighten our belt because I don't want to have that property tax increase, Sorry, this is right here. Okay, thank you.

This shows 0%.

Right.

So if you're of that mindset, you look at salaries and benefits, those are about 70% of your general fund.

Benefits are growing dramatically.

Yes, those are paying—

We have those scheduled at 5% increase annually.

And we can play with that.

Just medical trend, by the way, is generally 7 to 10%.

So when you think, okay, how can I tighten the belt anymore? You can't cut— I mean, well, you can, but as you can see, operating revenue is pretty darn flat. Debt service is almost minuscule. Capital is pretty low. If you want to move the needle, you're going to have to do something with salaries and benefits, and that means— that equates to lowering Your level of service. That equates to hard, hard discussions about going from 3 or 4-handed fire trucks to 2 or 3-handed fire trucks. So do we keep the library open as long? Do we have as many police officers per 1,000? That's the kind of thing that will move that needle if you choose not to proactively do something with property taxes. Um, what should we just talk about? You can increase efficiency. I argue you've already done a lot of that. You don't You've already cut a lot of costs, and the thing that you can influence on, you know, on moving that revenue needle is your property tax, and I would argue that you have some room for that to grow. We can—

Laura, one quick comment. But the real impact is the time factor. So in other words, if you do it and you do it Every year, the time factor, you stay up with it. If you don't, the time factor works against you and you get further in the hole.

That is so accurate, Mayor.

Another way of looking at it is you're getting in— your city gets in a time machine and goes back to 1980, and that's where it works and earns a paycheck. And then it comes back to 2020 to pay for gas, pay for rent, pay for groceries.

Yeah, so you're exactly right.

Shoot.

And cities that have historically, I mean, for the longest time, you know, kind of prior to the economic crisis, Clearfield City, for whatever reason, they just decided every year they were gonna do truth in taxation and maintain their rate. And I have been to meetings, not recently, where like 2 or 3 people show up. I mean, it really has become sort of a, expect a non-event. Because again, they get the message out, we're just— we're not raising, you know, we're just keeping that rate the same because otherwise the rate goes down, we have less money to live off of, we're just keeping the rate the same. And it has seemed to me, and what I've seen in West Valley and other cities, that they have— West Valley hasn't consistently done it every year, but it does end up being a little bit more of a non-event. Now, you live in a We're a unique county. Maybe that's too optimistic. But again, the increase is going to be very low by, you know, dollar amount standard. And you've got to figure out how to get that green line above those blue lines.

So before everybody goes and buries their gold in the backyard, we have the highest, probably highest I know that's one-time money, I understand all that. I have a degree in finance, but we're not destitute yet, right?

No.

Okay, thank you.

No, no, no, but—

I don't want anybody to be panicking, I don't want people jumping on roofs.

No, and that's a very good point. You, I mean, financially you have a very high rating, your view is very conservative, and that's all well and good. Again, this is to try to get you to think out that long term because those surpluses If, you know, in that year that we showed you that the sales tax went from, you know, whatever down by $5 million, those surpluses get eaten up in a hurry.

Right.

Prior to that recession, the state would only allow cities to maintain reserves at 18%. After that, they raised it to 25% because they saw sort of the need to prepare for that very rainy day.

if you will.

So, but that is a very valid point.

But I also will qualify in saying we do have significant surpluses, but those surpluses are compartmentalized. So we have a water surplus, a storm, a sewer, a transportation tax, and we cannot, for example, without a formal— we can do this, but without a very formal process, we can't take and transfer it to the general fund. In some cases, we don't have that opportunity. Statutorily, we're required to spend money, for example, on transportation. We cannot take it out of the transportation fund and put it into the general fund.

That's correct.

So there are, there are situations where, yes, financially we have a fund balance. But some of that fund balance is restricted in a way where it can't be used for other things.

Plus, I think that's the very reason you talk about it now, is we're not desperate. We're not in crisis mode. Let's plan now so we don't get there.

So, and, and I guess what I'm— I guess what I also would like to represent to you, and what Laura and Cody and others are saying, is you have kind of set a path that you want to Follow and priorities that you want to keep. My intent would be on trying to chart a course with staff that meets those priorities, but we don't necessarily see it as achievable unless we do something with our property tax. Not in a very dramatic way like we've talked about, but—

I think that's a good point.

But this year, for example, as we head into the budget season, I would anticipate that's going to be part of the conversation. That this incremental increase is going to be part of what we are going to bring to you. And my suggestion to you is we're not going to bring this to you to hire and fund all these new things. Now we may include things that are new and different. But the reason we're going to be bringing this additional adjustment in our property tax view is to maintain the path that you have set. I think that's why it's important to educate people now, not wait till July. Well, and try to convince them. Yeah, I mean, we, we haven't, we haven't, uh, prepared the budget yet. I mean, it's not But if I were to express to you intent, it would be our intent to present to you a budget that will include a Truth in Taxation hearing in August of this year, just to keep up with the priorities that you've set.

So Laura, anything else?

Is that it?

I mean, again, we— the model is dynamic, and if you wanted us back to say, well, what happens if, you know, for these— all those cells, we can, we can do that, and you can see the expense lines and the revenue lines.

So a quick question, and then we need to let you go, but have any other cities requested that you do the same discussion?

Yeah, we're doing this for American Fork, for Ogden, Vineyard. Those are the ones that we're working on right now.

American Fork was last week, Vineyard was 5 weeks ago.

Okay.

Ogden's in the process.

Yeah, well, we appreciate it very much. It's, uh, important to have this discussion, and so thank you.

We thank you.

And I think as we get deeper into the budget process, for Councilmember Larey, it might be a good idea to invite you back just to kind of share more of the—

what is It'd be nice to plug in real numbers. What does it do? I mean, I think, I think the data is very important for us to make wise decisions based on real data.

I would agree with that.

All right, well, thank you.

Thank you.

Uh, we're gonna have our meal now, and, um, uh, Debbie, could we have you lead us in prayer over the food?

Thank you, Father in heaven, for the opportunity to gather as a city staff and council, grateful for the privilege we have to serve We ask a blessing upon this food, our nourishment and strength, and thank those who arranged it for us. And we're grateful for the opportunity we have to serve, and that we'll use wisdom and judgment as we move forward. And we say these favors and blessings in thy holy name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

Oh, really?

North Temple, 93 West.

Oh, nice.

You've been there for like 4 years?

No.

You know, running 1 and 2, like that.

What's that?

Have you ever been to running 1 and 2?

Um, like the right one, like right off the track. So there's another one right in the hotel.

So if we could have everybody's attention, we want to devote some time to Jason on the census. And so we need to do that now. So if we could have everybody quiet and Jason will go ahead and give 10 minutes to you, and then we'll have 10 minutes to go over our agenda.

Okay, thank you, Mayor. Today we're just going to talk briefly about what we've been doing over the last several months to get ready for the census that's coming out. April 1st is Census Day, so we're just going to go— Grant Allen is going to go over some of the things we've done. Jenna's going to hand out some things that we've kind of handed out.

We've created a bookmark.

If you have a cell phone, you can queue on that QR code. Go to our website and kind of see what we've done. We also have these signs out, you'll see in English on this side and then we also have Spanish on the other side. And then we also have a Spanish and English website link as well that gives people questions and answers to the census. I will turn the time to Grant who will kind of go through that and then we can address some questions if you have them.

All right, so we formed a census committee in August of 2019. We met monthly Since then, just preparing for getting the word out. The committee has included ecclesiastical, city departments, educational, businesses. And so really what we focused on is just some different key ways that we can get the word out to everyone and how important it is to take— to participate in the census. So a couple Coming around, there's a third sheet utility. We put together a utility flyer that went through the whole entire month of February. It was inserted in all the utility bills, and that went out in preparation for that. It's double-sided in English and Spanish, just like this sign. We set up 2 websites, one in English, one in Spanish, with some marketing materials that the Census Bureau has provided. We have this sign around City Center, we have one in the library. Those bookmarks that you all have been given are at the library counter in the 311 Center so that there's a little QR code in there you can scan it with your phone. You don't have to have a special app now. iPhones, I think Androids as well, scan it and open the webpage. It opens up to our city webpage for these, and I'll show you those here in a minute. Where we have some just regular flyers and half-sheet flyers that we'll be sending— taking out to some businesses. We've identified some mobile sites that we'll visit once census people can respond online or in person. We're going to identify some mobile sites to go out maybe for a period of time during the day, high-traffic areas, Costco, the mall, and just be present there so people can ask questions. So we'll be sharing those flyers and doing some mobile sites later in March. We're doing a social media campaign beginning in March. We'll be doing Census Saturday, so there'll be some messaging on Saturdays. on the city's Facebook and other social media channels just on census facts. Just relevant info to keep people reminded and preparing for it. And then we're going to be doing an email to the schools, principals, and possibly some flyers in some, in some schools. We've organized a census kickoff meeting March 26th at Orem High School. We're going to have some booths and just another place where people can get information about how to respond and just know what— why it's important. So I'll show you here. This is form.org/2020census, and it has some information here. So if you want to leave, you can know there's flyers from the census, uh, why, you know, just quick facts of why it's important.

Um, when will it actually be taken?

So, so the information that they've shared, the Census Bureau has shared, is as early as March 12th, information is going to be mailed out about how to respond. This will be the first year that people can respond online. And so they're actually tiering that out, I would imagine, either by zip code or some way through the mail so that the online servers are not overloaded necessarily 1 or 2 days. But so they've identified that the information on how to respond will be tiered out through the mail, spread out through the, you know, March 12th through the end of the month. And then as soon as they respond, I was trying to find the status I still haven't been able to find, but I don't know what date that you can begin responding. I'm going to try and figure that out so that we can put it on the website. But when you respond, you're supposed to respond as if April 1st to who lives in your household or where you yourself live.

Population.

And so then if you don't respond once you receive information on how respond. Within a few weeks, you're going to be sent a reminder information. And then if you don't respond by the middle of, I think, April towards May, then they'll send you another reminder. And then after that, a census taker, one of the census workers, that they will come to your home and just find out some more information.

Other—

we, you know, with UVU and we've We've met with Provo, tried to coordinate some efforts on how to reach some student populations. Census takers will actually be reaching directly out to universities to try and do a specialized kind of focus on identifying students.

We can have just these 3 pretend like they're campaigning again and do all the census taking.

No, no.

Will you explain why it is important?

Yes, so I was just coming to that. So there's this fact sheet that was developed from George Washington University Institute of Public Policy that was shared. So in 2016, Utah received $5 billion through 55 federal programs from the data from— and the census count from 2010. Now, some of that is spread out over years, so— but this is on—

$5 billion.

Okay. And it actually shows the breakdown for all those federal programs per dollar and different eligibility criteria. The other thing that happened in the 2010 Census is by the end of— I think there's a date on— I can't remember the date on the Census Bureau's website, but once they receive preliminary counts, there's a cutoff date where they'll send official count numbers to To the states for if there's any redistricting or extra seats that are available. That was what occurred in 2010 in Utah. The 4th District was eliminated.

As far as LDS missionaries, you're not counting them because they're not in your home, they're on the field?

I believe so, yes. I think that's the case. So the other important thing that's been really— that's online being new this year, The census is really focused on some confidentiality and specific things. There's already been some scam and phishing efforts by that have been appearing, so through online or other channels, or hey, here's what census respond to this. But this is we've got this on here just to cut through that. There's another page that we're going to create as it gets closer. As it'll get closer to when someone potentially could come to someone's home, there's a specific page that Census has released to say if you're not sure they're from the Census, they don't have an identification tag or something like that, they can actually call a number and verify the Census taker's information.

And if you're illegal, that's a real concern if you fill this out.

Correct.

That was a really big concern last year. So we're going to add the Spanish page. There's some extra things on, on, on that. There's no citizenship question and that it's important for them to respond, you know, regardless of their status. So this is the same, kind of same, just took the same information. But there are some different materials specific to Spanish that the Census Bureau has provided. So we're going to be grabbing some of those. And also just a link to this actual— there's a dedicated Spanish page for the census. I don't speak Spanish, so I can't— so we've had to have some extra help to generate this material.

So in the past I've received an actual, like, thing I have to fill out. Will that not come? It'll be all online, or what will you—

Correct.

So the first form you'll receive that I've seen so far is that it will direct you I think they're encouraging a lot of people to respond online this year, but if you don't respond online within a certain amount of time, they will send you a paper form this year.

But they are—

I think they're giving people a chance to respond online first and then would send that through if you've not responded within a certain period of time.

Once you complete the form, they will stop reminding you. So once you— they know that that form was done, the census, they won't be sending you anything You won't have somebody come to your home. So, I mean, if you don't want people to come to your home, it's best to take it up front, get it done, have it away, and then stop fighting.

Are we close to being done? We're about out of time.

Yeah, I'm just going to show you the timeline that was kind of refined. So this is the timeline that is on our website.

My other question is, I've seen long versions and short versions. Is it just going to be—

It's just a short version.

Any questions?

Okay, great.

Well, thank you, appreciate it, Grant and Jason. Let's go ahead and move on to our agenda for this evening. Um, we'll go over the upcoming events there in the council meeting. We have the Walter C. Orm Award being given to Adam Robertson at the Serra, and the Beautification Advisory Commission will be giving us their annual report.

Thank you.

Our consent items are approval of meeting minutes February 11th, 2020, and appointment to the Transportation Advisory Commission of Jeff Whitlock. Jeff is a resident, obviously, of Orem, graduate of BYU, software developer, very interested in his city. His comment is that he wants to help manage growth in a balanced, forward-thinking way, maintain and expand green space, improve air quality, education, and traffic congestion. Anybody know Jeff?

Okay.

Everybody okay with appointing him to the Transportation Advisory Commission? Okay.

A few of you brought some brownies for Adam when he gets here. Okay, they're in the fridge. I'm just— Stephen has them.

He'll be bringing them.

Okay, thank you.

Uh, our scheduled items tonight, the first is a hearing on our fiscal year 2020 budget amendments. Uh, Brandon Nelson is our presenter. Anything you want to say? No, pretty normal, mostly, uh, Okay, then our second item is a site plan approval for Stewart Retail Addition located at 21 West University Parkway in a PD-12 zone basin. Uh, any comments on that?

Uh, they're just taking up part of the existing Barber Brothers. I'll show you.

You're the chosen one.

Okay.

No change.

All right, do you have anything you want to mention as far as moving forward, going forward next week?

So, in 2 weeks we're going to have a cell tower that's going to be on the tracks west of the depot.

All right, good. Jamie, anything you want to mention?

I'll just mention that we have 12 days remaining in the state legislative session. There continues to be a number of bills that we're tracking. One of them relates to land use that we discussed with you a couple of weeks ago. There's a new bill that the mayor has been Have you talked to the county attorney about this, Bill?

I, I have not, but I've spoken with others.

HB 300, which kind of allows the county attorney to, uh, and maybe Greg, you can speak to this better than I can, but potentially allows the county attorney, if he deems a specific charge to be, um, not life-threatening or What is it? Do you know how he refers to it?

I don't recall what his language was.

But it allows him to send a Class A misdemeanor down to a justice court to be essentially heard—

Of his choosing.

As a Class B or Class C misdemeanor.

So, it can be a justice court in any part of the county? That's my understanding.

If it occurred in Orem, the idea was they could file it then in Utah County Justice Court.

But it does allow them to do it anywhere in the county.

I think the language is the county justice court.

County justice court.

Right.

So anyway, we have concerns with that because we believe that it's probably not good public policy if, for example, a law enforcement officer or witnesses a Class A misdemeanor and charges the individual as— or the prosecutor charges them as such, we don't think the city or the county attorney should make a decision and say, well, I don't think that's right, we're gonna send it to the Justice Court and recategorize it as something of a lesser offense.

Yeah, as an example, you could have a Class A misdemeanor domestic abuse, and if you wanted to file that in A justice court to make it Class B, it would be attempted domestic abuse rather than domestic abuse.

So, it weakens what our police force is doing, number one. Number two, it moves responsibility and time and effort away from him to others. And so, it's, it's problematic in many ways.

Chief, I was just going to say, I believe that's in committee in the morning. I was actually going to talk to you about that in a little bit, but I believe it's—

I'll confirm that, but I think it is in committee tomorrow morning.

So there's a series of other— there's a building review bill, HB 347, that we're—

374.

374, that we're monitoring that is concerning to us, and a couple of other matters.

But it's been a relatively quiet One thing I would say real quickly is we had talked in our retreat about trying to get closer to our legislators and to have them more familiar with us. To that point, I've been to 3 legislative breakfasts this past week. But interestingly enough, one of them I went to, a particular legislator, when I walked in, I walked in late, and it wasn't in reference to me, But he was just saying, I don't like city councils dealing with this, with these issues. It should be the legislature. I don't trust city councils. They're not trained. They're not competent. They really don't know what they're doing. And when I heard that, I raised my hand and I said, I'm sorry, but I take issue with you, and, and brought up my thoughts and my comments. Uh, 2 other legislators thought he was way out of line. One of them came and apologized to me later. But the only reason I bring that up is there is some of that attitude at the legislature that we need to help work through by us getting to know them better and develop a better relationship. So let's go—

One quick thing, just a reminder, in 2 weeks at your work session, we're actually doing a tour down at the Devon Apartments.

It'll be on your agenda, but we'll meet there at the University Place at 3 PM.

These are the Apartments by Costco, the newer ones more.

So let's go ahead and adjourn, but before we do that, could I ask that everybody be in their seats prior to 6 o'clock? Our residents expect us to start on time.

That clock was a minute fast last night. I like to start on time.

Not really.

No.

That's a hustle.

No.

No, Carrie, before I left, she was like, hey, send me pictures.

I wasn't going to, but then she called me. Hey, do you have any pictures? Yeah, so we have very professional photographers. The only thing is they have to be like one time, and then all she has to do is review them and show them everything, and they were approved, so I'm I had to become—

had to become pro tem.

Hey, Dave.

No, that's Dave. That was with Dave.

I had to keep him first.

Is that Steve who would tell you that?

No, Dave would.

He's coming. He's schmoozing.

We would like to call this meeting to order, and we appreciate having everyone here. And would like to begin. We'd like to begin with a prayer to be given by Logan DeWitt, after which the Pledge of Allegiance will be given by Community PAC 2020. So if we could have Logan come forward.

Dear Heavenly Father, We're so thankful that we could live in this country with the freedoms that we enjoy here, and we're thankful that we can all meet here today. And please bless that everyone here may have an open mind and that they may understand others.

Amen.

And we're thankful that we could all be here today.

And we love Thee, and we say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Amen. Color guard, attention.

Color guard, advance.

Audience, please rise.

Hand over heart.

Color guard, post the colors of the great state of Utah and the United States of America.

Present arms.

Repeat the Pledge of Allegiance with me. 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.

Color guard dismissed.

The audience may be seated.

If the troop could come back forward, we'd like to give you a certificate and take a picture.

Thank you.

We now would like to go over some of the upcoming events here in the city. On March 7th, the Sierra Center for the Arts is holding their annual benefits arts gala at 5:30 PM at the Sierra Center. On March 14th, the Tile Liquidators will hold a ribbon cutting at noon. And on March 19th, the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce will hold their Pillar of the Valley event at the Utah Valley Convention Center at 7:00 PM. We now are privileged to have a presentation on the Walter C. Orm Award, and this award is being given this year to Adam Robertson, the CEO of the Sierra Center for the Arts. And I would like to begin by reading a plaque, the award for Adam and for this award. As a City Council, it is our privilege and pleasure to recognize the distinguished service of Adam Robertson, President and CEO of the Sierra Center for the Arts. Adam has had a huge impact on the City of Orem and has enriched the lives of so many in our community. Here are just a few of the thoughts from people who have witnessed Adam in action. Adam Robertson is a dedicated community leader who serves out of joy for the benefit of the entire Utah Valley community. He works around the clock to ensure everyone is benefiting and enjoying the experience he is associated with. He loves to be engaged in a good cause and and as a result serves on many nonprofit boards and is as gracious as can be. He truly is a humble servant leader, Ron-a-Ralph. He is dependable and his ethics are impressive. I have watched his love and devotion to the employees of the Sierra organization where he has made a big difference in supporting people and programs that have provided a wonderful opportunity to Utah Valley. Under his stewardship, the Sierra organization has grown and has moved from a position of debt to a debt-free status, and through his leadership has acquired adjoining buildings that now house costumes, arts, dance and drama, and other programs. Jerry Loveland. Adam Robertson's service and dedication to the community and culture of Orem are unsurpassed. Adam took the helm at the Sierra at a time when business Acumen combined with a love of the arts, the city of Orem, and his fellow citizens was needed to chart a new course for this iconic organization, then commit to the time, energy, and resources necessary to see that, that plan through to fruition. Adam's fearless, tireless, and visionary efforts have not only blessed the lives of the many residents who call Sierra home, but the hundreds of thousands of residents and visitors alike who each year enjoy cultural enrichment right here in Orem. He is one of the original members of the first Orem CARE Committee, working diligently for its initial passage, which has benefited all of the arts organizations and sports organizations in Orem. His involvement in the Chamber and other Utah Valley organizations is just part of who Adam is. Whatever he can do to make Orem a better place for families, he will do. I believe he is a great example of someone who has a community-first mentality. To Adam, Sierra is more than a job. He feels deeply entrusted with the historic legacy of the organization and is incredibly motivated and works long hours to make sure Sierra is thriving and growing creativity, creatively and financially. He always has an open-door policy and takes time out of his busy schedule to speak with patrons and staff. You will find him at every event looking to make sure everything runs smoothly. He has a strong vision for Serra's future while still celebrating Serra's longstanding traditions and values. Adam has done an amazing job of fostering a feeling of family and sharing at the Sierra. I believe that his heart is absolutely in the right place as he encourages the development of talent and creativity in many different arts, from musical theater, dance, and singing to pottery and art. The Sierra is home to so many wonderful programs. Our students then go out and bless the community with inspirational art and uplifting performances. Many continue on professionally or move away and begin programs to bless their new communities. I'm grateful to be a part of Adam's vision of how the Sierra can bless not only our community but others as well. He should be commended for his dedication and willingness to do so much good in the world. The Orem City Council would like to add to this chorus of praise for the work and service of Adam Robertson. His many contributions to our city and the greater arts community are worthy of every accolade and con— con— con— commendation he has received. We are especially grateful to Adam for his efforts in helping to enhance and promote the arts in Orem. We look fun— we look forward to working together with Adam for many more years to come. I would just like to say that Adam is an inspiration to many around him, With his great work ethic, with his great character, and his vision on how we can promote the arts and teach the youth within the city of Orem. And I congratulate him as the mayor and commend him for his many wonderful efforts on behalf of our city. Can we give him a round of applause, please?

Thank you.

Adam, can you come forward? This is the Walter C. Orm Award. Award for Extraordinary Community Service to Adam Robertson, February 25th, 2020. I'd like to shake your hand. We have some pictures. Oh yeah. And his name will go on the wall over there. Adam, could you come forward and shake everyone's hand?

Yes, please.

And then I'd like to have you say a few words. Adam, can you say a few words at the microphone there? We'd like Adam to say a few words right here at the podium. You can face the crowd if you'd like, or however you want.

How do I do this?

Just like you're doing it.

Okay. Well, thank you. I'm not good at this part. I'm usually the one making people feel this way. Thank you. This means a lot from— I'm a baby. Everyone knows that. From a city that I love. And I want to thank, especially in the back there, who's trying to blackmail me, my wife. Chrissa, will you stand? There's my wife right there. I try to be a good man, but as the saying goes, behind every good man is an even better woman. I believe that. Beckham, stand up. There's my 7-year-old, 2nd grader right there, Orem Elementary. Where's Blake? There's my Orem Elementary kindergartner right there, Blake. And I saw my father sneak in. Dad, you stand up, wave.

Hi.

He's a— there's an Orem Tiger right there. My, uh, both of my grandparents moved here. Um, I don't know, Dad, when did your parents move to Orem?

60 years.

60 years, so, uh, a long time. Both of my parents are Orem Tigers. Um, I All of my memories are here. I went to preschool in a preschool behind Wienerschnitzel. I don't know if anyone remembers that. There was an old truck out in front that was fun to play on. I went to Spencer Elementary when they— I think they had condemned it or something, closed it down, then reopened it. And I went to Spencer Elementary for kindergarten. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and part of 4th grade. And then we moved to North County for a couple of years and then back to Provo for just a few years, and then, and then Orem the last 35 years or so. Anyway, I'm proud to live in Orem. I love Orem. It's a wonderful, wonderful city to live in. I was talking to some of these friends that gave these great quotes. And I remember playing on the baseball diamond that was where the Sierra Shell is now. The fence was on the northeast side so the balls wouldn't hit the cars. And we used to hit out into the Sierra Park. And I grew up swimming at the Sierra Pool. And I don't know if they do that now. I saw Carl. Way back then at the Orem Rec Center, I would wake up at 5:00 AM and go swimming. My mom did laps at the rec center and ran down in the basement there. But I still have my ducky pass that she sewed on my swimsuit. When you went from one side of the swimming pool to the other all by yourself, you got a ducky patch that you could sew on your swimsuit. I still have that. Anyway, lots of great memories here. I won't go into a long, long story, but I want to thank especially my family and my work family, which I see more than my other family. Many are here. Will you stand? And I'll try to recognize all of you. Just stand up and I'll recognize Danielle Berry and Debbie Bowman, Linda Campbell, Lisa Pullum, Brody Ripple, Krista Powell, Kelsey Seaver, April Berlin. Lots of great— many Oramites as well. And And thank you to the others who have come today to your support. I appreciate that. Thank you. This means a lot.

You bet. Thank you, Adam. So BYU, in honor of Adam's receiving this award, has brought to us 2 trays of their chocolate mint brownies. Dave, if you could put them on the back table there, and maybe somebody could cut them with a knife and put them on some napkins. Everyone here is welcome to one, and there's nothing better than a BYU chocolate mint brownie. So maybe some of Adam's staff could go back there and cut those up and put them on napkins, if you would. Would appreciate that. We'll now go ahead and move forward with a report from our Beautification Advisory Commission and would ask them to come forward. If you would turn your mics on and then introduce everybody that's here.

Good evening.

All right.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council. Before we do introductions, I'm just going to do a quick— our quick mission statement because we have some fun pictures of us too to show. This mission statement we created last—

Could you, before you start, you introduce everybody who's speaking with you?

Oh, okay. Yeah, I was going to do it in a second, but I'll I'll, I'll do it right now.

Okay.

That's fine.

Um, there's the commission on the board. I'm going to start on this side. This is Sherilyn Bennett. I'm Sean O'Roulian. This is Elaine Parker, Tanya Harmon, and Vicki Johnson. And not present are Jason Bond and Aaron O'Roulian. And then our city council representative is David Spencer. Um, and I also want to recognize— and he doesn't like this recognition— I want to recognize Reed Price and April Nielsen. They're the staff support that we get, and even though they don't want to be recognized, they do a lot to help keep us going. So it's important that we recognize who they are. Let me go back and read this mission statement. The Orem Beautification Advisory Commission seeks to preserve and enhance the beauty of Orem City. We strive to inspire businesses and residents to continually beautify their surroundings through city-sponsored initiatives, events, and programs. I'm going to cover part of the slideshow as the— I forgot my title.

Vice chair.

The vice chair, yeah. And then Elaine will take over the other part as the chair of the commission. So for last year's 2019 accomplishments, we'd like to go over those. And I'm going to turn the time over to Elaine.

We participated in the Summerfest parade entry with Cook's Nursery joined us, and it was a lot of fun. Cook's handed out flowers to the crowd, and we plan on doing that again this year. We've had some Facebook page improvements this year as well as Arbor Day participation. We supported code change to allow more xeriscaping that we did last year. And we promoted a 100 Trees Project for the centennial, and we planted trees. We also have started a new thing this year where we put an article in the newsletter each month, and we saw some real positive things from that. We ran the garage sale rules and regulations trying to get people not to post their signs on city property and on the poles. And we saw some improvement in that. We saw some boxes on the corners with their signs instead of on the poles. And so we were happy about that. And we can— we are going to continue to do that this year in the newsletter, getting out the information to the residents of how they can better beautify the rule— the city by following the rules and regulations. We also talked about saving the bees and gardening classes, and I think it was well received. We are in charge of taking out— of distributing the beautification awards and the holiday decoration awards, and we want to thank Pete Wolfley for designing those signs for us. They're new this year, no longer the old metal signs. These are like campaign-style signs, and the resident gets to keep those. So the beautification awards. This is a map of the awards we put out this year. And you see we span out all over the city. The residents are thrilled when we bring the awards to them. Some will take their pictures with us, some won't. But we're excited. We decided to thank them for making Orem more beautiful.

There's a cute guy.

We got a long story on this one.

Those are some beautiful yards.

Yes, they are. And then our holiday decoration award is fun too. And people really appreciate that because, you know, that can be competitive in neighborhoods. And so people really enjoyed getting those awards. Also, there's a map of the awards we gave out this year. We also try to encourage businesses to do this. And you recognize this one from 8th East and this blow mold collection from this family. So we had some good yards this year. We were excited. And we hope with these signs and these recognitions that more people will You know, improve their yards and their light displays and just make Orem beautiful.

Okay, so we're going to turn the time over to talking about our goals for this year. And we're kind of excited about the things we have planned. The first goal we have is to promote worthwhile practices that enhance the beauty of Orem. And that's going to include the following: we're going to encourage Orem residents and businesses to beautify their yards and properties through recognition awards like, like Elaine just talked about. We're going to recognize residents and businesses during the holiday season for their efforts in decorating with lights and displays. We will continue to participate in the city's Arbor Day activities that help sustain Orem's Tree City USA designation. And then we also— this is new— we're going to try to somehow recognize park staff in a meaningful way for their efforts to beautify the city. That remains to be determined. We're not sure how we're going to do that, but we want to show them our appreciation and support. And the second goal is going to promote and promote the roles and activities of the Beautification Commission, which are the following: update and maintain the commission's bulletin board at City Hall. And for those that don't know where it is, you just go down that direction towards the end of the hall, and it's right before the The office where you pay utilities. And it's just right there. Continue to promote the commission and beautification activities and education opportunities through its Facebook page and city newsletter. That's kind of added on to what Elaine said about how we're going to have little snippets in the city newsletter that talk about ways that people can beautify their yard or conservation or things like that. Promote a way to let the public let others know when they or someone they know do something to beautify Orem. And this is something we discussed recently. And be on the lookout for the hashtag #BeautifyOrem. We are going to kick this off with a day of service in conjunction with Brigham Young University as they're going to do a cleanup at Nielsen's Grove. and we're going to start our Beautify Orem there. And the way this is going to work is we're going to hopefully get a friendly competition amongst the city through youth groups, church groups, Scout groups, families, neighbors, neighborhoods, where someone, when they go out and do something to beautify the city, whether they go out and decide to pick up trash in a park or weed someone's yard that can't, and then they post it and they use that hashtag, and then we can see what people have done and see if someone can, can up them one and do a little better. And hopefully this will be a little competition, they'll get the ball rolling to get people to be competitive and also support each other in, in these kind of activities. And then also participate in the Summerfest Parade, which we love doing. We get a lot of support from that, and we're also going to promote more of our goals through that and also our Facebook page. And that is our presentation. We appreciate you guys listening. Yes, go ahead.

Yes, go ahead, Tom.

Is the business recognition a renewed emphasis? Because I don't think you emphasized it in '19, but you have done it, I think.

Sorry, yes, we did do it last year.

OK.

And we are still recognizing for— for beautify— for businesses that beautify their area, yes. Yes, we are still doing that.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, and that's good to note. We, we appreciate when people from the city can send us a message on Facebook and let us know of a referral they might have, because otherwise we have to go out and drive around, and sometimes it takes a lot of time. But if we get nominations from neighbors or someone that thinks a business looks great, then we will take that, and then we'll go check it out, and we'll if we think that they deserve an award, we'll do that.

Councilmember Lurie has a comment.

I know that one of your goals a few years ago was to have some signage coming off the freeway, and I know that we put up the 800 North. Are you satisfied, or are there any area— other areas where you think we need some signage again?

I personally am not completely satisfied, but that's not something that we can't— that we're not going to rule out. Yeah, that'll be— that'll be something we'll discuss. But yeah, I would— I would like to see more of that through different main corridors in the city so people can see when they're coming into the city and maybe have something a little bit nicer than just a little metal sign sticking out of the ground.

Okay, so you'll let Dave know those— where you'd like to see those?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, and I'm sure we'll discuss that, but yes.

Thanks.

Well, thank you, Sean, and thank you for the whole committee for the work you do and the effort you put forth to keep our city beautiful. Can we give every— the commission a round of applause, please? Thank you. It's now time for personal appearances. We have not had anyone sign up for personal appearances, so we will 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 have read each consent agenda item into the record, either council or staff may request an item be pulled off of the consent agenda and be considered separately under the next agenda item in the order that they are listed. So the first item is approval of the city meeting minutes of February 11th, 2020. The second item is the appointment of Jeff Whitlock to the Transportation Advisory Commission. Is there any desire by anyone to pull that off onto a regular scheduled item? Seeing none, I will go ahead and accept a motion to move forward.

So moved.

Okay, is there a second?

Second.

Okay, Councilmember Spencer?

Yes.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the consent agenda passes. We'll move forward to our scheduled items. The first one is 9.1, public hearing on fiscal year 2020 budget amendments, and our presenters are Brandon Nelson and Nicole— how do you pronounce that?

LaRue.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, City Council members, uh, our Second round of budget amendments for the year, as we normally do these. As you well know, things come up during the course of a year, and we have a need to amend budget from time to time. As per usual, the major elements of these budget amendments are generally related to grants and/or donations received received by the city or awarded to the city, and this time is, generally speaking, no exception. As you know, we— from the document that you received, the items that have notes of a 1 next to them in the note column, those items are all related to a grant or donation in way, shape, or form and happen to be, from a number perspective, certainly the highest component. Are there, are there any specific questions about any of those items identified as such that you—

So Brandon, on the recreation grant from Utah County, can you— for $48,000, can you explain that one?

So every year we receive a municipal education or a municipal recreation grant It varies a little bit from year to year, but it's—

we—

Lissy Saravela and Carl Hurst, they submit for projects and/or in some cases equipment, various things that the city is wanting to do, and they submit that to the county. And then obviously the county provides an award based on those items. And this is recognizing that the award for 20— I believe it's for 2020.

Councilmember Laree has a question.

So on that grant, is that from the restaurant tax that, that we're receiving?

Correct.

Okay.

Yeah, now you'll see that there is a separate one on there in— so if you scroll up just a little bit, Nicole, no, that scroll up just a little bit if you can. Or down, I guess it would. So there in the capital improvement project fund, you can see near the bottom of the screen there's the Utah County grant for Library Hall. We also, you know, have received notification— I mean, I don't know if notification is the right word, but actual, you know, agreement that that will be coming. And so we're going ahead and putting that in. So obviously we'll spend those funds.

Great.

Okay. Which in a lot of these— keep in mind, most of these grants are, if not all of them in this case, are grants where we have been awarded the money. We have not physically received it. We're expected to actually spend the money first and then submit for reimbursement in most cases. Item number 2 and 3 are somewhat related. They both are related, which are in the debt service fund, which you can, you can see, and which is Fund 30, $1,021,000. And then item 2, which is the capital improvement projects fund for the— which is down just right there. And those are interest earnings related to the GO bonds that we have issued for the library hall and fitness Center, and obviously we have not spent all that money, and so they earn interest while they go unused. That will obviously get lower and lower as we have been spending that, but this recognizes those, those funds and allows us to then obviously again use those monies towards that— those construction elements. Item 3, related to the debt service fund, if you will recall, when we issued the GO bonds, there was a certain amount of those bonds that are put in what's called a capitalized interest fund, which are to be used to pay the bond payments for the— I believe it's the next 2.5 years. So that money is sitting in the fund balance of the debt service fund. We had a bond payment due. We're simply recognizing that we need now that fund balance to make that bond payment. Thank you.

Payment.

And that's what that entry, that budget amendment does. And you will see those periodically. The last item, the last 2 items, item number 4 related to the stormwater fund there at the bottom, that $76,000, we receive funds that are specifically impact fee funds that are specifically related to the southwest area. This recognizes that those, those impact fees need to be specifically spent in that particular area. And then the last item, item number 5, which is in the information technology fund, they have need to do some wireless access point upgrades here throughout the city facilities. And this simply uses some funds that they have available in their surplus to be able to make those access points or get those upgraded. Are there any questions about any of those items?

So I noticed the next one you're going to come to is the Orem Foundation Trust Fund donation from the Ashtons.

Right. So, so you'll see we've recognized that for this fiscal year, which that represents the 3 payments that we will receive in this fiscal year, And you'll notice also, if you were to look up at the capital improvement project fund, just so a little bit up right there, you'll notice that 3rd line item. So that's obviously going to the foundation because it's a charitable 501 organization. Then we simply move the money from that organization to the capital projects fund where it can be spent.

Thank you.

spent on the actual project.

Okay.

Which that recognizes there. You'll see another one, obviously, in our budget for the money for next year, the $200,000 that will be there for next year. And you'll eventually see that as well. And then each year thereafter until that bond— or that award has been exhausted. Any other questions? Okay.

Keep going.

Is that it?

That's it.

Okay.

That's all we got.

All right, appreciate it. So this is a public hearing, and we now have discussed this, and we would like to amend the fiscal year 2019 2020 budget. I so move. Is there a second?

Open to the public first.

I'm sorry, you're right, I forgot opening it up to the public. So this is a public hearing, so we would like to open up for anyone who would like to make a comment on this to do so. Please come forward and keep your comments to 3 minutes and give us your name and when you come to the podium. All right, seeing no one coming forward, we'll close the public comment portion of the public hearing and bring it back to the council. I move that we go ahead and amend the fiscal year 2019 and 2020 budget. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember Spencer.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, it passes. We'll now move on to item 9.2. Thank you, Brandon. Thank you, Nicole. We'll now move on to 9.2, which is a site plan approval of Stewart Retail Addition located at 21 West University Parkway in the PD-12 zone. Our presenter is Jason Bench. And is the applicant here, Jason? Okay, could you come forward, have a seat right here?

He's representing the architect, correct? Yeah.

And can you give us your name and who you're with? You have to press that on.

Thank you.

Alex Anderson with Schulz Architects.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. Tonight is a request to add a structure on the Xfinity— what used to be the old Barber Brothers property, if you recall that years ago— along University Parkway and Main Street. What they're proposing is to take a portion of this building out and build a new building.

Here we go.

So in the yellow, you'll see what they're proposing to eliminate and then propose to then add that to just under 10,000 square feet, 9,700 square feet of new retail. In addition to that, they will be adding a reciprocal access that would come down this way and then refinish the one portion of the building that they're taking out. As part of this process, the Planning Commission did make a recommendation. The PD-12 zone does require City Council approval as well. So some zones in the city do require both Planning Commission and City Council. They're the ones that approved the plat. That has already been approved. So the city council now is just affirming what the Planning Commission has recommended to you for the site plan. The buildings you can see on— this is the existing structure. And so you can see that— I think Sholes did that previous building as well. So the architecture is going to be very similar. The materials are going to be the same. And so it will blend in well with the with the project. Here's the location of the portion that they're taking down here, and you can see the existing structure here that then will go west and add that new structure. Like I say, the Planning Commission did make a positive recommendation, and they're here before you tonight to obtain site plan approval. I'd be glad to address any questions that you have.

One question I have is the businesses that are there right now, Where will they be moving, to the new building or going somewhere?

So my understanding is the rental place is going to stay in the remaining portion. They're just downsizing that, moving back, right? And then they'll add another 5 tenant spaces out front in the new building. So extended— and those that are there will stay, and then they'll just add new spaces.

Okay. Councillor McDonald.

Could you show the before picture again, please, Jason? I'm sorry, the picture of the actual— maybe you don't have that picture. So the picture of the building that's going to have part of the front removed, do you have that? That's this portion right here. So I don't know if you can— yeah, with your red marker, could you show how much is kind of coming off? Well, that yellow line outlines the outline of the portion that will be removed. Okay. I was trying to see it on the picture.

Oh, okay.

On the architectural drawing. You're making me do some— Right up on the white— where the white roof is, I'm assuming? Yes. So it's going to come roughly like this and then around, and all that will be taken— That will be removed and a new building in the front. Thank you. That's what I assumed but wanted to confirm.

Councilmember Luria.

So obviously I like the idea of pushing this to the road and making that look better according to the look and feel. I'm just wondering about parking. Are you— do you feel like you have sufficient parking for what you're trading?

They meet the parking standard, yes.

4 per 1,000.

Okay.

Yep.

Sounds good. That's all I wanted to know.

Any other questions or comments from the council? I think this will be an improvement. It'll look nice on University Parkway, and it sounds— it looks like you're designing a nice-looking building there. If there's no other comments, this is not a public hearing, so I would move forward that the council, by resolution, approve the site plan of the Stewart Retail Addition located at 21 West University Parkway in the PD-12 zone. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Councilmember Pedersen. Say aye or nay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, site plan is approved. Appreciate it. Thank you, Jason. We have no other scheduled items. Jamie, do you have anything you wish to mention?

Yeah, Mayor.

members of the City Council, can I just give a few minutes to Shawna Meekum with MAG? She has an event she'd like to make you aware of and unfortunately didn't sign up during the 3-minute period. So, okay, appreciate and value our relationship with MAG and are always—

sure, come on, you're always welcome to come.

So please.

Thank you so much. Shawna Meekum, I'm representing MAG. I also moved to Orem recently Well, good for you. So I had the wonderful opportunity of sitting through some of your City Council work session, that excellent financial analysis that Lewis and Young did. That really ties into an event that MAG Provo Springville American Planning Association of Utah, with some other private folks, have contributed to on March 18th. We'll be bringing out Chuck Marrone, the founder of Strong Towns. He's coming to Utah County, and he will share some of his organization's message, which has to do with building strong, vibrant, and financially resilient communities, like we learned about in the last couple of hours. I really believe in this message and that it deserves some consideration. The event is in Provo. It's no charge. There's a breakfast for elected officials at 9:00 AM where you can ask him all of your tough questions. And I would just urge you as a— or invite you as an employee and a resident of Orem to consider this event. I really think it would help make Orem a stronger place.

So great.

Thank you. Leave the flyers here.

Okay, thank you for the invite. Anything else, Jamie? Okay, um, I would entertain a motion then to adjourn.

Some of—

there's no other business. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

We are officially adjourned. Thank you for attending.

I was a little bit longer than I know.

We went 45 minutes or so.

Yeah.

Well, I guess we got time for you.

Yeah. Well, actually, my appointment changed.