City Council · 2020-04-28

Hey, Brent, is that your horse in the background?

Greg, I haven't been following GQ for about 6 weeks now. What's that thing in front of your shirt?

Oh, this? Can you hear me?

No, no, no, I'm talking about Greg Stevens.

What's this thing he's wearing?

A tie, yes.

A tie.

You haven't seen one of those for a while.

This is my second day with a button-down shirt. Everything else has been a t-shirt or a polo. I just wanted to be fun-tucking, so it's not real formal.

But do you have on shorts and flip-flops?

Nope, I'm wearing, uh, gym shoes and long pants.

Hey, Jamie, how are you?

Jamie, how are you?

He's muted.

Good to hear you.

How are you?

Should be able— Jamie, can you hear us?

Yes, I can.

Well, why don't we go ahead and get started? It's 4 PM and we appreciate having everybody on board. We would like to begin our City Council work session today, and I'd like to call this meeting to order and begin with an invocation by Jamie Donald.

Father in Heaven, we are grateful this day for the opportunity for the City Council to meet together. We ask the Father in Heaven to bless each of them that they might have an increase of wisdom, patience, and understanding for one another and the issues that they face in the city. We ask thee to bless them with the ability to resolve conflict, to have love and respect for one another and for those that they serve. And we say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Thank you, Kay. Appreciate that. It appears that all of the city council members are in attendance on our virtual city council meeting. I would like to read an item on this. It says, to minimize the potential spread of COVID-19, and as authorized by Utah Governor Gary Herbert's March 18th, 2020 executive order, the Orem City Council meeting on April 28th, 2020 will be an all-electronic meeting. There will be no public access to the Orem City Council chambers. Those desiring to view or participate in the meeting must do so electronically. This meeting is scheduled for a work session only, and we appreciate everyone's cooperation during these challenging times. We'd like to begin with a presentation on our annual sewer report. Our presenter is Neil Winterton, and Neil, would you like to go ahead and present yours?

Yes, thanks for this opportunity. It's always a pleasure to see your faces. And so anyway, each year a requirement of a sewer utility is to present to the governing body Okay, I got it.

I got it. You should be right now too.

And this is what we ask ourselves as a utility is, and we answer to the state of Utah, are the sewer revenues sufficient to cover operations and maintenance and repair and replacement costs at this time? And then, you know, are they sufficient to cover for the next 5 years? Do you have sufficient staff? Do you have a sinking fund? And do you have funds to meet anticipated needs? And the answer to those questions, fortunately, is yes. Moving on, another piece of the financial evaluation, and these are just clips out of the lengthy report that I included in the packet. The replacement cost is estimated for our collection system and our Definitely. At about $390 million. And then the next question says, do you fund your sewer capital improvements annually with sewer revenues at 2% or more of the total replacement costs? And that was the direction we were headed with the 2016 master plan and financial plan. We were We're slowly getting to that place where we could answer yes on the 2% or more. We've pushed pause on those increases for now. We're going to do some more studies and then get back to you at a later time with a different plan. Probably the best indicator of your collection system Is what we call SSOs, or sanitary sewer overflows. A system of our size would anticipate to have maybe a few of these per year, and the fact that we had zero sanitary sewer overflows in 2019 is a very positive indicator of the health That's right. But it's more an indication of the active efforts our staff takes to clean and inspect and make sure that the sewer is flowing. Having zero is very, very good. I can't emphasize that enough. The mechanical plant has a few statistics The design capacity, just I don't know if you can see my cursor, is up at 13.5 million gallons per day. We currently sit at the circled 8.56 gallons per day, and that is slowly rising, not as fast as it once did.

The effort.

The efforts of conservation, the efforts of tightening up the system are working, and we were on a steady increase up until about 10 years ago, and we are just slightly increasing each year. As soon as we hit 80% of our capacity, we'll need to start a design process as required by our permit. Also, a badge of success is the number of violations that we might have. And that happens if we exceed the parameters in our effluent flow out into Powell Slough, which eventually goes to Utah Lake. Our goal is obviously to have zero. And we have a very good success rate on that. And that also speaks to the success of staff monitoring and doing the things necessary to meet the needs of the F plan. That concludes my summary of the municipal wastewater planning permit. And I will take any questions you might have.

Neil, I was just going to mention I appreciate the good work you and your staff do. And the fact that our rating there on flows was zero is encouraging. And the fact that we are below our maximum level is encouraging. I think you guys do a great job.

Yeah, I appreciate that, Mayor. Staff has done an excellent job. Can't say enough. When everybody gets to stay home in the community, we've continued to provide the water and sewer needs for the community, and I can't speak highly enough of their efforts. They've done a great job.

Neil?

Go ahead, Jeff. Yeah, let's see. Neil, can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

I was just wondering, I appreciate all you do and it looks really, uh, positive.

How does it compare with other cities?

Like, are violations a problem in other cities and We have established communities.

We have grown, and those 40 to 50-year-old trees now are reaching and grabbing into our sewer system. And that is our current effort right now. We've purchased additional equipment that can go in and cut the roots, and then we've purchased additional equipment on our jet vac trucks that can foam the roots and kill them. So we've taken proactive measures to eliminate those. But next year, I hope to be able to answer those questions as zero as well. But you will see in the news, and if you keep your nose in the business like I do, I don't want to throw any communities out there, but you'll see— I'm not going to throw any communities out there. That there are problems that happen every once in a while and bubble-ups in the street with sewer, and you'll see boil orders issued with water and different types of things that sometimes are preventable and sometimes not. But we try to take so many proactive and preventative measures that we can feel comfortable with our water and sewer service.

Okay, thank you.

Councilor McDonald would like to make a comment.

You all on mute. Hey, um, you know, I'm wondering if any of these improvements or the zeros are because of, uh, line maintenance and replacements we're doing when we budget for that. I know we're doing it both in water and sewer. I wanted to— wanted you to tell us if you could see a direct relationship Yep.

Absolutely. Our violations that we could experience at the treatment facility itself, all the things that we invest in trying to get ahead of that in terms of monitoring and then reacting to that monitoring, we've spent a lot of money on monitoring and gauges recently, and all those things go into us being able to early detect, if you will, so that we can respond to the dials that are necessary to turn to prevent that from happening. In the collection system, the dollars that we've spent lining collection pipes or sewer conveyance pipes keep those roots out. If you can imagine a jointed concrete pipe, those roots find their way into that When you put a liner down it, it's putting a big giant continuous pipeline that not only makes the inside smoother, but it keeps the roots from coming in. The next step is to prevent the roots from coming in where the laterals protrude, and just last year we bought a machine that can help keep— line the pipe where the laterals come in so it actually provides a seal to keep the roots out. And so we used to spend about $100,000 per year lining pipes, and that was just barely keeping up with dire emergencies. And the last few years we've spent $1 million a year. So to answer your question, yes, but I can't answer which blockages didn't happen because we lined, because they didn't happen. But I can confidently tell you that we would have had more issues without the money that's spent, and we need to continue down that path. to maintain our system to the levels that we desire.

Okay. Councilmember Larey has a comment.

So moving forward with our budget that's upcoming, are you going to be leaving the rates the same as what they are now, or will you be coming back at a later date with some modifications?

This present budget, we've presented rates holding steady where they were last year or in our current year. So we haven't moved forward with the recommended rate increases in both water and sewer. And therefore our line where we were trying to get to that 2% will stay even. We're going to do some more evaluation on the, the bonding and the projects and evaluate where we have been the last 3 years and bring back a new proposal. We, we won't probably have time to do that for this year's budget, but fortunately we, we have increased our budgets over the last 3 years, so we do have money there for some of the projects. But we're going to bring back a new plan after this budget session is through. And of course, it'll be an iterative process where we'll present some options and go from there.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Pedersen has a comment.

Hi, Neal.

So a couple questions.

One is on the water rate staying the same, is that they were raised in 2020, or is that Are we talking about 2021 or anyway?

They were raised in fiscal year '20, from '19 to '20. From '20 to '21, we are not raising them. We are not proposing a water rate increase in either the base rate nor the tiered rate.

So the rates that people saw last year will be the same tiered rates this year. It won't be that— there won't be an increase. Okay, thank you. And then A couple other follow-ups, if you don't mind. One is the water meters that were replaced, that have been being replaced throughout the city, that what does that do? Tell me the benefits of that.

Are there any?

Yeah, there are several purposes and needs for a water meter replacement program. First and foremost, a water meter is only accurate for 20 to 30 years. So you should replace them every 20 to 30 years. Orem has never had a meter replacement program. We've spent money elsewhere. So we have meters in the ground right now that are up to 50, 60 years old, maybe even 70 or 80. We didn't have computer tracking, so we don't have all of those meters in an inventory anywhere. But when we go out and we look at meters, we can see that they're old. We did some testing and we found that some meters were under-reading. We found some were over-reading. So you have meters that were reading as low as even 30%. That— now that's very strange, but you can have meters that read from 80%, and then you have some that read at 120%, and then you're averaging about that. But that's neither fair to this person paying under or paying over. So the first thing that we needed to do was have a meter replacement program. And what we're doing now is utilizing the latest technology in meter replacement called automated metering infrastructure, or AMI as we refer to it, which is a remote read. The system that we're using is over radio frequency to various towers throughout the city. Backhaul fiber will gather that data and send it. Right now we go out and we send a meter reader every month, pull a lid, read the meter, put it in the system, the user gets the bill, and they might have their information in 2 or 3 weeks. The meters we're putting in now, that information is going to be sent to the towers. every day in 15-minute increments, and that information is going to be available to the residents via their phone, their computer, or other device where they can manage their water usage and see their data up to the minute. I say up to the minute, it's obviously not, not up to the minute, minute.

Sure.

But let's just say daily. And that way you can program different alerts. You can, as a user, if you set a goal for yourself to stay in Tier 3, you can send an alert before you're 5,000 gallons from entering Tier 4, where when you hit each tier you can send alerts. And then probably one of the most valuable features is a leak alert system. where if you have abnormal usage due to the algorithms that the programmers put into these meters, you can be alerted that you may have a leak in your toilet. And it might be as low as 2 gallons, 1 gallon, a half gallon a minute, which doesn't seem like a lot, but that adds up. And the cost— that this is gonna cost the residents is gonna be realized in leak resolution and leak detection many times over the course of the meter's life.

Thank you.

So I would say in summary, we needed to replace the meters anyway. We're replacing with the most updated technology. And We've replaced about 6,500 meters. We are just on the tip of being able to turn the switch and light up those meters that are in the ground. It hasn't been without some delays, but the wait and the technology is going to be well worth it.

So a follow-up to that, I mean, long-term, That should save the city quite a bit of money as far as the cost of employees, I would hope, or is that a factor? I mean, we won't have to have people going out every other month and reading meters.

Yeah, they go out every month from, you know, March through October, even November. And so there will be a man-hour savings there for sure to not send those out, and there will be a risk savings where people aren't out in traffic and they're not out getting bit by dogs and bees, stung by bees. So there is definitely a cost savings in fuel and other man-hours to the city by not sending people out. Now, I'm not going to represent that we're not going to have to go look at these meters occasionally and fix them and not have trouble tickets that we're going to have to go fix, but Absolutely. The meter readers, we used to hire 5 meter readers to go out and read those. That will be a labor savings. And then also the ancillary savings as well.

So one last question. I know I've had a lot, but when you mentioned Powell Slough, I assume that that's, that's where overflow goes. Is that right? In case we didn't—

That is where our effluent discharges. So our permit is discharge to Powell Slough. It is not a permit to discharge to Utah Lake. Separate water bodies, but it's essentially a discharge to Utah Lake, but it says Powell Slough in our permit.

And then with that, I know there's pumping— I know there's a pumping station. I live down in the southeast part of Orem. I know there's a pumping station down below where I live, but I don't know if that's Orem or Provo. Do we have a lot of pumping stations in Orem to have to pump sewer?

No, that's a good question. We have 7 pump stations, which is not very many for a system our size. We have the benefit of gravity that, that runs from the northeast down to the southwest, but we do have a few low spots, and when we have low spots, we have to pump it up. You know, you have Carterville area and Down below the Urquhart development, there's a lift station there. And then, you know, at the mouth of the canyon, there's one. So there's one on Geneva Road.

We've got some additional questions from other council members. Terry, is it—

No, I'm done. That was great. I just had— I kept writing them down as other people said things. I'm good.

Yeah, I've raised my hand again too, but I think David did.

McConnell, go ahead.

You mentioned that we are not raising rates, and maybe Jamie could address this.

We had scheduled to raise them.

We are not raising them because— are we going to delay work? Are we hoping to bond? I think this is a discussion David raised at our last retreat. How are we stopping the increase? Are we stopping the spending or are we bonding it?

I guess that's the question. So Maybe if I may, Neil, in response to that particular question, we have initiated conversations with the city's financial advisor and are talking with them specifically about financing some of the larger projects that are tied to both water and water reclamation. So, for example, the large water tank we've been discussing, which is about a $10 to $13 million investment. That is a project that we are now discussing that and looking to finance over time. Of course, as we look to finance this in— or some of this infrastructure, and we look to amortize repayment of that infrastructure along 20, 30 years, that is going to change the rate structure that we have in the city. So I would anticipate that as we continue these conversations, we're going to specifically core down as to what the future holds for rates. Now, the direction we have given— and we're working with Lewis Young— the direction we've given them is to work with staff here in the next 12 months in kind of hammering out where rates are going to be into the future. Now, this is not necessarily easy because we have updates to our master plans that we need to do as well. But the plan and the focus right now is on looking at our rates, financing some of that large capital capital infrastructure required and seeing where that lands us in relation to rates. And I would anticipate that that is definitely going to soften the curve as related to where we go with rates in the future.

That's a different flattening the curve than we've been talking about here.

Yes, exactly. And it may involve us recategorizing some of the assets some of those, you know, that tier structure that we have, we're not necessarily sure yet where we are. Unfortunately, some of our attention has been pulled away from that based on what we're currently facing and responding to. But no, we've already engaged Lewis Young. We've had several conversations, several meetings with them, and we have that work underway. Neil, I don't know if you want to add, or Chris, you want to add anything to that?

I think you've addressed it well. It's, it's never a bad thing for a utility to do a small step back and look where you are. You know, every 5 years a rate study or rate analysis isn't too bad, and we're coming up on 5 years, believe it or not. Looks like Chris.

Okay, Councilmember Spencer has a comment.

Yeah, so Tom sort of asked my question, but my concern was also at the retreat was the senior citizens that are under the poverty level and what we're going to do to help them out with this tiered structure, because I hear a lot of issues with the seniors and being able to pay for the raised rate from, you know, the normal rate was together it was $39 or $45, now it's $67 or $70. So that's my concern, and that's what we talked about in the retreat. So I think we're heading down that path, but I just— that, that is on my mind is the seniors and the water rates.

And, and that is also something that we discussed specifically with our financial advisor, and there are other cities who have entertained similar conversations and have made adjustments within their rate structures to accommodate different populations. And I would extend is somebody's got to pay for it. So as you modify and you change those structures, you're shifting financial responsibility away from one group of ratepayers and onto another group of ratepayers. And I think we just need to be cautious in how we define who we are going to provide, for example, relief to versus who we're not. Because if we extend obviously the category or we broaden that base, so to speak, then we impact them in a positive way. But we negatively impact the other ratepayers in a negative way.

And I understand that, Jimmy. My thought was, if, if ORM sets a poverty level, let's say it's under $15,000, I think your, your numbers of people that are in that category are quite low. But it's not like, hey, it brought— it's over $35,000 or $45,000. So I just I'm just saying that's a topic and a concern that I think that we are heading down that path, at least to compensate them somewhat. I'm not saying we're gonna compensate them with the whole bill, but maybe it's a $10 thing or a $15, whatever, but at least we're thinking about it. And that's one of my focuses this year.

Yes, and that will be incorporated into the review.

Thank you.

All right, Neil, are you good?

Uh, I'm good.

Okay, well, thank you very much for the presentation and for the discussion. Let's go ahead and move on to our next item, which is a discussion reducing credit card fees. Our presenter is Pete Wolfley, and is he there with you, Steve? So Steve, is Pete there with you?

We're just pulling up the screen.

Okay. All right.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Today we're going to talk about flattening another curve, and that's our— the growing fees that we're seeing on our credit card and debit cards here in the City of Orem. So we just have a quick presentation for you and then we can have some discussion about it. First, I want to say thank you to our iTeam Alpha. You may be familiar with our iTeam program. Different employees from various departments come together and solve sticky issues. And so this was the team that took on this project, did a ton of research, came up with lots of ideas, and kind of vetted everything out that we're going to present to you today. So I want to thank them publicly. Why we're going down this road looking at our credit card and debit card fees. As was just discussed, we're trying to, you know, find a way to make up for that revenue that we're holding on the water and sewer rates. You know, if we're going to freeze those rates, then these credit card savings that we're seeing could help kind of replace those. I'll show you a graph here on the next slide, but our escalating costs are getting— they're getting out of control at this point. It's borderline criminal in my opinion.

Thank you.

The trend is unsustainable. In the last 4 years, we've seen an increase of $360,000 in our credit card fees. And then we're also trying to follow the best practices from other utility companies. So here's over the last 5 years, here's how we're kind of looking. So you can see in 2015, our transactions and our fees, the transactions being on the bottom, the amount of fees we're paying on the top, are pretty close together. But over the years, the increase, the difference between the two has greatly increased. I mean, you can even see last year in 2019, our total number of transactions went down, but our total number of fees went up. And a lot of that has to do with these credit cards that people use. There's high reward cards. There's also, there's really the credit card companies, they regulate themselves. And so they can bump up fees. And so we just are trying to come up with a a few reasons or a few options for us to flatten this curve, if you will. So this is just an extreme example from this utility account that we have. This is all the same account and over 4 months, you can see they have very large water bills or utility bills. So 4 months' worth of utility bills resulted in almost $1,000 worth of fees. So this is a very extreme case. Our average is about $197. So this is extreme, of course, but it just paints the picture that, you know, for every transaction that's run on a credit card, there are significant fees. We want to talk real quick about elastic and our inelastic services. The elastic services are those things that people could easily go somewhere else to receive. You know, it's those, you know, they could go to Provo for recreation or they could go visit a different library. Passports, fingerprints, or events. These are the services that we wouldn't necessarily want to add any type of fees onto because there's high competition in those areas. The inelastic fees or the inelastic service areas are those where we're kind of the only show in town. That's utilities, court, police, building and permit fees, and business fees. So for those, we feel better about adding a fee because we're not going to lose any customers just because we added a fee there.

Thank you.

So, the credit card companies, they set these regulations. There are certain things that you can add a surcharge to, which is a percentage of the sale amount, and that usually ranges between 2% and 3%. And then there are other things that you can only add a convenience fee to. Utilities are one of those things that can only have a utility fee or a convenience fee. That is just a flat fee added to the sale if they choose to pay in an alternative method, meaning online, over the phone, through an app. Uh, some way other than in person. And then with surcharges, they cannot be applied to utility fees, but they could be applied to other areas in the city like business licenses and different things like that. So there's some areas, some service areas where we feel like we could do more positive messaging. So we wouldn't ever do a surcharge or convenience fee, but we would put out some positive messaging. For instance, If somebody came to the library and they wanted to rent a movie, it costs $1. If they pay that dollar on a credit card, that essentially costs the library 30 cents, and the person is only getting 1 cent in rewards on some of the best cards. And so if we put out this positive message that said something to the effect of, you know, anytime you don't use your credit card at the library, you're essentially giving a donation to the library. So we were thinking about having a campaign where, you know, with library and recreation, that people who really love those services, one of the best things they can do for those services is pay with something other than a credit card or a debit card. Some of our fellow utility companies, Rocky Mountain Power, Dominion Energy, and Provo, they all charge convenience fees for utilities. The fees range, but it's just a best practice. They're just kind of shifting the cost of those credit cards to the customer who wants to pay with those— pay with a credit card. Here's some adjustments that we've already made. Before, we set a minimum at the library of $1. Before, if you had a 10-cent fee or fine for a late book, you could pay that with a credit card and we were actually losing money on those. So we quickly, as soon as we figured this out, we set it at a $1 minimum. So we're not losing money anymore when somebody swipes their card at at the library. Development Services was ahead of the game. They put a $5,000 cap on their transactions. So nobody— you couldn't put $100,000 on a credit card. We've been working with our merchant service providers to come into the best practices and with compliance. So there was a few things that we could do. For instance, the next one, increased online security. So we've upped our security. We've had residents when they pay online with a credit card, if they add a little bit more information, We get a significantly lower rate because the chances of fraud are a lot lower. So we've done everything we could on that end. And then we've also launched the Quick Pay feature with our utility bills where you can easily pay with ACH, and those— there's no fees on those. So this is what we're presenting as our go-forward plan. We'd like to establish a cap and a convenience fee for our utility payments. As I mentioned earlier, our average online credit and debit card transaction During our really high months, August to October, is $197. And to recoup 100% of that, assuming a 2.8% fee, which is where, where we'd be at, we were asking for a convenience fee of $3.95. And then to help also offset, you know, some of these high fees, we'd also ask for a $500 per transaction cap. And so if your bill was over $500, It would be split out. So if it was $600, you'd pay a $500— your $500 bill with a transaction fee, and then you'd pay your $100 bill with that same convenience fee of $3.95. And that'll help offset the fees that we're seeing. The nice thing about rolling something out like this is we know exactly who's paying with their credit cards or debit cards. So we'd be able to easily get in contact with them, you know, through email or even a phone call if necessary. to let them know that we'd be— we're going to be adding a fee to the utility payments and encourage them to switch to ACH, which would once again have no fee attached. We'd like to get this going by October 1st, and the anticipated savings just based on our historical data would be $394,000. We'd also continue— once we get that kind of in place, we'd also like to continue to find solutions for our other departments and service areas, different ways that we can find to lower that, lower that curve on the fees. And then we're also exploring right now different ways to get people to pay through ACH, through contactless payments such as pay through text. So those are just some of the ideas that we've come up with, but now we'd like to open it up for some discussion.

Any questions from anyone? One thing I was going to say, Pete, it's interesting to see how those fees have just ratcheted up over time. And I'm glad to see that— I don't know, is this something you've discovered, something our financial side discovered, we've known about for a while and just tried to figure out how we're going to do this?

Yeah, it's something that we've been aware of, but we kind of just— this team kind of got it all together and found a path forward. And so we feel pretty good about it now.

Yeah, so congratulations to the team. One thing I would like to say, I'm very much aware of others doing the same policy. It's fairly common throughout, you know, life. And so I would think it would be accepted by those credit cards. We have a bunch of questions, so I want to turn the time first over to Councilmember Lamson.

Pete, great job. A lot of work going into this, and appreciate you and your team discovering all of this. Just curious, you mentioned the $500 and then the $100 Do we have any idea what percentage— what percentages we're looking at, you know, the $500 versus, say, the $100 charges?

Yeah, so the large majority of our customers are well under $500. It's mostly these commercial accounts that would be affected. I think when we ran the numbers, I think we're talking about 146 accounts that regularly are over $500. I have the data on that if anybody would like to see. I can send that out.

I think that would be interesting to look at.

Okay. Councilmember Larray has a comment.

So, Pete, have you worked with the actual banks? I know the different processors charge different fees. Have you explored to see if there's— we're getting our best value with the actual percentages? I know it just depends on who processes your credit cards. I'm assuming you have worked— have you, have you explored that to see if you can negotiate better rates?

Yeah, so we, we put, uh, essentially bids out to people, and we got— we heard back from Zions Bank and Wells Fargo, and they weren't able to do any better than the, the people that we're currently with. And so we did look at that route because we thought that that might be a quick savings, but, uh, we have a good contract right now with our main processor.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember McDonald has a comment.

Yes, thank you very much. I pay most of my utilities automatically. Most of them come directly from my checking account. Orem City comes from my charge card and then goes to my checking account. To give a shout out to Hans Anderson, he brought this up like 6 years ago that he thought we should reduce this. So, and frankly, I guess no one measured what the cost was. We just knew there was a cost. We didn't notice what the cost was. And when I ran businesses and I could pay my utility bill with my charge card, of course I did. If it's $5,000 or $10,000 a month, you get some real benefits of putting that on your charge card and then paying later. But I think everyone will expect this. The total savings to the city is appropriate, and it is basically the way people do business now. I think initially people were expecting to do their credit card, but now ACH is the way to go. So Thank you for initiating this, and I wholeheartedly support the savings for the city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tom. Councilmember Pedersen has a comment. Terry? Let's see. Terry is muted.

I think you've got me muted.

Oh, there we go.

There we go.

Okay. So mostly, I think it sounds like we're talking about commercial accounts. Is that right? Or—

Yeah, I mean, there's a few residentials that get up over that $500, but mainly commercial.

And so compared to other places, we don't want to lose commercial businesses. Do other cities charge a fee?

Yeah, one of the main people we compared ourselves to was with Provo. And they actually charge a different fee for commercial accounts in the range of $17. But we're just suggesting that it's the flat fee for anybody over $500. So we wouldn't differentiate.

So most residential customers would not be affected. Well, they'd still have the $3.95 charge, or?

What's that?

Would a residential person using their credit card be charged— we'd still have a fee for that as well?

Yes, yes, correct.

That's the $3.95?

Yes.

ACH, what is it? What are we talking— what's ACH?

It's electronic bank payments. It essentially comes straight out of your checking account.

Okay.

Yeah.

And that does— that's not impacted by this?

Exactly.

Okay, gotcha. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Wire transfer. Okay, Councilmember Sumner has a comment.

Oh, better. I'll echo what Tom said a minute ago. Councilmember Anderson He mentioned this several, several years ago. But anyway, a couple of questions. How many of— how many people will— accounts will this affect that are using a credit card or would take on the fee if they said credit card? Is that a majority of your users?

No, the vast majority are paying in other ways. I actually have a spreadsheet on my computer. Let me pull it up real quick and I can tell you the numbers.

While you're looking at that, I don't— I don't think this is going to be a problem at all. I, I know St. George, they've done this for— my utilities come right out of my checking account, or I have an option to pay a fee. But you know, when you don't have the money, you save $4 or $5.

For your moneybags.

Yeah, so the total— so this is in terms of payments, so we're talking 12 months. A whole year, there were 9,000 transactions that would fall under this $500 cap. So if, you know, you take all the transactions— all the accounts, times them by 12, the number is 9,000.

Okay. So how would you go about— would you just send me an email?

Yeah.

So we plan on sending everybody an email. And then we can also do stuff in the utility— the stuffers, like the bills that actually get mailed to people. We can contact them, we can— or we can call them, we can text them. We have a lot of ways to get a hold of people. We can send them letters.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, I don't think this will be a problem at all.

Of course, you'll always have a few that don't like it, but that—

I think it's a good thing to go move forward with. Yeah.

And the thing we feel best about is that if people want to avoid the fee, there's an easy way to do that.

This—

you can switch online. It's Super easy. You just change your method of payment and you're good to go. It's not going to be a big hard process.

Yeah, good.

Thank you.

Customer Spencer has a comment.

Yeah, so Pete, I was thinking, you know, as we contact the people that are paying with credit card, you know, if they struggle, you know, because Terry, you know, he's having a problem with his computer, right? So do we have somebody that they could reach out to and we could walk them through the process to make sure they are set up correctly? Because that'd be my concern going back to seniors. You know, they're not really computer savvy, but do we have a support that, hey, this is how we can walk you through so it is set up and then they're fine with it?

Yeah, our Orem Help Center staff, they're super friendly and I think they would be able to help out.

And I, if I go back to the, the commercial accounts that are over $500, those are probably the main Cause of the money that we're paying out, right?

Yeah, the ratio is significantly higher.

So the question there is, what was, what was the percentage that we were going to charge them?

That's— Provo charges a different rate. We'll charge everybody the same, $395.

Okay, so my thought is I don't agree with that at all. If you're a commercial account and you're using your credit card, I think that should be deftly Yeah.

And the place that we can make it up with the bigger companies is the fact that their payment is going to be split up into $500 chunks. So they're going to have to pay that transaction fee if they choose to go credit card multiple times. There's some accounts that will have to pay that transaction fee 10 times just to pay one month's bill.

So that's why— that's your deterrent then, to break it up at $500 so they—

Yeah.

So we can—

yeah.

Exactly.

I still think we need it.

If they're the culprit, I think they— yeah, but I mean, I'm fine with the $3.95, but it does go back to the— if a senior that's under poverty level paying credit card, then, you know, their bill is going to go up. So that's why we need the education to get them on ACH.

Dave, if I could, this is, uh, Stephen. Obviously there will be exceptions to this. The majority of our seniors write and mail in checks. Or come in and pay cash, and there won't be any convenience fee charged for that. So there will— there are some seniors that do credit cards. That is the minority, and we will continue to accept the checks in the mail like we have.

Thank you.

All right, Pete, if you don't have anything else, just gonna say good work, and boy, that's something we've got to catch and nip it in the bud. That'll be a huge savings. So thank you.

Thank you very much, everyone.

To you and your team. All right, let's go ahead and move forward to our next discussion. This is on CDBG COVID funds. These are some additional funds coming in from the federal government to help with the pandemic. I believe, Steve, if I'm correct, that we've received $411,000 additional for that, and So, Kenna Matthews and Steve Downs will be our presenters.

Well, this is fun to talk to you this way instead of in person, but, um, we are very fortunate. We will be receiving about $411,983 in additional CDBG funding to be used for COVID-related expenses. So these funds have to be used to prevent, prepare for and respond to the coronavirus pandemic and to help mitigate COVID-19. And it cannot be used to offset any revenue shortfall for government. So that's what the funding is for. And Stephen and I are just trying to get some direction from the council, or if we're going in the right direction with some of the things that we've been talking about. So last week we met with both the entitlements. We've met with MAG, who represents Lehi and Utah County. We also met with Provo City, and we discussed some possibilities of spending some of these funds jointly. And these are some of the things that we discussed with them. They're interested in maybe jointly funding some mental health, mental health and Domestic violence. Domestic violence. They're also interested in maybe doing what we call a business stabilization fund. So this would be a little bit different than some of the stabilization funds that you are seeing out there through the federal government. This would be more to offset some of the costs that the businesses have to do related to some of the COVID-related expenses such as PPE, marketing, things like that that they have to do a little bit differently in order to deal with some of the things that the governor is telling them to do, that kind of thing. Also, the county is looking at needing some funds for the jail, working with first responders and healthcare provider support. This would be some of the Because some first responders and also some of the healthcare providers have to be staying in hotels. They need childcare support, things like that. So those are kind of the things that we were thinking with the other entitlements that we might be able to fund together. And the other entitlements received quite a bit more money than we did. Utah County is receiving over $800,000. Provo is receiving over $700,000. Lehi is getting a little over $150,000. So they're getting less than we are. Potential Orem-only projects, things that we've been talking about. We do have a list of public service requests from our public service subrecipients. A big deal right now is rental and mortgage assistance. We talked to the Utah County Health Department and asked them what they felt the greatest need was, and they felt like the rental and mortgage assistance were going to be the greatest need. We've also talked about providing overtime money for police and fire and PPEs, and then some CDBG administration funding. So that's kind of what we're looking at, pursuing that with the different entitlements. We still have our few weeks out. We're still waiting for some HUD guidance.

Thank you.

on some waivers and things like that so that we can move forward. We will have to do what we call a substantial amendment to our 2019-2020 annual action plan. So we will have to bring that to the council and have them approve that substantial amendment before we can distribute those funds. And we're waiting on HUD to let us know when we can do that. Thank you.

So, uh, Kenna, so you're, uh, asking what the council's thoughts are on possible uses as you've shown here on your list, is that correct?

That is correct, or if you have other directions you would like us to go in.

So I'd just like to make mention of one thing. I— the county, as you mentioned, is receiving over $800,000 And they're receiving other monies as well. So for me, I would rather keep our money in Orem-only projects. I think there are areas that we could be a real help to our citizens, you know, at this time. And personally, I would like to do that. And I don't know, you know, one thought I've had over the past is You know, we have late fees charged on utility bills that some people are having a hard time paying due to COVID-19. Possibly we could pay some of those. But I think there's a lot of areas within Orem that we could use the money, and where the county is receiving their own funding, I would like to keep it in Orem. But I'd be interested to hear everybody else's comments. Councilmember Pedersen, I see that you have your hand up. Would you like to make a comment?

That was on a previous one, but I do— I will make a comment on this, Mayor. I agree with the motion. I think we ought to keep it in orum. And I think a group that is doing so much for us that we need to be sure we are supporting is our first responders, our police and our firemen. They are sitting in the seen some of the impact of the mental health issues that people have when you are out of work, domestic issues. And so I think this would be a good question to turn to them. How do we support them? Whether it is overtime, whether it is more counseling with mental health for themselves and for the people that they are discovering. But I do agree with the mayor. I would like to see it stay in Orem.

Thank you. Councilmember Sumner has a comment.

I just want to echo those comments, Mayor. I think it needs to stay in Orem. And then I do have a question about the county money. Do we receive any of that, or do you expect any of that?

So the CDBG funding would be for county outside of Provo, Orem, and Lehi projects. However, we can jointly fund projects. So say, you know, the Center for Women and Children in Crisis, which is the domestic violence shelter, they serve residents throughout the county. So what we could do is we could put in some percentage of our money, they could put in a percentage of their money, Provo could do the same. So that would be more of a jointly funded public service situation. So we are funding Orem residents, but we'd be able to fund them at a greater rate because we're all funding them together. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Lamson has a comment.

Yeah, I agree that we need to keep this money in Orem, and I would also echo the importance of supporting our first responders. And perhaps there are some things that we're not aware of that their families are dealing with. And so I think that would be a great idea to work with them to see if there are programs that they may not be aware of that they would be grateful to have some assistance.

So. Okay, thank you. Councilmember Larey, you have a comment?

Yeah, I am a little concerned about the domestic violence and the mental health. I was told that the domestic violence calls are up by 20%. And if there's some Orym-centric programs, I would— I'm really concerned about that. Um, I know that as a woman, that's really scary when you, you know, you feel, um, you feel scared. So if we could look at Orym-centric or things that are going to be supportive of our population. And of course, mental health, there's always, there's always a need for, you know, anxiety and depression. So If we can find ORMs centered in those 2 areas, along with the first responders, of course they're very valuable, but I just want to make sure that we're not forgetting that population. It's on the increase.

It's interesting, there's a lot of money coming into the county through different sources. So Community Action's getting quite a bit of money through what they call CSBG. It's very similar funding to CDBG, but it's more community action related. Some of that money will also be going out into the community as well. But we did ask all of these recipients that had made some requests if they were getting other money. And one of the recipients that isn't getting any money, at least right now, is the Center for Women and Children in Crisis. So I think DV money would be an important place for us to put some more of our money.

Yes, and I was just gonna mention some of our residents do use that service, and I think that would be a great place to use some of these funds. There are women that are in need of great help, and that particular community service has been underfunded for years. But again, I'd really like to center it on Orem needs and maybe even asking some in different departments what needs they may be Seeing that we're not aware of.

So great.

All right, anything else?

Well, thank you. We will— we are having a CDBG Commission meeting this week, and we will bring that back to them, your comments, and talk about that. And then as soon as we can, we'll bring this back to you for your recommendations and your approval.

Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate what you do.

Thank you.

Um, our next item is a budget discussion on operations, capital, fleet, IT, and our presenters are Nicole and Brandon. And are the two of you there? Are you here?

Nicole is just joining us online.

Okay.

Hi, I'm here.

There she is.

Appreciate you dressing up there, Brandon, for us. Thanks.

I kind of liked it when we didn't have to, I'll be honest. Ah, thank you. So as you're well aware, we had intended, uh, at our last council meeting to have a work session to kind of begin, um, or continue our discussion of budget, uh, the tentative budget for next fiscal '21. And just because of how things were, we decided we'd postpone that so that maybe we could refocus and, and figure out where we wanted to go looking ahead. And this is kind of where, where we've got to and, and what we've come up with. So, um, let me first preface this discussion on the first section that we're talking about here, revenue and expenditure overview, is we're discussing in relation to the fiscal '20 budget. So changes that we are proposing within the, the '21 budget in relation to where those things were at For the fiscal '20 budget. We'll start with the revenues in the general fund specifically. That's generally where our focus is, but we'll start there. This top section relates to those items within that, that we're proposing within the tentative budget to— that will be increased. Number 1 on that list is— continues to be the property taxes, as We continue to want to have an increase in relation to those property taxes as far as keeping the mill rate the same. Now, that said, as we move forward, the interesting aspect here— so out of that $480, about $410 of that is what we anticipate related to keeping that mill rate the same. Same. One element of that, however, that we don't control is— and we don't know where the county assessor is in relation to assessing values of properties. Does the current crisis impact the assessments that are going to go out and potentially the mill rate that we had maybe assumed was going to be where at a certain point is now going to be changed and perhaps the $410,000 may not materialize because the mill rate potentially increases higher than what we thought it was. And so therefore, by keeping it the same, we don't realize the amount of increased revenue that we had anticipated. A couple of the other elements in here are, you know, The Vineyard Fire agreement, we, we will be receiving an additional $100,000 in relation to that agreement. We have the VOCA grant— is speaking of violence against children and women— our VOCA grant helps in that regard. In the past, we haven't— we've never— we've always had that division within the city's police public safety department. Um, we've Never budgeted the grant money. As you know, we generally try, try not to budget grant money until it's in our pocket, if you will. However, times being what they are, we felt like, well, we've received it year over year for so many years now that it doesn't make any sense to do that any longer, and the funds are kind of needed to be in the budget. And so we've added those grant dollars. Obviously, we've also had future discussions related to UIA and the, if you will, the rebate that we've received each year for the past number of years. We are including a portion, if not all, of the rebate in anticipation of still continuing to receive some sort of a rebate. And then as we evaluate our contributions from other funds into the general fund. We reevaluate those every year, and that also produced some, if you will, some revenue increases to the general fund.

Brandon?

Yes.

This is the mayor. I just wanted to make a comment.

You bet.

I have been in favor of keeping the mill rate the same so that we can adjust year over year and not fall behind. But I'm not sure if this year is the year to start that, considering the difficulties that have been caused by the pandemic for so many within our community. And this would require a Truth in Taxation meeting. I personally would be against proceeding with that this year, just like we're taking a holiday on the increases, annual increases on our utilities.

Thank you.

I wouldn't mind starting this next year, but this year I really have a concern of doing this because of what our residents are suffering through in this scenario. So at some point in time, I'd like to bring that up for discussion to the council before we move ahead with that.

Sure. And obviously, you know, I should mention, uh, as we head towards the May meeting, first meeting in May where we bring forth the tentative budget, obviously that is something that you're— well, you can consider that in that meeting. Obviously there potentially could be adjusted prior to that meeting, but that meeting is generally the place where that can be discussed and And then we would make an adjustment if necessary between that tentative budget and the final budget that would be adopted in June. So anyway, that's, that's where we're at for those.

Sure.

Obviously there are some significant revenue decreases that we are— and the reason I mentioned the property taxes, you'll see later on when And we— as we go through here, you'll see what potentially the impact of not raising those property taxes has. But in relation to the revenue decreases, we've kind of settled on a 20% reduction in sales taxes. We can argue until we're all blue in the face as to whether that's going to be a reality or not, but at least that's kind of a place that we can work from.

Brandon?

Yes.

If I could make one more comment.

You bet.

The state legislature was considering deferring payment of sales taxes and giving a time period where they could be deferred over. It's my understanding last week in the special session that that is not being approved and that sales taxes are to be paid by businesses On time.

Yeah, I, I didn't hear that specifically, but I would have assumed that we would, you know, since the deadline here is April 30th, uh, for those sales taxes, I, I would have assumed that they would have made that announcement, obviously, if they were going to do that, um, some time ago. But, uh, that's, that's good news in the sense of I think they realize that not only does that have a large impact on us, but it also impacts the state as well as any other entity that has a heavy dose of sales taxes involved in their revenue structure.

Sure.

You know, we've hopefully conservatively guesstimated on some of the other revenues related to building permits, plan check fees, and other, you know, revenues that we receive in the general fund. You know, as we mentioned before, as we go through next fiscal year, we will be intending to come probably, if not every month, pretty close to every month, coming forward with budget amendments as we receive, you know, more information and better information as to where we're at and how we're doing. And then adjustments can potentially be made, um, during those budget amendments so that we can in essence true up our budget to more of a reality. Any questions in particular related to those revenue increases or revenue decreases? Okay, hearing none, um, as we move forward then— Well, there might— there's also the flip side of the coin, and that's expenditures. Let's start with some of the increases that we've put into the planning— planning on putting into the tentative budget. I mentioned the Vineyard Fire Agreement and the additional $100,000 there. We are, as part of that, last year we used some of that money to purchase a fire truck. This year we're setting aside dollars out of the money that we received from Vineyard in anticipation of eventually when we— they need to build that fire station. And, you know, we have to kind of plan ahead as we don't want to just all of a sudden think that we're going to staff that immediately. We need to get those, those firefighters into our family, if you will, and get them trained so that at the point when that fire station is ready to be built and that we have already experienced firefighters that we're able to either put in that station and/or backfill, you know, senior firefighters that might be moving to that station, and then we can backfill them in our own stations, however that works out. But these dollars help us prepare for that day. It includes coverage of the health insurance, anticipated health insurance increases for the city, and as well as continuing to fund the public safety career ladder that was put in place last year. We did not budget for a new ambulance. We actually had a brush truck in the, in the budget, and so in essence we're kind of somewhat swapping those 2 pieces. And then there were several, a small amount, some operational expansions that we'll kind of touch on a little later that were also added to the tentative budget. Now on the decrease side. So in the past, franchise fees we receive primarily from Dominion Energy and Pacificorp. Those fees in the past have been transferred to the street lighting fund. under an original agreement related to those fees. As we've now started our own streetlight fee, those franchise fees are no longer needed within the street lighting fund, and so therefore they can be kept within the general fund. So that contribution out is no longer necessary, and that's what this $775,000 represents. Associated with the upcoming, you know, opening of the new fitness center in next February, then the anticipated contribution again from the general fund to help cover operations in the fitness center has also been reduced in relation— again, keep in mind this is in relation to the fiscal '20 budget. There are several vehicles, for instance, also that no longer are— that were in the fiscal '20 budget that are no longer in the fiscal '21 budget. You'll recall also with the property tax, and I separated it out just to point it out, you know, we hired 5 officers last year, 4 related to the property tax increase as well as a new mental health officer. Those 5 officers' vehicles were in that fiscal '20 budget. They are no longer in the fiscal '21 budget, as obviously we have those vehicles now. Some other, some other costs related to costs that we're now moving out of our general fund and covering those costs in our B&C Road Fund. And then we, as I mentioned earlier, we also always every year look at allocations and adjusting those allocations and how those are distributed amongst our various funds. This year, we are similar to our fleet maintenance and our warehouse, our IT services and risk management. We are moving our facilities group out of the general fund and creating what's called an internal service fund where that group is all combined together and they then charge all of their costs to the applicable funds based on certain allocation methods. That change has resulted in a net benefit to the general fund of $190,000. Similar to the budget cuts that we did here for fiscal '20, we asked all departments to go through and reevaluate their budgets, and they— as they came back Those cuts came back and we, you know, approximately $575,000 in operational cuts. No personnel. Those are just regular supply type, you know, type things. Then there are several other items that were within the fiscal '20 budget that were in essence kind of one-time things related to that budget that we are no longer needed in the fiscal '21 budget. You will notice in both cases of expenditures, as the mayor mentioned, we are not including any type of pay in general pay increases. So those have been removed from the budget. Are there any questions about either expenditure increases or decreases?

All right.

Hearing none, let's sum that up.

So Councilmember Sumner has a question or a comment. Brent, are you there?

Hello?

Go ahead, Brent.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay. I think it was on page 3. Can you give me some examples of the operational expansions Yeah, I, I can—

we— I do have those in a separate section that we'll be discussing, discussing if you want to wait, and if we can wait until then and discuss those in total. Is that all right, Brent?

Okay, that's good. All right, thank you.

So again, the summary of all of those, those previous slides and where we sit. So that currently leaves us in a deficit position In essence, needing to use fund reserves of approximately $1.45 million looking at fiscal '21. As I, you know, the mayor touched on, if a property tax increase is not something that we would be moving forward with, then tack on another, you know, $400,000-plus to that number, and that would be needing to be used from the city's That just kind of gives you an idea of where we're headed as far as that tentative budget. You know, if you have any specific questions, not necessarily now, if you have any as you think about the— this presentation, you're certainly welcome to call me or shoot me an email, and I can respond to, to those questions as well.

So, Brandon, if you could send us out This presentation to our emails?

I think it's in the— is it in the stuff Jody sent?

Well, it's in the packet.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, I think it is.

It is in the packet. And Councilmember Sumner has a question.

All right. Yes, considering what's going on with the pandemic, I want to echo what the mayor said. I think now is not the time to raise property taxes at all. And I would not be for that. That's it.

Okay, thanks, Brent. One item to note is, you know, you just went through and heard about the credit card convenience fee. So none of that convenience fee is not included in this, if I understand correctly, because we haven't, we haven't plugged that information into here. And so there is some So there is some potential to offset that as we look at adding that particular fee. Yeah, but it wouldn't be too much in relation to the general fund. So keep in mind that number that they were telling you was in total across all entities, and a large majority of that obviously is going to be the water— going to be in the water fund. But I thought I would at least mention that those savings, there would be a portion that would be applicable here.

Okay.

So, Brandon, I was just going to say, I know your job must be very difficult at this time because as we get further into our budget, the revenues could vary up or down by quite a bit. So we appreciate what you're going to have to go through here in the future.

Thank you. It is challenging my math capabilities, I will admit.

Mayor, may I make a comment?

Yes, go ahead, Jamie.

Just specifically related to the estimates tied to revenue that we have included in this budget, or the anticipated decreases, we didn't look at the decrease in an across-the-board kind of way. What we anticipate is that we will see greater Revenue decreases in the upcoming— the next number of months. And then as time passes, we anticipate that we're going to see improvement. So when we talk about a 20% reduction in revenues, we're not necessarily taking one number, cutting it 20% off the top by way of a haircut, so to speak. and inserting it into these budget estimates. What we have done is we've kind of looked and said, well, we believe that here in the next number of months, it's quite possible that we are going to see 50% of maybe what we originally projected. And then in 2 or 3 months from now, we are looking at 60 or 65% of what we originally projected. And then thereafter 70 or 80%. We are working with the Utah League of Cities and Towns. They have contracted with a local economist familiar with, obviously, the Utah market. And he is putting together some preliminary numbers as to where he thinks the top 60 cities will be. from a revenue perspective as a result of COVID and he is looking to share those numbers with those cities by the end of this week, the beginning of next week. So we will have a third party or an additional set of eyes having looked at our data, having looked at where we are, and we will overlay that on what our current projections are so that we can hopefully gain a different perspective as to where we might be.

Jamie, one thing I might want to add, and that's really good to hear, I think that's something we really need. A national economist that I had read projected that our first quarter nationally and, you know, here as well Revenues would be down by 7 to 10%, and it appears that they're moving in that direction. Second quarter, they're looking at a 38% reduction. For a third quarter, a 1% increase. And fourth quarter, a 28% increase for a net reduction of 10% for the year. But of course, our budget time ends in June, but But anyway.

Yeah, so we know, for example, that we've seen a healthy increase in household purchases, or what we call general merchandise, what you may associate with a supermarket, for example. And I think that increase is about 8 or 9%. But at the same time, we've seen, and we are At least in March, the projections have been a 26% drop in auto sales, a 25% drop in furniture sales, a very significant drop, 20-plus percent as well, in restaurant sales. So yes, we are seeing potential blips in some categories. We're seeing— obviously some gains and a few others. You try and get in the In-N-Out line these days and you're thinking they're doing better than they were when the dining hall was open.

We counted 70 cars one Saturday in line.

Yeah, so I mean, again, appreciate Nicole and Brandon and what they're doing. They are really trying to make an educated switch swag as to what and where we are going to be. And that is something that we'll adjust essentially on almost a weekly, if not a monthly basis.

All right.

Brandon, anything else?

Nope, not in that section. So kind of moving on to fees and charges. Keep in mind this section, this is an overview. I'm not touching on every fee that we are adjusting, primarily focusing on some of the major fees. As we present you the tentative budget, you'll have the opportunity then to obviously review all of those fees and make whatever adjustments potentially you would like to make. Again, kind of between the tentative budget and the adopted budget time frame. So moving on, as, as mentioned in an earlier— your earlier discussion, uh, that the tentative budget does not have any, um, proposed changes to the water, either the usage by tier and the base rate. Same with sewer and the volume and the base rate. It does, however, include an increase in the stormwater ESU rate from $7.35 to $7.60 as part of that— again, part of the plan. It does touch on the impact fees, and we will continue to increase those for those— these 3 particular impact fees that as part of the original impact fee analysis studies that had increases scheduled in them.

Okay.

So we would continue on that path until obviously such time as the new studies were concluded and whatever adjustments needed to be made at that time. Cemetery fees, there are new fees in relation to that. Not only— primarily a lot of because of the opening of the lower cemetery and the impacts that that has to the upper cemetery. So, so some fee adjustments there as well. Just some things for you to— I know that's always seemingly a concern to a lot of people, so I thought I'd at least bring that one to your attention. Solid waste fees. Obviously, as we work with our solid waste provider, we make adjustments to those fees as as we make adjustments with our agreement with them. And these are the adjustments that are intended to be made to help cover in those costs.

Brandon, a question for you.

Okay.

Do you know how many individual trailer spaces we have in trailer courts in the city?

I do not. I don't know if maybe Bren does.

That's an off question. Just maybe in the future somebody could come up, but I'd just be interested to know.

Okay.

And then kind of the last one I wanted to touch on was the street lighting fees. I kind of mentioned earlier in relation to the franchise fees transfer, we will be moving previously who have dropped their $3.25 fee had dropped off and they had been moved to the new street lighting fee, that fee would be increased from $2.34 to $2.39. And then these new neighborhoods beginning July 1st that will be phased off of the $3.25 fee and onto the new street lighting fee. I'm just kind of trying to point out that there's some changes going on there as well. Now, you know, as I mentioned, there are a huge number of other fees related to The library hall, fitness center, outdoor programs, library development services, you name it. There are a lot of small fee adjustments in a lot of those cases. And so again, all of those fees will be brought to you as part of the tentative budget. But I thought I'd kind of point out some of these, these kind of the ones we tend to focus on and and have a bigger impact. Are there any specific things related to the fees and charges that I've shown you or any other questions in particular?

Okay.

Then let's— we'll move on to the operational expansions that I promised Councilmember Sumner that we would discuss. These are the items that we have added. To the current or the upcoming fiscal '21 budget. In development services, some software that helps the resident— the people out in the field, the inspectors— be able to talk. Not only those examiners be able to talk with the city inspect program, but it also gives them the ability to access plans while they're out in the field, which I think it would be a great benefit to them. There's also in there, as you've known, with our engineering group, some, you know, have been struggling to keep those engineers. And so we've developed a way to be able to help Sam Kelly and his group be able to hopefully provide a better structure Brandon, this is essentially a career ladder type promotion for a staff engineer.

You bet.

Once an engineer reaches a certain qualification, he or she is eligible to promote within the organization. So in many respects, it's representative of the same type of promotion program we have with our public safety departments. It's just not included in that number previously that we talked about for career ladders, as that is directly tied to police and fire.

Great, thank you for the clarification there, Jamie. Within the finance department, we've talked many, many years about, you know, you, you have your BRIGs or or Wells Fargo or whoever it may be that we decide to use. But currently, our risk manager goes out and collects the cash. And so we felt like it's kind of a time— and we've had some issues in the past in relation to traffic accidents or other, you know, bad shoulder carrying all the coin. So we felt like, you know, now is kind of the time to really take that out of the hands of our—

Risk manager.

employees and let's put it in the hands of professionals who do that on a daily basis.

Brandon, we've got major issues with the sound.

Okay, can you hear me?

Yep, you sound good now.

Okay, great. I got— when I got Steve looking over my shoulder, it seems to improve for some reason. I don't know what the deal is. Uh, in the city manager's office, in our specifically our city recorder area, uh, you continuing to try to digitize all of the files and try to continue that process so that everything's not in paper. Then in the fire, the reporting system that they use currently to get from there to our billing group, that reporting system has been lacking a lot. Let's just leave it at that. It needs to be changed.

Thank you.

And so we're looking at improving that reporting system. And then the last item is this fiscal year, fiscal '20, we added a skid steer and mini excavator lease, and now we're just including that in our budget for the previous year. So you can see the $67,700 down at the bottom, that ties to the, the other slide that we had shown you before.

Thank you.

Then in the— Uh-oh.

Steve, I won't progress.

Oh, there we go. So in the other funds, that was the general fund we just touched on. In other funds, we have some expansions. We've talked on in relation to going back and redoing the master plans. Obviously, you can see that kind of thing in both the water, water reclamation stormwater.

Those—

we've also touched on what some of the other things in relation to power and some asphalt stuff and really in the water reclamation fund. In the IT, they continue with that AMI that we had discussed earlier with Neil. That has some impacts to our IT group and they need to update some equipment in relation to being able to handle all of that new data. The stormwater fund has— besides their master plan, they have an ability to— it's called debris crushing, where they take some stuff and they're able to use it as fill material. And then in our road fund, we have some data analytics stuff that we're able to do there in relation to traffic. And then they're also participating in that debris crushing.

OK.

cost. So those are all of the expansions for the next fiscal year that we're looking at. Are there any questions in relation to any of those? Okay, hearing none, I will turn the time over to Reed Price and Thayne Carter in relation to our fleet replacement program for the upcoming budget. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay, Mayor and Council, it's a pleasure to be with you again. It's been a few years since I've actually presented this. I've been out of town on business. So my esteemed colleague, Thayne Carter, our fleet manager, has stepped in. So it's good to be back with you. For this year's FY— fiscal '21 fleet replacement plan, we— to summarize up front, we've reduced the budget to accommodate for the economic situation that we're in. and have a recommendation to you that totals $571,000 out of the general fund, $30,000 out of the road fund, and from water, sewer, and stormwater totaling $652,000— $652,500 for a grand total for fleet replacement this year of $1.2 million.

Thank you.

$1,253,500. Now we should note, and I'll point it out during the presentation, that the general fund should be reimbursed between $150,000 and $200,000 in both insurance settlements that we're expecting for a couple of wrecked vehicles, as well as the Volkswagen grant which we were awarded last year. And I'll touch on that. As we go through the presentation. First of all, let's look at the general fund. And Brandon alluded to this in his presentation. We plan— we need to replace one of our ambulances. There was one ambulance that was essentially totaled in an accident during the wintertime. We expect between a $75,000 and $125,000 insurance settlement for that wrecked ambulance. The total cost of an ambulance is $185,000. We have 3 police utility vehicles, which are the patrol vehicles that we'll be replacing at a cost of $148,500. One of those was also wrecked. We're expecting about a $10,000 settlement from insurance for that vehicle. We will also—

Corey, question for you. What type of vehicles are those 3 police vehicles?

Those are the Explorer style, the, the, the ATV.

Basically, everybody's gone to the Explorer style, it's my understanding.

That's correct. Ford does not make an Interceptor or the Taurus style anymore.

So when it comes to, to And I know the police appreciate those more because they have more room inside.

That's, that's correct, Mayor. The next is we'll be replacing a vehicle in, in our SET team or in investigations with a leased vehicle. There's a vehicle that we currently own that's about 10 years old. currently own, which gets high mileage. And because of that high mileage, we, we get a better deal if we, if we lease that for a short period of time. So our recommendation is for a 2-year lease of $15,000 for that, for that vehicle. Moving on to Parks, there are 2 vehicles that we plan to replace there. One is a gang mower, which is badly needed, at a cost of $95,000. as well as a riding mower which will be repurposed from the stormwater group. That particular mower has life left in it still, and the general fund will be purchasing it from the stormwater fund for the cost of $7,500, which is its depreciated cost. Then the last purchase in the general fund is for the senior citizen van— senior citizen bus. That particular bus was— we submitted for replacement through the Volkswagen grant, and it was one of the 5 vehicles that we were awarded funds to replace. That total cost of that vehicle will be $120,000. So the ultimate price that the city will pay Uh, Reid, one other question.

So the van that we're replacing, how many miles does it have on it right now?

The, uh, it's got about just about just under 74,000 miles.

Okay, and will that be then surplused out and sold?

No, uh, as a requirement with the Volkswagen grant They require that we completely disable that vehicle by—

That's right. You drill the engine and—

Yeah, we got to cut a hole in the engine and we have to cut each of the frame wheels— wells, frame wells.

We should make that a contest for our residents to see who wants to destroy the van.

Yeah, well, and we'll have some dump trucks and a fire truck to do the same thing to. Moving on to the—

I have a hand raised, if you could, Mayor.

Sorry, Tom, go ahead.

You mentioned that the leasing was a better deal a slide or two ago. I have seldom seen that to be true. You've worked the math, though. You can pat my head and say everything's okay. Normally, I haven't found leasing to It would be more economical.

Yeah, the only— I agree with you, Tom. We've looked extensively at leasing, and it typically doesn't pencil out unless you have a high-mileage vehicle like this one. We're confident that we can lease this for a couple years, sell it, and use the proceeds from that, roll that back into a lease, and And save the city money for this particular vehicle.

If you've done the math, I'm not challenging it. I just— if you've done it, great. Thank you.

We have.

I think— weren't you saying the mileage on these vehicles are 25,000+ miles a year?

That's correct. For this particular vehicle, they're putting in excess of 20,000 miles per year. Okay, let's move on to the road fund. That's what we refer to as Fund 20. That's money that comes from the gas tax that's used for primarily for improvements to the road surfaces. However, we can use that to purchase vehicles as well. This year, the only thing that we're recommending funding is to— for 2 backhoes. We have a buyback program where it's It's kind of like a lease. We own our backhoes, but the vendor will buy them back from us and we can get a brand new backhoe every 3 years by— at a cost of under $30,000. So we typically save $10,000 per year for our backhoes. And then for $30,000 every 3 years, we get a brand new backhoe. The hours low and saves on our maintenance costs there. Similar program for the front-end loader that we have at Public Works in the yard. Next is the water fund. They have 3 backhoes in the water section, so we'll need to save $10,000 Each for the— for each of those backhoes. It's also— we also need to replace a vibration compactor, which is a little vehicle that can be guided into a hole and is used to tamp or vibrate the dirt after repairs are made to make sure that they get good compaction to replace the road surface.

OK.

Next is the Water Reclamation Fund. There are 2 vehicles, a loader and a backhoe, that we need to save for the buyback program. We also will be putting money into a sinking fund or a savings account to replace the vac truck. A vac truck are the big orange trucks that you've probably seen around town cleaning the sewer lines. This will be year 2 of 3. So next year we will recommend funding the balance needed in order to purchase that back truck. There are also 2 UTVs, little vehicles that they race around the treatment plant in order to get from area to area that will need to be replaced, and 2 pickup trucks at a cost of $59,000. Total expenditures to the Water Reclamation Fund would be $348,000. And finally, in the Stormwater Fund, we recommend spending $237,500. One, first of all, $10,000 for the buyback program for the backhoe, and then $210,000 for a street sweeper. That would be year 1, the first year that we would save for that vehicle in anticipation of replacing it next year. The total cost of that vehicle would be just under $300,000 next year. And then finally, the riding— a riding lawnmower will be purchased for the stormwater fund. That riding lawnmower is the one that's being repurposed to the general fund that I mentioned earlier. With that, Mayor, that's, that's what we have to recommend to you for vehicle replacement. We'd be happy to entertain any other questions you might have.

Any questions? All right, well, thank you, Reed. Appreciate it.

You're welcome. Thank you, Mayor. We'll now get our esteemed city engineer, Sam Kelly to talk about the rest of the city's CIP.

That was very nice.

Thanks, Reed.

Mayor, City Council, I'm just briefly go over this guy. Okay, here I'm here to propose our CIP, our capital improvement projects for the year. Here's a summary before I get into the details of what we have. We're proposing $730,000 to be spent out of the general fund, the water fund. Now, the general fund is the one that's probably seen the most significant decrease due to the current state of the economy. The water fund, the water rec fund, the stormwater fund, All of those, we are moving forward with those as we have done with our moving forward with those according to our rate structure. That and those for the water fund and water rec fund, we are in year five, I believe, of seven. The stormwater fund, I believe we're in year.

Are we in year?

Yeah, we're in year five. So that's actually we're in. 5 of 5, right, for the water? Yeah. So, so this is going to be— we're actually— there is going to be a proposed rate increase for stormwater, but this is it. And these are the projects that we have. The B&C Road Fund and the Transportation Sales Tax Fund, both of those we've reduced slightly due to the projected decreases we'll see in the B&C Road Funds as well as the Transportation Sales Tax Here's what we're proposing for this. The, the general fund, $610,000 will be spent towards the fitness center with the breakdown there of $500,000 for the pool equipment replacement, electronic door locks similar to what we have here at the city center, as well as security cameras, with the additional $100,000 going towards the Library Hall landscaping, and then $20,000 going towards some concrete work that needs to happen in front of the Timpanogos Park. The water fund— and again, this is going— all of these enterprise funds we are going to be referring to our master plans, but we're going to start off here with replacing 4 PRVs. PRVs are a pressure— are Pressure reducing valve. This is what they mainly look like. It's a large vault. This one we have here is an 8-inch PRV. So that's an 8-inch valve that's hooked up to our water mains. We do have some larger ones being 12-inch and/or 16, but this is a schematic of what our PRV looks like. And these valves are placed at the bottom end of our— of our pressure zones so that we don't have increased pressures going to residential homes, blowing out pipes, water heaters, and things like that. The next thing is a drain line for Well 5. Well 5 is here at our city center park, and right now it discharges into a sump, which is against our ordinance. We shouldn't have sumps within 300 feet of our well— wellhead. So we're going to go ahead and have a project where we will pipe this water further to the west in— into our storm drain system so it won't be there next to our well— wellhead. The next one is going to be a water line replacement at 1655 South. Here's a map that shows where that's at. And I'm assuming that the main that we're going to replace is there from northeast right there to the boundary with the school that's down at Cherry Hill. And then of course, this is part of the conversation that's going to be coming up too, as far as bonding or continuing with the rate structures. But we're proposing $3 million be set aside for our storage tank. This is, I think, year 3 of 3. This is the area around our community park that we're looking to Yes. We're still looking to figure out where we can set that in relation to also putting in a well and our pump buildings. The interesting part about this area is this is where we can put that tank. It'll service the southwest area. It's at about approximately the right elevation, so we wouldn't have to do too much pumping. But because it's near the park and there's land and water conservation grant there, this tank has to be below grade and that surface has to be put back so we can still have those, those types of activities there. So it's going to be a little bit of a challenge to put the, the tank here. So that's why we're still working with the, with the logistics of where it's going to be placed, as well as placing a well there and our pump house.

Sam, one question. You had mentioned that this is year 3 of 3 on the storage tank. Is that correct?

Yes.

Okay, so we have approximately $6 million saved up, and then this would be an additional $3 million?

Yes.

If we were to proceed as we've done?

Yes.

And we're looking at various options, but— Yes.

And Sam, just by way And Chris is, I think, online as well, but this is about a $10 to $13 million project.

That's correct.

Also, this is less than what we had scheduled, uh, in the budget. So we had scheduled $4 million in this year, and, uh, due to maintaining the The rate structure where we are, there is a reduction in storage tank and in the allocation for AMI technology in this year's budget compared to the proposed financial plan.

Anything else? Looks like we're good. Continuing on, and then to Neil's point here, we are setting aside $2 million to continue with our AMI project, as well as we're setting aside $85 million for miscellaneous water projects. And this money is used for projects that happen throughout the city where maybe we look to— there's a maintenance issue with a small stretch of line. We can go ahead and design that and bid it out and build it. And/or these past few years, we've been using this funding to help out with work around the library hall as well as the fitness center. Oh, $85,000.

Sorry.

Yeah, I was going to bring that up just for anybody listening. They might have just had a heart attack.

But I was just seeing if you were awake, Mayor. That's okay. Next to the water rec fund, we're looking to continue with the plan. We're going to rebuild the, the secondary Clarifiers 5 and 6. And on this map, you guys get to guess which ones those are. Just kidding. They're the actual ones that are above the bioreactor. They're the 2 right there in the middle. And what that means is the structure will actually stay there, but we will actually take those clarifiers down, drain them, and then rebuild all of the hardware, the pumps and the skimmers and things like that. The outdoor This is for the— I believe this is for—

Various equipment.

Yeah, is this part of the various equipment?

Okay.

I do have a breakdown of that. For this, we're looking at— it looks like we're going to rebuild the West Aerobic Digester. We got a methane blower, some digester insulation blankets. Got to keep that stuff warm. Replacement parts for step screens. We've got to replace some motors. It looks like there's a confined space retrieval, probably a new system. Some meters for both the TSS meters, total suspended solids, and then as well as an influent flow meter. So that's kind of what that $160,000 totals. This is a manhole scanning system. This is a new piece of equipment.

Equipment.

It'll actually go onto our camera trucks. And it'll allow us to go in there and get a 3D image of the manholes. Right now, we can go in and we can camera all of our mainline and our manholes. But this will actually allow us to get a 3D image so we can actually see how much material has been lost due to H2S. And H2S is hydrogen sulfide gas. That gas is actually released with— during the effluent process. And when that effluent is turbid or it's splashing a lot, it off-gasses that hydrogen sulfide gas. And that gas attacks the cement in the concrete. And when that's gone, then the aggregate falls. And then we have an issue like we had on 12th—

12th Street.

North where we didn't have a top of a pipe. We had a roller fall through, and we had to rebuild the roadway and that line. And it was a mess. But this will allow us to go in and look at our manholes to make sure that they're structurally sound. And if they're not, we can either replace those or we can line them. The next is the Geneva Road to Springwater Lift Station pipe upsize. This has been a master-planned project. This will also— we're setting aside money because it's planned for. And this is the piece of pipe that would connect onto the mainline that was installed with the Lakeview Fields project with Jeff Mansell. This is the line that comes— that's on the south side of the Nathan Johnson property. We're setting aside money. We understand that it's a scheduled project. But as the conversation will be brought to you later in the month of May, we need to know the size of that pipe depending on what we want to do with the general fund in the area with the temple and whatnot. So that's a project that we have scheduled to be looked at and designed next year. And we'll want a little bit of direction on what we'll need for a size there, depending on how many units you guys would like to approve for that area.

Thank you.

Plant instrumentation. I think that's pretty, pretty self-explanatory. Here's just some pictures of some instrumentation that is used. I don't know if it's necessarily what they're going to be needing for the plant, but that's kind of a visual for you. $700,000. This is our routine liner project. I think there was a comment made previously in today's presentation about how we get in there and And we maintain our lines. And this is part of that where we go through. If there's a lot of roots, if there's cracks, if there's some aggregation, we go ahead and we pull the— pull through a liner. This is kind of an example of what that looks like. We're also going to put $1.5 million towards H2S rehab. Part of that H2S rehab can be done with a liner, but in— but in some cases like like we're currently doing at Monterey Drive, just north of 5th North, and as well as on 75 East around the Memel Drive area, just north of 8th North. We're having to go in and actually replace lines. So that $1.5 million is going to go towards some liners and as well as some pipe replacement.

Sam, a question for you. What is the lifespan of the liners that we put in? You know?

The lifespan is going to be similar to what you would have in a PVC pipe. So you could have anywhere from 50 to 100 years. A lot of that's going to depend upon, you know, installation, if there's anything like cracks, ripples, and things like that. But it— but what that liner is, it's a polyester sock that is impregnated with a resin. It comes in a refrigerated box truck. And then when they come and they install it like this, then they either use steam or they use hot, hot water to cure that. So what you end up with is a plastic pipe. So it can last quite a long time. Obviously, just like anything else, if it's hit, if you have any of these horizontal drilling companies drill through it or bore through it, it'll crack and And if that effluent gets around the backside of it, we can have issues. But the whole reason why we do this is that way it allows us for, you know, like I said, a lifespan of anywhere from 50 to 100 years.

And it saves a lot of money replacing those pipes.

Yeah, yeah. And there— and where it really pays off is we have some areas here in Orem where the sewer main is not in the roadway. It's actually in the backyard. So when we have a contractor like this come in, it's pretty invasive around the manhole. But then they can go ahead and lay that line throughout the whole block, through all the backyards. And they're not disruptive to any of those folks. Now, granted, that might happen at night, or they try and do it during the day, and you can't use your restroom. Well, you can. It'd just be kind of a mess. But they try not to. And then they go in there, they cut the holes out for Right. Or the laterals, and then the line is now, you know, good as new. And then again, here's $90,000 for miscellaneous construction. And again, that goes towards nuisance flooding projects. Oh, no, no, this is water rec. It's similar where we have lateral problems like there have been on occasion where we've had some issues with laterals some of our mainline or a manhole here and there, or again, like we've had to do around here, around the library hall or the fitness center. That's where some of this money is spent. Stormwater fund. We're going to continue to put some money aside to the West Union Canal abandonment project. This is a project that we've looked at now for, I think, 3 years, and I know we have well over a million put away in that— and for this project. On this slide here, the canal abandonment area is kind of the blue line that's coming along the right side of the slide. And then it comes down, it vanishes, and it comes back. But essentially, we're trying to get our stormwater out of the West Union Canal. And currently, we are partnering with Provo and UDOT to try and take care of the stormwater that we have in the Hillcrest area. We have met with them. They have a consultant hired. And right now, Provo is looking to see how much of this alignment, as it goes down State Street to the Provo River, if they can take some of that—

Land.

take some of that alignment and then detour it through Provo City and pick up some drainage there and then go ahead and bring that to the river. So that process is happening. And as well as we've hired— we being engineering— has hired RB&G to look at drilling some holes in this hillcrest area to look to see if we can put possibly some deeper sumps, you know, up to 50 feet deep to see if we can go ahead and use this area outside of the wellhead to inject this water in into the ground and not have to go through the expense of trying to run a new pipeline down State Street with all that cost as far as pipe sizing as well as the impact to the community and the concrete roadway. So those are some things that are happening with this West Union Canal abandonment money. The 2000 South project— this is part of that West Union— or actually, it is part of the West Union Canal abandonment project as well as it's on our Storm Drain Master Plan. This is the remaining funding. We currently have a project that's in been designed for this area. We've been notifying some folks in there. We're looking to finish off the road with a little bit of curb and gutter. But that's just the final funding to finish off this project in this area. And this is going to be— as a side note, this is a construction project that's going to have a stormwater component, a water component, and then we'll come back in the following year and then pave it. Springwater Park Yes. This is an area across from our treatment plant. This has been identified in our stormwater master plan as a priority 2 or 3 project. I really can't remember.

2.

But with the advent of all the development on around just east of here on the other side of Geneva Road with the hub, we've seen an up— an increased amount of stormwater coming down to this area. So far, we haven't flooded anyone out, but the way the hydraulics are with this basin, it does reach a high-water mark of halfway through or halfway up the front yards of folks. And so we decided instead of telling them that it's going to be OK and that's normal, we'd probably go in and move this up to a Priority 1.

OK.

And put in a new outfall line to get this water out to Powell Slough and then do some slight modifications to the basin. And then we have $805,000 here. Now, we use this miscellaneous project money because it coincides with our roadway projects. As we go through and are doing all of our roadway projects, we take this money and utilize it upgrade our sumps. We have a lot of sumps within the city that don't have any pretreatment catch basins attached to those. So we take this money, we upgrade our sumps with— in conjunction with our roadway projects. And then as we have nuisance flooding areas, we go ahead and take that money and address those areas because it's really hard to keep telling our citizens That it's okay to have flooding into the front of their yard. So that's what we utilize that funding for. The road fund— this has been cut back slightly. Looking at it here, crack seal has been reduced. I mean, do you want to speak to some of these, Reed? I want to say the crack seal has been reduced by about $50,000.

Slurry—

I want—

actually, let, let me Step that back. The crack seal and slurry seal and microsurface, we kept the same. We understand the importance of having those for the maintenance of our roadways, but we have reduced our asphalt overlay and reconstruction funding knowing that this B&C Road Fund is not going to be as flush as it has been. So we have reduced that amount. The street striping is still the same. We still have the same amount of roads we have to stripe each year. Signal maintenance, that's something that is newer, but we just— but we have implemented that so we can keep our signal maintenance. Yeah, so it's fully— so that needs to be where it's at. And then the brine maker and storage tanks, this is in conjunction with our brine tank building that was funded last year. We just finished the actual building itself. And now with this extra $125,000, we'll be able to actually purchase all the equipment for that, being the tanks and then the actual brine maker that will go inside.

Sam, this is Jamie. I think just in relation to this road fund, Reed, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe we have taken out of fund reserves to fund a portion of Actually, Jamie, we planned on balancing—

we will need to use fund reserves for FY20. But in FY21, we tried to balance it by reducing projects, by reducing CIP projects.

OK.

Thank you.

The next slide is just a picture of what that— the tanks. And then what the brine-making equipment will look like inside that building. And then finally, this slide here is the transportation sales tax fund. We call that our Fund 24 money. And in here, we have allocated that money. This is money that we haven't had before, and we're looking at spending it, or this is where we'd like to— we're proposing to put this money towards our asphalt and overlay construction projects for next year. Yeah, focusing on local roads, we're going to put $70,000 towards sidewalk hazard mitigation. And this is where we hire a contractor to go in and they actually cut the curb. We have designated areas for that. We would like to do more, but obviously understanding that this, this sales tax is going to take quite a hit with, with what's going on, we've only allocated $70,000 towards that. ADA upgrade— this is where we are using this money to hire the contractor that does our roadway projects to install the ADAs. Our concrete crew, just with the fact that we're an aging workforce, we're having a hard time keeping up with that. And the fact that we have more funding and that our local roadways, we have a lot more miles that we're actually having under construction, we're going to put that money towards this, as well as the other $225,000 that's actually going to go towards the sidewalks and things like that in conjunction with our road— with our roadway projects. Again, in summary, that's what we are proposing to spend this year, or for FY21, on our CIP.

Do you have any questions?

Any questions or comments? My only thought is that it takes a lot of money to keep a city functioning at a high level for 100,000 people.

Yes, it does.

Well, thank you. Appreciate that. Good evening, Mayor.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Thank you for having me present to you, uh, on IT today. I'm going to start with giving you kind of a summary of what we accomplished this year. These are just some highlights. We migrated our ShoreTel system, switching hardware to the new Mitel system that allows us more— to have more of a cloud presence as well with some of our phone tools. The that migration is almost complete. We've got one more upgrade to do on the software and then we'll be done. We've also have been working on the automated meter reading fiber and network infrastructure. This is what ties the AMI system to the network and allows us to route that traffic between our network and the subcontractor for that AMI project. We also have installed that— the SAN network, which I presented on last year. It's a storage attached network, and we finished that project in December. In January, we had a major incident with a server that went down and had some major hardware issues. It would have taken us about 72 hours on a best-case scenario to recover from that, and up to a week. We were able to do it in 5 seconds. The system automatically detected that on a weekend. and restored everything. By the time we came back on Monday, everything was still running except for some email messages with alerts that the server had failed. So that was— that system proved itself, and thank you very much for allowing us to do— go in that direction. We also reorganized our Active Directory authentication for our network. We started the migration to the Google Suite from the Microsoft products. We're currently right in the middle of that. We've made a lot of progress. All the engineering work is done, and the collaboration between the Google Cloud and our network, internal network, has been completed. We've migrated IT to that product, and we're currently learning the system so that we can start training people as we migrate them over. We also started an upgrade on our major HR software system, and that's an in-house developed system. We made changes and upgrades to our budgeting system as well, which is an in-house system. We rewrote the fitness center online system in preparation for the new facility opening. We also have redesigned our data center power so that we have better redundancy and better capacity in our data center. Our help desk area has been remodeled and centralized so that now we have all our help desk staff in one centralized location. We also have been working with the new rec center and library hall network design and specifications, which include audio and network services. And the relocation also of the recreation data center to the senior center on a temporary basis. We've upgraded our wireless hardware and software to the new generation devices, which are a lot faster now. Just a summary on computer rotation status. This year we're on track to replace 96 computers. As you can see from the history there, our computer count has been going up as well. And so we've been trying to kind of juggle some costs for that, but I think we're gonna be okay this year with those additional computers.

Thank you.

Major projects that we're going to be working on and that are already funded. We're going to replace— we're actually going to replace 90— 93 computers there. I'm sorry, I forgot to update that. We've also replaced 16 police car laptops. We'll install audio-video network switching equipment and infrastructure the new library hall. We'll install network equipment and infrastructure for the new fitness center. The Google Suite migration and licenses— licensing will be— will move forward. We're planning to pay for those costs for Google Suite with software that we'll be retiring and will no longer need because of the tools that are already included in that suite. The storage attached network, that still has a few more things to accomplish before we finish that project, and then we'll be maintaining that going forward. The HR system upgrade, 311 center software development to replace Yes. We will be doing that in-house. It's a ticketing system that our 311 center uses. We'll also be updating additional wiring, our wireless equipment. There is a request for funds related to the AMI water project. There are We have currently 9 tower locations with network equipment. This equipment is carrier-class equipment that needs to run 24/7. It has other supporting equipment such as UPSs and monitoring systems. And so it needs to— We need to be able to refresh those every 5 years with the latest technology so that we don't fall victim to hacking and other catastrophes. So the cost to maintain those and rotate them on a 5-year basis is about $10,000 a year. And so we're requesting $10,000 some additional in the network budget to be able to cover those costs.

Yeah, Mayor, Council, that is the end of our budget presentation.

All right, well, we appreciate, uh, everybody who has presented and all the work that's gone in by staff. Um, Jamie, have you got anything?

Yes, Mayor, thank you. Just as we wrap up this budget discussion, if there are particular questions or concerns with what you have seen tonight, if you wouldn't mind kind of speaking to that, either speaking to myself or Brandon here in the next couple of weeks, we will incorporate those into our incorporate concerns or questions that you have into our tentative budget presentation that we will provide to you the first meeting in May. As you may remember or know, the state law requires us to submit to you a tentative budget during the first meeting in May. And so we will do that with the understanding that we will make changes along the way. And I believe Brandon has represented that this remains a very fluid situation. And as such, we anticipate a number of budget amendments. The one kind of message I have heard specifically from Mayor and Councilmember Sumner is the specific comment related to keeping the mill rate same next year as this year, which we would anticipate would require a Truth in Taxation hearing. Both, both of you expressed concern in regards to that, and so I wanted to just see if others shared that concern. If so, then we will work that $480,000 out out of the proposed 2021 budget, and we will look to filling that gap by way of existing fund reserves or our rainy day fund. Is that, is that the direction that you collectively as a council would like us to pursue?

I think so.

This is Dave.

I think so.

This is Debbie. I would be comfortable with it if it was tied to public safety. If I remember correctly, it was about $1 a month. Am I wrong with the calculations?

No, it's about $1 a month, yes.

If we could tie that again to either police or fire, first responders, I think they're invaluable. So I'd be comfortable if it were tied to that. I am sensitive to families' budgets, but I still think if it's tied and we can do that again, I would be comfortable with that particular, a dollar a month, I'm okay with, for first responders.

Thank you. Terry Peterson. Let's see.

I think Terry had that again. Terry was on mute.

Am I on?

Yeah.

Yes, go ahead.

I would be opposed to a tax increase at this time.

Okay, so I have what I need. Not that I don't value the opinion of Councilmember Lamson or Councilmember McDonald, but I am able to count to 4.

Councilmember Sumner has a comment.

I just want to say on a small scale, and I expect it to be worse this month, with tenants, young people paying rent, and commercial businesses paying rent, it's a very difficult time. And some of these have come up with a lot of reasons, mainly why they shouldn't pay or reduction of payment. It all stems back to this COVID-19. I think we ought to be sensitive to our citizens of Coram. And everyone knows it's not the— it's the owner of the property or the landlord that pays the taxes to the county, but he gets his taxes from from the commercial people or the tenants. And I just want to say it's a real struggle right now. And I expect next week it will be even worse. Now, I'm on a very small scale, but I think I have a feel of what it's like in Orem. So that's— I'm not against a tax increase in good times, but I just don't think this is the the time to do it.

Thank you, Councilmember Sumner. Terry Peterson, did you have another comment?

Just one more comment going along with that, Mayor. On the $3.95 charge we are going to do for credit cards, is that a done deal or is that just something we are discussing?

I think that we have given Pete the go-ahead to get that done. I thought we were all pretty much in agreement.

Just a comment about that. I think it'd be nice if we had something coming out from the city letting them know that the water rates are staying the same this year, because a lot of people felt— including me, I thought that they were going to be going up this year and again next year. So I think that would be nice. And I really— even that it sounds like majority of those credit card uses is from commercial and large people, large accounts. I kind of hate to see our citizens get any kind of increase right now with what Brent is saying. So if there is a way that $3.90, if we could pass that on to the commercial folks that are abusing the system more than mom and pop that is putting it on their credit card for $150. Anyway, just a thought about that. I am just concerned about anything that says increase right now.

Terry, if I could speak to that.

There would—

if any of them use a bank withdrawal, They wouldn't pay that $3.95 fee. If any of them use a bank withdrawal, they would not pay the $3.95 fee. And the larger customers will pay more because for every $500 the bill is, they'll pay an additional $3.95. So somebody that has the $2,000 bill will pay $3.95 times 4.

So my only concern, Steve, is if we send that to everybody, though, if everybody gets that Then I'm going to have my 89-year-old mother-in-law saying, I just got this notice that my—

there's a 3—

you know, it's just the same thing that Dave was talking about, the concern about people seeing there's an increase even though it doesn't impact them.

Yep, yep.

No, so we would just be targeting those that pay with a credit card currently.

Okay, good.

Yep, thank you.

No, good clarification.

Okay.

All right, Councilmember Lamson, do you have a comment?

Yeah, yeah, I, I feel like now of all times we need to be sympathetic and understanding of current situations and, and the struggles that our families and businesses are going through here at this time. So I know Jamie didn't ask for my opinion, but I'm going to put it out there anyway. But yeah, I think if we can avoid that, I think that would be wise at this time.

Thank you. Mayor, just a couple of other things. Many of you may have listened to the governor's press conference today in relation to the coronavirus. As part of that press conference, he made an announcement that beginning Friday morning at 12:00 AM, the state of Utah will transition from a red risk category to an orange risk category as related to COVID-19. And as such, the city is going to make essentially preparations and accommodation to transition along with the rest of the state, subject to the Governor's Utah Leads Together plan. So the governor has issued specific information relative to risk categories, what moving to, for example, an orange moderate risk category means, and I will get that information out to you and all the employees by the end of today. But really what it does is it modifies, for example, some activities that can take place in parks. It changes the idea of congregating from 10 to 20 people. It opens up in-restaurant dining for a limited group of people. It also encourages everybody in public to wear a mask. And the governor also announced today an initiative in cooperation with the Utah Manufacturers Association where masks are being made by Utah businesses and are available free of charge for distribution to anybody that wants one or needs one. And you can access a specific request form on coronavirus.utah.gov. So we are going to transition beginning on Friday. We expect that that transition period will take several workdays for us to modify our operations. We have had an employee group that has been meeting in recent days trying to specifically identify above and beyond what the governor has already suggested, should be happening with the transition to the orange moderate risk category. We've been working internally as to what this means for the City of Orem, and we will begin that, that effort and that transition on Friday. In addition to that, we also expect that many of the operations, many of the things that we currently have in place now will continue given the orange moderate risk category. So for example, a number of our employees will continue to telecommute. Employees will continue to work staggered shifts. We will potentially, or in most cases, allow access to our city facilities, but we may meter people in and out of those facilities. We will continue to not hold large public events, including library activities or recreation programs. We anticipate that we will also not have some of the services that we have traditionally had available, available to all of our patrons at this point in time. So for example, passport services will be something that will be available on an appointment-only basis, but given the high-touch nature of the fingerprinting process, we will still not process fingerprints for patrons who come and conduct business with the city. So I just wanted to make you aware of that shift, that change. It does not come as a surprise.

Thank you.

The governor was quite specific about saying that this is an order, not a directive. One of the reasons behind that is because the current stay safe, stay home directive is scheduled to expire at the end of Friday, whereas this new order is effective the beginning of Friday. So as we know, an order supersedes a directive. So we will essentially move into this order phase and look in our rearview mirror towards the stay safe, stay home directive. The governor's order is something that will be in effect for 2 weeks, and at that point he will either extend the orange order or potentially transition to a yellow order. ultimately going to a green order, which suggests that the risk of the virus is now under control. So that's one specific thing that is happening. I don't know if you have any questions about what the government— the governor said today, but we will be working closely and we'll provide an operational plan to you and and to all of our employees here in the next day, day and a half in anticipation of making that transition to orange. We anticipate that a lot of the work as related to orange will take place beginning on Monday, May 4th. So we will get a number of things underway on Friday, but we expect that it's going to take us through the beginning of next week to move to that kind of level orange, so to speak.

Jamie, Councilmember Debbie Luray has got a question.

My question is related to the library. I know we had an employee that tested positive. Is that going to affect what you will do next week with the library, or have you not worked that out yet? I am just curious to what that means for the library.

So the library The library is in the process of finalizing the plan. The current plan is that we will meter individuals in and out of the facility in the same way that we will probably meter people in and out of the fitness center or Friendship Center currently, as well as the City Center. So yes, they do have a plan. They are doing, for example, some things to discourage people from hanging around, so to speak, in the library. So, for example, we're going to remove all of the furniture and discourage people from taking a seat and essentially spending a lot of time in the library. We're going to make those resources accessible to patrons, but we're going to encourage them to effectively get in and then get out. In relation to the fitness center, we have the approval to move forward and have limited patronage within the facility. So we anticipate that we're potentially going to set up a sign-up schedule and have individuals come in, sign up to use some of the equipment at a certain time, and then an hour or so later, another individual will have an opportunity to come in and use the equipment, not allowing more than 8 to 10 people at a specific— in that fitness center location at a time. So those are some of the things that we're looking to do.

Jamie, Councilmember Spencer has a question.

Jamie, I've got a question on recreational outdoor sports, say like for soccer and also for baseball.

Yes.

Those seasons are past due. Yes, if it goes into June, then that's going to be canceled. That's going to be a hardship on them financially. And if the city is trying to charge them from last year's, they're not going to have the money. So I just— any plans, ideas?

So yes, as part of the Utah Leads Together plan, they just issued an addendum or an appendix. Within this appendix, it addresses a number of categories. Business categories as well as other kind of, I guess you could call them, what do they call them here? General public and business reactivation areas. One of those areas does include team sports. And under the orange category, the moderate risk category, currently team sports are not permitted. So at least for the next 2 weeks between May 1st and May 15th, the idea of group sports still remains something that is not permitted. Now thereafter, it may change. I know Carl has had a number of conversations with some of the co-sponsored groups. They are very concerned about going forward what this means and can they still save their seasons. But based on the governor's, again, not directive but now order under the orange risk category, that moderate risk category, team sports are prohibited.

Okay. Any other questions?

Yeah. Just another item, and this is something that Chief Giles brought to our attention yesterday. We haven't necessarily had time to do a lot of research and to understand and appreciate specifically what may happen, but you recall several months ago the Boy Scouts of America and specifically the Utah National Parks Council put their facility there at the corner of 8th North and the I-15 interchange there. Up for sale, that property and that building has apparently been purchased by the state of Utah, and the intent right now of the state is to open a 96-bed transitional or correctional transitional facility in that building. Really kind of a halfway house of sort. Sorts, where those who have been granted work release by day can leave the premises, go to work, and at night they will be required to check in and to overnight at that facility. As, as you know, given the state of Utah and given the fact that we're a subunit of the state, we don't necessarily have discretion as to what may or may not go in a particular location when it comes to the state. The state of Utah is not subject to the same zoning requirements that we put in place for other private uses. So we've actually already reached out to our city— Deputy City Attorney Steve Earl, who deals directly with land use concerns, and he has represented that there's really not a whole lot we can do as a city in relation to this. Obviously, we're very concerned as to what may result from a facility like this in Orem. Not necessarily that that type of facility can't be accommodated, but of course we worry about potentially some of the ancillary things that may happen as a result of locating one of these Facilities in the city. Currently, there is not a like facility in Utah County like this, and so individuals who are in this situation have had historically to go up to Salt Lake County. This would be the first in Utah County. So I just wanted to make you aware of what is potentially happening in that location in the event that you do hear something. We just received notification from the State of Utah that it was their intent to repurpose that building for the purpose that I've described.

Anything else, Danny?

And just finally, just want to wish Councilmember Lamson a happy birthday this weekend. We hope you will enjoy the quiet and solitude of your birthday, and we look forward to the moment or the time that we can bring some treats your way and all of us can enjoy your birthday. And just want to wish you a happy birthday.

Thank you. You know, through this whole time, I've had no shortage of treats. I've gained about 20 pounds, so thank you. I appreciate that. And if I could, Jamie, I just want to say thank you to Jamie. I know this whole mess has just created, you know, mounds and hours and hours of work for you and your staff. And I haven't heard one ounce of complaint. I haven't heard any kind of, you know, moaning or complaining or woe is me or woe is us. But you've, you've shouldered this very well, and I think you've been a great example of what it means to be a leader.

Thank you.

Not so much looking to see what other communities are going to do or what they're doing, taking that information into consideration, but really making some really hard and some really tough decisions, always with the concern in mind what is best for Orem and what is best for our citizens. And I just admire you and your staff and want to say thank you for everything that you've done. And I know We're not through yet. I think we are hoping there's a light at the end of this tunnel, but I just, I appreciate your true leadership and making some tough stands in some really difficult situations. So thank you to you and all your staff.

It's a team effort, so the team has done a fantastic job and continues to do an outstanding job. And you know what, we have some great, great employees, some great leaders, and it's a privilege to work with them.

Councilmember Sumner would like to make a comment.

I second it. Is that a motion, Jeff?

Oh, I can make the motion if no one wants to.

I appreciate you too, Jeff.

And I have one comment before we adjourn. Jamie, I'm just curious, can you tell us, update us on the 2 employees that have tested positive?

Yes, and in fact, I will also represent to you that this afternoon, right before we began our meetings, we had a 3rd employee test positive.

I—

when I sent out a message— can somebody hear— can you hear me?

Yeah.

Okay. When I sent out that message on Sunday afternoon, you know, I was trying to balance the interests of the employee in terms of confidentiality while at the same time sharing some information with employees. I probably didn't share enough information. Tonight I'll make that right and send out some additional information to employees. We have 3 city employees, one in the library, one in our development services department, and the third one in public works that have tested positive. From what I— and I don't know if you just saw Neil pop on, but Neil is the employee in public works that has tested positive. And I'm hoping that it's okay to disclose this, Neil. Sorry to hear that, Neil. So we were notified by supervisors of the fact that these employees tested positive. I know for a fact 2 of the employees that tested positive were actually just going to take a test because they were encouraged by family or coworkers to take a test. All 3 of them were asymptomatic, and from what I understand, they continue to be asymptomatic. All 3 of them obviously were in the workplace, and in response to that, we have worked with— and Chief Earle and the fire department helped us get set up with a company to come in and disinfect the works locations at the library, public works, Public Safety and our water reclamation facility where these employees have been. We're also working with the Department of Health, the Utah County Department of Health, and their contact tracing efforts to essentially notify employees that they may have been in contact with an individual who has tested positive for COVID. In addition to that, I know department directors have sent out messages to employees, and even one of these employees has sent out an email to his direct peers letting them know that he in fact has tested positive. So, you know, that's kind of where we are. And frankly, it becomes increasingly concerning because there continues to be additional symptoms that may suggest you have COVID-19. We have another employee, for example, who's out today who had a stomach flu type— who had stomach flu type symptoms, which up until recently you wouldn't associate with COVID But in recent days, there has been the suggestion that stomach, you know, an upset stomach may be part of the COVID symptom base as well. In addition to that, you've probably heard of the blue or purple toes. You've heard of loss of taste and smell. You've heard feelings of dizziness, even strokes that are happening with individuals. So it becomes kind of just an ongoing effort to assess and reassess almost on a daily basis.

Jamie, do you have any idea how many of our employees have been tested? I mean—

I don't, Mayor. That's a very good question. I think that's probably something that we can send out a message and have employees contact their department director potentially. Obviously, we're trying to protect the personal health information of an employee, and they may or may not be okay disclosing whether or not they've taken a test.

Sure.

I do know based on just anecdotal conversations I've had with a number of employees that a number of employees have gone to be tested just because they have, like I said, family members who are encouraging them to do so, or they're just wanting to take advantage of the service provided by Timpanogos Hospital and crush the curve to try and make sure that they are part of the solution and not part of the problem.

But as a city, we have not requested that all employees be tested. Is that correct?

We have not. Of course, when we do have a specific incident of concern where we believe somebody may have tested positive or may test positive, we've been encouraging employees in their respective work groups to go get tested. Sure.

Any other comments? If not, I think, Jamie, thank you again for all you're doing. We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sumner, did you have a motion you wanted to make?

Yeah, well, let's go home.

Would you like to move that we—

Yeah, I move that this meeting adjourn.

Is there a second?

Second.

I'll second that.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right, we're officially adjourned. Thank you so much for participating and, and going through the issues of the city.

Thank you.

Thanks everybody.

Bye.