City Council · 2020-05-26

their computer device until you're ready to speak?

I don't think so.

And we are going to go to—

Mayor, I'm just on the phone with Brent. He's just— we're trying to get him in the meeting. Give it— if you can give it just one second.

Okay.

Okay.

So, so Brent, yeah, you should be able to dial that number and then enter the meeting ID.

The number 877?

I think that might be the number you call in, and then 852 is how the meeting ID starts.

852?

Yep.

OK, I'll try it.

OK.

Call back if you can't.

If he calls back, he may have you.

Okay, I—

yeah, Brent is working on getting in. He's trying right now, so he should be in in just a second.

Does that mean 10 minutes or—

We were just on the phone with him.

We can call him again.

He was—

he just needed to get off to try it. Yeah, that's what he's going to use to call in, I believe. Do you want to try calling him to see if we can walk him through it?

Mayor Ernesto is going to give him a call and try to walk him through it. You're, you know, your meeting, if you wanted to get started.

Yeah, let's go ahead and then he can join us as he comes in. We'd like to welcome everyone to our City Council meeting today, May 26th, 2020. I'd like to read a little blurb here to start out. 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 May 26th, Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The Orem City Council meeting of May 26th, 2020 today is 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. Those wishing to make comments should submit them through orem.org/comments or citycouncilpubliccomments@orem.org. Comments will be accepted before and during the meeting. All comments received will be read into the record during the live meeting. Once an item has been voted on, that item will be closed to additional comments. The live meeting event may be streamed at aurum.org/meetings. Thank you for your cooperation during these challenging times. We'll now go ahead and begin our City Council We're going to start our work session with a discussion of our CARE tax. 30 minutes is allotted, and Steve Downs is our presenter. So Steve, we'll turn the time over to you.

Thanks, Mayor and Council. I have here the presentation. This is a recommendation from our CARE Commission. couple months we've been meeting and hearing presentations from our mini and mid-major recipients. In fact, our first night of presentations was the night that we decided as a city to essentially lock— kind of lock down City Hall. So I remember, so it was that night. So however long ago that was, mid-March was our first meeting. I stepped out mid-meeting to start drafting emails and signs. And so anyways, we're really, really happy to be through this process as it began with the, uh, kind of the initial part of the pandemic and ends with kind of hopes for, for brighter days. I extend— Jeff Lamson from our City Council served on our CARE Commission as the council representative. We had some wonderful CARE Commission members who, when we make our final presentation, we'll recognize them all by name, but they spent a lot of time, a few extra meetings given the changing data that we were having come in as it relates to revenues to refine and look over their initial projections. We've been in contact with many of these organizations to understand what this year looks like, what events might be canceled. Anyways, it's been a year different than any other year for all of us, and CARE was no exception. So with, with that, this is— Jeff Lamson has, has kind of taken the lead in just putting together an initial proposal. As we go into this, I guess one other thing I'll mention is some of you are aware we had recently received an update on sales tax a couple of weeks ago which projected a 12% decrease in in the CARES tax. And we made a recommendation based on that 12% decrease with our mini and mid majors. Just at the end, the very end of last week, we got an update with that. There were some additional filings that came in, whether those were filings that potentially had been in March and February and didn't get submitted, or January, February, and were submitted in March, or whether March was a better month. We don't know for sure. We just know that the first 2 months of March were normal circumstances. The second 2 weeks of March were kind of mass pandemonium in purchasing goods. And April, which we don't have the data on, is the month that I think we're all most worried about as it relates to the CARES tax and all sales tax. So with that said, the March sales tax did come in a little better than we had thought. It wasn't down negative 12%. In fact, it was a slight increase. from March the year before, which is shown in this, in this proposal. But what we again don't know is April and May, which are likely to be the 2 most difficult full months for the city and others. And so we're still recommending a reduction in the amount of CARE revenue compared to last year. Any questions on the revenue side before we get into the allocations and expenses?

Stephen, this is Jamie.

Yep.

If, if I may just add, I've been, I've been following up on this whole revenue discussion with Brandon earlier today, and it actually could be a group of, for example, merchants who submitted for April. of this year as well. So it could be the result of sales taxes or sales greater than anticipated, or it actually could be representative of merchants who, at the time this data was put together, it actually included some submissions for April. So Brandon is trying to get with the State Tax Commission to understand if If that trend is something that happens all the time, or if this is just kind of a one-time situation. So obviously the numbers look better than anticipated, which is obviously very encouraging, while at the same time we're trying to understand why those numbers look better. Was it because March was better than we expected, Or was it because some merchants have submitted April contributions earlier than expected, and therefore the numbers looked a lot better in March, and when we get April numbers, they won't look as good because some of those April submissions have already been taken into account in the numbers that we've just received?

If I may have a follow-on to that, Mayor.

Sure.

I'm okay, you know, what we don't know is we don't know. And so I'm okay if we choose to do these, but can we pay the larger grant quarterly instead of annually in case we do have to ratchet those back any?

Brandon Nelson is shaking his head that that would be a possibility.

I could hear something rattling around. It was his head though. Thank you.

So keep going, Steve. I have some questions on the awards, but I think we understand the revenues.

Okay.

So shown here are the mini and mid-majors recipients. as proposed. And so a couple of things that I'd highlight. One is the Colonial Heritage Festival was postponed for this year. They are looking at doing a couple of different things, but the event itself was, was postponed. What the commission and Councilmember Lamson discussed was what's, what's the amount there. The only expense that continues on without an event is the money they need to maintain their storage, which is what allows them to come back next year. And so the amount you'll see allocated for Colonial Heritage, Freedom Vehicles, and Roots of Freedom shows a significant decrease from the amounts that we've awarded them in the past, but is the amount that they would need to cover their storage. And that's essentially what their ask was, given that the event was canceled. You'll see some other organizations maybe that have received funding in the past. The Center Stage Performing Arts Studio, there was a recommendation to not award any money this year. We had awarded a little bit of money the past 2 years, but there was a feeling from our council or from the commission that we don't allocate any funding to them this year. All of this is reimbursement, so if some of these events perhaps don't take place, then there would be nothing to reimburse on. The majority of them are kind of scheduled seasons, and so they've in the past, and this year already, have adjusted their schedule to try to accommodate the times that they're allowed to, to do events like they do. But some of them are one-time events. The Utah Brazilian Festival, which is scheduled for September. is a one-time event. If that event were to not happen, that $4,000 wouldn't be reimbursed. And then the majority of the other events are all kind of an ongoing season of scheduling. What you'll see is, is a total— the— if you look at all of the mini and mid majors in total, this proposal represents a 10.5% decrease in the amount of funding for mini and mid majors for the year. If you go down then to our majors, what, what Councilmember Lamson had us plug in was the amount of remaining funding based on the projections that we had made with all majors taking an equal cut in percentage from the year prior, which is a 2.4% cut. So this, this recommendation shows again an even cut to all 3 of the major organizations. Obviously the dollar amount is greater depending on the dollar amount you were receiving in years past. I also have, just for note, the percentage of the total major allocation that each of those organizations would be receiving under this proposal. The only other thing that relates to the art side of it— we've talked about this before— is given that this is the year that the project is being built, the resolution for this year would include allocating the interest dollars that the library hall project has earned as their previous year's allocations have been sitting in the bank for Any questions? I believe there might be— there were a couple requests from our major grants. I know Jeff Fisher's on the line, and the same invitation was offered to Adam Robertson and Utah Regional Ballet, and I don't know if either of them are on the line. But any questions, Mayor and Council, as it relates to the arts allocation? I have a question. The recreation, just so you know, is 50% of the money as well. There's $30,000 that were recommended for the co-sponsored groups, leaving the remaining $933,200 for the fitness center.

Yeah, I've got a question, Steve.

So if I look at the Utah Metropolitan Ballet in the request for 2020, I'm assuming you missed a zero.

Oh, yes.

Yep.

I apologize. That is correct.

All right.

Just because I'm wondering why we're giving it $20,000 and only asking for $7,500.

So—

Yep.

There we go.

Just missing a zero. Any other questions? It all seems pretty reasonable and fair. And Councilmember Lamson, appreciate your efforts.

Jeff, anything— Councilmember Lamson, anything you'd add? Is this kind of your initial proposal?

No, I think you represented everything very well, Steven. Yeah, and, you know, it's been a fluid target, but I feel like with the way things are, it's a fair and a good representation of what could and should happen.

So I have a comment or question. Am I on?

Yes, go ahead.

As I'm looking at the numbers that Steven gave us a month or so ago, a couple months ago, as far as participation every year, I'm comparing the Sierra and the Hale Theater. And so, so I look at the Hale Theater, they've stayed pretty flat from 2016 to 2019, and as far as their participants, about 150,000. And part of that's because they're at a 97% sellout ratio, so there's just not a lot more they can do with 9,000 season ticket holders. So that's appealing to— and a lot of this number are season ticket holders, but 152,000 people. The Sierra Theater, or the Sierra, not theater, the Sierra Center for the Arts has constantly gone up from 2016 to 2019. They've gone from 259,000 to 366,000 every year with huge jumps as far as participants. I'm just wondering, you know, I'm not so sure that we probably shouldn't be favoring the Sierra more and the Health Theater less. The Health Theater is pretty well built out. And I just see that the SIRA having the challenges of signing contracts with people now that they have to renegotiate, you know, the challenges with— because I've seen this with other organizations where you've already put money down and then there's a question, are you going to even— what kind of numbers can you have at different events? Anyway, I just look at that and since the SIRA is one that serves more than twice the community, twice our community, you know, 152,000 for the Hale versus 376,000 for the Sierra. I would lean towards more money going to the Sierra and less going to the Hale Theatre. That would be my opinion as I look at the challenges they both will have going forward. The Hale Theatre is in pretty good shape because they've already sold, you know, their tickets are already sold and they're 97% sellouts. So they don't have quite the challenges the Sierra will have with contracts and—

Thank you.

Negotiations.

Anyway, just my opinion.

But, um, one thing I was going to say, one thing that I know that would help the SIRA is if in fact we were not to, uh, allot their money over 4 quarters. I know that it helps them to have that money sooner rather than later.

I agree, I agree.

And I don't know how the hell it's set up that way. I just know that the SIRA, that helps them. So my own feeling is I feel like it's fair what we've done. We've set a floor of $300,000 for the HALE and $500,000 for the SIRA several years ago, and I feel like that the allocations right now are fair. It's not necessarily apples to apples, but at the same time, I think we could help the Sarah, by, like I say, not sectioning the money out over 4 quarters.

I agree with that, Mayor. My only concern is that they are servicing twice the number of people with the same challenges, with the same dollar amount as what they had the previous, you know, pretty close to the previous several years. That becomes a challenge.

Well, and to that point, The Sarah is receiving, you know, 60 to 70% more than, or 50% more than the Hale Center Theater. So I think that's reflected in that.

Mayor, I just heard your comment about maybe not sectioning these off. What would you do if we had a shortfall? How would you cover that loss? I want to be responsible to the taxpayer. And think we need to hold back a chunk of it, whether we hold back it quarterly or just 25% until the last quarter, I'm okay either way. But I'd hate to give out more than we have available.

So I would be okay with that, 25% to the last quarter but 75% upfront. But I don't know that I'm comfortable doing it over 4 quarters separately.

So yeah, um, I was just—

Brandon Nelson was just mentioning we'll know probably around October what the— what it ended with. So essentially, um, kind of maybe the best of that is 75%, and then the last 25% once we have the final numbers in.

Yeah, I think that's reasonable. Any other comments?

I think that's reasonable too.

Okay.

Yeah, I feel like that's a reasonable request and responsible.

So is everybody okay with this? Can everybody let me know what their thoughts are?

Looks good to me.

Just, just one other comment. And, and I appreciate, you know, what Terry's saying about the SIRA. There are times when some of the money is not used by some of these other organizations. And I wonder if it would be a possibility of, of maybe, you know, if they don't, if they don't use their money, That was allocated for them, if we could maybe earmark that to go to the SERA.

Yeah, let's look at that when we get further out in the year. Okay.

So, Mayor, I got a question. Dave here.

Sure.

So for Steve, in our last meeting we talked about this. You mentioned about a survey that we were going to do for the hill. And I'm assuming that's off the table because there's no extra money.

Is that correct?

Yeah, this allocation doesn't represent any money for the HAL study.

Yeah, so I mean, I agree with Terry. I think, you know, I support the SARA 100%, also the HAL, but I feel that the SARA does deserve a little more money. But I think right now in these times, I think that's a fair amount. And then any leftover that Jeff mentioned, I think I agree with that 100%, that it could be earmarked for the Sarah.

You know, this is Stephen. I think as we've talked with all these organizations a lot, I think both sides present challenges. The Hale, you know, for example, doesn't have access to an outdoor theater to begin showing their shows as soon as potentially the Sarah does. They can't space in their facility the same way. To your point, the Sarah has more people than it generally has provided. They may have some of the challenges with, with classes. But I think, I think there are challenges for both sides for sure. I think, you know, in my many years of being on in this allocation, I think that as the mayor mentioned, that is, that is reflected in the 60% of the total going to the SARA and the 36% going to the HAIL of the major, um, major recipients. So I think recognizing challenges from— but for both organizations moving forward is, is fair. I mean, they have a difficult time ahead of them.

I agree.

Yeah, my question on the, the study was, um, I don't believe that that should be paid out of extra CARES tax money. Uh, if the study has to be done, I think that needs to come out of the, the HAIL's amount. Because it is for the Hill.

I agree with what David's saying.

Because if we're talking $25,000, $35,000, I mean, that's, that's the citizens' money. That's— I just don't— if it's for the survey to see if that Hill building is going to produce, I think it's something we need to work out. I don't think that's right.

My—

this is Jamie. My only comment to that would be the money set aside for the study was at your request as the council.

Yeah, we can always change our mind too.

All right, well, at the moment, um, this is with regards to the 2020 awards. And, um, so everybody okay?

Anybody Mayor, if I may, this is Tom. I just want clarification on the holdback. The holdback would be for all of the major grants but none of the mini and mid-majors, is that correct?

Uh, that would be my understanding.

Yeah, then I would be supportive of that understanding.

Yeah, historically the mini and mid-majors, they'll sign their agreements in July, but until they do their shows, we're not really cutting any checks until Usually August, September at the earliest.

Of course, the CIRA is already by October. They're they're pretty much done, right?

So they've needed more than a whole year. You have indoor and outdoor. Yeah.

So we will we will we will draft our agreements to reflect. That to reflect a 75% upfront, 25% when we have kind of final data, and we'll work on exactly what that date is.

Okay, Councilmember Spencer, are you okay?

Yeah, I would like to maybe get Jeff or Adam to comment so far.

So Jeff Fisher, not Jeff Lamson?

Correct.

Jeff, would you like to make a comment?

Sure.

By the way, thank you, everybody. Appreciate you continuing to serve during these times. It's been crazy. The pandemic is something that I don't think any of us really fully understood how it would impact. I guess the only thing I would say, I get, you know, echoing what Stephen had mentioned, we do have a variety of season ticket holders, but at the same time, we also need to get them into shows. And the challenge to that is making shows available. We're working on opening this coming month and making efforts to safely get open and so on. And so we're involved in that process right now. I think this is great. I think this is fair.

It makes sense.

It's going to be decreased as projected with Jamie and his team. And I'm very comfortable with what you're saying.

I just— thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Jeff. Adam, are you on? I am, Mayor. Can you give us your comments?

Again, I'll just echo what Jeff was saying. These are crazy times, and we understand that there's so many unknowns on so many levels, this being one of them. And we very much appreciate your support, and I feel like this is a very fair approach.

Okay. Well, appreciate it, Adam. Appreciate it, Jeff. And we love what both of you produce and do for our community. So—

So, Mayor, with that, we will bring this forward on the next council's consent agenda.

Okay. That sounds fine.

Okay. Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

So now we'll go ahead and move on. Uh, we now like— would like to have a discussion about the amended and restated interlocal agreement. Uh, Jamie's our presenter. Um, Jamie, one thing I was going to say, and maybe I just didn't see it, but, uh, I didn't see where the changes are in the document. I just saw the Are you unmuted, Jamie?

Mayor, can you see my screen now?

Yes, yes.

So what, what you have here is a memo— a memorandum that I prepared for you. and was going to include in the, in the, in the packet, but unfortunately it doesn't look like it made its way to you. This is a restated interlocal agreement with the Utah Risk Management Mutual Association. And if I may just provide you a little bit of background, I just wanted to give you an overview as to what we are doing. And then this would require your approval at a formal City Council meeting in June to move forward with an amendment of this interlocal agreement. So back in 1985, the city, along with other municipalities, entered and formed a, essentially an insurance pool, Utah Risk Management Mutual Association.

Can everyone unmute their phone, please?

We're getting some Callback.

For the— and really the whole purpose of IRMAA was to work with each other in terms of developing self-insurance pool and allowing cities to collectively come together and develop good risk management practices. So we did this and we created this this organization by way of interlocal agreement. And so in order for us to amend the organization and to essentially restate its purpose, we actually need to come back to you to amend the interlocal agreement. And that's what we are looking to do today, or what we are looking to do here in the next couple of weeks. What you have is a clean copy of the interlocal I can provide to you a redline copy. What that specific interlocal agreement does are kind of 8 kind of key areas. Now, that doesn't mean that this is an infinite number, or this is the infinite number of changes that have taken place within the agreement, but these are the most prominent of the changes within the agreement. The first change is it essentially redefines Utah Risk Management Mutual Association to the Utah Risk Management Agency. Based on the recommendation of the Lieutenant Governor's Office as well as state law, these type of arrangements should be recognized as agencies and not associations. And so throughout the document, any reference to IRMAA, the Utah Risk Management Mutual Association, has been changed and has been redefined as Utah Risk Management Agency to more accurately reflect the nature of the interlocal agreement and its representation as an agency rather than an association. So from this time forward, it will be known as IRMAA, whereas previously it was known as IRMAA, Mutual Association to Agency. The next item that it clarifies is it speaks specifically to that all votes of the agency are weighted based by thousand— per thousand of contribution paid by each member. organization. There was some concern and a question mark in the past as to whether or not those contributions included outstanding claims. So IRMAA is an organization where by way of self-insurance, cities that are participants have a way to pay for their claims or to reimburse the agency over a 5-year period for self-insured claims that have taken place.

Right.

So there was a question as to whether or not those claim amounts should be or would be included in the board votes. And so as part of this restated agreement, it specifically clarifies, no, it just relates to $1,000 of contribution for things like administrative costs and the cost of insurance. It does not include the cost of any claims that are tied directly to your organization. Item number 3 focuses on the makeup of the board of directors and specifically the executive committee. Historically, the agency was reserved— or the executive committee included specific membership of all entities that had a population in excess of 70,000. So Layton City, Ogden City, West Valley City, and Orem City. In recent years, South Jordan City has eclipsed that 70,000 population number as well, and so they made specific application, and rightfully so, to be part of the executive committee. And as a result, we are amending and recommending an amendment to the interlocal that says, no, the agency's board of directors shall determine the number of members to serve on the executive committee. At this point, the board of directors has made the decision that any organization, any municipality in excess of 70,000—

I'm sorry.

Could serve as a member of the Executive Committee. The Board of Directors, item number 4, shall conduct quarterly meetings or as often as directed by a majority of the board or chairman of the board. Historically, we have held one annual meeting with all the members of the board. All other meetings have been specifically just the Executive Committee. This just provides flexibility whether we want to schedule, for example, 2 board meetings with all of the members of the IRMAA Board of Directors, or if we want to maintain that same schedule with 1 formal board member meeting for all board members and 3 additional meetings for executive committee members. The agency's Board of Directors, item number 5, shall establish criteria—

I'm sorry.

for new members and has the authority to admit new members on terms and conditions it deems appropriate. On occasion, we have inquiries from other cities interested in joining IRMAA, and there has been some discussion as to the basis for allowing them into the association. Would it require us to come in again and amend the interlocal agreement? And that requires unanimous consent among all the members. Is there another way that we can do that? What this agreement allows us to do is to establish criteria and thereafter to allow additional agency membership based on meeting this specific criteria. Item number 6 focuses specifically on withdrawal from the agency. In the last number of years, we have had several jurisdictions that have left the agency. Specifically—

Amy?

Yes.

Quick question. How many cities belong to IRMAA right now?

I believe we have 11 entities that are part of that. It may be a little bigger, Mayor. I need to do the— I need to check because we have had We have had a couple of agencies leave us in the last number of years.

So when you give us the redline copy, could you also give us a list of the ones?

Yeah, I'll be happy to do that.

Okay.

Last— actually, a year and a half ago, we had Royse City that left the association, and at the time they left the association, there was some question as to when they could leave.

when—

and when they left, what their responsibility was and whether or not they still had essentially an opportunity to participate in board of directors meetings. And it became somewhat awkward where you have a board of directors having conversations about a member city that is interested in exiting or that has already given its notice of its intent to exit, and they are still sitting as a member of the board of directors and are party to those conversations. And so this amended agreement would also make that adjustment as well. In addition to that, it clarifies that this agreement can be amended, changed, modified, or altered And the process by which it will be authored. And finally, item number 8, if there are ticky-tack, minor, insignificant, or what they call clerical errors tied to the agreement, that they can be changed and it can be amended, but it is provided that that amendment takes place by way of an unanimous consent of the Board of Directors. So that is really the document that we will bring forward to you for consideration. You have a clean copy of that document available for your review. I will provide a redline agreement to accompany the formal document. But in many respects, it just serves as a cleanup agreement, and because it is something that was entered into by way of interlocal agreement 35 years ago, it requires an interlocal agreement to amend and update the agreement. So if you have any questions, I'd be happy to take them now.

Any comments or questions? All right, well, thank you, Jamie.

I think we have Councilmember Pedersen, he needs to unmute.

Sorry, okay. Yeah, Jamie, just a question. So this is a self-insurance program between us and 10 or 11 other cities, is that correct?

Correct. So what we do is we're self-insured, but we buy— we essentially self-insure up to a certain level, and then we collectively purchase reinsurance For the agency as a whole to help us if we have claims that exceed the amount that we self-insure.

We have an umbrella over a certain amount.

Correct.

And so other cities that would opt out, would that be an expense decision? Is this—

what is it?

What do we pay a year as a city to be part of this group?

Well, we, we purchase, we purchase our excess coverage through them. We also purchase our property insurance through them. We actually have in the last couple of years, we've purchased our workers' compensation program.

Oh, wow.

So those we pay, I think we pay close to $1 million for those coverages. And then of course we are responsible for any claims up to that, that reinsurance amount.

Okay.

We have never hit the reinsurance amount as a city, and it frankly has been a good, a good relationship for us, provided we can manage our risk. And we have a full-time risk manager, and we work specifically with some very reputable insurance companies for our reinsurance. Our workers' comp, our property. We worked with Genesis Insurance. We've worked with Lloyd's. We've worked with the Workers' Compensation Fund of Utah. We've also worked with Chubb Insurance. So these are kind of major players in the insurance industry.

Okay, thank you.

And Terry, just so you know, Jamie sits on the board of directors for IRMAA.

Yes.

Okay.

Good.

Any other comments or questions? All right, thank you, Jamie. Before we move on, I would mention that Debbie Larrabee has left us. She's now on her flight, and it appears that Brent Sumner is on board. Is that correct? Brent, are you there? I see Brent. I see him there. It looks like it, but I'm not sure. Steve Downs, do you know if— Okay. All right. So let's hope he can get where he can communicate with us a little bit later. So now we're going to go ahead and move on to a discussion on the recycling market. Brent Bybee is our leader, and we have Brad Mertz, President of Recycling Coalition of Utah, with us as well. It's my understanding. Is that correct, Brent?

Yes, good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I am joined, uh, Brad Mertz.

I can hear you. Yeah, I'm actually the executive director.

Exactly.

The Recycling Coalition. Yeah.

Okay, we'll get that right. Good to have you here.

Thanks for having me.

You bet.

So thanks. Just to perhaps introduce things and introduce Brad a little bit too.

And, Brent, can you speak up or get closer? We can barely hear you.

Okay, I was close to the mic that, that was associated with Granicus, so I will eat the mic here. So Brad will go over— he's an expert in terms of kind of the more regional recycling market or around the state. And beyond. So I'll let him go into that. He might— his message might be familiar to some of you who have heard him at the Utah League of Cities and Towns conferences. And he's been especially helpful to a number of us cities to navigate through what have been some of the global changes in the recycling market and has helped us figure out how to best respond to, to those changes. So I'll let him kind of go through and give kind of, again, that more global market update, and then I'm gonna take some time to then zero in on Orem-specific practices and how we've been kind of responding over the last couple of years.

So Brad, I have a question for you. This is Mayor Brunson.

Sure.

This is your full-time job. This is not a part-time association. Is that correct?

Well, it's actually— no, it is a part-time association. We have a board that represents— represented by different haulers and recyclers.

Who do you work for full-time?

So my full-time gig is as a real estate developer, mostly out of state right now. We do multifamily apartments. Out of state.

So how did you get into the Recycling Coalition?

You know, I talked trash for a lot of years, and this has been the best place to keep talking trash, actually. So I am actually— it actually goes back to the days of BYU when I was in class with your city manager. I was involved with a nonprofit then, and for some reason I've just stayed involved with it ever since. One way or the other.

Okay, thank you. Please go ahead.

Are you going to pull up the presentation, Bryn? Do you have that?

Yes, I have it pulled up and the screen is sharing.

So we don't see it, Bryn.

Yeah, I'm not seeing it either. While he's doing that, maybe I can just jump in if you would like, Mayor, whatever you want me to do.

Sure, go ahead.

So what I usually like to start off with is a discussion of how much waste we dispose of in the state of Utah on an annual basis. And the latest numbers come from DEQ, and they show that we're disposing of 2.1 million tons of municipal waste a year. And of that, they're saying that we recycle— oh, here we go. You go to the next slide, Brent. So of that, they're saying that we recycle approximately 38 tons of material, which is really only about 2% of municipal waste. But I actually think it's— the number's closer to 20% in Utah. But either way, we're throwing away a lot of material. So 2.1 million tons. So if you can scroll down a little bit, Bren, to the 3rd slide.

Slide.

So the 3rd slide shows a picture of Vivint SmartHome Arena. And if you take 23 of those arenas and pack them full of municipal waste, that's what 2.1 million tons of waste looks like. 23 of those per year, per year. So I like using that because now you can kind of visualize what we're talking about as far as waste.

So, Brent, can you move the presentation along?

Are you still not seeing the, the slide that says we dispose of 23 Vivint smart home arenas every year?

Nope, all we see is the Cover slide.

Yeah, the COVID slide, first one.

It's not tracking through. All right, now you can go.

There you go. And now you can go, you can go to the next one now, Brent. So what's happened with recycling in the state of Utah and particularly throughout the country And, and you may be aware yourselves, is that the cost of recycling has gone up. What happened is nearly half of the world's recyclables were being shipped to China. China was taking everything. And then about a year and a half ago, China said, enough's enough, we're not taking it anymore.

They put up a green fence policy, right?

That's— yes, that's right. Yeah, so Similar to what my wife often says to me, I'm not taking it anymore. Anyways, the problem with China and all the material that was going there is there was a major contamination problem. They're willing to take a lot of waste with that recyclable material because they wanted the material. And they basically said, we're not taking any of the waste, any of that material. And so because of that, contamination was a major problem for China. And it was really more of a US problem, not a Chinese problem. We were willing to take— send them anything. And so what's happened as a result of that is in the US, we've needed to really clamp down on the quality of material that's being recycled, meaning that as the material is collected and processed and shipped to an end user, it's got to be clean. It cannot have contamination in it.

So, Brad, one other thing I was going to mention. I know India was taking a lot of material and they stopped or slowed down as well, and Vietnam was and they have slowed down as well. It's kind of been an international effort to not be taking our materials anymore.

Yes, yes, and specifically not our waste because a lot of waste was going with that material. You're right, absolutely. So our organization, we represent A lot of the waste haulers in the state, a lot of the cities are members of RCU. Orem is a member of RCU. And so we— what we decided to do to help the situation in the state of Utah is come up with a system that could standardize curbside recycling and basically make it easier for Utah residents to understand what goes in the bin. So that was our mission, to standardize and educate. So if you can go down to the next slide, Bryn. Why did we decide to standardize? You can see the reasons right here. Solving for contamination, making it more clean, simplifying the entire process, saving dollars, and making it easy. So typically what happens, and you'll have to look at your contracts, and I'm happy to look at that too, is if a city Is, is, has a curbside recycling program like Orem does, sometimes when, when that processor processes your material, if there's any residual that has to go to the dump, meaning any contamination that can't be recycled that now has to go to the landfill, you are being charged for that as a city. So if we can reduce that amount, that saves the city costs. It's easier. For the recycling processor as well. So we came up with this program called the Top 10 in the Bin. If you go to the next slide, Bren. That shows— this shows something that Orem City has adopted and something that we came up with to simplify. So if you go to the next slide, it basically shows what materials are allowed in the curbside bin for this Top 10 in the Bin program. And we try to make it simple. Cardboard, as you can see, mixed paper, which has been all your mailers and junk mail, food boxes, and again mail, aluminum cans, steel cans, drinking bottles, and milk jugs. Drinking bottles and milk jugs are basically your 1s and 2s if you ever look at the symbol on it. And then below that we have plastic containers and then paper bags and paper packaging. So we've really tried to just simplify what goes in. The bin. The next slide shows, which is also on the same flyer that we're using, what should not go in the bin. So plastic bags and wraps, while those are recyclable, they're not— they should not go in a curbside bin. And people ask, well, what do I do with those if they're recycled? Most grocery stores that are utilizing those plastic bags will accept them for recycling. So you can return those bags back to the grocery store. And they will recycle them. Glass bottles and jars. If you're from out of state, you may have recycled glass in your curbside programs. There's no— there's not a program in the state of Utah that accepts glass bottles and jars right now. And why is that? It's basically because once that glass material gets inside the curbside material and crushed, it gets crushed by the truck. You have glass shards and things like that can contaminate the paper and other material in that curbside process. Plus you have workers who are sorting some of that material by hand. A lot of it's now automated but still needs to be sorted by hand. And so you have people that are having to deal with those— that sharp glass and so forth that is basically a safety hazard. Electronics, again recyclable, just not in the curbside bin. Same with textiles. And wax-coated cartons, another item. And then, then we've also listed what's not recyclable. Common items that people a lot of times think, hey, this should be recycled. It's a cardboard box. It might have had some pizza in it and there still might be some pepperoni in there. Why can't it be recycled? Well, if it has food residuals or food-contaminated material, it's not recyclable. It's, it's an issue which contaminates the, the material.

So I don't know about recycling diapers, but what the heck.

Yeah, you'd be surprised, Mayor, how many people ask about that. We, uh, another one of our members is Wasatch Front Recycle Waste and Recycling. They're probably the largest service area in the state of Utah. So they have the cities of Cottonwood Heights, Herriman, Mill Creek, Holiday, parts of Murray and Sandy and so forth. So a large service area that they pick up both their trash and recycling. They surveyed their constituents and 6,035 people responded to this survey. If you can go to the next slide. They asked how if, if the cost of recycling was to go up 75 cents, they were facing an increase Either way of 75 cents from the landfill. So they asked their residents, would you pay an additional 75 cents to continue with recycling? And as you can see here, the majority responded, 79%, or 4,000 of those 6,000 said yes, they would still support recycling services. The next group said— Only if the fee is less than sending the materials to landfill, and only 4% said they wouldn't support the increase. So if you go to the next slide, basically what that was saying is almost 80% supported the continuation of recycling service, and if you total the positive results, you're actually looking at 95% of those surveyed would continue with recycling at— they would continue with recycling basically and support increased fees. And then we were kind of surprised of the demographic. We kind of thought, well, that's going to be the young people and not the old people or those who are on fixed incomes. As you can see, the demographic, and as far as the support, was fairly even. I mean, your highest group is the 31 to 45-year-olds. But I was, I was pretty surprised with the 66 and up demographic who, like you, I'm sure you're aware, many of whom are probably on a fixed income. They were still in support of it. So moving along, that's just another slide showing again the support for the increase. You know, one thing that we found that's been interesting is how the numbers convey to the public the cost of recycling. So in Ogden City, this happened just fairly recently. It was in the fall of last year. I don't know if you remember the story, but it was in the news where Ogden City decided to— they were going to suspend their program. And, and one of the reasons they were doing that is because the costs have gone up. They claimed that the cost— and they claimed rightfully that the cost went up 47%. So the recycler in Ogden said, yeah, we've had to increase prices because the cost of recycling has gone up. So if you go to the next slide, basically what happened is, yeah, it was 47%, but it amounted to 12 cents a month per household. And when you put it in terms of cost per month versus a percentage increase, most people are going to be fine with 12 cents a month. If you're going to tell me, hey, my utility bill is going to go up 47%, or my insurance costs are going up 47%, yeah. Yeah, I'd have a little bit of heartburn over that. But if you told me, well, that amounts to 12 cents a month, well, that makes it a little easier to swallow, right, as a resident. So we suggest as cities look at increasing their rates, that you do it in a way that helps people understand the actual cost to them. Now, one thing that I like to point out is that Utah has been a recycling state since the days of Brigham Young. And I don't think too many people know this, but Brigham would send out missionaries on rag missions. And the reason they'd go out to the different outposts and so forth throughout the state to collect rags was so they could manufacture paper. They would take those rags and make paper out of it. We've all heard the saying, use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. That's really what recycling is to a tee. reusing that material, those resources over and over. And as Utahns, I think we're all basically willing to be good stewards of our land and stewards of our environment. And that's— I like using that slide because it's really recycling's in our blood. So we've asked cities, what can you do? Orem's doing a great job. I commend the City of Orem and all that you're doing in this area. you've got a great program, well supported, good, good numbers that are doing it. You're using this top 10 in the, in the bin program. And then one thing that we do as an organization is we provide cities with social media outreach. So information for your Facebook pages, Instagram, Twitter, all that stuff. What are some things you can do as a city? Continue as a member of our organization, attend our Annual conferences that we have each year. Some cities like hosting collection events for hard-to-recycle materials. That's always a possibility. There's a lot of private groups that will help sponsor that if that's of interest. And then we like to encourage cities to talk about recycling as a component of your waste management program. So pretty much every community along the Wasatch Front has a curbside recycling program. And if you refer to curbside as a part of the waste management program, it just makes sense. It doesn't separate it as a separate category that, that we may or may not like. But as other cities have surveyed their residents on city services that they can't do without, it's amazing to me how recycling is always at the top of the list. So, and then most people always know that recycling is the right thing to do. So we're happy to provide newsletter articles, educational support. We have grant programs that we can introduce you to and that type of thing. So I just wanted to educate you a little bit on curbside and recycling and what's happening. And I think Brent has some slides that he wants to share on, on this great app, which I think is a great tool.

Yeah, so Mayor and Council, in addition to the information educational components that we use and take advantage of that RCU provides and that Waste Management provides. We've also since mid-January began to really push this Recycle Coach app. And since that time, our latest numbers show that we have almost just under 4,000 users. And out of 14,000 households that participate in our recycling, we're getting— that means we're getting somewhere around a 28% capture rate. So we still have a ways to go, but we're making a lot of progress in that regard. For many years, we had— we were holding at about a 65% amount of our households were taking advantage of recycling. But over the last 22 months, that's been inching up, and we're now at 70% of our residential households participate in recycling. So in terms of this Recycle Coach app that we've been pushing, gave you some of the initial statistics. Similar to what Brad was talking about, the key is to try to make recycling as convenient as possible and then educate our residents on, on how to not contaminate. So Often, I think a lot of us previously, or if we don't have the app, we look out and we check our neighbors' front yards to see if they have their recycling bins out to know if that's our day. But with this app, it's no longer guesswork for people. And I'll go through some of those details. And then also, some cities do things a little bit differently. Brad talked about how we're trying to standardize more amongst ourselves. But, um, you know, even, even outside of what goes in the recycling tote, we have some other recycling services like through our spring cleanup program and, uh, the, the metal recycling opportunity that provides. And then also we have a couple of glass recycling, uh, dumpsters that are available at our Public Works and one of our fire stations. So we're able to educate our public about ORMS recycling and waste disposal. So this, this calendar is, is really what's, what makes it even more convenient to recycle. So like I said, people know when their day is, and regardless of a holiday like yesterday or not, they can know when their specific pickup date is. And where recycling is is picked up on a biweekly basis rather than a weekly basis, then the calendar becomes very helpful for people. And this doesn't show just the recycling schedule. It also shows your— the resident's regular garbage schedule and also the green waste. And then if those— if there are those that would rather have a printed-off old-school copy, then they can do— get that from the app as well. In addition to the calendar, of course, with an app it allows people to set up their notification reminders. But even in addition to a text notification, someone through the app can choose to have text or email reminders as well. So, talked a little bit about education. The app has a a really comprehensive search function that allows people to figure out where and what to recycle. So sometimes there's a key difference between what's recyclable and what can go into a recycle bin. So for example, textiles are recyclable, but they aren't accepted in our recycling bins. But someone— but if someone puts in, you know, a search for shirts or pants or textiles, it'll direct them to Tabitha's Way or Deseret Industries on where they could take those recyclables. Or like I said, with our glass recycling bins, they can see that as well. And then sometimes there's other things that come up that aren't I guess, directly managed by us. For example, the household hazardous waste event. Or even sometimes a pickup schedule can be changed just because of severe weather or even just, you know, some type of operational issue that waste management might be happening. So the app allows us to send out those kind of notifications as well. These numbers here in terms of why an app and why we think that's extra effective in educating our residents. Basically, it's because that's what people are using to become educated about all of our city services. These percentages are pretty similar to what we see with other inquiries that come from our residents. And that's why you've seen over the last couple of years that we've been making our regular city website more mobile-friendly. And in fact, the educational components of this app are available online on our website as well. And then just simply put, we really like the kind of the simplified and just the image, the branding messaging of— that's associated with Recycle Coach. And they also have kind of just some general themes of messaging throughout the year that we can take advantage of. So maybe just to kind of recap, and in terms of what Brad has mentioned and what we're trying to do with our, our Recycle Coach app is that, uh, we're seeing the increasing demand, uh, both, uh, on a— not only on a statewide level but here in Orem. And we think that educating and, and, uh, making recycling easier for, for our citizens is, is the key for it to become more successful and to respond to the market constraints that, that we've been seeing on a more global basis. And maybe just to kind of finalize, I think a comparison table that was more on the, the total garbage amount was— has been provided a couple times by Brandon in his budget messages, but also wanted to kind of break out to the extent possible the comparison, how Orem compares in terms of our recycling recycling charges. And you can see here that, that we still compare really well in terms of what we charge for, for recycling. So you see on that average of $4.32, but that includes even the $0 amount. So there's some cities who make recycling completely mandatory for all their residents and, and just include that in their overall rate, and, and they didn't share what component of that was their recycling. But obviously there is a, you know, a good amount of that that is associated with it. So, so the reality is, uh, the, the average amount charged for recycling is, is even well above, uh, $4.32. But even with that, we're still, uh, in a good position as, as we, uh, look to the next fiscal year and, and as we've, uh, worked with Waste Management to try and, uh, control and limit those cost increase pass-throughs from them. So with that, if there's any questions, comments for, for either Brad or myself, happy to take those questions.

Mayor, I have one when you will give me the floor.

Sure, go ahead, Tom.

So we've discussed how much it cost us to put non-recycling items into the recycling box. Historically, we've been hesitant to require recycling, but there is a cost to us when people don't recycle. Any comment? I mean, have we contemplated a mandatory recycling? I realize that sounds more onerous than I meant it to. It flowed off my lips. But what do we do in order to reduce our expenses We have 70% embracing it. If we had 100%, no doubt the cost would go down.

Yeah, so, so Tom, um, for about 8 years we've had, uh, well, yeah, so for, for 8, since 2012, we already had an opt-out program. So people were, were signed up and then they had a, a window of time where they could opt out. Then, uh, 22 months ago, uh, you as a council adopted a, uh, I guess a modified resolution as it relates to recycling where all new utility accounts, uh, essentially are mandated to participate in our recycling program. And so that's been part of the, uh, part of the reason why we've seen the participation level inch up over the last almost couple years. And we've certainly made that— I guess that change— we've made that change— we've made Waste Management well aware of that change in our ongoing kind of discussions with them on controlling our overall All right, any other questions or comments?

If not, we appreciate the presentation, Brad, and having you here, and Bryn, your presentation as well. So thank you very much.

You bet. Have a good day, everyone.

Okay, thank you. We'll now move on to a discussion of the Southwest Area General Plan. And this is a 30-minute general plan review, and Jason Bench is our presenter.

Thank you, Mayor. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

So let me pull up my screen really quick. So can you see my screen okay?

Yes, and if anybody has a comment, just hit raise your hand. Go ahead, Jason.

As we had opportunity, this is kind of an update for the council, and as we discussed the southwest area in a neighborhood meeting we held on May 13th, 2020, we did have to hold it Obviously remotely, we used Zoom webinar. It's a feature that allows people to comment through a question and answer, but not direct comment like we're having in this meeting here. So we're able to get together with that. We sent out, just FYI, 2,600 notices mailed to the southwest area, including the Lake Ridge and other areas south of the parkway, invited them to participate. We ended up with 34 Citizens that were involved in our webinar that we held. So we just want to kind of update of what we've presented to them and move forward with a discussion on how we want to proceed. Get my thing to work. So this is the current land use map. As you recall, we've had this discussion previously with Geneva Road. Let me turn this on really quick. So Geneva Road running down this direction here with on the west side of Geneva's light industrial, on the east between the tracks and east side of Geneva is light low-density residential. As we discussed about a year ago with a property owner down there, the council basically did not want to see high density in the area, but looked potentially maybe some PRD densities, 5 to 6 units per acre. Maybe into the 7-8 units per acre, and directed staff to go back and look at some possibilities of updating our general plan to accommodate that. So as part of that, we've held this neighborhood meeting, and we had 4 options that we presented to the council— to the neighborhood. We're going to show those to you tonight and then kind of come up with a hybrid of those and request that we move forward with that scenario as we As we move forward, let me go through these different options. On these slides, on the left-hand side is the current general plan that will be constant. The one on the right is the proposed. So this is option one. As you can see in this area, we're proposing to keep the light and low-density residential, but add a southwest designation, which would allow someone to come in and apply for a PRD. And I'll explain a little bit later what the southwest designation would mean. But allow PRDs in this area, allow PRDs in this area. And the other option is to change the current general plan as light industrial in this area, change it to MDR, which is medium density, which currently reflects the land use that's down there with the Mansell property being developed. We do have a light industrial development currently in this location. And then in this option, we would keep this light industrial with future expansion of light industrial to the west. In addition, this currently under the plan that you can see here is light industrial. We would propose to take this area between the tracks and make that light industrial as well to match the intended use in that area. It's not intended to be low-density residential between the tracks. So that's Option 1. Any questions directed to this option?

So Jason, real quickly, If you were between the tracks, we're going to do something industrial, and it looks like it goes up right in front of the temple, between the temple and the freeway. Are you saying you would— you're suggesting industrial be allowed on the east side of the temple property?

Well, as you can look, and it's kind of hard to tell, but this is the tracks on this side. So this is the Commuter rail tracks, UP&L tracks are here. So as you get into this, you're not going to get anything in that specific area. It's too tight. So you would, you know, from this, probably this part south.

Okay.

Very long.

That would look better if you stopped it there, but whatever.

And Mayor, this is Jamie. My understanding is that UDOT has plans for or has a detention basin Okay.

I know that UDOT has a big detention area here.

Right.

That's possible there too. We can definitely look at that. We don't want to get a land use there that's going to contradict or, you know, infringe on the temple.

Well, I was— yeah, I was going to say, I don't think we want to build light industrial on the east side of the temple.

Yeah, we can— a certain area we could drop that off and make it rural density for that matter. So as part of our discussion with the neighborhood, we wanted to just outline the outlined in yellow is the existing PRD ordinance, which allows up to seven units per acre. There is an exception for an additional if they take out some existing homes to get a bonus of up to eight maximum, and the height is a two-story maximum of thirty feet. What we're proposing with the southwest designation is is take the PRD ordinance. Just kind of add a couple of items that would be specific to the southwest area, which would still allow up to 8 units per acre, but would allow some townhouse-style units versus the twin-home style that we see in the city today. So what I want to do is just show you some examples of current PRDs in the city. Peach Haven, Evergreen East are the typical twin-home developments that we have in the city. The Colonies, which are up on 800 North, That is more of a townhouse style that was approved back in the '80s. So we have approved these types of styles in the past, but currently what we see now is the Peach Haven Evergreen East style. These are townhome examples out in Vineyard, just to kind of show what we're looking at as far as the style that we would have if we allow this type of thing in the Southwest designation, more of this style versus the twin home style. The density would stay the same, but it would allow a different type of housing in the area. These are some additional styles. This is up in—

Daybreak?

Daybreak, yes, thank you. So these are 2 different styles in Daybreak. The one on the left is a style in Lehigh. And this is another style in Daybreak. So just some different options of townhouse that we're looking at the opportunity. That doesn't mean that they can't do a standard PRD in the southwest area, but it gives them another option if they want to do a typical twin home, if they want to do some townhouse style. This unit right here in Lehigh, that's 3 units. You can see there's a door here, there's a door on this side, and then it wraps around on the other side, there's another door. So it actually looks more like a single-family home than it as multifamily. So moving on to Option 2, there's a couple of different things that we've changed. One is to make this area— take it out of the light industrial, make it low-density residential with the Southwest designation, the opportunity to do a PRD-type thing. The other two— other option is taking when the Geneva Road will eventually come in and tie into Lakeview Parkway, is to make this more of a commercial node. and allow some type of small businesses, offices, and things to locate at this intersection here. And then keep these designations that we see here and then continue to take the light industrial going west.

So, Jason, we have a family that owns that property there just to the west of the temple, that one right there.

Yep.

And they would like to develop that I think, like the low density that we're discussing.

Yes. So this, this option, Option 2, is kind of the one that the majority of people that we've discussed online, which I'll go through some questions that we discussed, and then some review that we had questions after the meeting and people got on. Option 2 seems to be the one that they preferred most, which allows some commercial, which allows then some single-family residential up to attached units as well. Not high density, but the medium PRD densities that we, we see throughout the city. So this kind of is their preferred option, and we'll get back to city's option in a few minutes. Option 3 just is kind of a spin-off, keeping this more of commercial, adding back on the corner that we recall discussion that there is an applicant that wants to convert this property, 2000 South Geneva Road, to a convenience store gas station area. So this option outlines that as well. And then Option 4 outlines taking that commercial across what would be Geneva Road, and what this would eventually be cul-de-saced and have more of a neighborhood expansion to the west with some commercial options.

So Jason, could we do an Option 2 with the convenience store Sectioned out down there on 2000.

So I, so I'm going to go through some questions, then I'll show you what staff's alternative is, and then we'll answer your question, if that's okay.

You bet.

A part of this is also to add in different trail connections as we open this back up, if the council decides to do that. We want to look at possibly adding what we're calling a rail trail to get some trails along The east property line, Geneva Trail System, which Geneva Road has a trail. Once that gets widened, the trail will be— multipurpose trail will be on that. Lakeview Parkway Trail, which obviously once this gets through, we'd like to see that connection as well. And I know you guys are familiar with the Wokera Way Trail, which will end up connecting out to Utah Lake. So we'd like to incorporate these into the general plan. So when people do come in to develop They will have to do some trail connections, and these are just indications that we'd like to have east-west connection as well, so that people can actually get out and walk and recreate without having to get in their cars and travel somewhere to find the trail system. So we'd like to include that in this as well as we move forward. So like I say, we had 34 people in attendance, 38 if you count staff. We had 4 staff that were participating in this as well. I just want to go through a few questions that we, we did as we went through these different scenarios. We kind of broke it up with these questions. Basically, were you aware of the current general plan and included options for light industrial and single-family? We just wanted to kind of get a feel of what people knew, and it looks like the majority of them knew that that was broken up into the way that we had it currently. How familiar are you with the general plan? Now, the majority of them were familiar. There were a few 5 votes that were not familiar, and so we ended up having the opportunity to explain what the general plan was as we went through this neighborhood plan. A couple other questions: Do you know the difference between the general plan and the zoning? Surprisingly, there were a few that did not know, and we were able to explain that as well. If commercial—this was kind of a telling question, I think—for staff: If commercial was permitted in the general plan update, what would you like to see? And you can see grocery stores, small shops. The 2 that we're not really looking forward to is warehouse and industrial, but offices, mixed-use, all those were uses that kind of fit into that core that we're talking about, the community commercial area, when the— where it tees into Geneva Road and Lakeview Parkway. The last question, select all items that you would like to see in the southwest area. Again, commercial, medium density, low density was kind of the high, which will show a difference when we discuss the online survey that we had as well. We'll show you there's a little discrepancy between the low and medium. A couple more questions. How important is it to have a city park in the southwest area? Very important and somewhat important took the majority of that. So it is very important, I think, for the citizens out there to have some type of open space in the area. Do you support the trail system? Majority of that, you know, somewhat or yes was In the 80th percentile. And how important is it to address housing affordability in the Southwest area? 35 to 43% said it was important or very important. So that was a significant interest as well. So these results are here from the survey that we did after this meeting. So we indicated those that weren't able to attend the meeting, we asked them to go to the website and take a survey. These are 23 additional respondents that we had in addition to the 34 that we had attending this meeting to actually ask them which one option did they prefer. And based on our unscientific option, option 2 was the one that came out on top as one that they would prefer. Select the items you'd like to see in the southwest area. Again, you can see commercial Trails, parks—those things were important. If commercial was permitted in the general plan, again you see grocery, small shops, office, and mixed-use warehouse and industrial were low on that priority list. And which option would you prefer moving forward? Option two again was preferred. Would you support the city council to allow a density of up to eight units per acre, which is the what we're talking about low density slash. The majority, at least in this survey, agreed that that could be an option going forward. So as we looked at all these different options, this area is our preferred alternative as we looked at. And going back to Dave Spencer's comment several months ago when we talked about if we're going to look at the southwest area, let's look at the whole thing, not just the area that's annexed, but also look at this area that has the agricultural easement. We understand that there's an agricultural easement. There's a conservation easement here, so we, you know, may or may not be developed, but we thought we'd look at it. If and when it does get developed, we'd at least accommodate for that density. So this map represents this area. The area outlined in green is the agricultural easement. The area outlined in the aqua color here and over here are the conservation easements that for the most part probably will never be developed, but the agricultural easement could be developed in the future. So our alternative is to take this and keep this the low density, which is consistent with option two. Keep this more of a community commercial where you're going to get the small offices, a grocery store, and maybe some mixed-use developments as well. And then take these as low density with the southwest. Low density southwest option still requires the city council to approve, but like any other P. PRD in the city. It still would require a city council review. It still would require all their elevations and site plans to be part of the ordinance. So we're not asking that that be changed. It's still that process. It would just give them the option to know that they could do that southwest option, which is a PRD density, but it could be a typical PRD or it could be a townhouse PRD, but the densities would be limited to 8 or less. The other option that we would do— obviously this is part of the agriculture easement, but keeping the temple property in mind, we're looking at, you know, surrounding that temple with future land use that would be conducive to that low-density residential or the townhouse type thing. And so this portion of area here, which is obviously not annexed yet but would support if and when it does be annexed into the city or is annexed, that would go to the more low-density residential. the southwest designation. This property just directly south of the temple would be the same. And then what we look at is the expansion of our commercial area here, the industrial. You can see the fire station at this location. This area could potentially then be the area that we expand to the south. The other options that staff has looked at is maybe this area being some type of open space or some type of heritage park or something like that that could then, you know, separate These uses with this use, which would then be expanded to the south from our commercial industrial area. So this is the alternative that we'd like to pursue. If you look over on the chart itself, it's right now we have an ERU designation based on what we've— the previous IFFA is 1,248 ERUs. This would basically double that capacity up to 2,500 maximum. So if you look, the 1,764 represents the property that's actually currently annexed into the city. The additional 736 would be areas in this area that potentially could be annexed and developed as we go forward. So we're basically accounting for all this property, whether it gets annexed now or, you know, 20 years down the road. We will accommodate for that as we go forward, whether we look at, you know, increasing our sewer capacity or those types of lift stations, things like that. We would accommodate it now with this plan and not bifurcate it like we did last and not include those going forward.

So Jason, I've got some questions for you if you're ready.

I am, yep.

So first of all, on the rail trail east of the temple, you've got the high-speed Frontrunner train going down there. The tracks are elevated about 6 feet up and they're only about 20 feet from the fence of the temple. So I'm really curious how safe that would be to have a trail right there with the train going that fast and that high in the air.

Right, and that, that's more of an indication of where we would like that trail. I don't know that the trail would actually come onto the temple grounds itself. This is more—

I'm just saying if it were not on the temple grounds, I think it would be unsafe.

It wouldn't be on the trail, wouldn't be on the rail corridor itself. It would be on private property To the west. So I'm not— we're not designating that within the right-of-way of the rail. It would be outside of that.

We're just nicknaming it rail trail, but it's not going to be on Temple property.

Right. So this would be if, let's say that this property owner comes in and wants to develop, we would allow some type of circulation, some type of trail here, some connection going here.

I'm just saying on the Temple property.

Right.

You don't want to have it on the next to the rail. And if you did it on the temple property, we'd need to know if the temple would allow that or not.

Right. And we could definitely take that trail down to this area. So it's not on this, on the property. That's just more of a line showing that that's our future determination.

And then on your L1, just west of Geneva Road, that is the property that we have a developer planning and wanting to come in and develop.

Correct. Yes.

So we've cut back on our industrial quite a bit. Then as far as the question of capacity goes with regards to utilities, if we went forward with this, how much additional do we need to do, or where are we at on that?

So we would need to go through— let me get to my slides. So we would need to do an impact fee analysis update. As well as the impact fee facility plan updates. That would need to be done with this general plan process. So going forward, if the council says, you know, yeah, let's move forward and look at this alternative, then we would have to have these done and the council would have to make a determination once those are done in order to approve any modified general plan.

Okay. All right.

In addition to that, as you know, we're in design of some new lift stations.

Yes.

My understanding is that we are taking into account some capacity, but if we move forward with this, we want to make sure that capacity is within these designs that we're doing.

Well, then you would have a plan and you would know what you need to accommodate for.

Right. So tonight I think what we're looking for is, is this the direction that the council would like to pursue? There's 2 options, I guess. We can pursue this option or we can keep the status quo and not do it. I guess that's the question and direction we want to go. Do we want to go down the road of looking at updating the General Plan to allow low-density residential as the base, but do allow and understand that PRDs would be allowed through the rezoning process? And that's kind of what the Southwest designation would indicate is that you are aware that that would come true and it would be a case-by-case, but it still would give the developers some direction that, hey, the council is interested in doing PRDs in So that's kind of the direction we're looking for tonight.

Sure. Well, I was just going to say I appreciate the public meeting and getting all the comments and hearing what people had to say. It's pretty obvious the public likes Option 2. I like Option 2 the best, and I like what I see here. We do have one developer that wants to do the industrial. We have another developer up on top there that's ready to go with his development. to the west of Geneva Road that would complement, I think, the Temple area. So I like this. I would like to hear what the rest— each councilmember has to say about it. Councilmember Spencer, are you ready to go?

Sure. I think, Jason, I think you guys did an excellent job. I think I like that we are looking into the future. And that we will have the, you know, the capacity to, to grow instead of making the mistake and then having to come up with the money down the road. So I like it. I think the citizens like it. I think it's a great plan. So good job.

Thanks.

Thank you. Councilmember Pedersen, you have a comment on it?

Yeah, first a question, Jason. So as far as how many, how many, how many different residents can you put per acre townhouses versus twin homes? What's the number?

So it's, I mean, they're roughly the same. Typically we have the typical PRD, which is a twin home. You're getting about 6 units per acre roughly. Twin homes or townhouse style, you may be able to get the maximum, but you're looking at probably between 7 and 8. So they're, they're very similar as far as you may get, you know, 5 or 6 additional units at the most. But I think the cap is what we're looking at is Even though they may be able to get more, we still want to hold it to that maximum like a PRD typically has currently.

Okay, because just a comment about that, I think, and hopefully people in the city will not come after me, but twin homes are some of our most beautiful areas in our city are some of these twin homes as far as people maintaining their yards and taking pride in their— in where they live. Some of the townhouses, I can't say the same. And I— Jeff and I knocked on all of those in the city campaigning.

But—

Right.

I would love to see more an emphasis on twin homes down there, especially where a lot of people are downsizing. And we have a new development going in.

I call it—

I still call it the word perfect property. But just south of Word Perfect, where I think that's going to be— looks like from the pictures it'll be beautiful. So hopefully that's why I picture more of that than less of the— to me, a townhome is like some of the pictures you showed, Jason, where they're kind of crammed in together and there's doors going every which way. And anyway, that's just my own personal opinion, but I just think twin homes are a very pleasing thing to look at and a little less density.

So If I can just address that briefly. The PRD zone currently— and I can't address things that were built back in the '90s or whatever— but currently our standards do require a homeowners association. So we're going to— like these twin homes you're talking about, which are very nice in the city, are maintained by an association. And I think these same standards— well, we're proposing those same standards. So any development that goes down here and approved by the council will require a homeowners association. will need to be maintained by an association. So hopefully we'll get those beautiful landscaped, maintained yards and not, you know, the older ones that are just— haven't been maintained well over the years. Okay.

One thing maybe I could mention also, Terry, your— the homes you're talking about, like up on Word Perfect, so those are starting around $650,000. And the seniors, some seniors can afford it, some can't. Your townhomes are starting around $300,000, so almost double in cost for those smaller homes. It might be a thought closer to the temple to look at the twin homes and then allow the other townhomes to be further away. But I think it's beneficial to have some affordability in there as well.

So, so, uh, yeah, I do like the twin homes closer to the temple. And Mayor, just a reminder, 40% of our city is already rentals. We've done, we've done more than our fair share of rentals in Orem.

Sure, but affordability is important.

So, well, and again, if I can, if I can just make a quick comment on that, it does, like I stated before, it will require developer to come in and, you know, present to the council what they are proposing. So it is not going to be an outright approval. If a twin home development comes in and it is just not quite what is expected, then the council can, you know, ask them to make some changes or go to a twin home type thing. So it is still going to have that same process that allows the council to have some discretion in moving forward.

Okay. Councilor McDonald, do you have any comments?

Sure, I think I'm unmuted. First of all, Jason, you were talking, I think this still allows us to have the amount of, that the lift stations and other planning are adequate for it, is that correct? Or were you not sure of that?

We will be, if we go this direction, we will make sure the future plans and updates will accommodate what we're proposing, yes.

Okay, if I do a follow-on question, if I may, Jason. You know, initially the— we didn't know there was a temple coming in there, and we're trying to make the area adequate for everyone there. People who want to develop land, people who don't. We clearly have some opposing views there. Some of the trade-off to get more housing and less commercial requires some movement into the twin or townhomes. And, and your statement, I think, clarified that, that we're doing a bit of a trade-off. But they're also going to be required to have their lawns maintained. Is that what you were saying, to have a, uh, some kind of a covenant in that area?

Yes, with the exception of single-family lots, any twin home or PRD development does— is required to have a PRD maintenance agreement with their homeowner association, things that are maintained. So yes, any, any type of PRD is required to have that.

And yeah, and some of the twin— some of the single-family homes, which With, which is what Orem was built on, and we say we like, have the most terrible yards. And our poor public, you know, service people are trying to keep up with that. And so the fact that the yards are going to be maintained and not look like some as I walk through the city is comforting to me, as long as we haven't overtaxed the infrastructure or won't overtax the infrastructure.

I like your One thing I could mention too, the Mansell development on the bottom right there, just west of Geneva Road, has a combination of twin homes, single homes, and townhouses— townhomes, and they're all really very nicely done. So down in that area.

Yeah, this area here is the twin home development, and these are the townhouses. Yes.

So nice combination there. Councilmember Lamson, do you have any comments? Jeff, are you on?

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I would agree with what has been said. Jason, thank you for the excellent presentation. And the visuals with the graphs and the charts I found very helpful too. to be able to see in black and white what the people in that area, what they like the most. And I think that's something to remember is, you know, what do the people that live there, what do they feel comfortable with? And I also appreciate, you know, that we will have some input as to what they look like, you know, going forward.

Thank you.

I, you know, would just say amen to what Terry said, and Tom as well. I think it would be wonderful to be able to have that input into what the upkeep, what it looks like, and what the vision of that is going forward, so.

Okay.

Can I just comment? briefly, Mayor, on that. I just want to let you know that not everybody obviously is in favor of this. So I think there are some property owners that really just want to keep it the way it is, want to keep agriculture, and we've got a mix of property owners that want to do this type of thing. So to come in and— I don't want to paint the picture that I'm saying that everybody's in favor of it. There are some that want to keep it the way it is. So just so you know that.

Understood, yes.

And Jason, one thing I'd like to mention at the Top left there, where you have the future LDR SW, which is right across from the temple here. So, you know, that's something that we need to watch. I am aware that the Johnson family just north of there, uh, and they, they have a home over there next to the temple that I think the temple is purchasing.

Right.

But, uh, to the West of Geneva Road, right up on top that you were looking at, that's a dairy farm. And Mr. Johnson, the owner, is older, and when he passes away, it's the children's intent to sell that. And that would probably go into a development, a housing development of some kind.

Yeah, right now it's, it's low or light industrial, but I think we could definitely take this type of idea and do the frontage, which would be similar to what you see surrounding the temple, and then the back half could be an expansion of our industrial or commercial park as well. So there is a way.

Do we need to consider any of that when it comes down to our infrastructure?

This is currently in the city. We can definitely look into that to make sure that's covered. But yeah, that—

Okay, I think that would be important because I think that's already kind of— that family's moving that direction from my understanding.

So, okay. And if that's, if that's the case, we could talk to them and see if they want to be included and maybe take that type of thing, line up there. Sure. This part be— stay, you know, light industrial and this part residential.

Sure.

Well, I think most of us on the council, or all of us on the council, are I'm comfortable with this. 2 of the council members aren't on at the moment, but I like option 2 with the adjustments you've made. I think if everybody's okay, we'd suggest that you move forward with that.

I think—

I thought only Debbie isn't on. Isn't Brent on by voice?

Brent is not on. He's in St. George, I believe. And he is not on.

He told me, he texted me and told me he could hear us.

Okay, well, you should ask him how he's going to vote. You're going to vote by text or what?

So if I can just, just highlight. So, Mayor, we'll, we'll move forward. Obviously, with the issues that we're in right now, we will hopefully be able to meet together as a group. But in the meantime, we'll look at the IFA and IFFP updates. We'll look at the lift station. And then start the public hearing process and bring all that back to you in the near future.

Okay, and contact the Johnson family as well.

Yes, we will ask them if they want to participate.

Okay, great. All right, well, thank you.

Thank you.

We'll move on to a discussion now about city retention for 10 minutes, and Jody Bates is our presenter. We'll turn the time over to Jodi.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, and thank you for allowing me the time to talk to you today. This is something that we've been working on for over a year, almost a year and a half now, and that is a records retention specific for Orem City. Okay, Steven. It didn't go down. Just so that you know, the state— when the state doesn't have— I'm sorry, go ahead, Mayor.

Steve, are you there?

Yes.

Let's see, Jason, do you know if Jody's there?

There we go.

Can you hear us now?

Yes. Sorry about that.

So that means I have to start all over. Sorry about that.

You have to unmute.

Thank you. I was saying that this is something that we've been working on for about a year and a half now. And this is quite the process. The state, over a number of years, has started to change the retention schedules. At one point, they had a different retention schedule. They had one for municipalities, one for counties, one for the state, the school districts, special service districts. So over the past couple years, they've decided to streamline it and combine them into one records retention, which sounds great, but it also is very cumbersome when you're a specific— you're a municipality and you're looking for something specific. They have grouped things together where we have kind of lost some of our titles to our records that we can't figure out how long we're supposed to keep them for. So a lot of cities have gone towards doing their own retention schedule. Just as an example, the municipal schedule used to be called Schedule 1. And here it shows you that the administrative records, 34 of the original 45, are now either obsolete or they've been merged into this state retention schedule. Some of the classifications they did change. There weren't a lot of huge changes. Some of them were just the timeframe that people had to keep those records. And some of those were big. We found a recreation schedule that at first, when it was under the municipal schedule, was only supposed to be kept for like 2 years. And now it's supposedly kept permanently. And that was like participation rolls. We figured participation rules was crazy. The biggest one, and here are 2 examples that affect the city, and the biggest one that I know is the council's concern, administration's concern, is communication. If you look at that, it started out as a Schedule 1, 1-63, back in 2013. They then changed it to a state government routine administrative correspondence and changed the coding. And then in 2019, they changed it to a state government routine administrative correspondence. It went from never existing in 2013 to having a 7-year retention. The executive correspondence started in 2013. At first it was permanent, but if you go into the retention schedule on the state now, it's nowhere to be found. So things like that that have changed make it very hard in order to keep track of records and how long we need to keep them. Thank goodness the City of Orem in 1992 adopted their, by ordinance, their own records access management policy. This gives us the ability to go in and control how we manage our records. And with talking to legal, now that we have this ordinance in place, being able to do our very own records retention specific to Orem City, will— can be easily done by a resolution by each section that we propose and can be done on the consent calendar. This coincides with Utah Code, which does allow the municipalities to adopt their own ordinance and for policies, which like I said, the city already has. Like I said, we embarked on this about a year and a half ago, and this has involved every department has their own records Clerk, and we have been in contact with them over the last year or so, and they have been great to go into their departments and their department heads and work with us in getting what the records are called, how long we feel we need to keep them compared to what the state currently recommends, and we have been able to compile that, and we're still compiling that as we talk. What will this will do is this will enable us to better control how long we keep our records for our own purposes, because we're really the only ones that understand how long we need those for. There are certain ones that are still permanent ones, but there are some that, you know, the state says, oh, you've got to keep those for 5 years. Well, maybe our engineer says we really want to keep them for 7 years because it gives us a history. So we can change that and say, no, we're going to keep them for 7 years, or we can go less. It gives specific language. So when I go to Brandon and say I need a— I don't know, some financial— you know, a what?

Journal entry.

A journal entry. We're going to call that specifically a journal entry, because that's what we call it. So when I go to Brandon and say we need a journal entry, he knows what I'm talking about. So it makes it very specific to our language and the records that that we have. This is just an example of the retention schedule that we're working on. Each department is given a specific schedule number. This is the recreation department, they're Schedule 9. And then each department a lot of times has divisions under that. So recreation is Schedule 9, Section 1. Under recreation, we also have the senior center and they are Schedule 9, Section 2. Then each And then each record that they retain and they maintain has a separate number on top of that. I know that sounds a little bit confusing, but like I've said there, there is a purpose to the madness. Reason being is we do have a program that our IT guys are wonderful and have set up for specifically records and management and destruction. We call it Catacomber.

Catacomber.

So every time there is a record that is done, we're done working with it, it's at the end of the year, we put them in boxes which are given a specific label. We have archive rooms here in the City Center. You can see here it shows who submitted this one. It was submitted by Administrative Services. It tells you exactly what's in the box, who submitted it, and then further down it has the schedule. Schedule item, so it says exactly what department. And then it talks about whether it's permanent or how long we have to keep that. This is kept and we're able to run reports from this so that when that time is up, we can destroy those records per state code. Just for your information, this is our Archive A here in the City Center. It has 490 current boxes full of records. There's more information on the bottom of the slide that tells you that we have City Center B that's downstairs. We have 2 archive rooms over in the court building that we're hoping through this process we will be able to go through and clean a lot of this out. There's— I know of at least 84 boxes that we don't have any idea what's in them. It's just marked to be reviewed. So we're hoping that we can go down into these archive rooms, we can clean Through these, we can send for free, other than just the cost of running up to the State Archives, we can send boxes to the State Archives and they will hold them and save them for us, especially permanent ones, at no cost to us. So we're hoping that we can narrow these 4 archive rooms down to 2 by the end of— by this time next year. We're hoping this will be done and we can really work on it and be done by the first fiscal year next year.

So, Jody, I've got a question.

Yes.

Do we ever consider putting that online and getting rid of all the boxes, or would that be too costly and cumbersome?

No, we're working on that. The Archive Room C, where it says legal, the 274 boxes, within about a year and a half, I believe, that room will be empty because Legal started a number of years ago doing exactly that. They were scanning things in. So the boxes, we never put any new boxes in that room. We're just waiting for time to destroy the hard copies. We're hoping that we can, as we do this process, we can start departments to, as they're pulling them out to look at them as they retrieve them, that they can scan scan those in so that, yes, it hopefully— it will become more electronic. And the same thing applies whether it's electronic or paper. It still has to stay the same retention. We still have to record when we destroy it. But you're right, that's our ultimate goal, is to get to that point.

Okay. Any comments or questions from the council? All right, well, thank you, Jodi. We appreciate the—

We're going to start bringing those to you next city council meeting. We are going to be bringing them to you in sections. The first one will be like recreation and library, I believe. And for the next couple of months, there will probably be— we'll review one on the work session and then hopefully bring it to you the next week for approval. We'll do this in sections. And hopefully at the very end we'll be done and get cleaning some stuff out.

Okay, great. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, let's go on to our agenda review. We haven't got a lot of time, but we do have some. Um, so we will have a prayer and a pledge, and then our consent item is approval of meeting minutes. The city council meeting, May 12th, 2020.

And Mayor, I believe Brent has—

Is everyone comfortable with that consent item?

Mayor, also, I think Brent has joined us again.

Brent Sumner, are you there? Any way to get audio from him?

He's unmuted and his number's called in. I, I've been texting with him.

Anyways.

Okay, because for later when we're taking votes, I'll need to either note that he's not available or else we have some way to get communication back from him. Anyway, everyone else comfortable with the meeting minutes of May 12th?

Yes.

Okay.

Dave, you'll have to unmute your phone—

your Yes, I'm fine.

Yes with me.

Tom?

If you didn't hear me, I said yes with me.

Okay. Jeff?

Yes.

Okay.

Terry?

Yes. Okay.

All right. First of all, we have a public hearing with regards to our CDBG projected use of funds for 2020-2021. Is Kenna there at the moment?

Speak for her that we— this is essentially the second public hearing. Nothing new will be presented from the past, but she'll just do that second presentation. I don't believe we've had any comments during the last 30 days.

Okay, and item 9.2, any comments? Comments there?

Nope, same.

Okay, okay, then we'll go to 9.3, which is amending the Orange City Code pertaining to neighborhood meeting and noticing requirements. Jason, any comments?

It's just being consistent with the policy the council has adopted a couple years ago requiring a 500-foot notice basically, and then 1,000 feet if it contains any attached residential units.

So that ordinance was never changed back then?

It was not. We just followed the policy, even though our ordinance had 300 feet, but we felt it's time to change that to match the policy.

Okay, and then we go on to 9.4, which is an amendment or resolution adopting facility and street naming policy.

Jason? Yeah, we discussed this last, last time. It's just a policy putting in place procedures and things for naming of streets or naming something after an individual. It just gives the council more ability to follow this policy and procedures and gives people more direction on how to go about doing that.

Okay, then we move on to—

This is Terry.

Yes, Terry.

Thank you.

I have a question on that.

So I have some concerns about that. I have seen other cities go about naming this street after this basketball star and this street after this guy and that guy, and you leave somebody out that was essential to our city. I am just a little bit worried about going down that path where all of a sudden we are going to start naming Or we have the option of naming streets and cities and buildings after people. So give me direction. Why are we visiting that? Why is that changing a policy we've had for a number of years, always?

It just gives the ability for the council to have some direction. We've had some requests in the past. Typically they've been naming streets after, let's say, Tippahannock High School or something like that. So we have named streets after that. University Parkway, Canyon Parkway, those types of things. This just kind of puts that in policy, but it then also gives the City Council some discretion on naming something after— if it's a military individual, they would have to be recommended by a Planning Commission before it gets to the City Council. So there is some stop in there that we'd have to get a recommendation from the Planning Commission in order to name it after a basketball player, as your example, if he's from Orem or whatever, he would have to prove, or they would have to prove to the Planning Commission that it makes sense. And if they get a recommending of denial, they would not go to the City Council. So there are some abilities in this policy that allows— it's just not a foregone conclusion that the Council is going to change it. It still gives you direction and options of how to move forward. It just puts it in policy.

So different right now.

What's that?

And why is that— is that different than what we have right now?

Right now we don't— you don't have the ability to do that formally. So this kind of puts it, you know, in a policy that if and when somebody does request that, there is a step-by-step process of how to do it. Right now we wouldn't have that ability.

But we have named streets, like you say, for local schools that border those streets.

Right, and the typical way that we do streets, and that's— this policy reiterates that, is it is by a coordinate. And that's basically our main thing. If it's going to be named after a street in a subdivision, that would have to be after some type of feature related to that property, whether it's some type of, you know, street or stream or something like that. So we're not going to name it after the farmer himself. It would have to be something consistent with the property itself. But it does allow for the City Council to name it after, you know, somebody that's fallen in the military or something that's given 20 years to a certain park. But there would have to be some justification through the Planning Commission in order to— for the Council to rename that. So it just gives a policy in writing of going forward if and when somebody wants to, you know, like UVU when they named their Arena after UCCU, those types of— it gives you a better direction on how to do that.

Okay, there's no more questions. We'll move on to the resolution declaring the City of Orem's intent to purchase the Hillcrest Elementary School property from the Alpine School District. Jamie is our presenter. Do you want to mention anything on that, Jamie?

Sure, Mayor. This is a procedural matter that is required by the Utah State Code in the event the city remains interested in purchasing the Hillcrest property site.

Please.

So the school district notified the city on March 11th of its intent to sell the property. At that point of notification, the city has 90 days to express to the Alpine School District by resolution its intent to either proceed with exercising that first right of refusal that has been provided to the city within the Utah State Code when a property like this is sold, or Whether it looks to pass on the opportunity. So our intent tonight is to bring forward a resolution essentially representing to the school district our intent to proceed forward in purchasing the property. If we in fact don't purchase the property into the future, nothing is lost, but this provides us additional opportunity to coordinate a potential purchase or negotiate a potential purchase, and at the same time moves us essentially formally— formally allows us the opportunity to move past the initial notification period. Now, the state law specifically requires us to base that sale sale price on an appraisal that is completed, in this case by the Alpine School District. And if the city has concerns with what is included in the existing appraisal as provided by the ASD, then it can order an additional appraisal. And essentially then the difference, you know, the city then negotiates and pays The difference between the ASD appraisal and the city's appraisal. Upon review of the appraisal, the city had some concerns with the valuation of the property as either residential at approximately $6 million or commercial at approximately $8.5 million. So we actually ordered an additional appraisal. The additional appraisal is not complete as of yet. We anticipate it to be complete by the end of the week. But for example, we were looking at the commercial valuation that was given, and it took into account, for example, that access to the property would be available or relatively easily from University Parkway. Well, that's not the case. And if it would be, if access could be available to University Parkway from this parcel of property, we estimate that it would cost quite a bit to gain that access, in excess of $1 million plus.

So, Jamie, a question on that. That intersection is right on the other side of this property, right in the middle. Including the Hillcrest School and the park.

Yes.

So you had mentioned that UDOT might require the intersection to be moved, but I don't understand why that would be the case because it opens up right there to the north.

That, that intersection, if you look on an aerial, what you will notice is that the intersection is actually a lot closer to 800 East than it is to University— excuse me, to State Street. And as a result, right now that particular signal location can only accommodate movements in 3 directions. You add one additional direction to that, and it actually causes additional delay and problems at State Street and 800 East.

So you'd have to move it further to the west?

You would move it further to the west. So essentially on the west side of the BRT station.

And you would not move the BRT station?

Not necessarily, no. But if you move it to the west of the BRT station to accommodate obviously access to Hillcrest, then you actually create a problem because you then are needing to make additional improvements on the north side of the intersection to accommodate access into University Place.

So you'd have to move that north ingress—

Exactly.

—that's already there over to this.

So it becomes a very expensive proposition. In addition to that, they value the— in the existing appraisal, they've looked at the structure itself The school itself, and they've included a number for the value of that structure. I mean, realistically speaking, the only use for that school is another school. So it's not like you could take whatever is there in terms of the structure and convert it into Class A office space or even retail space or housing. The value essentially of that property is in fact the property, not the structure.

All right, I've got another question for you. In their agreement with us, it states that the Alpine School District would give us 1 year's notice of putting it up for sale.

Yes.

You're talking about a 90-day earnest money. How do we— I mean, explain that.

So what we have is we have a situation here where the Alpine School District has leased to the city a certain section of that site for a park. So that section of the park, from what I understand— and Greg's on the line— would be subject to that 1-year notification provision. However, there's a question—

Correct.

As to whether the remainder of the site is still subject to that agreement that we signed in 1990. And as a result, we then look to what current state law suggests we can or cannot do in relation to the purchase or the sale of that property. So we're kind of dealing with an agreement that only addresses one quarter of that site or state law right now that applies potentially to the remainder of the site.

So on the agreement it talks about the land, but it's— I don't fully understand from the agreement what the land actually means, if it's the entire thing or just the park.

Yeah, I think the city would argue that it speaks to the entire parcel. The school district would suggest no, it just speaks to obviously that particular acreage that is related to a park. I'm not necessarily sure which argument would win, but I'm not necessarily confident that we could apply provisions of a lease agreement on a very specific defined parcel of property to adjacent property that's not encumbered by that same lease agreement.

And that piece of land is zoned for a school, correct?

No, it is zoned actually residential.

Residential. And we have the moratorium that we put in place in 2014 on University Parkway that high density would not be allowed in that area. Is that correct?

So we actually modified our zoning ordinance to prohibit the development of certain types of housing, specifically density in the city. And yes, that would be subject to those provisions. So the city didn't impose a moratorium, but rather further clarified where and where not density can be built in the city.

Right. And that one, density is not allowed. A question for you on the RDA, does the RDA in that area work with this particular piece of property or not?

So yes, that particular piece of property is within an older RDA. However, there are— there's not a lot of money in that RDA. So we even internally have had conversations prospectively as to could we develop some sort of tax increment relationship on that property prospectively and do something, for example, commercial in nature. We haven't approached the school district about this, but part of our conversation would be with them, hey, you know, right now it's a tax-exempt property. So you're not gaining any revenue off it today. What if you would be willing to give us a percentage of whatever develops on that property in the future to help us and to develop that property into something different? But we haven't had that conversation yet with the school district.

Sure. So that's— real quickly, that's a nice park area. But we do have a brand new park at the mall just across the street. Hillcrest School moved up to the old Sierra Park School, and we have a nice park there next to the new Centennial School. And we could, if we really wanted to, purchase some land south of here, um, for a lot less money than $1 million an acre. You could purchase land for $150,000, $200,000 an acre and put in a park. somewhere else if that was a desire, but there are parks close by.

Mayor, one of, one of my biggest concerns in relation to this section of the community is maintaining some open space and sense of neighborhood. And oftentimes public schools, and specifically Hillcrest Elementary, has been one of those defining I guess you could say landmarks in the neighborhood that has kept the neighborhood and bonded the neighborhood together. I am concerned prospectively that if the school goes away and if that open space goes away, then we lose to some degree some of the neighborhood flavor, which I think we want to pay close attention to in the future. That's a section of our city that is deserving of some additional attention. And so that's why I, to some degree, am a proponent of doing what we can to direct, to the degree we can, what happens with the future of that property in that specific parcel.

Well, I'm very much in favor of the community and, and a park in that area, but I believe that we could purchase land for 20% of the cost of what this land would appraise for because of its location. There are parcels of land south of there within 5 or 6 blocks that I think that we could actually end up purchasing. And like I say, for 20% of the cost. So value-wise, I don't know that I would agree that this property is the one that we should be putting $1 million an acre into.

But that's assuming commercial appraised valuations, which I guess I would suggest is far more generous than really what should be.

How many acres is it?

It's 9 point— a little 9.33 acres.

All right. And if you're selling it for what, $6 million an acre on a residential side?

Oh, $5.7 million.

All right, $5.7 million. And so, you know, you're at $570,000 an acre almost. I think we can get land much cheaper, not in that location, but in that area.

Well, I look forward to you showing me where we can.

Okay, I'll be happy to. Mayor, you have a comment?

I do. I live in that area. I'm just north of that area. I'd like to see the piece of property you're talking about too.

Sure.

The issue about the people living there, a lot of these people are Title I people, English as a second language. That is a place where their kids go. There's a nice pavilion, there's a ballpark, there's a lot of nice areas already built in that, but we can't— this is an area that feels very much left out. And no, they're not going to walk across the street and go to the little park that the mall put in up north. And this is their neighborhood. And I think it's critical to— everything we do in the city, I don't think we can always put dollars and cents to it. Sometimes we do it because it's the right thing to do for a neighborhood. And so I think we need to be really careful. There's not any land— there's not other land available that I'm aware of, and I know the neighborhood very well.

So I would disagree. I think there is other land that would be available. And I'd be happy to go over it. And I think it's important we keep a park in that area, but not at $1,600,000 an acre.

But you're saying that you're appraising that commercial. It's not appraised commercial, it's residential.

Well, even at residential, it's $600,000. At commercial, it's more like $1 million or $800,000.

So, so, Jamie—

that's too expensive for a park.

Jamie asked the school district to go and to get another appraisal, if I remember, after the COVID situation, which they didn't do.

No, we actually had the option of going and requesting an additional appraisal, which we have done, but the results of that won't be available till the end of this week.

Okay.

So I've had several conversations with the appraiser that we've hired, expressed to him some of the concerns some of the reservations, concerns that I have, and he shares in those concerns.

So the other question, Jamie, is that cell tower. Why does this— why does the school get to keep that? That's a cash cow forever.

So they don't. They're looking to include the cell tower in the sale of the property. The added concern with that is the valuation that they placed on that cell tower. I think they are well, well exceeding what we believe it's worth.

Well, and one other comment, when they were telling everyone why they're going to close Hillcrest, maybe some of those comments should— would be nice to share as far as telling us about how the building is going to fall down and the heating doesn't work, the sewer system doesn't work. Maybe those things will be some things we need to remind them of now as they tell us how valuable the property is.

And that's obviously— that's part of the appraisal that will be completed and forwarded to the city. As you well know, there is a certain section of the building, the gymnasium cafeteria piece, that is obviously much newer than the older section. The older section, I would argue, really has no value. The larger gymnasium cafeteria section is where there is any value in the structure. But at the same time, what are you going to do with such a large room like that? It really does not— does not do what obviously a property owner would need it to do.

No.

All right, well, let's stop on our discussion there. We'll have more time.

Hey, Mayor, I've got a quick question.

Yes.

So I've got a question for Jamie on our intent to the Alpine School District. You know, we're doing this intent that we're interested, but do we have a timeframe after we do that? Like we have to buy it in a certain time?

Yes, we do. It would be 90 days thereafter. So we would have to We would have to within the next 90 days deliver an earnest money offer to the school district.

Okay.

But there's no definition as to what that is. I mean, it could be a dollar, it could be more than that.

I was thinking too, you know, Mayor, if we could always move the city center there while we're building our new city center.

Well, the reality is, you know, the safety of the staff and the residents into the city center is important. So let's go ahead and stop our discussion there. We've only got like about 3 minutes and we should take a break. I don't know, Jamie, if you want to mention anything or wait till City Council meeting.

I'll wait, Mayor. Thank you.

Okay.

All right. Well, let's go ahead. I make a move— motion that we adjourn our City Council work session and take a break, and we'll start back up at 6 o'clock if everyone's in favor.

So We're—

So moved. Aye.

Let's do it.

Okay, we're adjourned. We'll come back at 6.

Yes, I can hear you. So can you hear me? Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Let's see.

You can hear me now?

I can't see anybody.

Hi, Brent.

We can hear you.

Oh, oh, there we are.

So, as long as you're connected, that's great.

Okay.

I didn't— I don't know what I'm doing.

Well, as long as you can hear me and we can hear us and we can hear you. Okay.

I can see the mayor.

Oh, so the other—

I can't see me, but let's go down to the bottom and hit participants.

Can you do that?

Say it again.

On the bottom row in the middle, it says participants and it gives a number of 14. Can you hit that and see other people?

Yeah, there they are.

Now we got you.

Okay, life's good.

You're in St. George?

Yeah, yeah, I tried, I tried my laptop, but I couldn't get it to work.

I, I don't know.

Brent, was there a game on that we didn't know about?

We're going to go ahead and start our meeting. Hopefully everybody's on. Um, I would like to welcome everyone to our City Council meeting at 6 PM on May 26, 2020, and I would like to read an item concerning our electronic meeting. 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 May 26th, 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. Those wishing to make comments should submit that comment through orem.org/comments or submit to citycouncilpubliccomments@orem.org. Comments will be accepted before and during the meeting. All comments received will be read into the record during the live meeting. Once an item has been voted on, that item will be closed. To additional comments. The live meeting event may be streamed at orem.org/meetings. Thank you for your cooperation during these challenging times. We would now like to call the meeting to order and would like to begin with an invocation inspirational thought by Rajad Zaid, and then I will give the Pledge of Allegiance.

Mayor, you can hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

I don't see my picture.

I don't see your picture, but I hear you.

Okay. I shall be reading in Sanskrit from ancient Hindu scriptures, some as old as 1500 BCE, and then interpret in English. Om Bhur Bhuvaḥ Swaha Tat Savitur Vareṇayam Bhargo Devasya Dīmahi Dhiyo Yonaḥ Prachodayāt. We meditate on the transcendental glory of the Deity Supreme who is inside the heart of the earth, inside the life of the sky, and inside the soul of the heaven. May He stimulate and illuminate our minds. अस्तो मा सद्गमया, तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमया, मृत्योर माम्रतमगमया। Lead us from the unreal to the real. Lead us from darkness to light. Lead us from death to immortality. तस्मादा सक्तस्तातम कर्यम कर्मसमचारा। सक्तो है चरण कर्म परमपनोति पुरुषा कर्मणेवहि समसिदि मस्तिता जनकादया। लोका संग्रह मेवापि संपाशंकर्तुम्राहासि। Strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world. By devotion to selfless, one attains the supreme goal of life. Do your work with the welfare of others always in mind. ओम सहनवावतु सहनोभनक्तु सहाविर्यन कर्बाभाई तजस्वीनावदीतमस्तु मा विद्विसाभाई May we be protected together. May we be nourished together. May we work together with great vigor. May our study be enlightening. May no obstacle arise between us. United your resolve, united your hearts. May your spirits Be at one that you may long together dwell in unity and concord. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. Peace, peace, peace be unto all.

Om.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rajan. We appreciate that.

I appreciate you having me.

You bet. If everyone now would follow me as We recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

All right. Steve, are you aware of any personal appearances that somebody wants to give by way of comments via the internet?

None, Mayor.

Okay. We want to wait a minute to see if anybody wants to come in?

Yep.

Okay. I'll time it for 1 minute.

Okay, no comments.

Okay, seeing that we haven't received any comments, we'll close the personal appearance portion, move on to our consent items. Consent items are such that if anyone wishes from staff or council to move them to a scheduled item, please let me know. Anyone want to move them? Move it. All right, our consent item is to approve the meeting minutes of our City Council meeting May 12th, 2020. I move that we accept those. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, and I will now go down through the list of council members to vote on approving our consent item. Start with Councilmember McDonald. Everyone will need to unmute for this. Councilmember McDonald. Okay. Yes.

Aye.

Yep.

Okay. Councilmember Spencer.

Aye.

Councilmember Sumner.

Aye.

Councilmember Pedersen.

Aye.

Councilmember Lamson?

Aye.

I vote aye as well. And Councilmember Debbie Laree is not with us at the moment. So that is approved, and we'll go on to our scheduled items. The first one is a public hearing for a resolution. The city will receive public comment on the Community Development Block Grant projected use of funds for fiscal year 2020-2021. And Ken Ramson, chairperson of the CDBG Advisory Commission, and Kenna Matthews, community services manager, are our presenters.

Good evening, Council and Mayor. Appreciate you listening to us again this evening.

This is— Kenna and Ken, have you got your—

Yes, I'm—

Mayor, how do you go on?

Mr. Mayor, I'm Ken Ransom. Yeah, and Kenna was also supposed to be here.

Okay.

I'm sure she—

I am. I'm sorry, we were on mute.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, um, well, thank you for having us tonight. I'm going to turn the time over to Ken Ransom, our chair of our commission, to present tonight. We appreciate him and all of his committee and commission and all that they— the time that they have spent to help us. And we'll turn the time over to him.

Thank you, Ken. And greetings, Mr. Mayor, and to the City Council. And I appreciate the opportunity to present this. And the first thing, if we can move to the next slide, please. Slide 2. Our commission members are summarized on slide 2. Can I move it?

Okay.

In addition to myself, Tanya Harmon, Barbara Jones, Giovanna Elisa, Nathan Evans, and Mattathias Westwood comprise our Citizen CDBG Commission. Slide 3, please. So the bottom part of that slide, I'm just going to highlight a few things. This year, the funding total for the CDBG funding is $826,355, which comes from the HUD allocation rollover income, which has not been That funding has not been used. And program income, which is things like loans that have been paid back from the program. So that's the total funding that's available. If you could switch to slide 4, please. And we're also, as a commission, been meeting to discuss COVID-19 stimulus CDBG funding, and that'll be allocated separately, and the amount that's available to that is— for that, excuse me— is listed there. And we will present sometime in June on our recommendations for this funding. Slide 5, please. So here's a quick summary of what we presented last time. The first item is the City of Orem's request for the police department, the mental health response team, to help with homeless issues like bus passes, those types of things. They've requested $5,000, and we recommend that, that funding be granted. The remaining 3 items are joint funding that, uh, that our city and our commission has agreed to fund with Provo, with Utah County. And Orem's portion of that for Kids on the Move, that joint funding is $5,000. And for the Rocky Mountain University Foundation rehabilitation clinic is $20,000. And for RAH, which is for their ABLE project, is $45,000 for a total of $75,000. Slide 6, please. Thank you. And this is the non-public services summary of funding. So Utah, these are— the first 2 are joint. funding requests that we're funding with our other commissions that we're partnering with. United Way of Utah County, they're doing building improvements. Their building is in need of some repairs. So our portion of that is $43,867. And Wasatch Mental Health is constructing a receiving center. And our portion of that is $51,670.

Thank you.

And as you can see, the Neighborhood Housing Services of Provo Senior Housing Project, recommended funding is $100,000. And then you can see the list of City of Orem requests for the Critical Home and Home Rehabilitation Program for CDBG administration, the Section 108 loan payment, neighborhood revitalization, code enforcement, and the eligible parks product— excuse me, project, for a total of $725,300.

Thank you.

So our total recommended allocation, our commission recommends that we fund these requests at $800,300. So that's all I have to present. And I want to thank again our commission and thank the city staff, Ken and Steven, that have helped us with this. So we thank them.

And I appreciate, Ken, you serving. And the commission and helping out with the city here and the residents.

Thank you.

Any comments or questions from the council?

Okay.

This is a public hearing, so I will open it up for public comment. Steve, do you have any public comments at the moment?

We do. All right, okay, Pete will read that in.

Okay, this is our comment that we've received through our online portal.

Dear Mayor—

Pete, we can barely hear you. Any way to get you to a microphone closer?

How's this?

Does that sound good? Not very good.

Speaking into the mic for the chambers.

Here, here's Pete.

All right, here's the comment that we received through the—

through online through orem.org.

Okay.

Dear Mayor, council members, and staff of Orem City, Neighborhood Works Mountain Country Home Solutions would like to thank you for the CDBG funding that was provided to us to build and manage a fourplex to serve low to moderate income seniors in the city of Orem. We are very thankful for this opportunity to work with the City of Orem, and we hope this is the first of many projects where we collaborate together.

Sincerely, Charlene Wild.

Great, thank you. We'll now go ahead and open it up for anyone who wishes to do it online. So we will take 1 minute of time to allow that to occur. We'll start right now.

Mayor, no additional comments.

Okay, we will go ahead and close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any further comments or questions? Okay, we will move on to the next item. Thank you, Ken, and thank you, Kenna. Next one is a public hearing also on a resolution. The City Council will receive public comment and adopt the 2020-2024 Community Development Block Grant Consolidated Plan and the 2020 Annual Action Plan. And our presenters are Kenna Jo Matthews and Steven Downs.

Me again. So this is also a second public hearing on the Consolidated Plan. I did attach the updated plan to your agenda packet. As part of the consolidated plan, we also include what we call the annual action plan, which is actually the recommendations for this year that you just heard. So we'll approve that all together at the end of this. So So we have to— every 5 years, we have to do what we call a consolidated plan to determine what we want to do with our federal funds, what our priorities are going to be over the next 5 years. As we spoke about last time, we went through a large citizen participation process, and these were the priorities that we set as part of the plan. We set housing public services to low and moderate income residents, public infrastructure, develop economic infrastructure, efficient oversight and operations of the CDBG program, and neighborhood preservation. We were also encouraged to add an urgent need category because of COVID In case we get additional funding in the future, we can use this urgent need category as well. So our next steps will just be to adopt the resolution for the consolidated plan and the 2020-2021 action plan. We did not receive any public comment during our public comment period of a month that we posted in the newspaper, but we still need to have public comment here. Does anyone have any questions?

Anyone on the council have any questions or comments? All right, this is a public hearing, so we will go ahead now and open it up for public comment. Uh, Kenny, you mentioned you've not received anything, so we will now go ahead and allot 1 minute for any comment to come in.

Comment.

All right, we will go ahead and close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any comments or questions from the council? All right, I would be open to a motion if anyone would like to make one. If not, I will go ahead and make a motion that the council adopt— the Orem City Council adopts the 2020 through 2024 Community Development Block Grant Consolidated Plan and the 2020 Annual Action Plan.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, let me go down through the list. Councilmember McDonald?

Aye.

Councilmember Spencer?

Aye.

Councilmember Sumner?

Aye.

Councilmember Pedersen?

Aye.

Councilmember Lampton?

Aye.

And Mayor Brunstad, I vote aye as well. The resolution passes. We'll move on to item number 9.3, which is also a public hearing. This is an ordinance amending Sections 22-1-5G and 22-14-20I of the Orem City Code pertaining to neighborhood meeting and noticing requirements. Our presenter is Jason Bench. Jason, have you got your microphone unmuted?

Sorry, I tried to share the screen and then forgot to unmute. So you guys can see the screen okay?

Yes.

Okay, so tonight is simply a clarification in ordinance going from a 300-foot notification requirement to a 500 or 1,000-foot requirement. Several years ago, the council, in a work session they had, or Distant session asked us to do the 1,000 feet when it becomes multifamily. We did the policy but didn't— excuse me— didn't change the ordinance. Tonight we're here to change that ordinance. Anytime a rezone is required that pertains to multifamily or attached residential units, 1,000 feet will be required. If it doesn't contain attached, it'll be 500 feet. And then also site plans that are adjacent to or within a residential zone are under the same requirements. So instead of 300, it would be 500 if they're attached units, or 1,000 if they're attached, 500 if they're not. So we're just kind of making both these sections consistent with requirements of when they can hold meetings and other things like that. So be glad to address any questions.

Any questions from the council? All right, well, this is a public hearing, and Steve, have we— I will open this up for public comment. And Steve, have you received any public comment into the city? Steve, are you there?

No comment, Mayor.

Okay. All right, well then we will allow for 1 minute for any comment to come in starting now.

There are no additional comments.

Okay. We will go ahead and close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any other comments or questions from the council? Seeing none, I would like to make a motion that the City Council amend Sections 22-1-5G and 22-14-20I of the Orem City Code pertaining to neighborhood meeting and noticing requirements. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay.

We'll start with Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Councilmember Spencer.

Aye.

Councilmember Sumner.

Aye.

Councilmember Pedersen?

Aye.

Councilmember Lamson?

Aye.

Councilmember Brunstad?

I vote aye.

Councilmember Larray is not here. The ordinance passes. We'll now go on to item number 9.4, which is a resolution, not a public hearing, establishing a formal and uniform policy regarding the naming of city facilities and streets. By adopting the facility and street naming policy for the city of Orem, and our presenter is Jason Bench.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. Tonight we are proposing a facility and street naming policy. As we looked at looking at the formal policy for naming streets, as we did our research, we found out that the facilities and all that were encompassed in one formal policy, and so we've looked at. Incorporating those, not anticipating anybody coming forward, but wanted to make sure we address that in our overall policy. So the general guidelines, basically the ultimate one, number one, is the City Council still has final approval or final authority over any city facility or street being renamed, whether that's after an individual or descriptive name. The City Council has the discretion to do that, but typically the council under number 2 Basically, coordinate addressing is the predominant addressing that we use here in the City of Orem and want to continue to do that. If there are descriptive names, they will be part of that coordinate address. So if you come across the street, you're going to have that coordinate address including whatever name is part of that. The general criteria for naming streets under number 1A is the City Council has direct input on naming something or facility after a police officer or firefighter that was killed in the line of duty. Under B, an Orem resident or individual with strong ties to the city of Orem who died in combat while serving in the military. And C— so B and C would require a Planning Commission recommendation before it ever gets to the City Council. So a person or entity made extraordinary or lasting contributions to the city. Those, both A and B, would Excuse me, B and C would have to get Planning Commission recommendation. If they fail to get that recommendation, it would not be forwarded on to the City Council. So A and D, if somebody gives a monetary contribution or substantial contribution to the city, then the City Council can name a facility if they so choose without having a recommendation from the Planning Commission. They can— City Council can also assign descriptive names, as it states, if it promotes community pride or spirit or something, you know, high school, things like that, that's appropriate. And the city has done that in the past, naming many streets after grade schools, junior high schools, high schools, things like that. Number 3, new streets. So the Planning Commission does have the ability to do a street name if it's a diagonal street or curvilinear street or other type of reason. Typically, if it's an angled street, then we Typically give it some type of descriptive name, and so the planning commission would do that subject to it needing to be a topographical or historic feature and not named after the farmer or other things like that. So there are some restrictions and limitations of what the planning commission can do. Other names would have to come to the city council for approval. C just gives the definition of what a city facility is, and the streets include both public. And private streets. And then it goes through the process of what that process would be. Somebody would have to make a request to that, and if it's a B or C like we outlined, it would have to be substantial as far as outlining what contributions that individual made and get that recommendation from the Planning Commission before progressing forward. And then the Planning Commission would ultimately give a recommendation whether we move it forward or not. And then A and D. would be directly to the City Council for those recommendations. So that's our policy. I'd be glad to address any questions you may have.

Any questions or comments from the Council?

We do have an application as part of this. I forgot to— so basically they would outline that. And if you look at the asterisks below, it does indicate that individual making an application would have to provide significant and substantial information to form of why they would want to name it after an individual. So that's something that we would do. The Planning Commission will review that and make sure before it gets to the council it meets that criteria.

And Jason, when would a supermajority be needed?

So if something's already— excuse me— if something is already named, let's say Timpanogos Boulevard or whatever up by the high school, if whatever reason somebody feels strongly to rename that, it would need a supermajority to change 5 out of 7 council members. Right.

Okay. All right, if there's no comments, I'll go ahead and make a motion. I move that the City Council pass and establish a formal and uniform policy regarding the naming of city facilities and streets by adopting the Facility and Street Naming Policy For the City of Orem. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll go down the list. Councilmember McDonald?

Aye.

Councilmember Spencer?

Aye.

Councilmember Sumner?

Aye.

Councilmember Pedersen?

Aye.

Councilmember Lampson?

Aye.

Mayor Brunstad votes aye, so the resolution passes. Again, Councilmember Larray is not here. We will now move on to— thank you, Jason.

You're welcome.

We'll now move on to 9.5, which is a resolution declaring the City of Orem's intent to purchase the Hillcrest Elementary School property from the Alpine School District. And our presenter is Jamie Davidson. Jamie, we'll turn it over to you. Are you muted, Jamie? Jamie, can you unmute your audio?

Here we are, Mayor. I apologize.

Thank you.

Before you this evening is a resolution that essentially declares the City of Orem's intent to purchase the Hillcrest Elementary School property from the Alpine School District. As you recall, back in March earlier this year, The Alpine School District Board of Education expressed its intent to declare the former Hillcrest Elementary School property as surplus, and there began a process whereby the city has an opportunity to purchase that property. Within state law, the city actually has first right of refusal to purchase this property. In addition to the— in addition to state law, the city also had an agreement with the school district from 1990 that allowed the city to lease a section of this property or of this site for a park. And for many years, the city has operated Hillcrest park on the same property that Hillcrest Elementary formerly resided. And as part of that, we also had an opportunity and were given first right of refusal to purchase that park property as well. So we are in the process right now of assessing the value of that property. The Alpine School District completed an appraisal of the property And they estimated the value of the school property at approximately $6 million as is, specifically as a residential parcel or zoned residential, and an estimated $8.5 million if the property was rezoned to commercial. We as a city then engaged another appraiser to conduct an additional appraisal of the property to determine if in fact the property is worth $6 million as residentially zoned or $8.5 million as commercially zoned. The city does have some concerns with the values as represented by the appraisal that was provided to us by the Alpine School District. Per state law, the city has 90 days from the date that the school district notifies us to provide the Alpine School District by resolution with intent that it is the city's desire to purchase the school property. Thereafter, the city then has an additional 90 days to negotiate terms of the sale. and to provide an earnest money offer to the school district. So effectively, with this resolution, what you will be doing tonight is authorizing the city to proceed in negotiations in purchasing this property and in formally notifying the school district of your intent as the city to move forward and further investigate Okay.

Any comments or questions from the council? Again, this is a resolution and not a public hearing.

Correct.

I have some comments, but I thought I'd wait to see if anybody else has to make some comments. Okay, I would like to just mention a couple of things. First of all, if this property were to be developed commercially, the— it's my understanding, Jamie, if it's correct, the intersection out there, if it was to go commercial out onto University Parkway, would have to be moved to the west, and it would make some adjustments on existing intersections To the north into the mall and would be somewhat costly, quite costly to do that. This particular piece of property is in an area that 5 years ago we passed an ordinance that this property would not be open for high density. I remember when we had open house meetings with the Alpine School District with regards to the Hillcrest School being moved and joined in with the Sarah Park School to make Centennial. And I had residents come up to me and they said, the reason that you're in favor of doing this is so that the city in fact can purchase this property to develop the property. And I had mentioned to them, no. As mayor, I am not interested in purchasing this property for development. I am interested in the 2 schools coming together to make a— into a new building that would be beneficial since the Hillcrest School was— is old and has some issues seismic and mechanically-wise. Also, I feel like that the appraisal price That the school district has put on this property of $5.7 to $8.5 million is too expensive for the city to purchase, particularly at this time when we have decreased revenues coming in from sales tax due to COVID-19 and other taxes, fees, and whatnot coming in. I do not feel like this is the right time to purchase this property, nor should we. And so I am not in favor of it, but that is my feeling. So any other comments from the council or the—

Yes, Mayor, this is Terry. I have some comments about this. My children went to school at Hillcrest. It's a very tight neighborhood, and sometimes you do things as a city because it's the right thing to do for a neighborhood. And it doesn't always pencil as far as dollars and cents go. Now, the Alpine School District, I think, is very ridiculous in their appraisal that they're zoned for residential. But this would be a very— with everything that's gone on with this neighborhood losing their neighborhood school and the high-density apartments that have been built across the street and around the areas, this would be a very important step for the city to make this into a nice residential park.

Thank you.

Since there is no park in the southeast part of Orem, and there's no land available for a park in the southeast part of Orem. So I would be very much in favor of the city investigating this. When we look at the total budget the city spends, and you get an opportunity for a park, there's just— they're just not making any more land. So I would hope that the city can go forward and we can figure out ways to fund this and make this into a nice neighborhood park for families. that now have no place to go.

Okay, thank you, Terry. Any other comments from the council?

Mayor Tom McDonald, Councilwoman McDonald. Jamie, in everything you read, I don't think this requires us to acquire this property. It just gives us the permission to seek that opportunity out, correct?

Yes, that is correct.

Any other comments?

Yeah, I, uh, Jeff commenting. Um, I feel like it would be part of our due diligence to investigate this property for purchase. Whether or not we end up doing it is another matter, but I think that, uh, that piece of property located where it is, we need to make sure that, uh, if it makes sense for the City of Orem and for the residents nearby, I think we need to investigate Following that up and, and the possibility of a purchase.

Thank you, Jeff. Any other comments? Okay, this is a resolution and not a public hearing, so I will go ahead and make a motion that the City of Orem declare its intent to purchase the Hillcrest Elementary School property from the Alpine School District. And we will start with Tom McDonald.

Aye.

Dave Spencer.

Aye.

Brent Sumner. Brent, are you off mute?

Aye.

Okay. Terry Peterson.

Aye.

Jeff Lampson.

Aye.

Okay, Debbie Larray is not here, and I, Mayor Brunson, vote nay. The resolution passes, and appreciate it, Jamie. We'll now move on to any communication items. Jamie, do you have anything you would like to bring up?

Yes, Mayor, thank you. Just a couple of matters for your information. As you well know, last week the city transitioned to the yellow COVID-19 risk category, and we have been in the last week in the process of reopening city facilities or making adjustments according to the governor's Utah Leads Together plan and proposed restrictions, limitations that are tied to the yellow risk category. We have yesterday, for example, we opened our Sierra Pool. And given the temperatures, we obviously saw not as many patrons as you might expect on a Memorial Day weekend. But at the same time, we had individuals who were enjoying that facility. Our library is now operating under modified hours. We have staff that is returning to our city facilities. As, as you might remember, under the yellow risk category, Employees still have an opportunity, if feasible, to remote work. And so we still have a number of employees who continue to spend time at home working for and on behalf of the city and then spending time here in the city center and city offices as well. We anticipate that this orange or excuse me, this yellow risk category is something that we will have at least for the next week. Beyond that, we're not really sure what is going to happen. If you listen to the state epidemiologist, the lieutenant governor, and the governor, they are looking at a series of metrics to suggest when it is appropriate to transition to green. Everything from the number of hospitalizations associated with COVID-19, the number of individuals who have tested for the virus. The state is now fast approaching 200,000 individuals who have tested for the virus. I think today we were up to 198,500. They're also looking at obviously the level of positives in relation to those that have tested. Right now, the number of positive cases as compared to those who have tested stands at approximately 4.3%. In addition to that, they are looking at the number of individuals who have died once they have contracted the virus, and I believe that percentage is about 1.2%, 1.3%. So you can expect that as the governor and other state officials look to transition to green, they will be evaluating that decision based on the metrics that I've just identified. Now, we will also, and you also very well probably know this, if you drive in and around the community, there are still retailers, restaurants, other organizations that have chosen to remain closed. So for example, if you go to a number of restaurants in and around the community, a number of them have drive-through operations that are in full swing, but they have yet to open up their dining rooms, or they have yet to move to a full Monday through Sunday schedule, so to speak, under operating hours that are— Open from sunup to sundown. As a city, we have done our best to make all of our public assets accessible to the public, including park restrooms, park amenities, our ball fields, and of course all of our playgrounds are now open. It's going to take us a little while, a couple of days, to get everything in tip-top shape. I know we have sports teams, for example, that are anticipating a return to team sports, and we will be ready for that, for that opportunity here in the next couple of days. In addition to that, we will continue to schedule a lot of our meetings via Zoom and other virtual means. It is at least my recommendation in the short term that we continue to hold Planning Commission and City Council meetings in a virtual way. So for example, as we proceed into June, I would suggest that probably the next City Council meeting, the next Planning Commission meeting be ones that we schedule virtually. But thereafter we potentially consider where we are in relation to the governor's plan and the green risk category, which essentially is low or no risk, and make a decision as to the appropriateness of reconvening meetings in person. I'll also just note, and Mayor, maybe you can speak to this as well, that we continue to struggle with Utah County in relation to gaining access to COVID-19 CARES Act, which is federal dollars that are available to not just help the City of Orem in response to this pandemic, but to help our businesses in the community, to help other individuals in the community who are struggling. As you recall, the federal government allocated specific monies to the State of Utah And Utah County received $111 million with the expectation that those dollars would be forwarded or used for the general benefit of Utah County as a whole. Salt Lake County and the State of Utah have made the decision to allocate the monies that they have received through the federal CARES Act based on a population formula. provided that cities who are receiving that money would then essentially sign an agreement with the state or with Salt Lake County and hold them harmless from decisions that cities and towns make in relation to this money. So in the— essentially in the implementation or the administration of these dollars, if anything was done inappropriately at the local level, We agree— they would agree to release the state of Utah and Salt Lake County from any responsibility, any liability tied with the manner in which that money has been spent. Unfortunately, Utah County has not agreed to this same allocation formula and has set up a system where they would like for cities and towns within Utah County to request reimbursement for expenses. The problem and struggle we have with a reimbursement approach is there is no clean and clear understanding as to what may or what may not qualify for reimbursement based on the county's interpretation of federal CARES Act guidelines. So we may, for example, spend $100,000 in the City of Orem on a COVID-related expense, submit that $100,000 for reimbursement, and have that reimbursement rejected because in the opinion of Utah County it does not meet the standards as they interpret it. as they interpret those standards. So that, that puts us in a, in a real difficult position in a situation where, for example, the city of Scipio in central Utah receives a direct disbursement of COVID-19 CARES Act federal dollars to assist their community, and the city of Orem, which is 20 times the size of Scipio, does not receive like consideration and a similar allotment of money to help. The county has suggested that they will be in a position by about the middle of June to provide for reimbursements. I would like to represent to you, and I think the mayor would agree, that the longer we go Without these monies, the more difficult it is for those that we are serving, those that really need the money, to take advantage of these federal dollars that have been given to the state of Utah. If you have, for example, a business today that is in crisis, if there's not a way for them to get access to these dollars in the next 2 or 3 weeks, it may mean the difference between life or death for them as a business. So I know the mayor is actively working to try and appeal to the County Commission in expressing to them that there is a better way to do this. But at the same time, the County Commission, at least presently, is resolute in their desire to hold on to the monies and to base and to allocate those dollars based on reimbursement rather than providing all cities in Utah County with direct allocation, direct, I guess, benefit to these dollars. I understand that a letter was being forwarded today by pretty much all of the mayors in Utah County Expressing an interest and a desire to have Utah County follow the same model that the state of Utah is following in relation to the allocation of these dollars. But I don't think a response has been received yet from the county. I don't know, Mayor, if you want to add anything to what I've shared.

Sure, Jamie, I appreciate what you've mentioned. I think it's important that we realize where our businesses are within the city of Orem. We at— or I asked and we took a survey of all the businesses to see where they're at, and 30% of them have not received any funding as far as assistance goes. And in the survey, we asked how crucial it is that they receive assistance at this time of need, and they— 60% said it was very crucial. The problem is we've gone through Half of March, all of April, and most of May now, and these businesses, over 10 weeks, have still not received assistance. And as Jamie has mentioned, we may lose some of these businesses. Our businesses are, are revenue generators for government. And if in fact your businesses are down substantially, that means your sales tax is down substantially. And just as we've seen already with CARES tax, and you're going to see in our general budget, our revenues are down. And this is very concerning to all of us. We don't want to lose our small businessmen. We don't want to lose those that are homegrown here in Orem. We don't want to lose all those that work so hard to provide for their families in Orem. So the county's received $111 million many weeks ago. So far, no money has come forward to any city to cover expenses. So far, no money has come to any business to assist it with expenses. 70% of our economy is consumer spending. We need to see a rebound in consumer spending in the City of Orem to get our businesses going, to get our tax revenues going. And it is very concerning because we only have 6 months' time to spend the $111 million in the county. Now, it actually— it goes to the end of December, but we would have to know by the end of November what money is being spent so that we would then have to return whatever money is not spent to help the county and to help the cities back to the federal government. It's very disconcerting that people are looking at it as if it's just their money to spend when and how they wish to spend it. I have expressed my desire to the county commissioners, all 3 of them, how urgent it is that this money get out to our businesses, that we keep our economy rolling. COVID-19 has affected 2 areas of life. Our health and also our businesses, our financial side, and both are extremely, extremely important. Our health is number one, but without jobs, it's going to make it tougher and tougher. We've learned that our— from our police department that our rate of domestic violence is up greatly because of the stresses upon our citizens. We need to use this money for what it's intended, and we need to see the money flow forward to our businesses, to our consumers, and to our city. To sit on this money, to not involve the cities to be able to administer this, is criminal. It should be moving forward as it is to every other city in the state. We have tried different ways to make this work. We need to have the money come directly to the city, and it needs to happen next week. There's no reason why it can't. The state— or the Legislative Executive Committee on Appropriations has stated that this is how the money should be appropriated for every city in every county. in the state of Utah. The Utah League of Cities and Towns has also come out with a statement that this is how the money should be distributed directly through the cities to every city and all cities in the state of Utah. So we are doing all we can to work with the county, but again, the city has not received a dime. No businesses have received any money in our city, and our businesses are out 70 days without assistance. And I've spoken to some of them, and some of them are in desperate need, you know. And I don't know how many have owned a business per se, but if you own a business and you go 90 to 120 days without revenues, having to continue to pay your expenses, You're basically not going to make it. So we're getting down to the wire. This needs to be taken care of, and we need to see action where this money comes into the city. Just so everyone's aware of that. I don't have any other comments. Any other comments from anyone? All right, well, I will move that we adjourn for our meeting, and thank you for everyone for being here. Is there a second? So moved.

Second.

Okay, everyone in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, our meeting's adjourned. Thank you.