City Council · 2020-09-29

Um, yeah, let me check.

Oh, okay.

I'm here.

Steven, I, I know we're expecting representatives from Envision Utah as well.

Oh, there we go. I don't have any trouble connecting with anybody, but it is—

okay, good.

Okay, and so I think video's on now. Okay, we're good to go. All right, sorry everyone for being a couple of minutes late. Let's go ahead and get started. Appreciate everyone being here. So we are starting our city work session meeting and would like to begin with a comment. Notice of all electronic meeting and opportunity for public participation pursuant to Mayor Richard F. Brent's proclamation dated September 1st, 2020. The Orem City Council meeting on September 29th, 2020 will be an all-electronic meeting. There will be no anchor location for the meeting. The city cannot ensure the recommended minimum of 6 feet of social distancing for meeting participants at the usual anchor location in the Orem City Council Chambers. Therefore, holding the meeting at the City Council Chambers would present a substantial risk to the health and safety of those who may be present at the meeting and may contribute to the spread of COVID-19.

No.

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. To view the meeting, please go to orem.org/meetings. We will now go ahead and start our work session, and our first presentation is the Valley Visioning from Envision Utah, and we have Leota Kuhni here as our presenter, and we'll turn the time over to Leota.

Actually, I'm going to get us started. I'm Ari Bruening. I'm CEO of Envision Utah.

Hi, Mayor.

How are you, Ari?

Good.

How are you?

So we— you're probably all aware that we've been hard at work at Valley Visioning for what, a couple years now, I think, in partnership with the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce as well as the other chambers in Utah County. And looking at the future of the county, expected to double in population by 2050 and add a million people by 2065, which raises a lot of questions about how do you accommodate that population and still have a high quality of life and be able to get around without sitting in traffic and have good housing that people can afford and so on. And so we wanted to give you an update on what we found. We're getting close to releasing the vision in the next couple months, and we wanted to come talk to you first to make sure that before it goes public, you, you know what's in it and have a chance to ask questions or give input and so forth. So that's why we're here, and I'm going to turn the time over to Ryan Beck to run through what we've found and what the vision is looking like.

All right, thank you, Ari. And Mayor or Jamie or Bren, you've been involved with this too, so please, if you have anything that I miss, please feel free to add in by all means. So I'm going to do my best. We started this project fall of 2018. I'm going to do my best to truncate this in 10 or so minute presentation. If I gloss over anything, please slow me down. So Phase 1 was all about listening, and that is exactly what we did starting in 2018, fall 2018. We went out and we held a whole bunch of workshops around the valley, including one at your Orem High School, actually 2 at your Orem High School. And we also followed that up with an online survey where we had about, well, over 2,700 people chime in and give us some direction on the kind of some of these bigger issues. You know, this is just— we asked many, many survey questions. I'm not going to go through all of them, but I did think this one was important. The question was, in light of growth, how important is it to prioritize the following outcomes for Utah County? And you can see things that came to the top of the list, just like you would think. It's about managing water. It's about improving the transportation infrastructure. It's about air quality. It's about educating our kids, giving them a good education. It's about getting our kids good jobs. It's about housing. Can we afford housing? Can our kids afford housing? It's also about preserving agriculture and open space. And basically all these things that add to the quality of life that we've known to come, come to love and know in Utah County. So from this list and some of the survey results, we took our marching orders And we put together some working groups, you know, experts, experts in their respective topic areas, but on housing, transportation, air quality, agriculture, open space, water quality, workforce, and education. Some of you in the audience, on the council, mayor, etc., were involved. Thank you for your help with— on these groups. And they combined with what they said, and then what the survey, and then also some mapping exercises we did. At the workshops, you can see in the pictures here, you know, Ari mentioned the population projections. We asked people, look at a 2050 time horizon. We're going to double in population. Where are these people going to work? Where are they going to live? How are we going to get around? So we had to map this stuff. You can see some of the examples on the screen there. But what we did with all of this information from Phase 1 is we put together some scenarios, 5 different scenarios. That we went ahead and took back to the public through, again, another round of workshops and then an online survey. So we had 11,000 people weigh in this time around on the surveys. And all those, all those topic areas, I'm not going to go through all of them, but I do want to address one survey result that I thought was pretty interesting, kind of the overarching scenarios question. about how and where we grow. So Scenario A was all about current conditions. We grow into 2050 in the same patterns, think same mix of housing, same average lot size, but we look at the trends for the last 20 years and we project those forward for the next 30 years. Scenario B was all about organized centers. Growth occurs in mixed-use centers where, or where we plan to make investments in our transportation infrastructure. That scenario— or Scenario C was about westward growth, you know, out to Eagle Mountain, Cedar Valley, Saratoga. There's a lot of available land, a lot of undeveloped land, a lot of growth is going to go that way. So we wanted to study the impacts and the benefits of that. So that's Scenario C. Scenario D was all about southern growth, the other part of the county where there's a lot of available land. I think south of Provo. Down towards Santaquin, lots of agriculture land that has water tied to it that could be potential areas for growth. And then Scenario E, we wanted to test urban infill, and that's where we primarily accommodate this growth in existing urban areas, places just like Orem. So those were the overarching scenarios. These are just some— I just want to show, and I'm looking on the— mostly on the right, the map on the right. In that pale yellow is existing development. That's the existing development footprint. And then in that darker yellow, kind of orange color, would be the new development. So we went ahead and modeled where this— what we heard basically in the mapping exercises. And so just take a look at these footprints and think as I'm looking through these and what they would have in terms of infrastructure costs, you know, that directly relates to our tax how much we're taxed, directly relates to things like agriculture. So this one I'm showing now is Scenario B. This is the center scenario.

So, Ari, one thing kind of interesting is Scenario B seems to have something going over the lake.

That's actually true in 3 of the scenarios.

That's in C as well.

So we modeled the land use and then we gave these to MAG to build a transportation network that would serve each. And they figured they needed that bridge in 3 of the scenarios.

Yep, that is correct.

Good.

Thanks for pointing that out, Mayor.

All right.

Scenario C was all about westward growth. So if you look at this map, look at all this darker, this orange color we have out here in Eagle Mountain. And then a lot, you know, we infilled some existing On the east side here, but, and then Scenario D, conversely, a lot of growth going on down here south of Provo, not as much going on out here on the west side. And then Scenario E has the smallest urban footprint where we went ahead and infilled these missing, these places that maybe were passed over in the first round of development, or maybe we redeveloped some of them. So those were the scenarios. You can see on this slide how people voted. This is the 11,000 people. So in the blue, there's 2 things going on here. In the blue is how those 11,000 people, the public, voted. You can see a lot of support for Scenario B. That was the center-style growth. A lot of support for the westward growth towards Eagle Mountain, and then quite a bit of support also for the infill. So the other thing that's going on here In the red bars, we have— we went ahead and verified our results, did a random sample survey. Anything, you know, the surveys can be difficult, and lots of— so we went ahead and paid Lighthouse to do a random sample. The good news is, is just about across the board, in just about every single survey result, they lined up very well. So happy to report that. Now, I just wanted to show you this one. This is the same result, how and where we grow. but we sorted it by Orem and Provo so you can see your results. Scenario B, centers, which, you know, Orem for the most part is built out. So I was pleasantly surprised people from Orem support growing in a center-style growth and infill, this scenario, either infill scenario. So when we think about your State Street and the no develop— you're doing developments you're doing there, It seems like you're right on target with those developments and where you're going with those. So let me talk— I just went through one of the scenarios. If you're interested, we have a lot more scenario survey results, you know, things like agriculture, air quality, transportation. Happy to review those if you so wish, and we can send them to you afterwards if you'd like. But wanted to talk for a minute about Phase 3, which is the vision, which Ari mentioned is going to be coming out here by about mid-November. And now you got to think this is a Utah County vision for 2050. Utah County is a diverse place. You know, Orem is very different than Eagle Mountain. Eagle Mountain is very different than Santaquin. So it's, it's an overarching vision. There's big, some big vision goals. And they're going to be— they're going to talk about convenient transportation choices. They're going to talk about housing options. It's going to be about open space and supporting agriculture. It's going to be about managing our water wisely. It's going to be about clean air. And it's going to be about educating our kids. Now, those are kind of the grandiose visions. You'll see some grandiose vision statements. We will have specific goals and strategies to back those up. So I guess that's my ask of you is, Leota sent around a document that had the vision, the goals, and the strategies listed and written out. I know some of the staff, I'm thinking Bren and Jamie, have spent some time looking at those, but if others are interested in looking at those and reviewing those and even redlining them, we would love the feedback just so we get this right here in the next few months. And we can march forward with a common vision that everyone's bought into. So with that, Ari, or anyone have anything else to add to that, or any questions from, from the council?

Well, one thing I wanted to mention is the overarching elephant in the room in all of this is what our population is going to look like in 2050. and how we actually plan for that. And I'm hoping everyone on the council has gotten that information and data from Envision. But it's really important to figure out where we're going to be and how we're going to get there. Envision Utah did an excellent visioning process 20 years ago, and really great things have come from that. And maybe you could mention that. And I think that's why it's important that we vision now for the future of what's coming.

Yeah, that process you mentioned was really where we got our birth in the late '90s with Governor Leavitt kicking off Envision Utah and doing a vision for the Wasatch Front and back. So yeah, this is— and now this is 20 years later, we're Looking at the fastest growing county on the Wasatch Front here in Utah County, you're looking at 1.2 million people in 2050. So roughly that's what Salt Lake County is today, roughly. So.

So you did some visioning about what to do as far as what the population growth would be, but also how to get our air cleaner. And our air is 25% cleaner than it was 20 years ago. There's other parts to that that you envisioned and have become— and they've come to pass successfully as well.

Yeah, things like public transportation that led to the investment in all the rail that we built and so on. A lot of things happened as a result of that effort. And so the idea of visioning like this isn't to tell any one city what to do or how to do it, but more to To see how we working together as a larger area, what principles we want to follow and where we want to end up.

Hey, Mayor, I have a question.

Yes, go ahead, Dave.

So on the 3, the A, B, and C scenario with the bridge coming across Utah Lake, where is that supposed to hit? Is it hitting an arm or where is it supposed to connect?

I think that's still up for debate at the moment. Provo has it in Provo. Orem could possibly have it. It really depends.

Mayor, this is Jamie. There is some discussion, and if you will look on MAG's 2050 plan, right now the suggested line And representation of MAG is that it is right now just line, but it connects at 2000 South. So there has been quite a bit of discussion on the part of Orem with MAG and UDOT as to concerns we have with the location of that line. At this point, the suggestion by all parties has been And for now, it's just a line on a map on a 2050 plan. There's nothing specific as of yet, but that's something that we're watching very closely.

I would just add to that, yeah, and it is in— as far as timeline is concerned, it's a, you know, an unfunded, really long 2050. It's out there in the future. So to Jamie, to your point, Yeah, I think the actual line where it goes, where it actually connects, deserves a lot of further study.

Any other comments from the council? I think the important thing is just that we all study the documents that Envision Utah has put together for our valley visioning and that we look as how that would actually help us to plan for the future, because it's going to make a difference as to where people live, how people move transportation-wise, how we afford the growth that's coming. And if we don't plan for it, the growth will just come to us haphazardly and create a lot of problems. So it's very important to plan for it. Tam, I see that you're on the line. Welcome to our meetings today. Any comments you have in regards to this?

Thank you.

I'm sure it all has been covered before, but I would like to note so that the council members are aware that one of the key players in helping us launch this Valley Vision effort was Mayor Brunst. Meeting with him and representatives of Envision Utah to saying, and the Utah Valley Chamber, how do we make this happen? So thank you to your vision and your efforts, Mayor. I'm sure Ari's already touched on this. This is a top priority. In fact, it is the secret sauce, I think, of Utah Valley Chamber, and which is working collaboratively with Orem City. And I also note that Jamie Davidson is a very valued member of the Utah Valley Chamber Board of Directors. And has provided some great insight and direction for us. So I don't want to belabor anything. I just would ask if there's any questions that you may have of me, and I apologize for coming late.

I am—

I've taken a new job at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions. It's in its sister institution, the Norda College of Osteopathic Medicine, has a site visit by accreditor on Monday. And because we share facilities, and I am now over facilities, I had to be prepped on the yes and no questions on how to answer to the accreditors.

So I was being grilled.

So I'm happy to come here to this friendly group of city councilors and ask any other softball questions you may have. We're always your friends.

I know you are.

I appreciate you all very, very much, truly. All right, I don't think we have any questions. Go ahead.

I was just going to say thank you for the time on the agenda, agenda today and this afternoon. And please, please, if you have any comments on those vision goals and strategies, you can send them to me or Ari or Cameron or Leota, who's also on the line, and we'll get them incorporated.

All right, well, thank you, Ryan, and thank you, Ari. We certainly appreciate having you here.

Everybody, thank you all.

Thanks for letting me crash at the last second. Thank you, Cameron.

We'll see you.

All right, let's go ahead and move on to our next, uh, presentation, which is an update on UTA services. And we have Kent Mellington, one of the board trustees, here to present to us. Welcome, Kent.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the time to give you an update on some of the things going on with UTA. I thought I would start by mentioning the ridership swings that we've seen during this pandemic. We, by the first part of April, we were down about 75% from the 160,000 a day to about 40,000 a day system-wide. We are now back up to about 65,000, so we see some increases. Much of that increase is coming down in Utah County with the opening up of the schools, and so we see good ridership there. But we see some of the ridership coming back. In keeping with the theme that Envision Utah has just shared about the growth of of the population down in Utah County. We have undertaken a number of studies as well to determine how best to increase the transportation facilities that we offer down in Utah County. For example, we've just started a South County study that would look at everything south of Provo. That has just begun. We are also looking at the northern end of Utah County with the Point of the Mountain study that talks about how do we connect the southern part of Salt Lake County to the northern part of Utah County. And then, And that proposal is now being made. We see some ideas that have been proposed for a combination of bus rapid transit and light rail coming up over the point of the mountain into Lehi from South Salt Lake County. But of significant importance for or Orem are 2 of the studies that are being undertaken now. One study is being done by MAG. It's called the North Lakeshore Study. There's a significant look at some of the transit and transportation and roadway needs in the northern Part of Utah Lake, you can go to mountainland.org/NLstudy and actually participate in, in some ideas similar to what Envision Utah had done with some surveys that have been done. But that study is underway now specifically for some transit.

ideas.

And so that's, that's underway right now. One of the studies that have just been reported out last week actually is what is called the Central Corridor Study. This directly impacts Orem and I think was, was really pushed originally by Jamie Davidson and we appreciate that. That impetus that he gave to this study. It is a study of a bus rapid transit system that will run from the Provo Frontrunner station up to Lehi to connect with the Point of the Mountain study that, that I talked about just a minute ago. This would run directly through Orem, down State Street. Would continue on up through Linden and American Fork, sometimes utilizing the, the rail system right-of-way that UTA owns in that area for the bus rapid transit. But it's the bus rapid transit that is the preferred mode of transportation here. And so this has just been reported out. One of the important features of this new study is the connection to Vineyard down 800 North in Orem. The bus rapid transit would continue right on down State Street, but it would have a spur that would run from State Street down 800 North to Vineyard and back. And with the— all of the development that's going on along 800 North, businesses, hospital, you're well aware of the development there. And then into Vineyard, this would be a very important piece of that entire study. At that has just been reported out. Everybody is in favor of the preferred alternative that was proposed, but that system would have a significant impact in Orem right now. And so those are the major studies that have been been undertaken that are going on right now that impact Orem and Utah County. We have a study going on in Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs, but that will be less impactful for Orem. But this Central Corridor study is directly right down, right down Orem's State Street. So we are studying how we can improve transit facilities in Utah County. We have a number of those studies going on, and you'll see some, some activity to actually implement these over the next probably year or 2 as we're able to get additional studies done and some engineering taken care of.

So, Kent, I was just going to say the The North Corridor proposed plan, I think, is very important in the sense that it's going to connect traffic all the way from Point of the Mountain down through American Fork, down through Lehi, coming into Orem, Lindon, and of course connecting to Vineyard. Vineyard's proposed to grow by another 30,000, 40,000 people, and this connection will be a really great and large connection. It's rather interesting, I drove by some UVX bus stations yesterday, and the bus stations had plenty of people on them. They were all wearing masks, and it appears that ridership, as you mentioned, is coming back.

Yes, ridership on UVX has increased during the summer. Of course, school wasn't, wasn't being held, but we were at about 2,500 a day on UVX. When school started with the 2 universities, we jumped up to about 6,500. And so there's, there's significant activity there at UVX. That, that bus rapid transit system that runs through Orem is actually being used as a model for the one that's being proposed in Ogden that will service Weber State, the one proposed in Salt Lake County that will run from Murray and service Salt Lake Community College. So it's a very successful system that's been implemented down here in Orem and Provo, and it's being used. successfully as a model. And it's that same bus rapid transit system that is being proposed for State Street.

And if I'm not wrong, Kent, other cities across the nation are actually looking at the UVX line as a model and an example of what they in fact could do as well.

We have actually had visitors from out of state that have come down, and we've taken them down here to show them how the BRT system works here in Orem and Provo. They're very impressed.

And you know, it's interesting, when we went to put— move that UVX line forward, we lost financing twice. We had 2 lawsuits against it and 2 referendums against it. And besides all of that, it has been very successful and is doing a very good job on transporting people. and bringing down congestion of air pollution, congestion of cars.

That's for sure. The UVX has been very successful, and we're really proud of it. We're looking at somehow extending UVX up into Vineyard as a part of this overall study. That's something that we're looking at. It's just being thought of right now.

And that would be on Geneva Road?

Yes, it would be on Geneva Road. And so a lot of that would be— is still in discussion stages, but we're hoping to be able to expand that. And of course, over time, we're likely to have to do that with a million more people in Utah County over the next 30 or 40 years. We're going to have to increase our transit capability significantly over that time.

Yes.

So those are the studies that we're undertaking. We're looking carefully. Some of them have just started. Some of them have been completed. We're looking at doing some engineering, but Orem, where it sits as the heart of Utah County, why, They all will reach in and touch OREM, and you'll hear a lot more about these studies as we go forward.

Great. Well, we appreciate that. Appreciate having you online.

Well, thank you for the invitation today and for this opportunity to give you this brief report.

You bet. Any questions from the council to Ken? All right, well, thank you then, Kent. We appreciate it very much.

Mayor, thank you very much.

Hold on, Kent.

Sure.

I just have one question on the transit going down State Street in Norham. Will that affect the parking on either side of State Street?

Brent, this is Jamie, and I know Ryan can speak to this as well, but when we adopted in developed the State Street Master Plan, we did take into account transit running down the center of State Street, and there would be places along that corridor where on-street parking could be limited. And so it doesn't relate to an— to an elimination of parking, from what I recall, but it does in certain spots limit the availability of parking along the State Street corridor. Ryan, can you— or is Jason on? Can they add?

This is Jason. You are correct, Jamie. There are some spots that would be limited, especially if they have a dedicated lane down State Street in both north-south directions. If it's, you know, running in the general-purpose lanes, there wouldn't be, but if it is actually dedicated, similar to what we've done on the Parkway, there could be spots that would be limited, but we did do a plan that would basically take 7 feet on either side, as outlined in the master plan. So it is accommodated for that growth, but there, there could be some limitations depending on the width of the right-of-way as it goes north or south.

Thank you.

Yeah, we might just point out that the engineering hasn't been done necessarily, but it's been contemplated as these 2 gentlemen have pointed out.

And when we were in process with that master plan, we did receive direct feedback from both UDOT and UTA.

All right, any other questions? All right, well, thank you again, Kent. Appreciate having you here.

Appreciate it, Mayor. Thank you very much for the opportunity. You bet.

All right.

We will now go on to our next discussion. This is the city retention schedule. Jackie Lambert, our deputy city recorder, is our presenter.

Yes.

Thank you, Mayor and council.

This is just the next grouping with our ongoing process of getting approval for the city City's retention schedule.

This grouping includes sections of the Public Works Division, namely the cemetery, parks, public utilities, and volunteers records. I'm happy to take any questions, or if anything comes up, please feel free to reach out to myself or to Jody Bates, and we are happy to discuss. anything about retention with you in these ongoing approval processes.

Any questions or comments? All right, well, we appreciate having you here, Jackie. Thank you. Thank you so much. We'll now go on to our next discussion, which is on the Orem City Center. Our presenter is Jamie Davidson, and I'll turn the time over to him.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the City Council. We are circling back today to just provide you an update as to the city center and the city's current, I guess you could say, the financial environment that we are operating in right now that potentially suggests a I won't say once in a lifetime opportunity, but I will represent to you a very unique opportunity given current financial markets to consider construction of the city center and moving forward with a city center while interest rates and the like are at historic lows. The mayor, in cooperation with the council here just yesterday, made a request that we put some information together relative to this conversation. And so yesterday afternoon, I spent some time and jotted down this information as, as a result of conversations that I've had in the last week with Joe Smith from Method Studio. Bren Bybee has had some conversation with JRCA Architects. Which is the firm we retained back in 2016 to help do a space analysis on the City Center, conversations we've had with Lewis Young Robertson and Birmingham, our city's financial advisor, specifically Laura Lewis, as well as representatives from Y2 Analytics who have helped us in the past with survey work and the development of focus group efforts. that were a real key to us being able to move forward with our fitness center project several years ago. So I want to just kind of give you a brief update as to some of what we have done to date in relation to the City Center and then dive into some of this new information that I'd like to share. And of course, I'd like to give some time to Mayor Brunst, who also has Probably some insights and some information he'd like to share relative to this building as well. So I'm going to share my screen and give you an opportunity to— let's see. Give me a second here. So I'm going to share that. And just as a reminder, I'm trusting everybody can see this now. As a reminder, a little bit of information about our existing municipal campus, the square footage of some of our facilities. At the bottom of this slide, you will actually see our existing City Center building. consisting of 45,683 square feet. You may be interested to know that in many respects, the basement is somewhat of a forgotten space for many, but we actually house quite a few employees down in that basement. We have members of our facilities team, our IT team, our development services team, our engineering section, our finance section, all of those individuals have offices and workspaces down in the basement. So while, for example, access to the basement is not necessarily something many think about, we actually do have a number of employees, probably 30+ employees, that are operating down in the basement right now. And the basement is approximately 18 square feet for a total of a little over almost 46,000 square feet total in the City Center. A number of years ago, I suggested and made mention of a study we completed with JRCA Architects. Back in 2016, we initiated this discussion on the future of the City Center, and we developed a needs assessment in cooperation with JRCA, just identifying what our current square footage needs were based on specific criteria that JRCA applies to public facility projects that they have historically built in cooperation with other cities and the State of Utah. And based on their evaluation, their suggestion was we needed about 43,000 square feet to operate and carry forward the operations of the city at that time. Thereafter, they conducted a review with all the city departments within the city center and tried to identify future space needs within the city center. And then ultimately, they considered the addition of the Justice Court into a city building. As you know, our city Justice Court operates on this campus, but it operates out of leased space that we have from the state of Utah. So the building to our east is actually owned and operated by the state. And we actually lease one of the 3 floors in that building, and that houses our Justice Court, specifically our court personnel, as well as judges' chambers and 2 courtrooms in that building. So we got looking at what specific space needs were, and what we landed on was approximately, if we were to include the Justice Court space, a need for about 57,000 square feet to accommodate today plus growth in the future out 20 years, plus incorporating our Justice Court into a municipal building that we owned and operate. Now, I will represent to you that this was done pre-COVID, and some things have changed obviously in the last 6 months that would probably require us to revisit this again in having a conversation if we were to move forward with this effort to better right-size our facility needs post-COVID-19. But for the sake of conversation and discussion, at the time we were looking at this building and its future, future, we identified a need of about 57,000 square feet. A lot of effort has been put in recent years trying to assess the condition of our city center. And a big concern that we have, obviously, in this building is the seismic strength of the facility. And based on recommendations that were made by a firm back in 2015 that assessed from a seismic perspective this building, obviously some significant concerns were the result. Specifically, I've highlighted in yellow a paragraph that was most concerning to us as staff and in relation to our operations. here in the city center. Specifically, the last comment or the last sentence identified these concerns and deficiencies, if not corrected, may result in a collapse or partial collapse of the building and the potential loss of life. These items are life-threatening and should be properly addressed. And at the time, we asked AE Urbia, which is another firm that conducted this evaluation, to do a 30— 30,000-square-foot or 30,000-foot evaluation as to what it might cost to add some seismic improvements to the facility. And back in 2015, the suggestion was about $2.6 million, not to change any of the spaces in the building, but rather just to shore up the facility for the purposes of earthquake protection. Then in 2019, we revisited this seismic evaluation with a different engineering firm, and we did a much deeper dive into the building and the seismic concerns associated with the building. And as you can see, for example, on the right side of your screen, we went and looked at all of the bracing in and around the building. Because we have unreinforced masonry walls that make up a majority of this facility, there was great concern that if there ever was an earthquake, the unreinforced masonry walls would separate themselves from the roof structure and other pieces of the building, leading to a collapse or partial collapse. And really, to greater detail, we received the same recommendation, and that was, you know, the structure is a concern if you are operating out of the facility and you require the facility to remain standing in the event of a seismic episode so that you can maintain your operations after such an event. So, you know, the idea is, yes, this is an office building, but at the same time, this is an office building that houses the brains of our organization, specifically in the basement, all of our IT infrastructure that operate all of our facilities, not just on this campus but beyond. their central location is here at the city center in the basement. So that, that was a big concern, and it's a big concern because there are specific seismic standards that we build to in order to maintain operations prospectively after an earthquake. And the suggestion was That if you are going to operate a building and it is identified as an essential facility, then you need to build it to the highest seismic standard subject to current building codes. And that highest risk category standard is a Category 4 building. And that was the suggestion and recommendation if you want the building to stand after a seismic event. You need to have it built to risk category 4. Now, by way of just reminder, we are operating in a building that is a risk category 0. So we— this building was built prior to seismic codes. And so in the event that we have an issue, this building would most definitely incur a lot of damage. Now, I want to just kind of emphasize that we're not just talking about this building based exclusively on seismic concerns, because I know the suggestion is, well, it may or may not collapse or fall apart in the middle of an earthquake. We had an earthquake several months ago, and yes, we did incur some damage to the facility, but we're still standing. It's still standing. We're operating out of it. We really haven't seen, obviously, the demise of this space. So we actually went and looked above and beyond the seismic issues of the building. We actually asked several other consultants to take a look at the building's mechanical systems, its plumbing, the electrical systems, and, you know, tried to identify where there were deficiencies in those areas as well. Now, about 10 years ago, we actually, in the, I guess, the middle of the last Great Recession, we actually used some federal money to upgrade a number of mechanical systems within this facility. And so we took the money, that kind of 2010 CARES money that we received, and we spent a lot of that money for energy efficiency improvements tied directly to some of the mechanical systems in the building. So the actual mechanical systems in the building are in much better shape than the plumbing and electrical systems in the city. And I just kind of out of these reports, and I can make these reports available to you, I identified some of the key areas that require replacement or upgrade in this building prospectively, generally in the short or near term. Everything from replacement of our existing electrical switchgears to an upgrade replacement of our fire alarm system, our universal power source, the temporary power system that we would rely on if we go down or if Rocky Mountain Power goes down, a need to replace our building generator and the single— and the fuel tank that we have that's actually buried outside our building. It's actually a— it's not a double-lined tank. but it's a single-line tank. We have lighting controls, lighting within the building. We have conduit racks for our IT services that are unsecure. And of course, we have telecommunications equipment that has been added to this building since 1970 when it was originally built. So back in the days of the '70s, we didn't have the tech infrastructure that we have today. And B&A Consulting took a look at these renovation efforts, and their suggestion was, if we renovate this existing building, you're probably looking at about $42 a square foot for a renovation. If we were to build all of this new, you're looking at probably a third less cost at about $30 a square foot. And we could continue on with conversations about some of the issues we have with mechanical and some of the plumbing systems here in the building. You know, some of them most notably are the sewer pipes that we have in the buildings— in the building, the sprinkler system that we have in the building, and the control systems that monitor and regulate all of the temperature, the heating and cooling systems. All of those things are areas of concern in this building. So based on all that information, we revisited this building with JRCA Architects back in 2019, the same group that worked with us in 2016, and we said, okay, now we know more than we did in 2016. What do you think some of the costs would be to upgrade this building primarily for the purposes of seismic protection. And they came back with an estimated cost of about $7.4 million or about $162 a square foot. Now, they assumed that this work would happen in the 3rd quarter of 2020. So, you know, it's representative of potentially where we would be today if we went out to bid. But obviously there's some question as to how accurate that number would be, that number is, and we don't know until we were to go to formal bid. But in the issue, in the idea of upgrading the building for seismic purposes, it would not lend itself, and that $7.5 million would not lend itself to improving any of the spaces within the existing building. It would not provide additional security. It would not, for example, add single or double-pane windows to the facility. It wouldn't upgrade any of our mechanical systems or any of the electrical systems. It would just deal specifically with the seismic concerns that we had. And so we went and revisited again with JRCA and asked them the question, Okay, well, what if we wanted to rebuild this space and renovate this space and work in the space improvements, the security improvements, the HVAC improvements, and the seismic improvements? And what you see on your screen is an estimate of about $350 a square foot, or $17.6 million to renovate the existing space. As compared to the construction of a new building. And they, for the purposes of discussion, were looking at existing city halls in Vernal and Bluffdale and Springville and trying to identify where the cost would be for a like facility in Orem based on their experience. having built and designed all of these other facilities, and they landed on a project cost of $22.6 million, or about $453 a square foot. Now, I think this is a very generous budget, but that's where they landed on in 2019. So, so why is this relevant? Why are we having this conversation about new building versus an old building, I just want to share with you the money that we have spent in the last 3 full fiscal years as it relates to improvements within our existing City Center. So we have done everything in the last 3 years from carpet replacement to security improvements, to a number of repairs and replacements on some of our infrastructure here in the city center where we've spent in the last 3 fiscal years, fiscal year 2018, 2019, and 2020, we spent $857,000 in these last 3 years. I have been having a conversation with you about spending some more money on this facility in this current fiscal year, specifically related to restroom improvements here in the building and some additional CARES Act improvements that are, I guess you could say, necessary if we are to continue to be mindful of the virus and potential future viruses. So we have included and proposed a renovation of our existing restroom, which would require a relocation of our janitor closet, the addition of additional— or of touchless doors, so doors that would not require individuals pushing and pulling them open, looking at some additional storefront glass in office suites for COVID and security protection, improvements of our break room, and of course some additional building improvements. Now, one of the reasons that some of these projects end up being more expensive than first anticipated generally is this building is not ADA compliant. So this building was built prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act. And as a result, anytime we undertake a significant renovation of the space, we actually have to bring this building up to existing code. So what does it mean for us as it relates to restrooms? If we actually go in and just renovate the existing restrooms based on the existing footprint, they do not meet ADA specifications. So we actually need to expand expand the existing restrooms to meet existing ADA requirements. But in addition to that, unfortunately, given the size of this building, we do not have sufficient bathroom space on the first floor or on the main floor of this facility to meet ADA requirements as well. So not only do we need to make the existing bathroom bigger, but we actually need to find space spaces for additional stalls in this building to meet ADA requirements. So what you are seeing here is a renovation of the existing main floor restroom and the addition of 2 unisex bathrooms that we would locate in the— to the north of the city Council chambers in the breezeway or off of the breezeway area. So for example, you would walk into the city center, and if you are heading into the city center through that breezeway, we have envisioned 2 additional restrooms that we would place just off of the breezeway to accommodate and meet ADA requirements. Now, some of these costs would be covered by way of CARES, specifically the main restroom renovation and the touchless automatic doors and the storefront glass and things like that. But certain pieces of the project would not meet CARES specifications, and so we would have to use city general fund money to meet our capital projects money to meet those ADA requirements. So again, we find ourselves in this dilemma of in the last 4 years, we've spent about $1.2, $1.3 million in this building, and we will continue to need to make improvements given the age, the 50-year age of this space. So I began several weeks ago At the request of Mayor Brunson to have another conversation with Joe Smith, who serves as the principal of Method Studio. This is the same architect who has worked with us on Library Hall as well as our fitness center. We're very pleased with the work that they're doing. They have a value engineering mindset and are, you know, they're trying to give us as much as they can for as little as we can, you know. as we can, and they've done a really good job with that. I sat down with them and I asked them, you know, where are we, Joe, in relation to a new city center? What do you think on a cost per square foot basis we could build a new city center? And his specific feedback was, I think you could probably do it for $300 to $350 a square foot depending on whether or not we would add the Justice Court to a future City Center. The reason that Justice Courts are more expensive is because they require additional security improvements that are not present, for example, in a City Center. So in a Justice Court, you need, for example, hallways and corridors for staff and for the judges, and you need a separate space for prisoners. So you can take prisoners in and out of a court facility, and they cannot mix, obviously, with the general public. And so there's some additional things that we need to build into a court space. And as a result, the suggestion would be, you know, you build in a justice court into your future city center, and you're going to increase the cost per square foot of your facility. Having built city centers and projects in the past that have included a court component, it is an absolute necessity that you build in these additional security measures into whatever you build. Because you do not want that intermingling of the general public with, for example, prisoners who are in shackles and the like. That's, that's never a comfortable situation. So I talked with Joe and I said, Joe, could you give us potential elevations, a proposed concept that we could work off of that would complement what we have at the library and Library Hall and our public safety building? As well, could you kind of envision from a parking perspective where future parking would be, so on and so forth? He said, Yeah, we can do that. It would probably take about 90 days, and we would quote you a cost of, you know, $15,000 to $50,000. But he assured me we would— he would work very hard with his partners to give us the best price he could. And so I would envision that price to be more on the lower end of what I've shared here than the higher end. And then lastly, if you just look at You know, a 57,000-square-foot building including a justice court at $350 a square foot, you're looking at about $20 million to build a facility. So with all of that as background, I then approached Laura Lewis with Lewis Young and I asked her, okay, Laura, I'm hearing that this is a very favorable financing climate. Help me understand and help make an argument that this is something that we should consider. And specifically what Lara shared was some of where we are in relation to current interest rates, and then overlay that onto where we are with the cost of construction and the inflation that's associated with constructing new buildings. And we were able— I was able to go in and to find some information that suggests on an annual basis where current construction inflation is. Now, these are national numbers, and I would represent to you that they are not representative of Utah. Because with the exception of that 3rd bullet point where it talks about and identifies high school construction costs, that is Utah-specific information. But the others are national statistics, and what you see there are construction inflation numbers that range anywhere from 1.66% to 2.43%. Turner Construction, it's a huge multinational construction company. They actually publish an annual building cost index. And I looked at the last 10 years, the average was 2.29 as compared to 2.43 for the last year. And I thought, okay, let's just kind of for the sake of discussion, identified 2.29% as the inflationary cost of construction today and into the future. Now, I think that's a very conservative number. Laura had a conversation with the President of the Senate because UDOT is considering some very significant projects in the next couple of years, and they are including about 10% construction inflation per year into some of their cost estimates as per UDOT. So, you know, for the sake of conversation, 2.29% is a very conservative construction inflation number. You can see where municipal interest rate trends are right now, that the bond index, for example, you look at where we have been in 2020, we're looking at you know, 20-year AA-rated municipal bonds, that their low interest rate is about 2%. The high interest rate that they've seen to this point in 2020 is a little over 2.75%. Now this takes into account, this is the average based on Moody's and Standard Poor's, their ratings of AA. So Orem's rating is actually better than that average rating. We actually have a AA+ rating. So I would anticipate if we were to run these numbers— they didn't have these numbers available online for AA+ rated cities or government organizations— but I would suggest that given our AA+ rating, with all 3 of the rating agencies, we would fare very well in the finance market right now, and you will see that in a few minutes. So I said, okay, Laura, let's, let's take a look at where we are on a pay-as-you-go basis versus a finance basis. Let's just hypothetically identify we need $20 million to build a new city center. And let's hypothetically say we want to potentially finance this building across 30 years. Where if we did this on a pay-as-you-go basis and we conservatively set aside $250,000 a year to save up for construction of a building, Could we do it and when would we do it in relation to construction inflation and where the construction market is right now? And this is the information that we came up with. On the left-hand side of your screen is a cash accumulation basis of us setting aside $250,000 a year for the next 30 years. And that would allow us to generate and have an ending balance of $22 million, $22.6 million. Now this takes into account a starting point of $10 million. So we have $10 million in the bank. In the next 30 years, we're going to add at $250,000 a year. to that fund. And by the time we're at 30 years, we will have $22.6 million. If you take a look on the right-hand side of the ledger and you take into account the cost of a $20 million building at construction inflation at 2.29%, while we in 30 years will have saved $22.6 million, including the $10 million we have in the bank today, the cost of this new building 30 years from now will be $39.4 million, or a delta of $16.7 million. That's based on a $250,000 contribution. Well, what if we could— what if we could contribute exactly what we need so that the left side of the ledger on a cash accumulation basis would equal the right side of the ledger and the construction inflation analysis. So how much would we need to deposit every year into a sinking fund to result in enough money in 30 years to build this new city center? The answer to that question is $714,000 a year. We would have to set aside $714,000 a year for the next 30 years to get to the point of reaching $39 million, which is where we think, based on a 2.29% construction inflation rate, we need to get to in order to have Enough money to build a new city center. So at that point then, I had a conversation with Laura and said, well, what if we came to the table with $10 million in cash and we financed the other $10 million? How much would we need in that scenario to finance a building? how much would we need in debt service on an annual basis to have $20 million today to build a new city center? And what the numbers suggested, again, based on 2.29% inflation, was we would have a debt service payment of $463,000, almost $464,000 a year to pay for that. to build a new city center today and to finance $10 million of that $20 million building. And if you just look at this pay-as-you-go base accumulation in comparison to construction cost inflation, even if we were to set aside that $464,000 every year, at the end of 30 years, we would still be $9 million short of what we need to build a new city center. So we're in a situation right now where construction inflation and interest rates are at a point where we can't save our way into a new building because whatever we save in a judicious way, will be eaten up by construction inflation. Now obviously, if we included a construction inflation number of 5%, then that delta would be dramatically wider than it is today. So here are some of the details, and I'm, I'm showing— you can't see all of the details, but what this essentially shows is the financial analysis that we ran and the idea of a bond would be a revenue bond. It's not something that requires a citizen vote. This is not a general obligation bond, but it's something that we could, for example, pledge sales tax revenue or utility franchise tax revenue. We could use that as the backstop. We would come to the table with a $10 million equity contribution, which is money we already have in our capital projects account. I mentioned we'd run it across a 30-year schedule, debt service schedule. The analysis also assumes 2 years of capitalized interest to build the facility before we actually have to start paying the principal of the bond. We would, based on the financing structure, we would generate $10.19 million in the issuance of that bond. There would be about $195,000 in underwriting and cost of issuance costs. And we would land at a true interest cost of about 2.1949%, so below 2.2% in true interest cost. Now, when we had the same conversation back in October of last year, current rates suggested that our true interest cost would range from 2.94% to 3.1% based on the type of bond that we were to issue. Finally, with an estimated annual debt service payment of $464,000 a year for 30 years. So then that kind of begged the question of, okay, well, if we need to find $464,000 a year, where are we going to get this money from? And so we looked at what we are currently spending, which is about— and I, again, this is a conservative number— about $250,000 a year. In facility costs. If we took that money rather than invest it in the old building, just set it aside and continue to invest it in a new building, we could use that money. In addition, there are administrative charges that we could assess our operating partners in our— essentially our business funds, our enterprise funds, Water, storm, garbage, wastewater, our risk management fund, our IT services. Those are all essentially enterprises that benefit from the city center and would need to pay their fair share of the city center. So we could look to another about $195,000 a year if we were to reallocate and recalculate the cost of doing business across all of our business units in addition to the general fund. Because we would be working into some— a new building with new efficiencies, we estimate that we would also save about $30,000 a year just in utility cost savings. Rocky Mountain Power Questar Gas or Dominion Energy and some of the other charges that we currently pay. And then finally, we could look at a reallocation of some of the money that we are currently spending out of the general fund on transportation because of this new transportation sales tax that passed last year. We could divert or we could rededicate money in the general fund to non-transportation sales tax, non-transportation matters, and use that Fund 24 to meet those obligations. So, you know, here I've shown you about $600,000+ of potential opportunities for us to pay for $464,000 a year without impacting current operations. Now I will represent to you that obviously every financial decision that we make, every action has an opposite reaction. So if we were to head down this path, then there probably are some things into the future that we would not be able to accomplish immediately. But like every year and every budget we put together, There are always opportunity costs and there are always essentially things that we need to forego in one year because of other priorities. In recent years, for example, we've spent a lot of time and effort on compensation matters, and we have been focusing on putting as much money as we can towards our existing employees, and as a result, that has led to not being able to put as much money to new employees. And then finally, you know, this whole idea of, well, is the public really behind the idea of rebuilding this city center? One sure way to do that is to go out with a general obligation bond vote. Now, in that circumstance, you would be looking to ask the citizens of Orem to increase their property tax in order to build a city center. Everything to this point I have not suggested is something that we should do, nor would I recommend that we go to a general obligation bond to build a new city center. But there's an opportunity for us by way of a GO vote to put a formal question on the ballot to give voters an opportunity to say yea or nay. That's the only way that we could put a question to the voters and have that decision be a binding vote of the voters. But again, my suggestion, representation to you is typically voters are excited about things that they directly benefit from. A new fitness center, a new library, a library hall. They even see public safety facilities, police facilities, fire stations. Those are things that they generally benefit from in a direct way. They don't always see that same benefit from a city center. So that's why I would suggest to you that that's probably not the right path to follow. There are, though, some ways where we can assess public interest and support for moving forward with the City Center project. Public open houses, virtual meetings, an opportunity by way of the city's website, and community opinion leader education and support. In addition to that, we have 18,000+ email addresses of all of our customers here in Orem. We could put together a Y2M that could give us a very good temperature of the citizenry as related to where they are at in relation to a city center. And then finally, the idea of a focus group or a series of focus groups to gauge public interest is also a great avenue that we took with our fitness center that really helped us in better understanding what our residents thought as most important in the construction of these facilities. So I've been talking for a long time. That is the conclusion of my presentation. I don't know if you have any questions, or Mayor, if you'd like to add to anything that I've shared today. Jamie?

Yes, go ahead, Brent.

This is Brent. I have a question. There's a lot of old buildings in the county and in Orem. A lot of those things that you're improving, aren't they grandfathered in until we get a new building? I mean, do you, do you have—

Yes, they, they are grandfathered until we try and change them, and then we have to comply with current zoning and current building standards. So, so for example, with our restrooms, if we leave our restrooms as they are today, then there's no need for us to bring them up to current standard. However, if we undertake a significant renovation, which in this case we have deemed what we're doing a significant renovation, then we would need to bring it up to current code to meet ADA requirements. And that's something that our building department deals with, with relative frequency. As people come in and they want to update their facilities, we look at existing building code and require them to bring it up to code, and we look at existing zoning ordinances and require them also to bring their buildings up to current zoning ordinances as well, provided they undertake a significant improvement or renovation.

So what you're saying is you could put this off another year if you wanted to, these ADA compliant and the updates you've mentioned?

Well, I guess what I'm saying is any of these improvements are always subject to the ADA. today, tomorrow, 10 years from now. The reason that we're having this conversation, at least I think this conversation is compelling to some degree, is we have an opportunity, for example, to benefit from a 2.2% interest rate for 30 years. We didn't have that opportunity 3 years ago. We may not have that opportunity next year. or the year after, or the year after that.

Jamie.

But you could— my question is, you could put these off a year, and you've given a lot of great information. I appreciate it, Jamie. And we could do open houses and tell the citizens about this, and then put it on the ballot. And I just want to go on record where I pushed this forward this session, in work session, I haven't changed my mind. I'd like to see it on the ballot in 2021. Well, and I, and I, you know, and I don't know if the mayor has anything new to tell us. He's talked to all of us, but, uh, well, I guess—

A couple things, Brent. As far as putting it on the ballot, then you're raising property taxes. The public will not like that. I would, I would totally disagree with that. We can get approval from the voters by A survey from Y2 Analytics for 18,000 of our homes. And so this is a sales tax revenue bond, not a general obligation bond. Again, a general obligation bond will increase the property taxes. We've seen how that has gone in the past, except for a police officer. I would not recommend that. The other thing I wanted to mention on ADA So as an example, if someone were to come in and have a problem, say bringing a wheelchair into the women's restroom, and you probably haven't been in the women's restroom, but it's very difficult to try to get a wheelchair in there. If they were to do that and then make a formal complaint, they would have the right to sue us, and they could sue us for not being compliant to ADA. At the same time, our elevator does not comply with ADA standards. And if we were to renovate the elevator to ADA standards, we would have to tear out the whole middle of the building to do so. So what, what Jamie's saying is the amount of money that we're spending to keep this building up could be spent for a new building, and the time is right. So we don't know what the interest rates will be like 2 or 3 years. We've been studying this now for 6 years. We brought it up in 2014, 2016, 2020, and there is a nexus here. The nexus is the interest rate has dropped this year by 18%, and the amount that it's dropped in the last 2 years saves us $3 million worth of interest payments over 30 years. Number one—

Mayor, I just get one response to that. I asked Jamie and staff on a road that's in tough repair when it's on the schedule to be looked at and made whole, and it's not until 2023. Now I'm afraid we— this is putting off some of those projects. Now Hillcrest, we probably couldn't even address if So I think—

I can address that for you, Brent. So my recommendation would be, first of all, that we do not add a court into the new City Center build. As Jamie has said, you end up having prisoners coming in and out of the building. I'd recommend we keep the court where it is today, on the other building on the campus, and continue to lease that. Second of all, I would not add the extra 5,000 square feet of footage that we had planned on for future growth, considering what we've learned from COVID-19. So I would probably stay at the 45,000 square foot range. And by doing that times what we're spending on the rec center of $308 per square foot, your actual cost would come in at $18.5 million— well, come in at $15 million, and then you'd have about $3 million in engineering costs, contingency costs. You put 10% contingency. You have survey, geotech, testing costs. Anyway, you would actually come in at $15 million with $3 million of those costs. You'd be at $18 million. So if we're looking at a $20 million project and we came in at $18 million, we could in fact take $2 million of that and use that towards building the new park over at Hillcrest. And if we needed to add one more million, you could take it up to $21 million, and we could move ahead with the park at Hillcrest, and we could move ahead with the city center. The thing that I'm concerned about is The safety and security of the employees who work there. I probably spend a lot more time than a lot of people in the building, and, and I'm very concerned. It rests heavy on my shoulders that this building is not in good condition. But the fact that the amount of money we're spending for upkeep would equal the amount of money that we would spend on our annual debt payments where there's no additional charges going out to any of our residents. There's no additional property taxes. It'd be kind of like the, you know, the library hall and the rec center where there would be no additional cost to the residents. And this would protect the safety and security of those in the building. If you remember, in 1999, the Public Safety Building was built. Now they could have put that off. They could have waited. They could have said, we don't want to do it. But in fact, they did do it, and they did it for $155 a square foot. They built the Public Works building, which, if you remember, up on 8th North was a disaster. And if you look at the one we have now, it's beautiful and it's functional. And they did that in 2006 at the cost of $95 a square foot. We're talking now $308 a square foot. So if it's continued to be put off and put off, the construction costs will go up. Lumber's up 20% this year. These costs will go up. The interest rate will not stay where it's at, I don't believe. And the cost that we're putting into the building, we're just putting it into an old building. So I had CKR engineers structural engineers. I had Daniel Goodrich come look at the building. He is the structural engineer who did the work for the rec center for us. And his comment to me was, he said, Mayor, he said, I've had various people put new money into old buildings and it never turns out well because the old building is still an old building. It still has the structural problems. It still still has the mechanical problems, the fire problems, et cetera. So the reality is, he said, I highly recommend you don't do that. You just end up with an old building. And the reality is, we have the ability right now to not charge our residents anything additional. We have the best interest rate we've ever seen. The cost that we are spending every year Would equal what we would spend on new debt. And this is looking forward. This is not looking at today. This is looking forward. Tom, I'll get to you in just a second. Looking forward for our residents and our employees, just as they did with the Public Works building, they did with the Public Safety building. We did it with the Senior Citizen Center. We've done it with the Rec Center. We're not going to have this nexus of low interest rates, of being able to pay the debt with what we're already paying right now, and with having a building that is in need, great need of being replaced again. And I, I, you know, all of this together I think brings a point where it makes sense to seriously look at if we continue to put it off again. Well, then you end up spending $245,000 to $400,000 this year, and then you have to go to the citizens and say, oh, by the way, I want a new building, but we just put in all these brand new restrooms. That isn't going to work. And the reality is, we do have a point here where the money, instead of being spent for improvements to a very old building, could be spent for a new building. for the safety and security of those who work there. Tom, did you have a question?

Yeah, more of a comment.

Mayor, obviously we've known your passion for this idea.

You've been—

you've told us all about it and repeated many of those same issues today. The Feds have announced that they're unlikely to raise interest before 2023, so we do— this window of time is not all that narrow of a window. I wonder how much we're spending spending on all of these reports. I understand they've been fairly minimal, but my other concern is we may not have $10 million available if we spend $3 million on— $2 to $3 million on park renovation and other things that I think the public is very interested in. We may not have that kind of cash available, so I would be unwilling to move at this point. I want to know post-COVID what size building do we need. I need to know how much are we really going to have left after we make improvements to the park that 6 members of this council, and I think the majority of the community, wanted us to do. I'm not ready to move forward at this point. And to Brent's comment, whether we do it as a vote or get a lot of citizen input, if we'd have to get kind of overwhelming citizen approval, and I'm not so sure we get that, but my first preference would be to take it to a vote. So if you're asking for a decision today, I'm not ready to move forward in earnest until we have a lot more information in front of us. And Jamie, I hope we're not spending a lot of money on, with the financial advisors or et cetera, et cetera, 'cause that's, if we don't build, that's definitely money down the tube.

So Tom, your comments are good, and I certainly understand your feelings. I think on the size, I think we can get an answer to that. I would like to get all this information out to everyone in their email box to look over. As regards the park, I think it would take $2 to $3 million to put in the brand new improvements in the park. I had already just mentioned that we would have probably $2 million from this bond by not building the court and by building the building at 45,000 square feet. And we can add another million in the bond so that we have $3 million for the park to move forward quickly, at the same time putting forth the money for the city center. And to me, you know, like I said, I've had old cars before that just start to cost me $300 a month. And I would basically go out and buy a new car for the same money. And I believe that for the safety and security of our employees, which I think is a big discussion that needs to be had, this building needs to be renovated and, and not renovated but built new. So—

Mayor, Mayor, I just want to say last comment. I agree with everything you said, but I think we need to take this to the ballot like we did the library and the fitness center and Provo did theirs. You know, the people need to decide.

And would you want to do a property tax increase?

We have to look at it. We may not have to. We'd have to look at it.

If you're going to take it to the ballot, you have to do a general obligation bond. If you do it through the survey, we do the sales tax revenue bond and there is no property tax increase. I do not believe a property tax increase is warranted where we can self-finance this.

Well, I'm afraid a lot of these, these projects the next 5 years, like the one I Just mentioned, even though that's a small project, they're going to be put down the road even further. I would like to take it to the ballot.

So just so you're aware, we worked really hard to get a quarter-cent sales tax approved 2 years ago, which brings in $2.5 million additional dollars into our road fund, maintenance fund here in the city, increasing it from $2.5 million to $5 million. And so I believe that money is coming in to work on these projects, and Jamie could refer that to you. But anyway, we would like to get this information out to you and have you look it over. With that, let's go ahead and move on. We are looking at our—

Mayor, let me—

I think you've got 4 people that say Well, I would like to have you gather this information before you say that and then come back to us.

Isn't Jamie under some time pressure to decide if he's going to make some improvements in the building?

Jamie?

We have been working with Kier Construction and Method, who are currently on property, and so that was the— that was kind of the impetus of you know, while they're still here, still mobilized, could we take advantage of their superintendent and the subcontractors that we've worked with for library and continue to do the work here? So yes, that's the, that's the reason for this, I guess you could say, urgency associated with these improvements this year.

Jamie, this is Terry. So My understanding is about $250 million of that is— I'm at $250 million— $250,000 of that is federal money that we would use.

Yeah, we—

so we're only talking $100-something thousand that we would take from the city.

Yes, correct.

Okay.

All right, well, thank you, Jamie.

Can I say something? I'm willing to start the process of at least getting the building designed, spending what was $15,000 to $50,000 to architecturally design. I think whatever we do, I don't like surveys without having concrete things, just nebulous things. I mean, if we're gonna do this, let's design a building, get that ball rolling. That's gonna take 90 days, and then you'd have something to show people. Because just talking about a thing up here—

No, we would wanna have charts and designs.

Right. Well, I'm willing to at least spend that $15,000 to $50,000, whatever it is, to get that rolling and see where we're at and see what the actual building needs to be. I heard you say you don't want the extra $5,000. You know, I'm one of those people, maybe it's somewhere in between. You always want to, you know, figure your growth. However, people are working from home, so maybe like you said, Zoom. So I'm willing to at least put some money in to get it designed. And then we see if we put it on the ballot, we survey, whatever we do. But I think you've got to get something moving, and I'm okay to spend $15 to $50 to do that. That's my opinion.

So Debbie, just so that I— I hope I haven't overstated what that $15 to $50 would result in. We are talking about conceptual, kind of a conceptual idea of a building. where the building could be positioned on the campus. We're not talking about full architectural drawings. We're just talking about kind of the next step, the next vision phase of, of this effort.

But people still need a concept and an idea.

So we would have, for example, potentially elevations to show somebody, hey, you're talking about it, what could it potentially look like? I think we would have something like that.

Okay.

And that's what I'm talking about. I don't— we don't need all of the, you know, all the everything structured. But I mean, what does it look like? What is it? What would it be? How many floors? And I think that's important because I, for one, don't like nebulous things. I don't want to survey on what I don't even see. So at least have a concept. That's what I'd like to see.

Okay.

Good. Appreciate that, Debbie. We will— I'd like to get this information out to you and have you look at it and then come back to you.

So—

Can I ask you a question also, Mayor, really quickly?

Sorry, I know you're trying to move on.

So the improvements for this year sounds like they're pretty large in scope. And it seems like with all of that done that we should be okay for a little bit. I appreciate your analogy of the car. I mean, we've all been there and done that. But it sounds like with the improvements that we were talking about doing, that it should keep the building in pretty good repair for a while, other than the seismic. I know the seismic is a big concern. But to spend that money versus $20 million—

Is a big difference.

So, Jeff, with regards to that, there are a lot of other things that have to be repaired and fixed in the building, and the amount of money we're spending now, we will continue to spend that year over year, as far as I can tell. I mean, we have fire codes, we have sewer pipes, we have HVAC. I mean, we go on and on and on, and We have required all of these requirements in the last few years— new roof, new sewer pipe. You know, some of the sewer pipe work that was needed to be done, no contractor will take on. And so we still have problems there. The reality is, what we're saying is that this money, like the car, appears to be money that's going to be needed every year. Because it has been so far, and that money could be going into a new building. As an example, the $400,000 right here, you know, that would pay down, what, 8% of the building? So, you know, we need to use this money properly and determine how we're going to do it.

So, Mayor, Explain how this works to me. This is Terry. If you don't have the support from the City Council to go ahead even with preliminary drawings, tell me how that works.

It doesn't work. We would not move forward. We would stop, and it would be up to you guys to whether or not you ever want to see a building replaced and any of these things taken care of. To me, financially, it makes sense With the low interest rate and the money that we keep putting out per year. But if it doesn't make sense to 4 of us on the council, obviously we don't move forward. We won't move forward on any of it. And it will just stay where Jamie will continue to spend money doing improvements every year, and the old building will stay the old building for a long time.

So Hey, Mayor, Dave here.

Yes, Dave.

I'm in favor of moving forward with the concept plan that Debbie talked about. I think that is a need. My concern from day one back in the— when we brought this up many, many years ago was the safety of the employees of the city that work in that building. And if we have an earthquake and people die, I don't want that on my head. So I would like to move forward at least with the concept and we can get the citizens' input. And I don't think it's that expensive to at least go that far.

I don't agree with putting on a ballot for a vote 'cause I do not want a property tax increase, which I'm against.

So I just— my thing is we're having a discussion. I think we need to move forward at least as a concept plan 'cause eventually it's going to have to come down the road.

So I agree with you, Dave, and I, you know, I would appreciate if there was one more person Who would agree with putting in the concept plan? I think it's $15,000 to $30,000. I know we did a survey, for example, on the park, our own survey spent— I think it was $7,500. We spend money with different groups like Laura Lewis studying various items. We've done that with Utopia, we've done it with solar. We've done it with utilities. I don't think that's unreasonable to want to spend that money to see what it is that we've got when you consider what it could save us in the long run. So anyway, I would appreciate somebody else who would move forward with it. I would like to move forward with it. If not, we'll send out this information to you. Again, I hope you realize, and I hope you understand, previous city councils looked forward and built public safety, public works, etc. This building is 50 years old. It needs to be rebuilt for the safety and security of our citizens, and I don't want that on my shoulders either. Anyway, so At this point, let's move on. We're about ready to go into our normal session, and we need to go over what our agenda is. So we have— and thank you, Jamie, for your discussion there. We have a Library Commission that is going to invite or report to us today. We have consent items, approval of city meeting minutes, September 1, 2020, September 8, 2020. Resolution of certain sections of the Orem Public Works retention schedule, and more importantly, amending the city council meeting policies and procedures, which we have gone over in a previous work session. So is everybody okay with those consent items? Can all of you tell me yay or nay? Somebody want to say something? A yay or nay?

Yay.

Okay, I need to have participation here. So the next thing is our scheduled items. One is a public hearing on an ordinance for a general plan. We don't have much time, and there is one— I don't know that we're gonna have enough time to go through all of these. This one is low density to medium density residential at 595 West 400 North. Jason, anything you want to mention there?

I'll bring it up in the regular meeting.

Okay, next one's a public hearing on 1.86 acres of property located in our annexation area that wants to be annexed in. Jason, anything there?

No, pretty straightforward. I will definitely—

Next one is changing the city code to allow some low-income condo units to go into Northgate. And we're just changing the overall concept for Northgate Village. Anything there, Jason?

No, I'll be able to explain more in the meeting.

Okay.

And then the—

we have one on towing services. Jason, probably in the next meeting.

Yes.

So the one that's concerning to me is 9.5, Development Services requests the city Amendment 22817 regarding location requirements for climate-controlled storage units. I did receive, and I think most of us did, the email from Julie Smith and Bruce Baird regarding that, stating that they had made application prior to this being changed. So I would— and maybe you can tell us tonight, but I would like to know if that's the case and, and maybe look at this in another meeting because I'm not sure what's occurring here.

Yeah, they, they did not make a complete application before our application. We followed the process like we do any other amendment. We were not taking it through, you know, in secret or anything like that. We followed our process. In looking at the records, we actually applied the day prior to them actually applying for their site plan. The site plan was not accepted because it was incomplete.

Okay.

And they have not applied, you know, supplied any additional information at this point. So their emails are inaccurate as far as stating that we are, you know, doing it just because they applied. That's inaccurate because we applied first.

Okay.

They applied later. So we'll be glad to explain more, but this is really just a clarification of the definition. It's not trying to circumvent them or anything else. It's simply just clarifying City Council's previous determination that only 2 storage units are allowed on State Street.

Okay.

All right, thank you. And then the last one is amending our fiscal budget in regards to compensation issues. So if no other questions, let's go ahead and adjourn the meeting, and we'll come back in 9 minutes at 6 o'clock and have our City Council meeting. Thank you. This meeting is adjourned.

I wish my hair looked awesome. But thank you.

Sorry.

Okay, if I'm muted, let me give the prayer again. Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank thee for this day and for our many blessings. Thankful for our wonderful city and for the Wonderful residents and strong families we have in our city. Pray that thou might bless our city council to be wise in our decisions, to be forward-looking, to understand the needs of the city, and to move forward. Pray that thou might bless all those affected by COVID-19 within our city. Pray that thou might bless Ernesto from our staff, that he might heal up and improve. Pray that thou might bless all of those businesses and residences affected by COVID-19, and that the pandemic might soon subside and go down. Pray for thy help to bless our governor and to bless our president, and we pray for a good city council meeting. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. All right, if you'll join me in the Pledge of Allegiance now, if you all stand. I pledge allegiance You'll follow after me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God. So, Steve, we keep getting— I keep getting muted by the host.

Steve?

Guys, we just got— well, we just got muted during the pledge. So we got muted in the prayer and muted in the pledge. All right, can we have a city council meeting and not be muted? Okay, let's go ahead and move forward. Um, can you all hear me?

Yes.

Okay, thank you. Wasn't sure anybody's there. Okay, we would like to start, uh, by a report, uh, from the Library Advisory Commission. And we have Suzanne Whitaker, the commission chair, who is here. Suzanne, we'll turn the time over to you.

Hello, good to be with you all this evening.

I'm going to go ahead—

hello— I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you so we can see our presentation. All right, can everybody see that?

Yes.

All right. Well, thank you for this opportunity to review the year. Like you said, my name is Suzanne Stratton-Whittaker. I am the chair of the Library Advisory Commission this year. Not all of our members are with us just of, you know, for coordinating with Zoom, but we appreciate their service this year. And we appreciate the support from Councilman Sumner this year as well. We had 2 members that fell off our council— our commission this year, and we are looking to soon replace them. So first off, a COVID-19 response update. Although the library was closed, it was closed from March 13th to May 3rd, there was still a lot of interaction between staff and the community. And the Orem Library was actually one of the first libraries in Utah to reopen to patrons. So there's a list of items there that the staff that did work in the facility, that they worked on to keep busy and be productive. One item that I really like that they used the makerspace, the 3D printer, and the sewing machines there to make masks for the community. Another item I just wanted to highlight, virtual storytime. The children's staff has done a great job of giving the community online storytime options while in-person events have not been an option. So we've had a lot of fun with that. So summer reading, like every year, it's a very, very well-participated-in event for the library. For the— it lasts for the first 2 months of the summer, and families always look forward to every year Given the concerns and restrictions from this year, we feel that the amount of participation, which was just over half from the year before, was a very good turnout. And we had high participation— or high satisfaction from those who participated. Those who participated were very dedicated to earning badges and completing their goals. And there's a list there of the online activities. the creative online activities that the library staff came up with. One thing that was unique to this year that they don't believe they've done before, but the library's outreach team came up with a great idea to offer a drive-through finale for participants to go through where different countries, cultures, and continents were featured. You can see some pictures here. Families had a fun time driving through. Nobody left their vehicles. Throughout that time, and at the end everyone received a bag of treats and prizes at the end of the drive-through. So during this year, the staff has definitely kept busy with looking for new ways to provide new opportunities and improve the patron experience for both of those coming to the building and those who are still staying home, to serve both audiences. Here's an overview of some of the new options for patrons. One item we wanted to highlight that the staff came up with was the option to— for attendees, excuse me, for citizens or, you know, those coming to the library to get book bundles instead of walking through and finding books themselves and, you know, having more contact than maybe needed. They put together these book bundles to— for staff to grab and go. They were bundled according to theme, author, subject matter, and it was one way the staff, you know, has tried to help families quickly go in and out of the library, still getting the library experience, but making a more efficient process for them. Next up, Library Hall. As you know, we're nearing the completion of that beautiful facility. Construction began in spring 2019, and it's almost complete. Contractors are working on the last of the finishes and installing the equipment and fixtures. Library Hall is a great facility in a beautiful location, and we know people are going to be very excited to see it and enjoy the programs there. Staff is looking at many different options to open the building safely, such as providing multiple options to attend a program, seating people with rows and seats between households, and filming events to broadcasting social media. So having to be a little creative with that considering the current climate. We will have a ribbon cutting for the facility. It is going— it is postponed temporarily while the city is in the orange phase for the coronavirus guidelines. As soon as that is announced, we will let everyone know, but we wanted to make sure we set an example for the community and make sure everyone has a safe experience. So thank you for all your support at the library this year. That's our presentation for today, and we're wondering if you have any questions for us. I have a question.

Yes, go ahead, Debbie.

So do you have any idea how many more books were, were checked out during COVID I'm assuming a lot more because people were home, had opportunities. Do you have any idea What the, uh, or was it only after they could come and get the bundles?

Charlene, are you jumping on with that?

I'm just wondering if we've had an increase in circulation since we've opened, or was it more ebooks during this pandemic? Any idea?

Charlene, you're muted.

There we go.

Our ebooks were heavily used during COVID They continue to be heavily used. That's a very hard area for us to keep up with demand. So we, we're seeing good robust usage there. We're also seeing people come in and check out quite a bit when they do come in, but our numbers are down. We are compiling all of our annual statistics now, and everyone is going to have this weird kind of outlying COVID year with our statistics. We have been months and months now without our children's programming, which is definitely an opportunity where people come to the library weekly or more often than weekly to pick up their materials. So we're seeing reduced circulation in a lot of areas. We did have a pretty good summer given that it was COVID. We like having the opportunity for people to come in and browse and make selections. We did turn on holds for any item, whether it's on the shelf or not. that people can just grab them quickly off the hold shelf. But we're busy, but we're not, we're not breaking any records. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions or comments? All right, well, Suzanne, we certainly appreciate your report and appreciate the good work that the Commission does, and thank you for your service.

Hey, you're welcome. Thank you.

Great.

Let's go ahead and move on to personal appearances. Steve Downs, do we have any personal appearances that have sent in requests?

We do have one. Give, give me just one second and we'll pull it up.

Okay, while you're pulling that up, let's go ahead and open it up for one minute. Starting now for any that want to come in right now.

Okay, Mayor, ready for this one while that, that clock runs? This is from Scott Swain, director of Roots of Freedom. I would like to propose an item for the agenda. At Sarah Park, there is a lot on the far south end with a cell phone tower in it. My understanding is that the city owns this lot and the red brick house on 720 South. I would like to propose that we put a living farm there with an educational theme. This farm could have a petting zoo, a greenhouse to learn where our food comes from, fruit and nut trees and farm animals, and information on how they provide food, clothing, fertilizer, etc. for us. The main floor of the home could be used to show videos and to teach schoolchildren and others about the purpose of the farm before entering the living farm. USU interns and a full-time staff member or director could live in the home and direct the upkeep of the farm and run the educational element there. It could be a nonprofit, and we could apply for community development grants to fund this since the main theme of the farm is educational. This property once belonged to my great-grandfather Otto Julius Polson, who is a community builder. He, he could include information— we can include information on him and a short history of Orem as it has developed from a farming community to a more urban, high-tech community. It would be easily seen and used being right next to the swimming pool and the Sarah Theater. I would be willing to help achieve this goal and work with the committee and the city to accomplish it. Again, that is Scott Swain.

Okay, thank you, Scott. Steve, maybe you can pass that on to Jamie to take a look at. Are there any other comments that have come in?

No other comments, Mayor.

All right, we'll close the personal appearances portion of our meeting and go to our consent items. We have 3 consent items. If anyone wants any of these moved to the scheduled items, please let me know. Otherwise, I will go ahead and read them. 8.1 is the approval of meeting minutes. City Council, special City Council meeting, September 1st, 2020. City Council meeting, September 8th, 2020. Resolution, approval of certain sections of the City of Orem Public Works Department retention schedule. And 8.3, a resolution, amending the City Council meeting policies and procedures. Um, anybody have any comments? If not, we'll go ahead, and I move that we go ahead and accept the consent items. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, let's go ahead and take a vote. Terry Peterson.

Aye.

Okay, Tom McDonald?

Aye.

Dave Spencer?

Aye.

Brent Sumner?

Aye.

Debbie Laree?

Aye.

Jeff Lampson?

Aye.

And I myself as mayor vote aye as well. So our consent item passes. We'll move on to our scheduled items. The first is a public hearing, which is Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Next, we have an ordinance request about an ordinance. The applicant requests the city amend the Orem General Plan map by changing the land use designation on approximately 23.75 acres from low-density residential to medium-density residential and amend Section 22-5-3A and the zoning map of the City of Orem by rezoning the property located generally at 500 and 505 West, 400 North from an R-8 zone to the R-7.5 zone and rezone approximately 0.79 acres to the HO hospital overlay zone. Jason Bench is our presenter, and is the applicant here, Jason?

I think he is. Tom from IHC should be on the line.

Tom, are you there?

I'm here.

Okay. All right, Jason, why don't you go ahead?

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. Can you guys all see my screen?

I guess yes.

So before you tonight is a request for rezone. This is— the applicant is Intermountain Healthcare. They are proposing to rezone a portion of their campus, which includes a general plan amendment. So you can see that on the left side of the screen, the area outlined in blue is the area that will be affected by the application. Tonight's discussion. They are proposing to change the general plan from a low-density residential to a medium density for the purpose that R-75 requires that medium density designation in order to be rezoned to that zone. So if you can see on the slide before you outlining the warm community location, you can see the medium density which is surrounding on the north side, north of 400 North, west of 400 West, and then west— or excuse me, east of 400 West, and then west of Geneva Elementary School represent the medium density residential. So it's surrounding the hospital area. You can see the hospital, and then areas to the southwest are designated low density residential. What they're proposing tonight is to change that area that you can see that has changed. I'll toggle back and forth to the area of medium density residential and then take that same area and rezone it from R-8 to the R-7-5 zone. And that is consistent in our opinion. The Planning Commission reviewed this request and made a recommendation that the council approve that. They felt that it's consistent with the area for that rezone. The other question that they have is when the hospital overlay zone was created, there was a home on this area that you can see outlined in red that was not owned by the hospital and was not at that point had the hospital overlay on top of it. What they're proposing— they've since bought that years ago. It's incorporated into their, I think, the garden area right now as part of the ownership of IHC. What they're asking is just to simply rezone that to hospital overlay. hospital overlay zone as well. So the whole campus now has that hospital overlay zone on top. So 3 requests tonight. One is to change the general plan from low density to medium density, to rezone that portion that we discussed to R-75, and then change the portion of that property to the hospital overlay zone. The Planning Commission did make a recommendation that the council amend as requested and be glad to address any questions.

Any comments or questions from the—

Yes, I do. So I sat in that meeting with Jason as the hospital was wanting to make that change, but I never got a good answer. I mean, I was just listening to the Planning Commission meeting, but there never was a good answer why, why change it. And it was just The answer I heard was because we want to. It wasn't quite like that, but there are houses right along the one edge of the property that are R-8, and then there are a lot of property, like Jason says, that's R-7-5. So I will— I'm going to vote against it because I don't know why the hospital wants to change it when they said they have no plans to do anything. They just want— they would just like to, uh, uh, you know, shrink the lot size that people would have, although they're not doing anything. That's not a good answer to me. So I can't support a change in zoning when there's not— I'm not hearing a reason for that. Unless I missed something, Jason, but they never gave a reason why they were doing it other than some of the other property in the area is R-75, and so they'd like to change theirs.

I think the reason that We're under the understanding it's just consistent with the area and they just want to be consistent with that area. It does yield probably another 8, maybe 9 lots depending on how it lays out, so it doesn't gain a significant amount of lots, but it is, I guess, consistent either way you look at it. It's consistent with the south or it's consistent with the north and east. So rezoning it, I don't think, is out of character, but— Yeah, I mean, that does require change to the do that.

But I don't know why they're rezoning it because they're not doing anything with it, right?

Maybe Tom can address that from IHC.

The answer I can give you is that periodically we review all our properties relative to their land use. And as we looked at the Orem campus, one, there was an issue with the one property that we had acquired subsequent to the original hospital overlay that we wanted to correct. And as we were looking through that issue, it just became clear to us from a stewardship standpoint that we request the underlying zone change to make it consistent with what the general plan provided and with what, you know, a fairly significant amount of the property surrounding it It's purely a stewardship and asset management initiative on our part to try and keep our properties current with land use that surrounds them.

But if it's staying a hospital, Tom, tell me about the stewardship. What does that mean if it's not— if you're not going to develop it?

Well, and we don't have any plans to change the use, but it's just sound land use management.

Hmm.

I mean, if it were— as an example, if we were asking for a high-density residential zone change or a commercial zone change, That does not make sense. But this is consistent with what the city has outlined as their general plan, and we're just trying to stay in, in step with what that general plan provides. But we don't have any plans to change the land use for the hospital into the long foreseeable future, other than there may be changes to how the improvements are eventually situated on that campus. So over, you know, the foreseeable future. You know, medical services are changing, and the time may come when we'll have to change that campus and how it's configured, but—

Sure.

But if there's no plans, it doesn't really matter if it was changed to an R-8 or an R-75. It doesn't change anything that you are doing or plan to do as a hospital.

No, other than it's just we want to be consistent with the land use around us. And candidly, and I'll be candid about it, why should, why should it be, you know, a lower density when everything around it and the general plan call for it to be something other than what it currently is?

Because it's a hospital.

Well, that's true. And so, you know, the argument might be, is that a higher density use than the R-7.5?

And I think those There would be those that would argue that it is.

So I, you know, with all due respect, I don't think it really matters. The use is probably a higher intensity use already.

I don't see higher— well, it's just a—

I think most would, and I'm not trying to be deferential here, but I think most people would, if anything, argue that the hospital is a higher intensity use. than an R-7.5 use.

I think it's a beautiful facility and especially your landscaping, and 3 of my 6 children were born in that building. So I think it means a lot to me. I just was confused why you're getting into the real estate development business.

Well, we're not going to change the use. All we're going to do is try and keep the land consistent with other land uses. around it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Yeah, can I ask a couple of questions?

Sure.

Reading through the minutes from the Planning Commission, it sounded like all of the neighbors that were in attendance were in favor, all of the neighbors that were at the public meeting. I didn't— it didn't seem to appear that there was anybody in the neighborhood that was against the change. And then also, I read in the notes somewhere that the feeling was, and I'm not sure who it was that said this, that the actual property value for the neighbors around this overlay would actually, you know, would be beneficial to their property values. Can you speak to that, Jason? Is that— Are those true observations?

I think we did get a couple of comments, and Ryan can correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought we had a couple of comments from the neighbors that were kind of just a little questioning, kind of like Mr. Peterson, just why are they changing it? So I think that the majority of the neighbors that came to the neighborhood meeting or that were on the Zoom call or whatever they did were in favor of it. There were a couple that were just questioning why it needed to be rezoned. What was your second question? Sorry.

I just— there was a comment from someone about that this would be an increase of property value to the neighbors around this particular overlay area.

Yeah, I don't know that it would go one way or the other. I think either an R-7-5 or R-8 would probably have the same valuation. I don't know that it would increase their value necessarily. I'm not a real estate agent, but I don't know that it would make that significant of an impact. We're only talking a few, you know, different lot layout. If they were to raise the property and redevelop it as a single-family subdivision, they're only going to get about 8 more lots. So it really is not significant as far as the number of lots that would be increased. So I think it's pretty, pretty consistent with what's either R-8 or R-7-5 is going to be consistent with each other.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? All right, well, this is a public hearing, so we're going to open it up for any public comments, and we'll start right now for 1 minute. All right, we'll go ahead and close the public comment portion of our public hearing. Steve, have you received any public comments?

No, Mayor.

Okay, we'll bring it back to the council. Any comments from the council? If not, I'd like to make a motion that the city amend the Orem General Plan map by changing the land use designation on approximately 23.75 acres from low-density residential to medium-density residential and amend Section 22 And the zoning map of the City of Orem by rezoning the property located generally at 505 West, 400 North from the R-8 zone to the R-7.5 zone and rezone approximately 0.79 acres to the hospital overlay zone. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Terry Peterson.

Aye.

Okay. Tom McDonald?

Aye.

Okay. Dave Spencer?

Aye.

Pardon me? Aye.

Okay.

Brent Sumner?

Aye.

Okay. Debbie Laree?

Aye.

Okay. Jeff Lampson?

Aye.

And Mayor Brunstad, I vote aye. I certainly appreciate the hospital and what they do for our community. So the ordinance passes. We'll move on to 9.2, which is a public hearing. This is an ordinance annexing 1.86 acres of property located generally at 1526 South, 1250 West, and amending the Orem General Plan map by designating the property low-density residential southwest Orem and amending Section 22-5-3A and the zoning map of the Orem City Code by zoning the property OS-5. Our presenter is Jason Bench, and is the applicant here?

Yes.

Is this the Mark Stephenson piece?

Yes.

Okay, so I'm here.

And who are you?

I'm—

I own the property that's being annexed.

And tell us your name.

Mark Stephenson.

Okay. All right, Jason, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor.

So this, this piece, as you recall, a couple months ago the council accepted the petition to annex. The 1.2 acres is the area there outlined in the blue. The more of an aqua blue is the current boundary of the city. If you can see this line here, which they didn't even draw on that, but that is the city boundary. So what they're proposing is to annex this portion right here, which is the 1.86 acres. The map in question, they have gone through the public process after the city council accepted the petition. The city recorder did work with the county surveyor and they, you know, made sure that this was correct. There was a 30-day protest period. We did receive one request from the property owner to the west just to make sure that when this does come in for development that the irrigation and other issues that go across this property are addressed, and we assured them that that would be the case when they went through the process. As you recall, a month ago the council adopted the new general plan for the area. This area does call it to be low density slash southwest. And so that's why the staff is recommending that that be annexed and then also be general planned with the low density designation or low density southwest designation, and then zone it to the OS-5 pending as a holding zone until the applicant decides to come through and request an additional zone. So the Planning Commission did review that and does make a recommendation that the City Council annex that. property, adopt the general plan designation, and then also zone it to the OS-5 zone. I'd be glad to address any questions.

So I have a question for the applicant, Jason. Mark, I was just curious the reason why you want to annex this in now and what your plans are for the property.

So a partner and I own the about 7 acres that are contiguous to it. And it's just to the kind of to the east and to the south.

Yeah.

Okay. And so it's all to wrap it all into one, basically one area that we can develop together. So it was a little piece that was contiguous to it that I purchased with the hope that we'd be able to combine them all. And then ultimately what we'd like to do is just have a a residential development in there when everything gets sorted out.

Okay. All right, thank you. Any other questions from the council?

Mayor?

Yes, Brad.

I was just wondering, I guess Jamie could answer this, does this affect any of the utilities going into there or what we've done with that?

That's probably a That's probably a good Public Works discussion first and foremost. Ryan, are you on the line? Chris, are you on the line?

Yeah, Ryan here. That's something we'll definitely be looking at when site plan approval comes through, but we are in the process right now of updating utility master plans and then working on those projects. So definitely we'll be looking at that capacity as a site plan and a concept is submitted. Right now we have not seen a concept, so we're not sure what that impact will be.

Okay, thank you.

If I can follow up with that, the discussion we had with the council, the general plan, the infrastructure that we have planned there accommodates the density that's proposed on this property. So the sewer line, the water, and all that has been accommodated for.

Councilmember Lamson, do you have a question?

Okay.

That was from before, Mayor. Thank you.

Okay. Any other comments or questions from the council?

I have one. So Jason, when we were talking about the property near the temple, we were— I was saying the PRDs could only go to 7, not 8. Would that be also true That we've held, if they do a PRD, would have to still just do the 7 units per acre. Would that be— would that apply to this neighborhood also?

It would, yes.

Okay, just want to double-check that. Thank you.

Any other comments or questions? All right, we'll go ahead and open it up to the public for any public comments, as this is a public hearing, and we'll start the public comments right now. All right, we'll close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any questions or comments from the council? All right, seeing none, I would like to make a motion that the city annex in 1.86 acres of property located generally at 15 1926 South, 1250 West, and amend the Orem General Plan map by designating the property LDR-SW and amending Section 22-5-3A and the zoning map of the Orem City Code by zoning the property OS-5. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll go ahead and start with the vote.

Jeff Lampson?

Aye.

Debbie Laree?

Aye.

Brent Sumner?

Aye.

Dave Spencer?

Aye.

Terry Peterson?

Aye.

Tom McDonald?

Aye.

And myself as mayor, I vote aye. The ordinance passes. And we will move on now to public hearing 9.3. This is an ordinance amending Section 22-11-3 35L1 of the Orem City Code pertaining to the location of residential units in the PD-22 Urban Village Zone and amending portions of Appendix Q of the Orem City Code pertaining to the overall concept plan for Northgate Village, the commercial retail area designation plan, and the public streets, building heights, and land uses map. Jason Bench is our presenter. Jason, do we have our applicant here?

They should be. Bruce Dickerson and Bruce Chestnut should be on the line.

Bruce and Bruce, are you on the line? Either Bruce? All right, well, we'll go ahead and keep going.

Jason? They want to just check the room to see if they're needing to be admitted, perhaps.

So I admitted Bruce Dickerson.

in.

Okay.

Yeah, here we are.

You hear me now?

Can you hear me now?

Bruce Dickerson?

This is Bruce Chestnut.

Okay.

That's Bruce Dickerson. Okay. Well, welcome to both of you. Glad to have you.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right, Jason, if you want to go ahead and move forward.

So the PD-22 zone, which is pretty much developed, this is the WinCo food Area there, McDonald's, those things are along the 800 North corridor with the residential on the backside in this location here. The property in question is this question— or this property here at 1140 West on the 960 North Street. It was owned by the LDS Church. They're in the process of selling the property. The applicants are in tonight to make a few changes, a few modifications to the actual PD 22 zone, 3 changes to the appendix, and then just showing the concept plan and amending the ordinance to allow for a shifting of some of the density that was already currently allowed in the zone to shift it to this location. I'll explain as we go through the process. So right now in Appendix Q, there is a map that shows commercial areas and a mixed-use area and a residential-only area. Area. You can see the residential-only area, which is where you see all the condominiums, townhomes that are currently built. This area is also developed with some residential, and this is the area that was commercial. The church was at this location. Right now, the BJ Plumbing is at this location, and then the real estate office building is at this location. That's the current map. What they're proposing is a few changes. One is, as we looked at the overall concept plan, And how it was developed over time. It has changed somewhat from what it was originally developed as. This is the original concept that came in showing the residential component, showing a pad site and some different things that are fairly accurate, but there are some changes. It shows the church site. What we're proposing is to amend this part of the appendix just to show the current layout of all the different— you see the hotels and different things as that current Currently stands, and so we're proposing that that be a change. It's not a significant change, but if the council does approve it, it would show the new concept plan for what they're proposing tonight. The next change to the concept or to the Appendix Q would be in this area right here, where we would change. If you look on the left side of the screen, this is the existing map in the Appendix Q, which shows an Area A, B, and C. Being residential only, B being a mixed-use, and C being commercial. What they're proposing is to change this line right in here to make that all residential only area so that they can expand their proposed development into this area. So that's the other change that they're proposing. The 3rd change was that would be to take that commercial area and mixed-use area and move this line right here, which is the residential only line, over to this line over here to make that area all inclusive in the residential-only area. As part of that, under Section 22L30— or 1135L outlines the distribution of the densities. When the property was developed, 700 units were attached to the PD-22 zone in the different areas. So the applicant tonight is not proposing to change that number. They're simply trying to allocate some of that number. As you can see, the majority of the property has been developed and there's still a surplus of units that haven't been used. So their, their thought is to change that residential-only area, capture some density, which would then, if you look at the mixed-use tower area, still leave a remainder of 139 units. Could go back to the And this is the concept. This is the mixed-use area where those 139 would be remaining. What they're proposing is to take some of that mixed-use number and shift it over here so the entire residential-only area would absorb some of that density. So we would take the residential-only up to 561. There would be no units in the mixed-use area because there is no units other than what's in the residential-only area. And it would still leave the ability for a developer to come in on that vacant piece, one of the last pieces out there. And develop 100—

excuse me, 100—

excuse me, 139 units on that specific property. So that's what they're proposing tonight. This is simply a concept plan. The council is not reviewing this for approval. It's just showing what they're proposing. They had 100 units is what they're proposing, similar to what they have here in the Glendale Estate Phase 1, similar type units. They will be working with Keller Williams to Have a cross easement for shared parking in this area for not only that when Keller Williams has some spillover parking or vice versa, they'll be able to use that without you know going into other parts of the development. That's for you just an observation tonight. They do provide some elevations again. The council is not reviewing these. This is a planning commission decision, but we definitely wanted them to show what they're proposing as far as elevations. We have asked them to. add some additional materials to the elevation. They have some— you can see some stone and some other hardy board and some other stucco to make that a little bit more appealing. And so they have taken those suggestions and made those recommendations for adjustments. So this is the property, as you see, looking north. Currently it is vacant. And the Villa de Este Phase 1 is the ones you can see here on the east side. So the Planning Commission did review this. They did make a recommendation that the council approve the 3 changes to the concept or the Appendix Q, and also the amendment that reallocates the density. So we're not approving the concept plan at this point other than in the Appendix Q or the elevations, but we provide them for council to review as well. So any questions that I can address?

So I have a question for Bruce Dickerson. Yeah, on the line. So I'm here.

Hear me?

Yes. So you built the Villa di Este condos to the east on the right-hand side there, is that correct?

That's correct.

And those condominiums were for lower-income families, the cost was lower. Is that correct?

It's not lower-income families, it's affordable-income families.

I'm sorry, affordable.

Yeah, affordable. And they have private ownership, and this still is that way, and it's still working out perfectly. And FHA approved.

Right. You also built the Running Horse Condominiums Along the freeway south of Walmart, is that correct?

That is correct.

And those were affordable condominiums as well?

That is correct, yeah. And 90% of the people that occupy both of those projects, I would say, are young marrieds or young singles and wanting a place to own. So we get them FHA approved. That is an important Yes. People— developers can say they're affordable, but we get the FHA on it so they can get in for 3.5% down, and it guarantees that we have to maintain it that way. So if somebody buys a unit, we put owner-occupied restriction on that unit, so that will be owner-occupied forever, and it will not turn into a big rental project.

So the concept that you're trying to promote here is the same idea— affordable condominiums for younger families. Is that correct?

Absolutely correct. There's a—

go ahead.

There's a huge need.

There is a huge need. So the average Home price in Orem is approaching $350,000. The townhomes are approaching $300,000. And as I remember, the condominiums that you had at Running Horse were in the $180,000 range. I don't know what you're looking at here, but certainly affordable in today's market. And we have a huge need for affordable housing. Which we are not filling in the city. So would these be affordable as well? Absolutely.

Our price range is probably low $200s, maybe the high $190s, $195s. There's some in Villa that has resold recently for $205,000. Some have resold for $215,000 down in Running Horse. But we're— our goal is to start out, yet let these young families get it, get locked in and have an affordable house that the payment is actually probably less than if they had to rent it.

Yes. Well, that's great. We appreciate your putting forth the effort to move in that direction. Any questions or comments from the council?

Yeah, I have a hand raised, if I may.

Go ahead.

Hi Bruce, Tom McDonald.

My guess is—

hey, my guess is we're not just targeting young families. There's older people who don't want to have a house hassle. They want to be able to travel. They have wherewithal to buy a bigger house, but they're choosing to simplify their life. Don't you have some percentage of those as well?

Oh, absolutely. And what's interesting is that There are some older folks that are single widowed widowers and—

Hey, be careful with who you're calling older folks.

Remember who you're talking to.

Well, you've got to remember who's talking. I'm, I'm older. I'm nearing almost 70, so I understand it. But I, I had one lady that was, oh, close to 80, and I said, well, is this going to be sufficient for your grandkids and everybody? She goes, well, this is exactly why I'm buying it. I don't want my grandkids coming to visit me. She says, I want to go visit them. So, and we also put a percentage of them for the Affordable Act for handicapped people as well. And we don't— there's been— all of those have been used and bought and owned by private Bruce, don't you have some common areas in these too?

So when the grandkids do come, you can go to a common hall, or do you not provide that at this location?

We don't. We don't really have— we have a big park that's in the first phase. And the first phase, as we've talked to them, what's interesting about this generation of young people, That we found that when they come home, they come home. They go in their unit and they get on— I don't know, I guess on the internet, but they really are not with any— if they start getting children, maybe one at the most, and if they go to get two— because the other thing that we do, Tom, is we put a covenant that restricts only 2 adults per unit. And so you can't load these places up. They're not big enough. They're just for young family, married couples, and/or like you said, we even have some retired folks that are in there too.

Okay, Brent Sumner, did you have a comment?

Yes, I just, I think Tom was talking about me. They're the first. But anyway—

Well, I know you, Fran. I know you're probably older than me.

Well, to be 70 again, that'd be great.

Well, I'll tell you how it is.

How do you stop an investor from coming in and buying them and renting them out? Are they—

Well, there's 2 things that happened there. One, we put an overall restriction on whole property. So if you went and did a title research, a title search on our property, you'll see the first thing that'll come up is says there's a land use restriction. And then the second thing we do is that FHA will not let one investor own more than 10% of the whole project. So there are investor units and we restrict after there's— after they buy an investor unit, that will stay an investor unit, but it will— what FHA requires is a 50/50%. What I've worked with Mayor on is that for Orem City, we've gone to 60/40% so that only 40% of those can be investors. Now, Let me just talk about those investors a little bit. The investors are not the Ivory Homes or any big investor. They're the small pot and, you know, maw kettle investor that want to own something, and they're not thinking to themselves that Social Security is going to take care of them, so they want to own a unit. And so that's basically what we have. You know, if you think about it, 100 units, only one person could own 10 units in the whole project. And we've never had anything like that. We've had maybe 2 or 3 that's owned by one individual.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilmember Lamson, have you got a comment?

Yeah. I love those 3 words you said, owner-occupied forever. I have a question about the parking. What is your parking per unit ratio?

It's 2—

oh, pardon me. Hold on, my battery's going loose. I got to plug in here. It's 2 parking stalls per unit. Now, what we have learned as we've surveyed it for professional, because we want to make sure that we don't run into a problem there. Because most of these young people have one car because they go to get the FHA financing, they can't afford 2 cars. So they have one car. And what we end up having is 1.3 cars per unit over the 500 units that I've built here in Orem City. And So we've never had a parking problem. The other thing that is good to understand is that we also put an onsite manager. And they're still there and they manage it and they make sure that we don't ever have more than 2 cars per unit. If that— we— it's allowed 2 cars per unit. We assign 1 unit or 1 parking stall to the unit and the rest of them are in common.

Okay, thank you.

All right, any other questions or comments?

Bruce, this is Terry Peterson. So, uh, when I was— Terry, a big issue with the people were the high-density apartments, but they didn't realize— people don't realize high density doesn't mean inexpensive. I mean, that, you know, the Aston and the Devons and some of these around the mall is to live So you're filling a niche that's really important for the city because sometimes people, you know, put them all in the same bucket, and this is a complete different market you're dealing with than the Aston Apartments where there's 4 or 5 cars per unit or 3 or 4, you know, depending on the situation. But so thank you. Thanks for doing it.

And again, these are not apartments. These are condominiums, owner Correct.

Yeah, and that's, that's important, Terry, because most people, most people don't understand condominium ownership. And if you go look on the records of FHA, nobody in this, in Utah County has got an FHA-approved condominium project since 2005, and they are becoming harder and harder to get Get approved because FHA is making it harder and harder. But it's like myself, once you can ride a bike, I always know how to ride the bike. I know how to go through this process. The only problem that I've had, and Mayor Brunstad has helped out tremendous amount, is getting the zoning to provide these, these affordable housing for these young families.

Thank you.

Yeah.

All right, any other comments or questions? All right, well, this is a public hearing. Let's open it up to the public for any comments, uh, starting right now. All right, let's go ahead and close the public comment portion of our public hearing. Steve Downs, have you received any comments in?

No comments, Mayor.

Okay. Any other comments or questions from the council? All right, with that being said, I would like to make a motion that the City of Orem amend Section 22-11-35L1 of the Orem City Code pertaining to the location of residential units in the PD-22 Urban Village Zone and amending portions of Appendix Q of the Orem City Code pertaining to the overall concept plan for Northgate Village, the commercial retail area designation plan, and the public streets, building heights, and land uses map. Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Okay, I'd like to start out with Dave Spencer.

Aye.

Tom McDonald.

Aye.

Terry Peterson.

Aye.

Brent Sumner.

Aye.

Debbie Laree.

Aye.

Mark Kempson.

Aye.

Mayor Brunstad.

Aye.

The ordinance passes. Appreciate having you here, Bruce and Bruce, and thank you, Jason.

Thank you very much.

You bet.

Who's part of this project? It just got approved.

Sorry.

Okay, now we're on to 9.4, which also is a public hearing. This is on an ordinance. The applicant requests the city amend Appendix A of the Orem City Code By enacting Standard Land Use Code 6422, towing services business with building as a permitted use in the M-2 zone. Jason Bench is our presenter, and Jason is the applicant here.

We are the applicant there.

Okay, sorry. No, you're good. It says the applicant requests the city amend, but we are the applicant. Okay, so go ahead, Jason.

So business licensing is requesting this. They're having— I wouldn't say issues, but they want to be able to distinguish between towing services that actually have an office in Orem versus a towing service that just has an impound yard in Orem. There's a lot of towing companies that have yards in Orem, but their offices are out of a different city in Utah County, and vice versa. There's a lot of people that use, you know, Provo City Police or other police will call a tow service that could be, you know, stationed in Orem or located in Orem versus someone else. This is just a way to distinguish between those, and the business licensing fees would be associated with, with that. So if somebody owns a business in Provo but has an impound yard in Orem, they're paying a business license fee in Provo, and they would pay a lesser fee in Orem because they still have a yard but they don't have their office here in Orem, versus someone that actually owns a yard and an office in Orem, they would pay a different business license fee. The reason behind this is that Orem City Code requires that tow companies that the police— our Orem police use have to have some type of impound yard in Orem. That's by ordinance. They can't take the car that's being towed and take it to Lehigh, for example. It has to be stored in Orem so a citizen or whoever can, you know, access it easily rather than driving across cities to access their vehicle if it's towed. So that's the reason for this, just simply to clarify and be able to distinguish between those that have a business in Orem and those that just have an impound yard. So it's, it's pretty straightforward. I'd be glad to address any questions. The Planning Commission did make a recommendation that the council approve it. But that's the reasoning behind this amendment.

All right, any comments or questions from the council? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and open this up for public comment as this is a public hearing, and we will start right now. All right, we'll close the public comment portion of our public hearing. Steve, have you received any public comments?

No comments, Mayor.

All right, anyone from the council wish to make any further comments or questions? All right, I would like to make a motion then that the City of Orem amend Appendix A of the Orem City Code by enacting Standard Land Use Code 6422, towing services business with building, as a permitted use in the M-2 zone. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, I'd like to start out with Jeff Lampson.

Aye.

Debbie Laree.

Aye.

Brent Sumner.

Aye.

Dave Spencer.

Aye.

Tom McDonald.

Aye.

Terry Peterson.

Aye.

And I, as mayor, vote aye as well. So the ordinance passes. Thank you, Jason. We'll move on to item 9.5. This also is a public hearing on an ordinance. Development Services requests the city amend Section 22-8-177, additional provisions for specific uses of the Orem City Code pertaining to location requirements for climate-controlled storage units. Jason, we'll turn the time over to you as the presenter.

Thank you, Mayor. As you Noticed you have received a few emails, and I'll explain as we go forward. But many— a couple years ago, I believe, when this— well, it's been longer than that, time flies. The city used to allow up to 4 climate-controlled storage units. We actually— this is an ordinance that we created to allow them on State Street. A couple years into the— we had one storage unit built. The council requested that we Change that number back to two instead of four. We did make that modification. That has been several years ago, with the understanding that on State Street we'd only have two climate-controlled storage units in the C two zone, and the rest of them would be allowed in the M M two zone west of I fifteen. When we changed the State Street districts, when we added the five districts, it was still our impression or understanding that. That was still the requirement because the uses that were allowed in the districts were based on the C-2 standards. And so as we went through, our staff just figured out based on the interpretation that that would be correct. As state law changes over time, basically it's a requirement that the ordinances be more specific and basically state what it means. And so as we looked at this definition, it felt— we felt that it could Could use some improvement. A few, probably 6 months ago, we started getting a few more phone calls relating to climate-controlled storage units on State Street. So we've been addressing this issue for several months. I talked to our staff today and all the 2 of them up front have probably fielded about 8 phone calls over the last 6 months wanting to put climate-controlled storage units somewhere on State Street. Our interpretation has been it's limited to 2. Whether it's in the district or in the C-2 zone, and that's kind of been our interpretation. In reviewing it with legal, we felt that it would be appropriate to clarify it a little bit, cleaner language, to not only meet our intent of C-2 but also any other State Street district on the corridor, back to the original intent of the council's limit to 2 climate-controlled storage units on State Street. We filed the application on August 10th to make that modification. You've got an email from, I think, Julie Smith and Mr. Baird, her attorney, indicating that they also filed on the 10th, but in actuality she filed the application on the 11th. So it was actually after our application. We were already in the process when they filed that application. It was a very incomplete application. It had one page. To it. There was no civil drawings, no traffic study, any of that type of thing that would be required with a submittal. So we rejected the application based on the fact that it was incomplete, not the fact that we— it was for a storage unit. It was the fact it was incomplete. We could not process it through at that time. At this point, they have not submitted anything in addition to that. It was simply a one-page application with a one-page document. I have that information if you're interested in that. But it's, it's a different topic, I guess. Tonight, before you tonight is simply the definition is what we're doing under 22817.7, number 7, is simply adding the language combined area of the C-2 zone and all State Street districts, simply to clarify that we don't want any more or allow other than the 2 which we have on State Street climate-controlled storage units. They still would be permitted in the M-2 zone. And so that's kind of where we are at this point. The Planning Commission did make a recommendation on September 2nd, and it's before you tonight for this definition. We did follow the requirements on any other ordinance amendment. We, you know, obviously we noticed it in the papers and the other things that we were required to do, so we followed the same process. We did not do anything different or tried to sneak anything through. This is simply above board. request to make a clarification to the definition. So I'll be glad to address any questions.

So Jason, the 2 that we have, uh, is one of them there on 1600 North and State, and then the other one, the new one that's just been built along State Street?

About 1000 North, yes. Those are the 2. Okay.

And most cities, uh, do they try to restrict, uh, these kinds of Storage buildings, is there a reason behind it?

Well, as you recall, about a year or so ago, we came back and eliminated the storage units out of the M-1 zone for the, you know, sheer fact that as a percentage, Orem itself has a pretty, pretty dominant percentage of storage units in the county. And, you know, not sure that we need any more storage units. So the council approved that recommendation And this is the same thing. I'm sure that we would like to, you know, people would like to have storage units, but I don't think we have enough, our fair share in Orem, and I think we should maintain the 2 climate-controlled on State Street.

Okay, any comments or questions from the council? All right, well, this is a public hearing. We'll go ahead and open it up for public comment starting right now.

Mayor, while that clock runs, we have 2 that we'll get started with.

Okay, great.

Okay, the first one is from Julie Smith. Mayor and members of the City Council, I represent the owners of the old Vasa Fitness located on 800 North and Main Street. The owners have made many efforts to market their facility and have found that it has little viability for retail use. However, there is still— there is a strong demand in the immediate area for climatized storage that will have a sales tax aspect as well, or as it will sell moving and storage supplies. Several weeks ago, I made application for the use of this site. The letter from Mr. Baer details that application and the staff's refusal to accept it. When the original restriction on climatized storage was adopted for the C-2 zone in 2015, 2 concerns were expressed by the council, not wanting to lose out on tax revenue and wanting time to see if there were any negative impacts not anticipated. To date, there has been no reported negative impacts on the city with the climate storage. If the intent of the council was to restrict the number of climate-controlled facilities in other zones, they had the opportunity to do so when the zones were adopted. Instead, they have reacted to a valid application with an attempt to change the restriction without proper notice to property owners who will be affected, and by having a so-called public meeting in which no serious discussion can be held. At best, this is governance by ambush. If the city feels the necessity to restrict this right, it needs to be done in an open forum with adequate notice to property owners. A detailed list of negative impacts this use has had on the city and good reasons to restrict the use on 800 North. Please continue this item until a genuine public forum can be achieved to allow 3 climatized storage units in the C-2 and State Street zones. That is, uh, Julie Smith's. The next one is from Mark Hampton. I've owned property in Orem and have become very familiar with the VASA, once storehouse market land, for more than 30 years. In the with the various uses in the building, the traffic has been a concern for me and local residents. I have reviewed the applicant's plan and find it very appealing. Not only will the existing building be repurposed to a beneficial use, the use has little to no impact on the surrounding community. No children, no police service, very little traffic, less congestion in our community. There is no downside for the city. In fact, a new facade on the existing building will be a huge improvement.

Thank you.

In fact, the city benefits from allowing the climatized indoor storage, realizes the city added tax revenue, and the city is only to provide very limited services. What a wonderful thing for Orem City. If the developers are forced to tear down the building and produce a true mixed-use project in this location as per the city code, the impact on infrastructure, schools, police and public safety, et cetera, would be dramatic. dramatically increased. I am in complete favor of this project and hope that you will be as well. And those are the only 2.

Okay, we'll close the public comment portion.

Give me, give me one second. I was reading off the same computer. We're just checking to make sure there were no others that came in during this time. Yep, that's all.

Okay, all right, we'll close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any comments or questions?

I have a question.

Yes, go ahead, Debbie.

Jason, I thought that VASA was going to be redeveloped into like mixed use. Is that not moving forward? Is this the best use of that property? Is that what they are trying to tell us?

Well, their concept plan that they submitted did have a building full of residential on the front and retail on the corner, but there was no details or any compliance necessarily for the zone that they were in. So I think they are trying to do part of that, but the original plan has not gone forward.

Okay. Is that because it is market-driven and there is not the demand for that? Do you know why?

Other than they maybe just can't make it work. I don't know if it is the cost or they don't want to tear down the building. I am not why they can't make it work. But the original developer that wanted to do a mixed-use development there has since left, and that they're, I think, left now to, you know, do something with the existing building that they have rather than try to redevelop.

Okay, so is this the best use for that property, or is that to be determined?

Well, it's its own district, so I think there's obviously a higher and better use. This is the easier use, I think, at this point.

That's my opinion.

That's what I was thinking. Okay, thanks.

Any other comments?

Yeah, I have one.

I have one, Mayor.

Go ahead.

You know, I don't—

we're calling these climate-controlled storage units, but in the end, they're storage units. And I don't know if 800 North is where we want storage units. So I appreciate the potential owners of it being in favor, but I don't know that the citizens as a whole would want storage units right there on 800 North. So I think there's a higher and better use for the property, which I think is what this amendment proposes.

Is that correct, Jason?

Correct.

Any other comments?

I have a comment, Mayor. You know, with our community is screaming for more pickleball courts, and we've all been getting these emails about indoor pickleball or indoor Tennis and indoor pickleball courts. That's, that's a great opportunity for somebody to take that building that currently has amazing indoor tennis courts and, and take the, the recreational part or the exercise part, turn that into an indoor pickleball court. When there's a development, Tom, there's a development for you, Tom. Anyway, uh, I, I think there's some great things that could be done with that. I don't understand enough about the whole controversy about the storage units to even have an opinion, but I do know that there's other options that could be amazing for the community there. Just a comment.

Any other comments?

Mayor?

Yes, go ahead, Brent.

Jason, he said he figures we have our share of Storage units. Do you have it? Jason, do you have any numbers on— are most of them fully occupied or used, or do they have empty units, or do you have any numbers on that?

I don't have the report in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that they're, yeah, relatively full.

By that, we just have our fair share.

That's basically it.

I think I just quoted off the top of my head, but it was, you know, in the 15 to 20% of all the county, we have all that storage unit here in Orem. So we have a pretty high percentage of the availability or available storage within the city limits. I don't know that we need to add more storage in the city. Okay, we have a lot of storage units. Thank you.

So I was just going to mention the 2 climate-controlled storage units that we have are both very, very attractive. If you look at the one on 1000 North State, so all your storage is included inside surrounding building, and it's a, it's a really nice building that they built, and then the one on 1600 North likewise is a very nice building. I don't see a lot of junk outside like I do at some storage units, and I see— I don't see a lot of cars. I'm sure there are, but I don't see a lot of them. But they're very attractive buildings, and I think they add to our community. So personally, I'm actually open to having a 3rd one and allowing VASA to be used for it because VASA is kind of getting run down and this could be an attractive use, I believe. So anyway, if no further comments, we'll go ahead and make a motion. And I would actually make a motion to not amend Section 22-8-17.

Second.

The way it's written, I would actually make a motion to amend it to allow 3 climate-controlled storage buildings in the City of Orem pertaining to location requirements for climate-controlled storage units. So that's how I would change it. Is there a second?

Second.

OK, seeing no second, would someone like to make a motion?

Yeah, could you pull the motion up on screen please, Mayor, or whoever's running the—

I'd like—

let's see, I'd like to move that the City Council by ordinance amend Section 22-8-17, additional provision for specific uses of the Orem City Code pertaining to the local requirements for climate-controlled storage location requirements. Location requirements for climate-controlled storage units.

Is there a second?

Steve Earle has a comment he's trying to make.

Go ahead, Steve. Go ahead, Steve.

Yeah, sorry, Steve Earle has a comment.

Yes, Steve Earle, go ahead. I think he's on mute. So can the host unmute Steve?

I can only— I can only ask him to— okay, he's unmuted.

I can unmute him.

Steve Earle, can you hear us?

Just shows his phone number.

Now there's one—

OK, I think I've been muted now.

Can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

OK. All right, thank you. Yeah, Mayor, I think there's another option for the applicant here too. If the council does go ahead and pass the proposed ordinance amendment to limit to 2, they at some point, if they really want to go forward with the project to use this building as climate-controlled storage, they can come forward with a project. And probably the best way for them to do that is come forward with designs, you know, show how maybe they are going to refurbish or rehabilitate that VASA building. As you noted, it is a little bit run down. And it may be that they can come forward with a plan that looks attractive and in the best interest of the city. And that would gain the City Council's approval. But I think what we are trying to do tonight is generally not allow additional indoor storage, you know, in our C-2 and in our State Street District zones. But that doesn't mean that an applicant couldn't come forward and propose a plan that looks good and, and gains the council's approval for this particular property.

They would need to come through for an amendment, right?

Yes. And like I said, instead of just leaving it open-ended, I think what we would want is for them to show us design details that shows how they're going to make the the Fawcett Building in this case look more attractive than it is right now. And it may be that if they can show that what they're really proposing is an upgrade and, you know, looks better, and maybe whatever other buildings or development they propose in conjunction with it, maybe that's something that would be appealing to the City Council.

Of course, I'm not sure if they would like that, but— So Steve, if that were the case, then are they then Again, requiring us then to amend what we're passing right now to allow 3.

So yeah, if that happened, then probably we would need to make some ordinance amendment. Obviously, if we're limiting it to 2 right now and we wanted to expand it, you know, to allow an additional one in this zone, then yeah, that would still require an ordinance amendment. But I guess what I'm suggesting is that instead of just with a generic proposal, To allow it in this location.

Yeah, come back and change what we're adopting right now.

But if I could clarify, this is Jason. Can I make a comment? Sure. To be quite honest, we're not going to make that application. They would need to make the application to amend it. Yes, go through that process. I don't want to give them hopes. We're just going to come with a site plan and you guys are going to like it. They're going to have to go through that process to change it, not just automatically allow another Can I ask a question also along those lines?

Sure, go ahead.

If they did that, I'm assuming that at that point then there would be some public input. Some of the neighbors in the neighborhoods would be able to participate in a meeting and share their input.

That's through the Planning Commission and City Council process. That is their opportunity.

Okay.

So, Jamie, you said there was an additional comment forwarded to me from Bruce Baird. I have not seen that comment. If you've got it, I'd be happy to have you read it. I have not seen it.

Mayor, Mayor, I don't, I don't have a copy of this comment. I just have been advised by a representative working with this with the individuals that are looking to develop the VASA property that Mr. Baird submitted a comment to the city.

So I understand what you're saying. I have not received that comment. I don't know if Steve Downs or somebody else has received it.

And I checked with Steve and he did not receive it. I said that to Ryan Clark, I think.

Yeah, I have a copy of it, Mayor. It was originally sent to your email, Councilman Lamson, Councilman Spencer, and Councilman Sumner. Well, I have one from earlier in the day. I don't know if that's what he's referring to.

He wrote it.

Yes.

From—

it would have been 11:58 AM.

That would be the one, Mayor.

So I was not thinking that that was a comment for part of City Council, rather that it was an email to us. But if he wants this part of the of our discussions, I'm happy to read it. So it says, dear Orem City Council, I'm counsel for North Orem Investments, LLC, the owner of the property located at 44 East 800 North. Something about useful developments, a conversion of the Vasa Fitness Building to be a climate-controlled storage facility. Early in the morning on August 10th, On June 10th, 2020, Julie Smith made an application to the city for the proposal for the climate-controlled storage portion of the development was at that time allowed by city code. The property is zoned CX. The CX zone incorporated by reference the uses allowed in the C-2 zone, storage being allowed. Thus, there is either no limit on climate-controlled storage buildings in the CX zone proposed climate-controlled storage was an allowable component of the mixed-use project being proposed. Apparently, Mrs. Smith's application caused the city to recognize the issue raised above and to initiate action advised of it by Steve Earl on the literal eve of the Board of Adjustment appeal of a staff decision in regards to public comment about it to the Planning Commission when the commission was considering the draft. Mr. Earl was very candid during his call, including pointing out that one of the 2 uses climate controlled of your various State Street corridor-related zones, and thus did not count towards any limit. Mr. Earl on August 10th had given the immediate approximately timing of the filing of the application by the city to— part of this is cut off, so I'm sorry. Either way, I believe that Mrs. Smith's application should be considered legally vested. She applied in the proper amount of time and triggered the pending ordinance doctrine. At the very least, even if Mrs. Smith's application is not vested for some reason, it is not fair to Mrs. Smith or to the citizens. I submit that changing the rules of the process for land development while applications are being submitted is not how the council members would want themselves to be treated. It would be very easy to craft an adoption of this proposed ordinance that allows this project to proceed. We would also be happy to discuss this matter with you in person if you would open up to hear us.

Thank you.

They thank you for your consideration and look forward to resolving this matter peacefully with you. Thank you, and please stay safe. Bruce Baird. So, any other comments? I think with what Steve Earle has said, and hopefully the applicant has heard this, I shouldn't say the applicant, but Bruce Baird and Julie Smith have heard what we've said, that they in fact can try to make an application to the city, which I would—

There is a motion on the table that we haven't called for a second.

Sure.

So I'm just repeating what was going on within the additional comments coming from the other person. So anyway, I'm hoping that they will make a motion or move on that kind of activity that Steve has mentioned. Is there a second on the motion?

I already seconded.

Okay. All right, let's go ahead then. Let's start with Terry Peterson.

I'm— so what am I voting on, Mayor?

So let me just read to you real quickly what the motion is. The motion is that the city amend Section 22-8-17 with additional provisions for specific uses of the Orem City Code pertaining to location requirements for climate-controlled storage units, specifically that the combined area of the C-2 zone and all of the State Street District zones contain no more than 2 climate-controlled storage buildings city, and we already have 2 within those zones.

Okay, I'm going to abstain because I'd like more information. I'd like to be more comfortable about what this whole process is and what's going on.

So, Councilmember McDonald.

Sorry, aye.

Okay, Councilmember Spencer.

Aye.

Councilmember Sumner?

Aye.

Councilmember Laree?

Aye.

Councilmember Lamson?

Aye.

And Mayor Brunstad, I vote nay. The ordinance does pass, and we will go ahead and move on to item 9.6. This is a public hearing amending the current fiscal year 2020-2021 budget and amending the compensation program of the city. And our presenter is Brandon Nelson. Brandon, I will turn the time to you. Are you muted? For him, he's here.

Okay.

All right, well, we actually have some good stuff in this particular budget amendment, so I'd like to begin with, uh, talking about the various items that have an actual, um, dollar impact to the budget. So that's the items that we are looking at now in here in Appendix A. The first items, items listed with a note of number 1, those are, you know, what we've historically done each time with budget amendments primarily related to grants and donations. Nothing necessarily out of the ordinary there. I will highlight, you know, the— oh, is it 6th item down? The COPS grant that we received for $375,000 to hire some additional police officers. You know, that's the biggest item of note on here. Several other smaller grants that we've either received as new or additions to existing grants as far as additional dollars. Are there any questions about any of those particular grants? Okay, touching on the item kind of near the bottom, that's item number 2 in our note number 2, Community and Neighborhood Service Fund. I believe, you know, we're bringing this— this is the CARES grant money through the HUD program, which Kenna has brought to you several items in the past. This is just getting the those dollars onto our budget so we can actually spend on those projects, and of course any additional projects that are brought forth. Any questions about that particular item? Okay, then item— the one at the very top. Related to sales tax, which is note number 3 and number 4. So I'm going to touch on note number 3, which touches on the 3% merit increase proposed by the city management. And this item is in relation to also note number 4, which is the new public safety pay structure that I believe all of you have been informed of and had a chance to look at. So the 3% merit component is not applicable to that, to public safety folks, because they are moving, or it is proposed that they move to their own pay structure. So both of those elements, however, are going to be funded at least through a budget amendment through an increase on our— in our expected sales tax revenues. Item number 4, you, you will see in Exhibit D and E. Are there any questions in relation to that item, in relation to the 3% merit portion? Or in relation to the public safety pay structure amendment as shown in Exhibits D and E.

Brennan, I have a question.

Okay.

Go ahead, Debbie.

I thought some of the police stuff was going to be funded through the street lighting program. Is that part of the sales tax?

So it's not. So I'll do my best to try to explain. So when we had the COVID situation come up, we originally did not— we're not budgeting the franchise tax portion to be part of the— necessarily fund anything, right? It was going to be just part of the general fund. When we decided that we needed to reduce sales taxes, we covered the reduction in sales taxes by, in essence, using the expected— the street lighting portion of the franchise taxes to help alleviate that reduction in sales tax. So the answer is Sort of in a way because we had to use those revenues to be able to get our budget to a point that was acceptable and balanced. At this point, those revenues are thus already being used. However, obviously we now have a better feeling that our sales taxes are going to be improved, so therefore we're going to raise those. In to cover these particular costs. So whichever one you really want to think of as funding these increases, either way is technically— you can think of as correct. Whichever, whether you want to think of it as sales tax or whether you want to think of it as those franchise taxes.

Okay, so ongoing is still going to be the same idea. We'll use the street lighting funds, da da da da da. So this—

correct.

Once we change all this career, this is not a one-time thing. This is changing it forever. So that will be how we will fund this per se?

Correct.

All right, thank you.

Any other questions? Okay, then there are 2 elements Let's see here. That do not necessarily— item number 5, I should touch on that, which is simply— we've had this in the past, obviously, as we— the remain— the balance of the GO bond money still continues to earn interest, and we're simply adding those interest earnings back into the projects to be able to fund those projects. So this is This is simply getting those earnings onto our— into our budget. Then in Exhibit B, we have B and C. Both are elements that need to have— be part of our budget amendment because they change the fees and charges of our budget. Earlier we had a Change in our SLU codes that Jason had brought forth in relation to tow yards. This Exhibit B simply puts together what those fees would look like now that that SLU code is applicable. And these fees would then go into effect. Are there any specific questions in relation to Exhibit B?

No.

B and tow yards in particular. Okay. And then Exhibit C. So as part of the landlord licensing process, we have been receiving a number of calls for people with accessory apartments who are unwilling or do not want to pay the $50 landlord licensing fee each year. So they are— they've contacted Development Services to go through a process of removing their accessory— their legal accessory apartment from the records of the county.

And then—

and within the city. Well, that rescission has a cost not only from a time standpoint but also from recording with the county. And so Development Services has proposed a fee in relation to recovering our cost in order to do that in this rescind affidavit.

My guess is they're going to continue to rent those apartments. They're just not going to let us know about them.

That's my question as well. Are they still going to use them for the purpose they've been using them for and just pull their names off the list? Do you know, Brandon?

I, I don't know that necessarily. I would assume I assume that that's always a potential possibility. Maybe Jason has something to say, or maybe Steve.

Mayor, this is Steve Downs.

One thing is, yeah, I mean, they may, they may continue to do something that's illegal, but it'll no longer be on the county records as a legal basement apartment. Therefore, resale value and things that the realtors will check will be impacted.

So do they know that?

Yes, they do.

Mayor, this is Ryan Clark. The affidavit that they have to sign that is then recorded at the county specifically states in it all of the ramifications of rescinding that approved accessory apartment. And are they saying then that they are not going to have an accessory apartment? That is correct. And so therefore, if they were found and reported, then Our NPU officers would work through that and they would be prosecuted for an illegal apartment. So can our NPU officers go out to each one of these to verify that in fact they have told their renters to leave and that they no longer have an accessory apartment?

If I can address that, just— most of these that are coming in to request it have not rented their apartment. For whatever reason, they've never used it as such.

Okay.

And I think the majority—

That makes more sense.

Yeah, the majority of them just have not rented them.

Okay, that's good to hear.

Jason?

Brent Sumner's got a question.

What? You talked— you said they don't have accessory apartments. How many are you talking?

Right now we've had maybe 2 or 3 that have come in and wanted to rescind. Of those that I've talked to directly, they just have never either used it because they've had a large family and that was converted 10 years ago or whatever, and they've just never had an opportunity to do that and just determined that rather than pay the $50 a year, they'll just get rid of it. We wanted to make sure, to Ryan's point, we made sure that that affidavit really was explicit that if they did remove that, they would be paying all of the fees that were associated in the years to come if they decide to get it back, they would be paying thousands of dollars to get it back. So we wanted to make sure that they understood before they signed that affidavit and got rid of the accessory apartment that they are losing their rights and it's no longer considered nonconforming. It would not be— it would not even be considered an apartment. And so they would have to pay all new fees going forward. So the ones that I've dealt with are simply those that have not rented them.

And now I'm not going to put it past somebody from trying to get around I, I just hope there's some, some way we could check it out to see if they're still renting it like Tom said. And I know the NPU is swamped, and I'm not sure how we could do that.

Yeah, right now, just to— I mean, the building department inspects it for the initial accessory apartments. And typically we require them to have an internal connection between— if it's a basement, for example, there's the stairs or whatever, an internal connection. And what they've done is just taken that door out. So I mean, they, they would have a second kitchen potentially as a second kitchen affidavit. So any of those indicate that they cannot rent them without, you know, penalty of being in violation of the ordinances. So I mean, there is some stipulations. So if they are caught by a neighbor, for example, then NPU could charge them and we could prosecute them for doing that illegally, which is hopefully not the case. But that's, that's how we would do it. Now, it's really more of an internal connection that they would just open up and have the whole house. So there really is not a whole lot that we could go out and look at other than the normal house that could have a basement door that they would open. I mean, that's really all that we'd be looking at.

A question for Steve Earle. How many, how How many have we prosecuted?

How many illegal apartments have we prosecuted last year? I don't know. I don't have that number. Our prosecutors could probably look that up and tell you, but I don't know.

I know there's certain steps they follow on that. I'm just wondering how many have really gone to the end and been prosecuted.

Anyway, I would say probably, probably not too many because they do Like you said, go through a process where they try to get voluntary compliance. And I think that that's generally what happens. They get compliance and then probably not too many have to go to the bitter end. Okay.

Thank you.

So that's all I have.

Are there any final thoughts or questions or concerns about any So I'd just like to mention that with the change to the police and fire, we've put in a career ladder last year. With this, we're putting in a different way of doing it, adding it to the career ladder where it's step in grade, which is similar to what other cities have done. I think that's a good idea. And I believe this will be a real benefit to the police and fire to retain and recruit individuals for our forces. So I'm in favor of that. Plus, I appreciate the opportunity to give a 3% raise to our employees within the city. Any questions or comments? All right, this is a public hearing, so I'll go ahead and open it We'll open it up to the public, um, and we'll open it right now. All right, we're going to go ahead and close the public comment portion of our public hearing. Steve, have you received any public comments?

No, we have not.

Okay. All right, any other comments or questions from the council? I'd like to make a motion, Mayor. Yes, go ahead, Dave.

I'd like to make a motion that the City Council amend the current fiscal year 2020-21 budget And amending the compensation program of the city.

Okay, is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll go ahead and start with Terry Peterson.

Aye.

Tom McDonald.

Aye.

Dave Spencer.

Aye.

Brent Sumner.

Aye.

Debbie Laree.

Aye.

Jeff Lampson.

Aye.

And I, as mayor, vote aye as well. The ordinance passes. We're through our scheduled items. Jamie, do you have anything you wish to bring up?

Mayor, I don't have anything other than to just let you know that tomorrow I have scheduled time with the last of our police chief finalists to interview. I've had— I've spent a couple of hours with several candidates already. I think I will be ready by the end of the week to make a recommendation as to moving forward in that effort and that process.

Okay, thank you, Jamie. Do we have a birthday today or?

Dave Spencer.

That's what I thought. Dave, you there? I'm here.

He's asleep. I recommend we all unmute and sing happy birthday to Dave.

Go ahead and start, Steven.

Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday, dear Dave.

Happy birthday to you.

Oh baby.

You're in trouble, Dave.

That was terrible.

Just add that to your 2020, Dave.

Absolutely.

These meetings are recorded, you know, people.

Yeah, no doubt. All right, if nothing else, I move that we go ahead and adjourn.

Mayor, this is Mark Sanderson. Hey, I just wanted to take a moment to publicly thank you and the council along with the city administration for the support. This reclassification of our pay structure is going to make a huge difference in our current recruitment. and retention of our fire service employees. It's going to allow us to attract individuals with experience that will support the many members of our department that serve the city every day. So on behalf of the fire department and public safety, I just want to say thank you.

Thank you, Chief. Appreciate that. All right, if nothing else, I move that we adjourn. Everyone in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, we are adjourned. Thank you.