City Council · 2021-01-12

Shame on you, Jeff.

Now that he's gone, we can say whatever we want.

And I think we're ready, Jeff, when you are.

Okay.

Well, as I mentioned, Mayor Brunstad is tied up for a little bit and asked me to conduct the work session today. So in getting started, I would like to read the Notice of all-electronic meeting and opportunity for public participation. Uh, pursuant to Mayor Richard F. Brunson's proclamation dated January 5th, 2021, Durham City Council meeting on January 20th— January 12th, 2021 will be an all-electronic meeting. There will be no anchor location for the meeting. The city cannot ensure the 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. 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 aurum.org/meetings. To make a comment, please submit your comment through aurum.org/comments. Written comments will be accepted before and during the meeting. All written comments received will be entered into the record and forwarded to each City Council member for review. Written comments will also be read aloud during the live meeting. When required by law or when time permits. As technology permits, the City Council may also accept oral comments. Once an item has been voted on, that item will be closed to additional comments. Thank you for your cooperation during these challenging times, and thank you to those who are here today, and thank you to those who have put the agenda together and, and make these meetings go so smoothly. First of all, we have a discussion on the utility master plan, and this will be presented by Chris Shirkey, our Orem Public Works Director, and Laura Lewis, the financial advisor from Lewis, Young, Robertson, and Birmingham. Chris?

All right, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Lamse. I'm looking at the number of attendees on our list and I'm not seeing Laura Lewis. Bren, do you see Laura on the list? I've sent her the, the invite. He might be on the phone with her right now. So while we're waiting for Laura, we can flip-flop perhaps our portion of the meeting, and I'll go ahead and present on the 10 million gallon tank, and I'll go ahead and share my screen, and then I'll let Laura come on afterwards. Brent, did you confirm that Laura's coming on in a few minutes?

Yeah, I was on the other line with her. She, she's found the link. I walked her through it and she's getting on.

Okay.

I think, like, we can start off with your portion of the presentation.

Okay, let's go ahead and do that then. I will then share my screen. Let's try that again. Okay, I'm sharing my screen. Can everybody see Mount Timpanogos and the shack at the top of Timpanogos on this? I think so. Okay, let's go ahead and move on then. So water resources is one of our greatest resources in the city. And this is a perspective that you don't usually see that often. I don't know how this was taken, from a helicopter perhaps, or a plane, looking back at the top of the peak of Timpanogos, Utah Valley, Utah Lake, and so forth. Just brings a lot of perspective into understanding where our water comes from. We heavily rely on our water resources that are found in the Wasatch Front, in the mountains, Timpanogos, Trial Lake, and the Hayuventas. That water makes its way to Orem, and in the last few months we've been working with Bowen Collins and Associates and Hans Nallman-Luse on a master plan, and also a Well Number 10 design and location. And I've been asked today to present on the history of how we've come to this point in the master plan process and the recommendation process. And in particular, this is for those who perhaps weren't here at this last presentation and given this update. What this master plan document shows here is the peak hour demand of our water supply in the central zone in the city of Orem. This is under our current 2020 conditions. These different dots have a different meaning and representation. The orange dots are 45 to 50 PSI for pressure. If it's red, then it's 30 to 45. If it's yellow, then it's 50 to 60. The reason why I'm presenting this to you now is to give you the background of why we feel the need to build a water storage facility in the center of the City of Orem. This has been a thought or a discussion among Public Works employees probably for over 15 years, and it wasn't realized to the master plan that indeed it was confirmed through hydraulic modeling that we needed to pursue this route. So this shows current status or current conditions. This graphic here shows many more red dots and orange dots in the central zone. And that's very alarming. That means that the pressures are down below 45 PSI. This is a condition in about 30 to 40 years at build-out. This is what we're trying to prevent from occurring. We already feel that we are— we're not providing the best or most ideal pressure in the Central Zone today. And so this will help solve that problem. In the master plan draft that we received about 3 weeks ago, it confirmed and further identified the location in the Central Zone in the City of Orem. This is a pressure zone. It's the largest zone in the city, and it's, it's the one that services the most number of people, and we are concerned about delivering water at the preferred pressures in this area. As we zoom in a little bit, we can— we've identified here that there are a few different water line projects associated with this. 16-inch water lines, as well as that red line at 400 South from 4th West to 4th East, or 8th West to 4th East, that is a 20-inch water line. The other items here are a well. Well number 10 is designated by W1. ST1 is our storage tank. And, and we have a pump booster pump station that needs to be located in this general location. Over the past few years, we determined or evaluated several locations that we felt were suitable for this analysis, and we went in and identified 12 parcels or 12 properties. that had open, maybe not vacant, but at least open space. And I'm going to walk you through our thought process and how we determined the recommendation that we've come to today. So just to give you some orientation here, we're at 400 North and Orem by the Orem Community Hospital. Here's 8th West. Here's Center Street, Mountain View High School, and the fitness center, and then Orem Community Park and Orem Elementary School are down here off 4th South between 4th West and 8th West. Initially, we were thinking that we would be doing a joint or constructing a joint water tank with the Town of Vineyard. That has since— that plan has since changed. In fact, Vineyard has not formally announced but is actually moving forward with an analysis to build its water tank in the center of its community. Therefore, we will not be joining with Vineyard on a joint facility. That decision was made a few months ago. In this process, though, when we were evaluating these sites here, we did reach out to Orem community at the time prior to acquiring this land and prior to the Geneva Elementary— or excuse me, the Geneva Park master plan projects that have recently taken place with the futsal courts, the new parking lot, the new playground facility in Canopy, and so forth. So we've ruled out this option altogether, not just for those reasons, but also because it's not the best location to service the Central and the Southwest zones from a water supply perspective. We further evaluated additional open space properties around this general location. Those properties identified in purple are or were orchards at the time. You'll notice that the orchard at 300 South and 400 East is not an orchard anymore, but it has since developed. In fact, I think the development might even be called The Orchards, just east of Orem Elementary School. We looked at the property on the northwest corner of Center Street and 4th West. in addition to the vacant— or excuse me, the vineyard at 4 South and 4th West, as well as a vineyard at 4 South and 700 West. None of those were deemed to be the best alternatives. They were available for purchase, but there were no willing sellers at the time. We didn't feel that it was in our best interest to recommend any type of condemnation or eminent domain in those cases to the City Council when there are other viable options available. And I'm going to just share with you now— well, let me share with you also, there were some discussions with Alpine School District regarding the field here on the west side. It's a practice field for softball and football and soccer, I believe. And even the stadium here was a consideration, albeit it wasn't a realistic one, but it was something that was evaluated and looked at. Most recently, we have looked at this property at the northeast corner of 400 South and 600 West. That is owned by Alpine School District. We've reviewed that with their superintendent— Farnsworth is who it is today— and in the past with previous superintendent, as well as with their school board. They were not interested in pursuing that path. As a result of that, we further analyzed and reviewed other options on our Orem Community Park property specifically. One thing is important to know from your perspective is that this land is encumbered by a conservation fund easement. And so we had to— we were sensitive to that and that we need to restore everything back to a condition equal to or better than what it is today with as many or more recreational opportunities. We have settled and are recommending that this is our preferred site or preferred location here. This location in yellow is not programmed for any recreational opportunities or aspects by Mountain View High School or by the City of Orem. It is also closest to 400 South. I recommended, or I showed you a graphic earlier that had a 20-inch water line at 400 South. The closer we could get to 400 South, the least expensive it would be for us to actually construct the tank and all of the appurtenances, including the lines, the well, the pump station, and so forth. And so at this point, it is our recommendation to move forward with this location for the 10 million gallon tank for the central zone in the City of Orem. On our call today, I do have Mark— excuse me, Marv Allen from Hansen, Allen, and Luce. And Keith Larson from Bowen Collins and Associates, who have helped with the development of the hydraulic models and the analyses that have taken place for this recommendation. And they're available if you would like to— if you would like to ask any questions of them. We also have members from our Public Works Advisory Commission here today. Casey Shaw, who— and Devin Rich, I've noticed he's on the call as well, who was our PWAC chairperson. And Casey is an engineer with Central Utah Water Conservancy District, many of you know, who also has been on board with our Public Works Advisory Commission since 2014. We met with our Public Works Advisory Commission today, and they support this recommendation to move forward with this location for the 10 million gallon water storage tank. So I'd like to entertain any questions you may have. On staff today, we also have Reed Price and Neil Winterton, who have been integrally involved with these master plans, and I appreciate their time and efforts in this process.

Chris, this is Debbie. Do you have an idea of cost yet?

We do. Underground storage facilities like— so I don't know if I mentioned this specifically, But this will be a buried facility. It will not be above ground. It'll be buried. Every time you go down a foot, it adds, it adds cost to the project. It's believed that this will be about $1.25 per gallon, $1.30 per gallon, or about $13 million. This project would specifically be targeted for bonding, and Ms. Lewis will be presenting on the bonding aspect of this. We do have the need to construct a well or another water source in this zone, and so that would be located in this general vicinity, and it would fill this tank. We would also need a booster station that would pump from the tank into the pressurized central zone. So altogether, all 3 of those projects are roughly around $22 million.

Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, I have my hand raised. Am I good?

Yes, please.

So I noticed one piece of real property, it looks like we need to demolish. Are those restrooms that are shaped kind of like a 4-cornered star, or what is that?

That is a pavilion. On this particular park, Mr. McDonald, we have 3 pavilions. That's one of the 3. That'll be reconstructed. We'll have a brand new pavilion on the site.

How much cost does that add to it versus going to Plainfield at 4th North, which is less desirable but where we don't have any real property to destroy?

The location at 4th North would add significant cost because of the transmission lines that would be needed to get the water to the south. And so it was determined that this location was the most optimum location from a cost perspective. That could be millions of dollars to locate it up there in additional costs. The pavilion might be at $200,000, maybe $150,000.

I have one more question.

So when you engineer this, you're looking at our water needs. This is something for 50, 60, 75, 100 years. What's our— what are you engineering this to, I guess? How many decades in the future?

We would anticipate this water tank would be in service for at least 100 years. We would have to maintain it over a period of time. We'd have to drain it, inspect it, and do our our regular analysis to determine that it is in good functioning shape and condition. But this is a 100-year asset, minimum.

Okay, thank you.

Hey, Chris, this isn't new to anyone who's been on the council for a while. We've been talking about this and planning on it for years.

I'm sorry, Tom, is that— I didn't— was that a question?

No, just I'd like your confirmation.

Oh yes, so this has been— this was a part of our master plan in 2016. It was identified that we needed a 10 million gallon water tank. We were deficient 10 million gallons currently in our water storage requirements per the State of Utah rules and requirements. In fact, we were on a conference call with the Division of Water Quality or drinking water, sorry, last week. And we went through that analysis that confirms independently of our, of our hired engineering firm that we are indeed short of that. We've made significant progress in that effort to locate this and to now go out to bid in terms of hiring an engineer to actually do the design. And our goal is to turn dirt on this project, Tom. as early as the 1st of July. And if all things go forward without any hindrances or any other challenges moving forward, I fully anticipate that moving forward. If the project—

Can you get the budget in place that quick too?

Well, Ms. Lewis will present on that now, and she has a plan that suggests we can do that, yes.

Hey, Chris, I have a question.

Please.

So on the 10-gallon— on the tank, is that a big enough size for a 100-year— I mean, for our growth in 40, 50 years? I mean, is that going to be able to handle the growth out west?

This will help with growth in the central and southwest areas for sure. We'll be able to pump from this and retain pressures and add pressures to this central zone. But speaking to, you know, future growth and development, this will satisfy our immediate deficiency. In other words, we are short just under 10 million gallons per state rule for drinking water, per their rules in the state of Utah. So we will basically be catching up And this is not in terms of for future growth and development. This is for current needs. There is a need in probably 20 to 25 years, maybe 20 years, for a future tank in northeast Orem that will take place well, well beyond our time here at the city. That's, that's for growth in 35, 40 years, so maybe 2060, at build-out, we'll be looking at another 10 to 15 million gallons that will be needed.

So, would we want to add anything bigger here for now, or just keep it where you're at?

Well, that's a great question. There is not a— it's not required right now, so we typically would build as those requirements are necessary. Although, I do agree that it's optimum to to build as much as you need, as much as you can during the current construction costs that would be incurred. So with inflation and so forth at 5-6% for construction locally, that is a great idea, although the need is not there currently today.

Let me add, this is Neil.

Also operationally, Right-sizing your storage is an important aspect for day-to-day operations so that the water doesn't sit in the tank too long. So, there's that to consider as well.

Chris, this is Keith.

The last thing I would add is from a hydraulic perspective, we could add a little bit more storage here.

But it's actually needed elsewhere for hydraulic reasons as we get out into the future.

So maybe adding a little bit might make sense as part of final design, but not— certainly not adding 20 million gallons here.

Thank you.

Any other questions on that, or are we ready to move on to Laura?

And Laura is on the call now.

Thank you, Chris.

Okay, thank you.

I am seeking to share my screen. Is it up? I can see it, but that doesn't mean you can see it.

Laura, try again.

I made you—

just made you a co-host of the meeting.

Okay.

It says I'm screen sharing now. All right, this will be fairly quick. I, first of all, I apologize for being a little bit late on the call. Seconds before I was going to jump on, my daughter who was traveling, driving from Alabama, called to tell me she got in a car accident. So I'm like, okay, is everybody okay? All right, bye. So anyway, I apologize for the short delay in getting on. So as I think Councilmember McDonald asked, show me the money. He was— it was phrased something sort of like that, right? So that you can fund all these projects. So some important things, we're continuing to update the utility rates. progressing along nicely. There are biweekly meetings with Orem City staff and other utility professionals like Keith and others that you've heard today. And we're planning to present that for the council's review on January 26th. That's not when you'll be adopting it. That's when, you know, Fred Philpott, my colleague, will be going over that utility— those utility rate studies with you. It currently appears— I don't You know, I can't imagine a reason from what I see today that we'd see anything drastically different from the fact that we believe that water rates can go down and your sewer rates will be stabilized without— I mean, if we hadn't have done the bonding, you would have continued to increase those rates to do pay-as-you-go. But now as we're doing bonding and stretching, you know, the repayment of those long-term facilities over the long term, And I think it was Debbie that asked, you know, sort of what's the useful life of the water tank? Very, very long, and it makes sense to pay for that over time. So, um, that's all very good news in regard to the amount of rate decreases and whatnot. Fred will take that up with you in a couple of weeks. As we're moving forward with that rate study, we obviously still have to focus on, you know, maintaining reasonable cash balances, revenue sufficiency. You know, it's critical to make sure we have debt service coverage and all of those things, you know, and, you know, probably 13 pages of other things the rating agencies look at when they determine your credit rating. We're seeking to get you the best credit rating so that we can get you the lowest rates. So, that's all proceeding very nicely. The projects that we'll be funding with both bond proceeds as well as cash that you will use, some of the cash you have on hand, we'll talk about that in a minute, are the So for water, there's about $33.4 million with the tank, piping, lines, well replacement, water reuse. For sewer or water reclamation, $17.2 million. You can see, you know, we've listed just a few of those projects. And then for storm drain, what we talked to you about a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago, we had a lot more that we were contemplating maybe needed in storm drain, but it's been determined that we can't quite pin down what those costs will be because there's still ongoing discussions needed with other cities and whatnot. So we're going to do sort of the known amount right now and wait until the other larger projects can be pinned down. So with that, the city will— the current plan is for the city to use about a little over $17 million of cash balances that you have in the water and sewer utility On a combined basis to reduce the bond size. The remaining fund balances are sufficient to meet the day's cash on hand that, that you need in order to garner the best rates, best ratings possible.

Yeah, and so far nobody's taken, so.

Yeah, well, we're running the same thing.

Well, you can lead the horse to water, right?

Josh Adams, you're not muted. We're hearing you.

I thought someone really wanted to talk about interest rates. All right. I have done an updated comparison we shared with you again the last time we met. It's probably been a month ago now, of pay-as-you-go versus the savings of doing a bond issue. And over a 25-year life, the bonds will be about 25.5 years, Over a 25-year life, depending upon your assumptions for construction inflation, here I've assumed that would be between 2.5% and 3.5%. As Chris mentioned just a minute ago, currently that is significantly north of that. We're seeing, you know, 5% or greater construction inflation. So, this is very conservative. And if you look at, you know, the— if you were just to set aside the amount of money that you will be using to make the bond payments, If you were just to set that money aside, one, you don't ever really quite catch up to be able to do these projects by the time the bonds are paid off, and two, it ends up costing you a lot more money, somewhere between $16 and $45 million. That's a future value number. I did not present value. I certainly can do that if you, if you need that done. So, here, the interest rate considerations. Interest rates continue to be very low. Notwithstanding, when I was updating all of this, I was trying to make it as real-time as possible, updated it yesterday. The 10-year Treasury rose above 1% a few days ago. That's been the highest since last March. As I note in the footnote, I think it's carried on down here. It's kind of interesting to see the 10-year Treasury go up because it was going up the day the stock market was getting hit, and that's kind of an anomaly in my industry. Typically when the stock market's not doing well, then you'll see cash, you know, investors with cash move into the bond market, and it typically puts, you know, some pressure on yields to go down. We're kind of in, you know, the market sort of trying to figure out where they think the future's going with COVID with the new administration, et cetera. But on the whole, interest rates are still very, very low. We are only 20 basis points above the all-time low of tax-exempt rates. And so, it's still an excellent time to issue bonds. If we were in the market today, we asked for some updated scales. I would anticipate you'd be in the range of 2.35% to 2.4%, what we refer to as a true interest cost. It's a weighted average cost of the bond life. This chart and related graphic give you a sense of where interest rates were just from a year ago. So, we looked at January, the business day January 13th, a year ago, and, you know, where they are are today. And you can see again, the story is it's a good time to issue bonds. Now on to the parameters resolution summary. At your next council meeting, if you determine to proceed with the issuance of the bonds, there are some steps that the city council needs to take. Those are primarily adopting a parameters resolution, which sets a hearing, and among other things, and then you have to hold the hearing. So when you adopt the parameters resolution, it does not commit the city to issue bonds. It provides, you know, the, the guide, the parameters which the bonds can be issued, and it's the starting point for us to allow for public notification, required, required publication, and the setting of a public hearing. Within the parameters resolution, you designate officers that are established to have the authority to provide the approval to do the final bond issuance, as long as we're within those parameters set forth in the resolution. This provides for marketing flexibility, which we really need because the day that the bonds price, the underwriter wants to be able to notify the bondholders that they can ticket and sell those bonds. And when we used to only be able to do that on City Council meeting nights, there was kind of a rush of, oh, everyone, let's issue our bonds on Tuesday. And Tuesdays aren't always the best day that you want to price. So this provides us the flexibility that we need. We'll need a little bit of guidance on this before we can finalize the resolution that will be presented to you. Historically, the city has utilized the mayor or mayor pro tem, the city manager, and the chief financial officer. The resolution can be written to grant approval to a larger or smaller group, but in order to provide for speed and flexibility, because whoever is are those designated officers. Whoever makes that up, they do have to participate in a couple of pricing calls and do need to be available, you know, to give us the final, you know, positive head nod that, you know, we're good to go ahead and issue those bonds. So I, you know, I'm perfectly fine to have them go ahead with what you've done in the past, but again, if you want to change that, there's no— There's no limit or— you know, specifics of who needs to be in that pricing committee. The parameters that we're setting forth in the bond are a maximum par amount of $45 million. Now, if you do the math from up above, your projects are $52-ish million. You're bringing $17 to the table. Good news, I can still add to— it's a good quality in a financial advisor. So the reason this par amount is higher than you might be thinking is that there is an outstanding state loan. It's a sewer loan. And it has an odd requirement, 0%. So we certainly don't want to refund it. We don't want to go from 0% to any percent of interest. But it has an odd requirement that if you have any additional bonds where we pledge sewer revenues, and again, you're doing sewer projects here, so that makes rational sense to pledge sewer revenues, then we have to fund a reserve. We may be able to just get them to sign a piece of paper waiving that requirement, but we may have to work with them to effectively replace the old bonds with new bonds that have the same 0%, etc., etc., but waive that requirement. If we do that, we have to include that in, in this parameter sizing, and that's about an outstanding roughly $7 million, give or take, so that you are aware of that. The maximum term that we've indicated in the parameters is not to exceed 30 years. The maximum coupon is 5.5% and the maximum discount is 3%. Now remember, coupon is not the same as interest rate. There's a yield on the bonds and a coupon on the bonds, and they're, they're two different things. So don't get scared by that 5.5%. Again, we're still expecting the true interest cost to be in the 2.35 to 2.40 range. At present, when I take the bond premium into account— again, the premium is generated by the fact that the coupon is higher than the yield— when I take that into account, I'm anticipating today that the par amount would be about $29— a little over $29 million. Your final maturity would be 25.5 years. The maximum coupon and the pre-pricing we've been given is 4%. There would be— I'm not contemplating any bonds being sold at a discount. But the way that we pay the underwriter is by a discount on the bond. So there'd be, you know, that small discount. This would allow us to arrive at an estimated annual debt service of that $1,861,000 on average. Some years it's a little higher. You know, we sell bonds in $5,000 increments, so that would— that may fluctuate a little bit. And with that, here's some key dates that you'll, you know, need to be aware of. Today, obviously, we're having this work session. We'll distribute the first draft of bond documents. I confirmed with bond counsel they'll aim to have those done by Friday. The POS may not be done by Friday, but by next Tuesday. We'll have a review of those bond documents. The city will have the review of the utility rate study. I don't know if that's going to— I'm assuming that's in a work session, Bren, but I didn't call you in advance to verify that.

That's correct.

Okay. And then in your actual meeting, you would consider for adoption this bond resolution, which would authorize the sale of the bonds as long as we stay in the parameters. It delegates the authority for, you know, other people to take that final action, and it sets the date of February 23rd for the public hearing. While that— while waiting for that to happen, we'll be just, you know, having a rating agency presentation. We'll get the rating. You'll hold the public hearing on the 23rd. Shortly after that, we would distribute the official statement and price the bonds and sell them and close. So we're anticipating closing by March 25th, which is well in advance, Tom, of the turning shovel date, I think, that Chris said of June.

Whoo!

With that, are there any questions? My kids would say I probably bored you all to death, so they don't think my job's exciting at all.

I have a question, Lori. With political situations right now kind of getting chaos, do you expect any, any changes in the interest rates, or you think people will be pretty— I mean, I know you can't, don't have a crystal ball.

No, no, I don't have a crystal ball. Everything that I'm hearing in regard to like the Fed, you know, what they're saying when they meet, they're still aiming to keep interest rates low. The, you know, economy nationally is not doing as well as the economy here locally, and, you know, that serves to keep, you know, pressure on keeping interest rates low. So there's nothing in the tea leaves that I'm reading, Debbie, that makes me believe that we're, you know, poised for a spike by any means, but I certainly want to, you know, Move along prudently. What, what is nice about this method of sale, you'll be working with Stiefel as the underwriters who'll be working with, and this method of sale is referred to as a negotiated sale. And with that, we'll get all teed up to, you know, do what we're saying here according to the calendar, and, you know, price sometime on March 8th to the 10th. Now let's say that you know, for whatever reason, whatever political event happens and the market goes bad, we say, oh, you know, we're gonna hold off. We're not gonna price that day. We're going to price a week or two later. Or if we see something coming that we want to, you know, beat into the market, then we'll, you know, try to speed it up a few days. So we do have that flexibility. And, um, you know, I, I think given all that we've all seen for the last several weeks. It's good to have flexibility.

Okay, sounds good. Thank you.

You bet.

A question, do we do a competitive bid, or do we— are there multiple underwriters, or tell me that process?

I would be happy to. So, uh, in the, um, in, in my world, there are sort of 2 or 3 basic ways of issuing bonds. You can do what's called a direct purchase. With a direct purchase, and that's typically— you want to use that for shorter Generally smaller, so let's say $10 million or less, because then the bonds are bank qualified. Shorter, 10 years or less, because that's where banks like to buy. A direct purchase, we put together a term sheet and we set it— send it out to any interested bidder who can take the entire transaction. So that's called a direct purchase, sometimes referred to as a private placement. The city has done that before with various projects, as have many other cities. And in that, in that way, it's a, you know, here's the security, you bid, and we look at the terms and conditions and compare them and make our advice on who you should work with. So that is called a private placement direct purchase. This transaction's too, too large and goes out too long for that. So now we're in the world of public offerings. In a public offering, you have 2 alternatives.

Those alternatives Laura, I believe you accidentally muted somehow.

There you go. Is that better? It's because I talk with my hands, and if I don't, I can't speak. So, all right, that— okay, so—

You were just going to talk about public offering of a bid.

Okay, okay. 2 types of public offerings. There's a negotiated public offering and a competitive sale. So in a negotiated public offering, the city determines who they want to use as an underwriter. That can be done through an RFP and responses to those RFPs. city has an agreement. It's my understanding the city has an agreement with Stiefel and has worked with them in the past. Stiefel, the professionals that work at Stiefel used to work for an entity called George K. Baum, and Stiefel acquired them. They do the majority, you know, if we did an RFP for this transaction for underwriter, they're going to score very well because they do a lot of the water bonds in the state, so they're very familiar with you know, the people who like to buy that type of credit. But in a negotiated offering, you pick your underwriter. That can be done just, oh, we know they're good, and we pick that underwriter, and you negotiate the fee and the, you know, the terms under which they'll underwrite, and that's what we're doing here. Again, we did not, in this instance, solicit an RFP for underwriters. The other option is what's called a competitive sale, and in a competitive sale, you put together the offering documents, and you pick a date and time that you're going to go out with that offering. And we don't, we don't work with an underwriter in advance. And with a competitive sale, you get the official statement all ready with your legal professionals and, you know, your financial professionals, everybody, and you pick a date and time, you notify the world in advance that these bonds are coming, and they do a competitive bid. And it literally, it is like People are submitting their bids literally minutes before they are due. You'll sit around for an hour going, oh my gosh, no one's going to bid. And then last minute, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you pick, you know, whoever provides the lowest cost to you. Everything else is set. You set what the call provisions are. You set what the coupon rates can be. You set, you know, and then you're left with just picking by yield. So, there's some advantages to that, certainly. The disadvantage is, if you are in a market that has any disruption and you've picked your day, you're kind of stuck. You can pull a competitive sale, but it's not terribly advisable. You know, certainly, I mean, let's say on 9/11, yes, people would have pulled their competitive sales, but it gives you a lot less flexibility than a negotiated sale, and that's why it's not— You know, it may not be the best thing to do here. The determination has been made to do this on a negotiated basis with Stiefel. That was a long answer to a short question.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions? Or comments?

Yeah, evidently the hand raising isn't working. Let me just chime in here. Jamie, I think Jamie's on, is he not?

Yes.

In the past, we've had kind of a list of where we sit in water rates and sewer rates versus other cities. I'm kind of happy to keep at least our base rate fairly similar. So we encourage some conservatism. I'm not sure that I, I like all the tier rates we have, and I know we need to have some tier rates, but they seem to jump pretty high. Before we make this presentation in 2 weeks, could you have those prepared for us, Jamie?

Yes, in fact, that is the plan, to share those with you on the 26th in advance of the parameters resolution. So we will have that information for you, and we will make that presentation in advance of bringing the parameters resolution forward that same evening.

And, and Tom, we— your message has been conveyed to us by your staff that, you know, there is concern about the tiers. I'm, I'm not the best expert at my office. Fred, you know, holds that relative to utility rates. The state does require that you do some tiering, again, just from a conservation perspective, but we, we have had the message that you would like to see those tiers adjusted. I think the intention is to focus a lot on the highest tier, but, but we, we do know that that is of concern and we'll be discussing that.

So I've got a question also. I brought up the seniors or those that are under poverty level, what we're doing with them on that base rate. I don't know if Chris can talk to that or what.

So this is Jamie. We are in fact looking at that and are trying to put together a program that can be of benefit to the seniors.

The—

obviously, this is a very fluid situation, and so we're trying to, we're trying to kind of address this effort in chunks. And that effort is not as far along as, for example, our conversation about the tank, our conversation about rates in general, and we would expect to further flesh out this senior discussion as we proceed forward in advance of any rate changes that will be made as part of our budget proposal to you in May with an effective date of July 1st.

Okay, and also, you know, we talked about the tiered rates. I would assume that they would be going down because if not, that would not look very good.

So we are obviously, as we look at the modeling, and this is where Fred from Laura's office can help us, we are not necessarily— and I think, and Chris can speak to this— there are a supermajority of our users that essentially are in What is it, Chris, the first couple of tiers?

Yeah, they're not exceeding Tier 3.

And so we are focusing our attention primarily on those areas and obviously still providing relief to those that are in higher areas, but we're trying to focus our attention on where the greatest amount of benefit can result in this analysis, while at the same time being sensitive to the fact that we need to maintain a conservation component in our rates.

So, Jamie, are we looking at, you know, instead of 4 tiers, maybe a 3-tiered system, or—

No, we are looking at maintaining a tiered, like, for example, a 4-tiered system, but we're looking at rates that are, for example, 10 or 15% less on those lower tiers. And then, Chris, on the higher tier, I think it's a little different.

It was, it was over 15, I think, in the highest tier.

So we're looking to do it by way of adjustments to the volume charge that we have, with a pretty consistent decrease in the volume charge in Tier 1, 2, and 3, with an even greater decrease in the volume charge for Tier 4. Thank you.

Jamie, this is Terry. I'll just pass on a comment someone shared with me the other day, which kind of fits in how the city looks like we're doing this. This gentleman told me, said, I'm being penalized because I'm one of the citizens that lived here longer, and so my lot's bigger and the amount of grass I water is larger than the newer homes which have smaller lots. And it sounds like we're addressing that, you know, with the citizens that have the bigger lots and, you know, more fruit, if they have a few fruit trees to water or whatever.

So—

Yeah, I think we're trying to do that. Obviously, there are a couple of things that come into play, and Chris can suggest that there are like 90-plus percent of our customers that are residential customers that have 3/4-inch meters. And then there are an additional group that have 1-inch meters, and then we get into the larger meters for commercial, industrial use and such. Again, we're trying to focus on areas that will provide the greatest amount of benefit for the greatest number of people, but we believe that everybody will benefit, but everybody won't necessarily benefit in a— in the exact same way. Obviously, the more you conserve, the greater you will benefit.

So, Jeff, I think I'll jump in here. And thank you for carrying it forward. I got back sooner than I thought.

Sounds great. I didn't break anything too bad while you were gone, Mayor.

Sounds like it went well. Thank you very much. Any other comments on the master plan, utility master Laura, we appreciate, as always, having you here and look forward to working with you on it.

So, so, Mayor and Council, if I may, just a couple of key takeaways from today. The first one being the recommended location of the tank. The second one being a plan to return to you in 2 weeks' time with the parameters resolution. That is based upon adjustments that we are looking to recommend in our rate structure. And all of this will reflect a transition from a pay-as-you-go mindset as to financing this infrastructure prospectively to a essentially financing of future infrastructure. That's kind of our plan. Are you comfortable with that?

So, Jamie, I'm comfortable. A couple of things: the fact that the cost of money is so low that we can spread out the cost to users over a period of years, so it spreads out the responsibility and the use factor in a better manner, and the fact that we are planning for the future with a 10 million gallon tank and the necessary infrastructure, plus we may see a 15% decrease for our residents. I think that's all very beneficial and I would recommend it. I don't— anybody else have comments there?

I'm very supportive. I think it makes sense with these intergenerational projects that will benefit up to 100 years or more. Makes sense to spread the cost, and with the low interest rates, it just makes sense. So definitely want to move ahead with that as soon as possible.

And you're going to be here to the end of the project, is that right?

Being 55, I hope so.

Okay.

Okay.

Any other comments?

Yeah, Mayor, Dave here. So I just looking at the, the one point $8 million payment, you know, for the annually, that's $155,000 a month, which is very cheap and very reasonable in my mind. So I think that's very positive moving forward.

So.

Yes, and again, remember, these are coming off of water revenues and sewer revenues, and we're very strong in that category. And we have $17 million that we've already collected that we're going to use towards this as well. So in our reserves.

A quick, quick question, Chris. Looking at that map in the neighborhood, when that construction takes place, I don't know what a 10 million gallon tank looks like, but any concerns with neighborhoods' yards to the west and the south?

Absolutely.

We're very concerned and we're sensitive to those needs, and we will do everything we can to mitigate noise. Dust and other disruptions during the construction process. We will also hire a public relations firm that will be reaching out to the public and updating websites and information. That's what we foresee so that everyone can stay on the same page and understand the progress and address any concerns or issues along the way. So our— one of our number one goals is to of course, ensure safety, but also to mitigate any disturbances that may result as a part of construction.

Chris, one thing I wanted to mention, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in building the new Orem Temple, is doing weekly drone updates. That's pretty cool. I'm wondering if we could do that on the water tank as well.

I think we can. We'll do what we can. incorporate that to provide updates. I know we did something like that similarly with Big D Construction and fitness center, maybe not on a weekly basis, but I, I think that's a great idea.

Yeah, Ernesto Lizalde, our IT director, actually flies the drone for us, one of his hobbies on the side, so I'm sure he'd love to do it.

Right.

Jeff, if I could.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Sorry, thanks, Neil.

Um, as, as a close resident to the area, I think that I could also answer your question about neighborhood concerns. Um, you know, Chris has mentioned the importance of safety. I've got 3 young kids and a 4th on the way, and I appreciate the fact that, you know, there is going to be that public relations to help make sure, and the construction safety requirements to make sure that everything is safe. I don't really love the idea of potentially losing the playground equipment for a few years, but I definitely agree with the benefit to the city is far greater than, than that.

Yeah, not, not to be contrary to Chris or to Devin, but there will be a well that is drilled in this general location as well. Well drilling is not a simple, quick, or quiet operation. We have drilled 3 wells in the recent career past here. We've done a great job at that, reaching out and doing what we can for sound mitigation, but there will be some inconveniences. We will do everything possible, as Chris said, with shielding and curtains and sound dampening, but I don't want to present that there won't be a construction project of large magnitude happening there.

Thank you.

All right, any other comments? All right, well, thank you everyone that's been involved in this discussion. We'll now go ahead and move on to our next discussion, the creation of a Public Safety Advisory Commission and amendments to Article 2-22, Employee Appeals Board. For 30 minutes, we have Heather Shriver, Chief Josh Adams, and Chief Mark Sanderson.

Mayor, may I just make a comment that we set an appointment with Senator Kennedy at 4 PM, and so in the interest of, of Senator Kennedy's time, I'm hoping that we can just watch for his login. And if you don't mind, Josh and Mark, it might be necessary for us to to cut this discussion in several pieces, if that's okay.

Yeah, Jamie, that's just fine, and, and we'll try to be a lot faster than the 30 minutes that we have allocated. I'd like to share my screen for the first issue. Next week, we're going to be asking the City Council to consider creating a Public Safety Advisory Commission. So let me just share this screen with you all. Let me know if you see it.

Yes.

It's there? Excellent. Okay, due to the civil unrest we've seen across the nation during the last year, there's really a need for there to be important and impactful communication between the residents of the City of Orem and our public safety departments, both fire and police. We all know that our police departments are currently under significant pressure to make sure their practices and procedures are lawful and fair. And people want transparency when it comes to public safety. And we know that since the last legislative session, we've seen a lot of proposed legislation dealing with public safety and police issues. And right now we're looking at 30-plus bills that have already been drafted that the Utah State Legislature will be considering this session. And What we'd like to do— and those bills, I should just say, they're going to be addressing use of force issues, training issues, authority issues, and citizen review of public safety matters. So in an attempt to demonstrate that we're aware of those issues and that Orem is ready to lead out on these issues, and frankly to maintain as much local control over all of these concerns as we possibly can, we would like to move forward with this ordinance. Thank you. The chief of police, the fire chief, and city management will be asking the city council to consider enacting and creating a public safety advisory commission. So I'd like to go through kind of an overview of what this commission is going to do, and there are 8 points that I'd like to go through, and I will just literally read them because I want you to have a broad understanding and a of what this commission is going to do. First, they're going to act as an advisory board. I kind of see it as akin to the, the Public Works Advisory Commission that we have, but they will be advising both the fire department and the police department. They'll provide support and encouragement and input regarding community needs. They'll study, advise, and give input on the development and general philosophy surrounding public safety within our community. The commission will analyze and evaluate community expectations of the police department, the fire department, and our— the way that we deliver our emergency responses. An important part of this is that they're going to work to increase citizen awareness through direct engagement with the community, improve transparency, and improved accountability. They'll also be fostering positive and open communication with the community to enhance and build a level of trust between the Orem city residents and the police. I already think we have a high level of trust, but, but I, I think that this commission could be very helpful in increasing that level. They're also going to be involved in emergency response issues and emergency preparedness. We've seen the necessity of that over the last year. And finally, A goal of this commission is going to be to involve and try to represent the diverse community that we have here in the City of Orem. Just to go over the composition of the board, we are proposing that the commission be prepared— be composed of 7 members. 2 will be appointed by the police chief, 2 will be appointed by the fire chief, and 3 will be appointed by the mayor with the advice and consent of the city council. We are proposing that there be a city council liaison who will work with this commission That liaison will be appointed by the mayor but will not have a vote on the commission. The qualifications for serving on this commission will be: first, you need to be a resident of Orem, you need to be a registered voter, no felonious history or violent criminal history, and we would also like commission members to be willing to attend commission-related fire and police training so that they have a better understanding of the issues that are currently and always facing our public safety departments.

So, Heather, yes, if I could break in, are you including in that the police academy?

Um, that would be the proposal of the police chief, yes, is to have the commission members—

Citizens Police Academy.

Yes.

So, and the fire department would probably have something akin to that as well. Chief Sanderson would— Sanderson could speak better to that than I. A couple of duties and obligations that we'll be asking the commission to perform. They're, they're going to be meeting at least quarterly to discuss public safety issues. We'd like them to report at least annually to the City Council, and there may be opportunities for them to present recommendations to both the police department and the fire department. I skipped I skipped a slide here accidentally. I'm sorry, but I just want to be clear as I wrap up this presentation about what the commission is not, because we're hearing a lot about these civilian review commissions in the media and in our communities. And what the commission is not is, is not a civilian use of force review board, and it will not act as a civilian disciplinary review board. We have internal and external mechanisms already in place for both of those issues. This commission may be briefed on issues from time to time when it comes to, you know, use of force or discipline, but they won't have the authority to require either the fire department or the police department to accept particular policies, practices, or take any, any specific action. So with that, again, we'll be asking the City Council to through an ordinance next week to create this Public Advisory Safety Commission. And if there are any questions right now, I believe both of the chiefs are on the line with me, and we can take those questions now.

Heather, it looks like we have Senator Kennedy with us.

Perfect time to break.

If we could hold off, and we want to welcome Senator Michael Kennedy to our session, work session today. By way of introduction, Michael Kennedy was just elected to take Dan Hemmer's spot in the Utah State Senate, and he is a 3-term member of the House of Representatives, took a break out to run against Mitt Romney for the U.S. Senate, and is now back in the legislature again. So Senator Kennedy, we'd like to turn some time, about 20 minutes, over to you to, to have you introduce yourself and talk to us about the upcoming State Legislative General Session. And are you there? So I admitted him. I don't know if he has his mute on.

I'm here.

Test.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Can you hit your video and put the video on as well?

Yeah, for some fun reason, it looks like my video is not working, which I'll tell you, there's not much to see on this side of things. Can you hear me okay though?

Yeah, we'll just listen to you then.

Good. Well, it's good to be with you, and I appreciate all you do to serve the people. And mostly I want to take your questions. I think one of the most stunning things for me, we start the session a week from today, so I'm looking forward to serving the people in my district, which is 3 times bigger than when I served in the House of Representatives. But we went to the Senate caucus last Wednesday, and I was stunned to find out what I think all of you know is we've got a billion-dollar surplus. I thought for sure that we would have a significant shortfall considering the disastrous year that we've all been through, but instead we've got a surplus. And so you can imagine that one of the things that's happening is everybody has a request for just a few hundred thousand dollars here, a million dollars there, and they're going to be very motivated to spend all that money. I'm glad to see that Senate leadership as well as House leadership want to give that money back to the people that originated it, at least $80 million of that, which I'm in full support support of. But I— and when it's, it's easier when there's a shortfall, because in that case, the answer for most people is just no, we don't have the money, and so you can't do anything. But when it comes to a surplus, then it becomes more difficult of who gets what. So I'm curious—

Kennedy?

Yeah.

And maybe we could clarify that that is a one-time surplus.

Yes.

They do have a half a billion dollar ongoing surplus, What you're referring to is one-time money.

Yes, and the problem that you end up with there is the unbalance that can come is if we spend that one-time money on ongoing issues, then we can get into an imbalance in the future even though we have a surplus now. So thank you, Mayor, for that clarification. But I'll just say on my part, infrastructure is a big part of what I would like to focus on. I do think there are a lot of projects throughout the state, but particularly in Utah County, as we continue to deal with one of the greatest challenges that we confront, and that's growth, whether it be children in our schools or in the case of roads and tracks, Frontrunner trains, is there's a lot of growth issues that I think we confront that this money could be well utilized in one-time money to allow us to do the studies and prepare for infrastructure development projects. So the other interesting thing I'll share with the group is that there's There's discussion, and I was shocked to hear this, but I'm hearing the rumors and it's somewhat confirmed, although I'm not sure, of a bonding process to take out— I'm hearing $1.5 to $2 billion of bonds because a couple things. One, the interest rates are next to zero. So it's a great time if you're going to borrow money to borrow money. But in addition to that, construction costs I'm told there's 7-8% inflationary trends with construction costs year by year. And so it's better for us to bond and start now than it is to wait until things are more expensive down the way. I'm not a fan of bonding, but I am a fan of infrastructure early instead of infrastructure later. So it's one of those things that I'll carefully consider that. But Kay Christofferson, who is— he works American Fork and Lehi, he's transportation chair on the House side of things. He and I are gonna work in a collegial fashion. I've worked with him for 6 years in the House, and I know I can trust his opinion. There's other people that I know well in the legislature and also in the Mountainland Association of Governments who can advise me about that. But those are some things that are on my mind. I wanted to know from the council or the mayor any particular issues you had for me, questions that I could try to answer.

Well, we actually do, and we appreciate you asking that question. 2 things that we have need for are 2 road projects. And I have spoken with President Stewart Adams, the President of the Senate, and I've spoken with most of the representatives and senators from our area. The 2 projects we have is we have a new temple in the city of Orem for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which I am too.

That's outstanding. Congratulations.

Yes, and it's being built along Geneva Road in a section south of University Parkway and north of the Lakeview Parkway coming up from Provo. Both of those are 5-lane roads, and the road in front of the temple right now, Geneva Road, is 2 lanes. It's actually a country road with No streetlights, no curb and gutter, no sidewalks, mostly just a lot of dust and a lot of traffic. So that was kind of left out of the plans of UDOT. But in meeting with Carlos Bruceros, the CEO of UDOT, he did bring up that that had been forgotten and needed to be put back in. So it's been put back into the list. It's item number 25 on UDOT's priority list, and it's funded for $15 million. But the church is going to be building one lane along that road in the middle for a turning area. And the Lakeview Parkway is going to come up and tear that road up and make it into a 5-lane road in 3 to 4 years or whatever. So we would like to do it at the same time and make it a 5-lane road through there and not see it torn up twice, or not see money spent twice. So now we can see you.

Hey, how are you? I'm here, actually.

It's good.

So the reality is, if in fact we could get this in and approved this legislative session, that means this year, to be funded. We in fact could save probably about $8 million of the legislators' money by not doing this twice and by doing it in combination with the church. Now we've been in contact with the church. They're in favor of this approach. The leadership of the legislature is in favor of it. Kay Christofferson has been involved with it. UDOT is in favor, though they don't have the money for it. It would have to come from the legislature. And MAG is behind it, and we have a legislative committee of our legislators, which now includes you, who are behind it here in Utah County. So the idea would be is to get this passed. If in fact there was a road bond, it could be included in that. If there's not a road bond, the President of the Senate said he would personally work on making this a project that's approved before the legislature this year. So we would just like to ask for your active support in pushing this forward, because otherwise we're going to dig the road up twice, we're going to waste the money twice. It makes no sense unless we come together. And like I say, the North Road, the South Road are both 5 lanes that are going to connect. Let's connect them now instead of 3 years from now.

Excellent point. Thank you, Mayor. And I've driven on that road, and no offense to the road, but it's a miserable road. It's congested. It is not well maintained. And I, I've been disturbed just driving on it before the temple announcement was made. So I Even if, even if you weren't asking, I would be invested in that concept. And you are asking, and that means even more to me. $15 million, is that accurate as far as the money goes, eminent domain?

And that is a— that is an estimate from UDOT. I can't tell you if that's entirely accurate, but I think it's somewhat close. The key factor in all of this is the timing. So the temple groundbreaking was in September, and their estimated construction time is 22 to 24 months. Well, September was 4 months ago. And so now we're down to 18 to 22 months. And to do a 5-lane road in there in the next, you know, 18 to 20 months means it really does need to be passed by the legislature This session, so construction can start.

Why, um, Kay and I, so we were invested in Thanksgiving Point Interchange, and that it's, it's, I'm hearing from everybody, it's still a disaster, but it's less of a disaster now than it was. And I think that total project when we voted on that in 2017-18 was up to $400 million. I can't remember, but $15 million, honestly, Mayor, That's— you find that on the couch cushions at the Capitol.

It's—

that is, that is not a big ask. And if we can't get that, frankly, I'd be shocked. But definitely whatever sway that I have, I would utilize in that direction. But I want to know what else is on your, your mind because—

So then the second, the second one is 1600 North coming from I-15 going to State Street. So we have 4 exits off the freeway. All of them are 2 lanes each direction, with the exception of 1600 North, which is 2-lane that goes down to 1 lane each direction, and then over to State Street. It gets backed up very heavy from one stoplight over at State Street all the way down to 1200 West. So A few years back, MAG mentioned that they had some money for preservation money for roads. And so I requested that our city— and I worked with Jamie on this— and we applied for preservation money to buy houses. There's 30 houses on the south side of the road that, if that road is widened to 2 lanes each direction, need to be purchased. and taken out to widen the road. The north side of the road has high-capacity lines from Rocky Mountain. It has a school, it has 2 churches, it doesn't make sense. So we've already collected that $3 million and purchased some homes. We then worked with Senator Dan Hemmert trying to get $14 million in last session. But as you remember, the last session last year produced a— what they called a skinny budget. Well, in the skinny budget, we ended up with $4 million for this road, which is excellent. And then we have worked with UDOT to turn this road over to UDOT because it's going to be a $25 to $30 million ask to do all this. And they have taken it over and we've given it to them. Together with the $4 million and the $3 million. So I think we've— Jamie, you could correct me— I think we purchased 5 to 7 homes. But we would like to see that move forward. But the word on the street is that's probably 5 or 8 to 10 years out.

Wow.

And that doesn't work with our traffic pattern. We need to have that move quickly. So we really need your help in that. section as well.

So we're looking at, let me make sure I heard the numbers, you said $25 to $30 million total to finish the project, is that what you're estimating?

To buy the 30 homes out, to widen the road, to do the 2 lanes, yes.

Pardon me, go ahead, yeah.

This is Jamie Davidson, but we have actually purchased 8 homes along 1600 North, and according to MAG estimates, the Mountainland Association of Governments, The Orem-Geneva Road project is approximately a $25 million project, and the 1600 North project that the mayor is currently discussing is about a $40 million project.

Oh, okay. Wow.

So add a million or two here or there.

Sure, just throw it around. If only I could have my hands on some of that, huh? Well, um, okay, that's serious money. And if I heard the priority right, is that The Geneva Road Temple is probably the bigger priority than the 1600 North.

It is because of the timing of it. So the Church is going to go ahead and put in a lane in the middle. And I don't know how much money they have designated for that. But if we combined our efforts, then that money would not be wasted. And they are, they are moving ahead with putting that lane in the middle. as they build the temple. So that's why it's very important that we, in this session, get approval and get money designated to put that road together, because we only have about 20 months to do it.

Yeah, and that one's gone from $15 to $25 million.

Good.

I mean, I still think that's a very reasonable project.

Remember, the Church is going to pay some of that because They won't have to do their lane. They could do it with us together as a joint project. So anyway, that'll help.

Yeah. Mayor, I haven't heard anything about this, but is there— I don't know the geography well enough to say, but is there any I-15 connectivity to that temple site? I mean, is—

Well, it connects right on 1200 South University Parkway, the BYU exit.

Right.

You come straight over to Geneva Road, take a left, and you go down about 2 blocks and you get to the temple site.

Well, the question is, how much traffic is going to that temple? And is there some— I mean, Carlos Preceros, I trust him implicitly, but I— and the engineers, it's disturbing. And in these meetings, when you talk to those engineers, they say, if you give me enough money, I can do anything. I'll build a bridge to the moon if you give me enough money.

Remember that Geneva Road is 5 lanes coming down to the BYU exit University Parkway, and the Lakeview Parkway coming up, which is already past the Provo River and going north, is 5 lanes.

So they're going to—

They're going to connect and they're going to be 5 lanes. So there's no sense playing with adding 1 lane now, waiting 2 years, 3 years, tearing it all up, Totally support putting in 5 lanes. It makes no sense.

Senator, Senator, this is Jamie Davidson again. The, the average trips per day along that stretch of Geneva Road is approximately 8,000 cars, 8,000 trips a day. The traffic along 1600 North is approximately 30,000 trips a day.

Wow.

Yeah, that's totally different.

So 30,000 trips a day down a 2-lane road.

What will the temple— so when the temple is built, what kind of traffic? 8,000 trips or double, do they estimate? What's the change in that?

No, they don't say it's going to double, but they have done— the Church has done a traffic study. And it shows that if it stays the way it is, that the stoplights fail and the roads fail.

Thank you for that forewarning of what we should be fighting for. And I like both the projects. I work in Linden. I'm just a few miles away from that 1600 North, and also, no offense, but a bit of a miserable stretch of road and needs to be adjusted. And my own selfish purposes, I'd like to see that changed as well because I use that interchange regularly. Good. What else? What else on your mind?

This is, this is Debbie Luray.

Hello, Debbie.

I'm great, thank you.

We all know that growth is coming significantly and affordable housing is becoming a main issue. And I guess I'd like to say to you, we are dealing with that. We have different parameters. We have a housing study. I really hate it when the state really mandates to us what we really should do. And I understand there are certain problems, but we, we like the idea of those who govern closest to the the people understand. And that principle is very important to me. I'm just going to put that out there, that we understand it's a problem, we know it's a problem, and if you do a lot of heavy-handed stuff, you'll get pushback from the cities.

Good, you should. And I, you know, it's always the, we all want local control until we want to control the locals, is what we say up there at the Capitol, and it's offensive. I've never felt that the state in this, in the circumstances of schools, and as a doctor, I'm bossed around all the time by insurance and federal government, so I'll just say If I'm stepping on the toes of Orem City, please, or anybody that has concerns, I want to know about that, but I'm hands-off when it comes to that sort of thing. I think the city and the county are better suited to make these decisions than the state in many cases. Thank you.

And we do know affordable housing, and we know a lot of it is our own children who are staying, and, and so we know it's a problem and it's something we're working on. We certainly would Welcome working with the League to come up with solutions, but please don't be heavy-handed with us. That's my petition to you.

Thank you. Is there some— are you aware of some bill where they're gonna mandate a certain amount of affordable housing?

There's always speculation, and Heather probably could pipe into this, but I've heard everything from making certain percentages have to be affordable. Land use is always a concern. And so, Heather, do you know of any specific bills?

I don't know of any specific bills that dealing with, dealing with percentages. There are going to be some bills that would provide the cities with additional tools, perhaps, to help with affordable housing. There are some bills that will propose some changes to site and subdivision plan approval. that might be seen as stepping a little bit into the realm of local control. So we're not sure what's going to be out there completely, but those are a couple of the issues that we see coming down the pike.

I'd like the council and mayor— and Mayor Bryant, you and I have had interactions before— I just, I want you to give me feedback. Many of these things will start in the House, and I'm waiting in the Senate. Frankly, I'm busy with what I'm doing that I'm not aware of or hearing about what's coming that I need to be concerned about. But I'd like all of you, if you have concerns or questions, can I give you my personal cell number and please text me? I don't need a dissertation. I don't need 3 pages of justification. What I need is an HB 321 stinks, vote no, signed whoever. And, and then if we want to talk more about it, we can. But my cell number is 385-268-9458. That's 385-268-9458.

Okay.

And I'd like any one of you to please send me information if you have it. As you know from your service, there's a lot of information out there. I need, I need reliable information, and I need information that is on time or effective that way. So I'm in Health and Human Services and Judiciary in the Senate, and I'm on Social Services Appropriations, so I'm not directly impacting these kind of infrastructure development components, but I definitely have— I mean, there's 24 Republicans in the Senate, we're a supermajority there, and we sit together for lunch every day, and whoever's making those decisions, Of course, Stuart Adams is a big part of that, but I'd love to advocate for our community to make sure we get what we need.

Thank you, Dr. Kennedy.

You're welcome.

So, Senator, in the past, Utah County legislators have had a breakfast at 7:30 on Wednesday mornings there in the Senate building. I'm thinking you're probably still going to be doing that.

Apparently it's Friday morning at 7 AM. So if anybody's got any input— and Utah County is strong, we're almost a county of the first class, and we're meeting— Brady Brammer just sent out the 7 AM every Friday, we're getting together during the session so we can have—

We may be coming up to visit with you there.

We'd love to have it, although COVID is making it harder for anybody to interact, but I enjoy those kind of in-person interactions.

Sure. And Heather Shriver has mentioned accessory dwelling units also. You know, it seems like every year, half the year is spent on offense, things we'd like to see, and the other half is spent on defense, the things trying to hang on to our city and hang on to our legislative rights, as it were. So anyway, that's important to us.

Okay, well, keep me informed. Any other things that you wanted to talk with me about?

Anyone from the council have anything else? I think that's probably it for now, but I'm sure we're gonna want to communicate with you quite a bit.

Please do, and use that cell phone as you need to. Lately it's been Dixie State University and don't change the name or change the name. I'm like, look, we've got big issues to deal with. Dixie State University's name is not the top, but people get motivated about some things and just let other really important things slide by. But I'd like to hear from you about what is on your mind if you have issues, so please be in touch.

Well, great. So good to have you. Thank you for taking the time to come.

Thanks for inviting me. And have me back after the session or during the session. Love to do it again.

All right.

Thank you, Senator.

Thanks, Mayor and Council. Have a good day.

Okay. We'd now like to go back, if we could, for just a minute to Chief Adams and Chief Sanderson, if they want to mention anything on our previous discussion.

I don't have anything.

Okay. Chief Sanderson? All right, Heather, anything else you want to bring up?

No, we'll just be presenting that ordinance to the City Council next session for consideration.

So I think it's a great idea.

Thank you.

I have one question. Will these be 3-year terms, or what's the—

what's the idea here?

3 years, yes.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

All right.

Now, thank you, Heather. Now we'll move on to the Hale Center Theater Forum fundraising, 15 minutes. Cody Swenson and Jeff Fisher, if you're there, we'd love to put you on.

Mayor, this is Ryan Clark.

I'd like to do a quick intro if I could.

Sure, Ryan.

We've invited Jeff and Cody to give an update on their fundraising efforts. COVID has slowed down our, our goal of working on a new theater, but they've still been working hard.

So they're on the line, and Jeff, I believe, will present.

I've also invited Artie Woodbury and Chris Longson from the Woodbury Corporation, so if you have any questions for them as well.

And I'll, I'll turn it over to Jeff and Cody.

Thanks, Ryan, as always. Appreciate it. Thank you for giving us some time today to report on the new theater project at University Place. We're still excited. We're grateful to be alive, grateful to be in business. It's been a heck of a year. In fact, if you can't hear in my voice, I'm— a month ago I got COVID and ironically got it from a child who brought it home, and it's been a rough month healing. So this is my first week back. I want to thank all of you guys for your service as well. Each one of you have been wonderful to us, and we appreciate the mayor and the staff as well as the council and everybody for everything you do. So it's been a challenging year since the Ides of March. You know, literally the middle of March, we shut down the theater for a quarter. So 3 months of being closed was, was difficult. We pivoted and did some Hail at Home theater where we created some stuff that people could stream. We did everything we could to be scrappy and keep ourselves moving. It actually worked well. We were excited about that. We lost more than $1 million in revenues this past year, and we feel fortunate through the federal CARES Act that was kindly distributed through the federal government, state, the city, and the county that we were able to get back over $1 million as well to help with, you know, donations and grants and things of that nature. So we feel pretty blessed that we made it through 2020. And here we are in 2021. Looking back is what we were asked to do by Ryan, that even through all these challenges, we received over $2.5 million on top of the million-dollar-plus for the operations. We received $2.5 million in donations from 2 donors, with the possibility of another $1.5 million from one of those donors, which brings our total of donations up to $3.5 million. We unfortunately lost one of our donors, a half-a-million-dollar donor, because they are in charge of a nonprofit organization that was struggling and needed to put their resources into that to keep it alive. And we told them we completely understand, we're personally going through that, and we told them that we hopefully see them on the other side of when things are better and maybe they can come join us again on the project. But in general, combined funds, if we're able to pick up the county and the state funds as we talked about, we need to secure another $6 million in private funds to be able to get us to our goal, which is what we're still shooting for. We think that the pandemic set us back about 12 to 18 months in context to raising the capital that we need to begin construction. But we also are very optimistic that that dollar amount, $6 million, could be something we could pick up. We think that's very reasonable. To be candid with you, sitting and listening to Laura's conversations about bond rates, boy, the fire is hot. It sounds like we need to maybe meet with the council and meet with the mayor and Jamie and his team and do some creative thinking, we may be able to take on some more debt ourselves even, which is something I was resistant to there in the beginning, but there could be some opportunity there. So anyway, that's kind of our quick overview. Cody, do you want to add anything to that?

No, you've covered it really well, but I was going to say what Jeff just said, that the fact that those bond rates have come down so far from, from where they were when we first started discussing bonds. It's a little bit of a game changer, so we'll have to really explore that.

So they're actually down 40% in the last 28 months, to give you an idea.

That's incredible.

And we were— the thing to remember is the 10-year bond just went up, and You know, we heard what Laura said, but at the same sense, the federal government's going to borrow another trillion dollars to put out the $1,400 checks to make it $2,000 per resident. And consequently, the debt levels of the federal government are going up, and there's concern with the debt levels going up that in fact the, uh, some of the interest rates may go up. So, you know, we have to wait and see what the new administration has to say, but it's a little disturbing to hear that the bond rate on the 10-year bond went up above 1%. Anyway, I don't know how close you follow that, but—

Uh, we actually follow it pretty closely, but I, I had not heard that they were— when, when Laura was doing some of those figures today, to be candid with you, I was like, wow, let's think some of these things out a little bit. So Jamie and Ryan and team and those of you that we've met with, we maybe want to get together and, Bren, help us think through some of this again with Artie. There could be some opportunities that we could move quicker depending on that window of opportunity, especially with some of the infrastructure money that we've also heard coming up that may be available. So Without being— I know that we're short on time, and so time saved is great, and so I'll be quick. But just for those of you that maybe don't know or haven't heard as much about us as in the past, some of you have. We basically are about a $3.5 million business. We were almost approaching $4 million with our budget until this past year, and then of course We've modified that for '21, but we do about $15 million of economic benefit to the state of Utah, specifically in Utah County. We are the largest performing arts— presenting performing arts organization in Utah County, hands down, and we are right around the 4th or 5th largest in the state of Utah. We're right behind Shakespeare and Pioneer Theatre. So the largest 2 theaters are Hale Sandy and Tuakon. Those are the 2 largest. Again, those are groups that produce and present their work. Very different than Eccles Theatre downtown that is a venue that hosts shows coming in. We actually create our own. So in short, that's— we see about 150,000 people a year coming through the theater, and we anticipate that that will actually double as we go into this new facility. So all those numbers will jump almost twice. So any questions from the mayor or the council or staff?

So just a quick one. It appears that your attendance is excellent at the theater, but I know that you have to abide by the restrictions. Just curious how that's playing out.

Yeah, so socially distanced seating has clearly been an issue for our budget. That too, along with closure, is what has created some of the challenges. As many of you know, we were at 100%, so we were full every show at 300 seats. And so to turn around and have to restrict those seats back and be less full has been a big deal on our budget. So, but we've been fortunate, those seats, most of them have been full. So we've had a couple of weeks and shows and a couple of days where we've had to try to do some incentives. Shop in Utah was great and some others as well.

I just wanted to add, I saw Blink and Sense and Sensibility and the quality has not diminished. It was super fun and I've got tickets for The Importance of Being Earnest next week. I just want you to know I've been very impressed with your precautions, the safety, the security, and the quality has not diminished. So I just want to say thank you very much, and I look forward to the day when we can have filled theaters again.

As do we.

Boy, thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Thanks, Debbie. So Cody's wife, to put a plug in, is in one of the casts for this show.

Ernest.

So it's a great show. And then just quickly, David Smith, one of our employees, and his friend actually wrote Blink. So it was pretty cool that we were able to put that show in, and we got so many great reviews from this coming-of-age show of your kids growing up. And I'm glad you enjoyed those. So Debbie, it's always good to see you at the theater, and many others in there that we see at the theater as well.

Well, I'm a theater lover, so I'll be there as much as I can.

Good.

Well, thank you both. Appreciate having you with us, and thanks for the update.

You bet. Thanks.

Nice to see you all.

Thanks again to Ryan and Jamie and Brandon, everybody for supporting us. So appreciate you.

You bet.

Thanks.

All right, let's go ahead and move on to a presentation on the CIP 2020 year in review and 2021 preview. Sam Kelly and Taggart Bowen. our presenters.

Thanks, Mayor. We just thought we'd give, give you guys a brief little summary of what we've done this past year with our CIP and then what you guys can expect on this upcoming construction season that straddles our fiscal year. So we'll start off with Taggart Bowen. He's our Design Section Manager, and he will give you a brief summary of what we did this last year in case you guys didn't get a chance to drive around All of our construction projects this last summer.

All right, thanks, Sam. I appreciate the opportunity to share— just do a year in review of our capital improvement projects. Share my screen here and let's see. So let's see, you guys see this Google Map here? That's showing up, Sam?

Yeah, I see it.

Okay, so when I say it's been a challenging year, I'm sure everybody can relate to that in different ways. Has been an interesting year for design, and our job is to design capital improvement projects, and then we bid them out, and then we assist in the construction management. And so it's been a year that I feel like our staff's worked really hard to adapt and to make sure we continue to produce and design projects and then make sure we take care of the residents. And one of the enjoyable things of our job is to— we get to see a project in the planning infancy stages all the way through to completion and construction. And also an enjoyable part of our job is we get to interact with residents and property owners, and we had to learn to do that in a little bit different way this year just through the different restrictions we had. And, um, but it was, uh, it's definitely an interesting year. So just to start off, we were able to complete about $7.5 million worth of projects, capital improvement projects this year. And then in addition to that, we helped out with the library hall and the fitness center site plans. And so just as I work my way through these different projects, if anyone has any Any questions or comments, feel free to speak up there. Just turn these off and then I'll just turn on our— So our roads project was— each year we do an annual roads project, which is about— this past year was about $1.7 million, and the contractor was Kilgore. So just looking at this map, you can see that the different areas we started up in the northwest area of Orem where we did asphalt and road base reconstruction. You can see it from the picture here. This is at about 760 West looking west where We dug out the road base and asphalt and replaced that to get a nice smooth surface here. And that was part of a project where we started a few years ago with repairing the utilities, and we were able to finish it off just this last summer with a brand new surface of asphalt. Kilgore did a good job with that. And then another one of our areas here was we were able to do a profile mill and overlay of the City Cemetery Road, just there highlighted in red. I'll just kind of jump around here through different parts of the roads project. We also— this is close to Councilman McDonald there, your neighborhood. We were able to do a lot of work on Palisade Drive this past summer where we put in a lot of stormwater utilities. Let's see as I pull that up here. We were able to do— put in just through the overall project about 55 ADA ramps through the whole city. And then throughout Palisade, we were able to put in 17 to 18. 17 to 18 ADA ramps. Sumps and pretreatment structures. So did a lot of utility work there, and this coming year we'll be doing more work there with asphalt, finishing the surface up there with mill and overlay. And down in the south area of Orem, we were able to complete just a few overlay areas. And then another nice part about this project, and then another project we were able to work on, is completing the curb gutter and sidewalk through this area. And just to kind of show you there, here's a picture of— this property here is owned by Xiaohua Stewart, a really nice lady who we were able to work with. coordinate with to get curb, gutter, and sidewalk put in through this area. And as you look down the road toward Main Street coming to the west, able to finish that piece off. So now there's sidewalk through this area here. And then on another one of our projects, also on 2000 South, we were able to finish off curb, gutter, and sidewalk here on 250 East, and then on Also for the owner who lives here at this property. And so those have been some enjoyable projects to work on just to see these nice improvements go in to provide that curb, gutter, and sidewalk. And then down the south side of the road as part of our 2000 South utility projects, we were able to put in curb and gutter for residents along there. So jumping back to this map here. So jump into the next project. We were able to work on the Geneva Park parking lot. So just It's been a project that it's been nice to see the progress there with a new sports court, new playground. And then here we have the— an older street view on Google of— this is what the park looked like with the playground there. And then Because we added all these amenities and made this a nice park to, to go to, and as well as the parking needed for this preschool over here, we were able to add a new parking lot this past summer. And so here's just some pictures of that. Looking at the top picture here, the picture of the asphalt— Or sorry, the road base after we put the utilities in, and then here's the asphalt in this bottom picture with the striping and then the sidewalk put in. So we're able to complete that park and it looks really good. And that was done by Geneva Rock. Another project is here in the green. This was a project where we hired Condie Construction to come in and complete utility rehabilitation project. They came in and were able to put in a new sewer as well as water line improvements. There's a stormwater sump structure that they were able to put in near Memo Drive, which was also reconstructed, so Turned out to be a really good project that started out as a sewer replacement project, and then we ended up adding in water, roadway improvements, as well as— it's a picture of Orem Boulevard and 400 North. We put in a sewer to help take care of an issue there with that area of the sewer.

Some other improvements.

Just something I'll let Sam talk more about this as well, but down on 2000 South, which is a project that— turn that off here— shown in the purple, we're able to put in quite a bit of storm drain, larger storm RCP reinforced concrete pipe the past summer from just east of Main Street all the way up to 250 East, and then we'll be finishing off the rest of that this coming summer with Lance Excavating. And we're also— we'll be doing waterline improvements and as well as roadway improvements. And this coming summer we'll be finishing that off with some asphalt overlay improvements as well. So this has been a challenging project and also very rewarding to see. You can see some of the pictures here just to see. If you look at this top picture, it kind of shows there the— What it looked like before with the shoulder and these power power poles that had to be relocated, so it took quite a bit of coordination to do that. And then this middle picture here with the new asphalt and curb and gutter. And then during the paving operations, just pouring the asphalt in the hopper there. And it's been great to work with the residents down there and been really good to work with a lot of them, about a dozen owners we to get easements on the south side of the road, so that's been really great to work with. And I just want to leave plenty of time for Sam here, so I'll just quickly move through these. Just to review some of these other projects we've been working— we were able to complete. Just recently we hired a contractor to come in and work on the Center Street, State Street storm drain project, and they're able to complete that in a weekend work and coordinate with UDOT. You can see this top picture just shows the subcontractor. Saw cutting out that area that needed to be replaced as part of that new stormwater structure and pipe that was put in. Here's a subcontractor putting the concrete in and then putting the final touches on the concrete here, which was rapid-set concrete that can actually drive on within hours of putting that in, which was an Interesting process to watch that. It was a pretty expensive and really good project that was something that was very needed. Jump into the next project here on 800 East and 200 North, working with the school district. We were able to complete the Cascade Hawk pedestrian signal as part the traffic and just to make it safer for pedestrians, mostly the school students there, able to put up a hawk signal. And the school district teamed up with us on a 50/50 cost share for that project.

Do you know how much that project cost in total?

Yeah, it was just a little over $100,000. That one. So, and that was something that—

$100,000 for our side or $100,000 total?

It was just over $100,000 total for material and labor.

Okay.

And so that was done by B. Jackson Construction. And it's a great improvement. It was a great opportunity for us to team up with the school district and, and put that in for them and get the design done and kind of coordinate that so that that's made that area safer for them. Let's see, jump into our next project. Another Traffic improvement project we did this past year was this 400 North Mighty Light crosswalk project, which was done by a contractor, FT Concrete. And this is a picture of them as they're pouring the concrete, the median curb, pliable ends. And then this bottom picture here is just kind of hard to see there, but that's just the finished improvements. And turned out to be a pretty good project, was done pretty quick. And that's also another project we teamed up with Mighty Light to share the cost on that one.

Yeah, they have buildings on both sides of the street, north and south, and their workers are going back and forth all the time right there. So that's a really needed project.

Yeah, I think it provides us that safety element that was missing, and hopefully they'll be a great benefit for them and safer as they're crossing back and forth between their businesses there. Just a few more here. Got the— this project we're just wrapping up, it's over on 800 North and 1100 East. We're able to You can see here, this is a before and after. Some nice improvements we were able to do there in that corner of property owned by the city. Just a little triangular piece there at the corner of 800 North and 1100 East, just next to the Murdock Canal Trail. And the contractor we hired was able to put in some nice landscaping improvements there. And Nice little spot. Looks a lot nicer than it did before. So just another project that was been 2 or 3 years coordination and planning and then being able to— probably just a year or 2, actually, but Here on the City Center campus, just a few pictures of new charging stations that were put in this past summer. Got one near the City Center, one here south of Public Safety, and then on the north side of the library as well as at the courthouse building. So, so some of these, these last projects here These are just some miscellaneous projects with some pictures. Our main focus is on roadways and utilities and helping Public Works out with different projects that they have, and then also includes parks projects, miscellaneous projects. This is one of those that we helped out with our street section to design and— Helped to manage the construction of the spray tank building, which is a nice feature for them to have over down at Public Works. And the last 2 here, I'll just show some pictures. We're all very familiar with these— the library. There's just a picture of the inner courtyard and then the outside of the library there, as well as the fitness center. Spent a lot of time this past year These 2 sites with our team and did a great job of designing and making sure to get the sites to meet our standards. Got some nice pictures here of the demo. This top picture, we've got the contractor putting curb and gutter islands in with some rough grading there, and then here's the grader machine with doing some final final grading, and then got your asphalt there at the bottom. So it's been a great, a great year for our section and appreciate all the hard work they've done. And if anyone has any questions, comments, or—

So Mayor Davey, I got a question on the charging stations. What are those costs? Are they subsidized by the government or—

Yeah, the charging stations, they were actually part of the Volkswagen emissions. So, there were penalties and as part of the making up for those penalties, there were grants that millions of dollars money that they had to provide projects for emissions mitigation. And so we did have to come up with the money originally for those, and then we were reimbursed the full amount for those. That was a nice project to get, get these in as part of that. So we had to go through a long application process and filled out a lot of paperwork that met all those requirements through the state and then they reviewed that with the Volkswagen folks. But we did get all those stations put in, paid for through that grant reimbursement. So that was nice.

That's great. Thanks, Taggart.

Unless there's anything else, uh, go ahead and turn the time over to you, Sam.

Sweet, nice job, Tag. So I know you guys are probably so excited you can barely stand it. So as soon as Tag gets done sharing the screen, I'll put up mine because I'll show you the map of where the residents will live that will be calling you complaining about our projects. I don't know how else to put it, but that's usually probably the most simple way to put it. Just to start off, just to give you a little bit of a heads up, the more brighter colored green are going to— it's going to be our sewer rehab project. Those small little addresses there with those thumbtacks are going to be manholes that we'll be doing some work at the end of some cul-de-sac areas. The major project for our sewer rehab is going to be in this area just to the east of where we did our last project. This project is funded by the routine maintenance as well as H2S rehabilitation. So in this area, we will be putting in new mainline, trying to have it set to grade so that we don't have any maintenance issues, meaning we have to get in there and clean, and/or if the pipe is deteriorated. So that's what our sewer rehab project is. The areas in red are going to be microsurfacing, which is a little bit different than our asphalt overlays. But we do go in there with a surface treatment to refresh that pavement surface. The orange areas are going to be where we will actually be doing an asphalt overlay and/or reconstruct. As you can see, to Tag's point, we will be coming in this year putting down a new asphalt surface on Palisade Drive. Along with that project, we will also be adding our speed tables. We took out all the speed bumps And went back and put in a speed table. The speed table, if you guys get a chance to go down to the fitness center, it's going to be a concrete structure that has anywhere from a 3 to 5-inch rise with ramps on the side. So they won't be nearly as abrupt as the speed bumps, but they should reduce speed but still allow for hopefully better response times for public safety. That's usually the biggest complaint about speed bumps, speed tables. Is that one, it's hard for public safety and/or our plow folks to maintain that road, but the sad— but the positive to them is that they're really good at reducing speed. So that is going to be what we will be doing for our roadway projects. Like Tag said, we will be finishing off this 2000 South utility project. We will be paving it all the way through Main Street down to Close to the park. We still have to finish off the rest of this part of this with the area in blue being new water main, the area in magenta being new storm drain, and then we do have a small piece of sewer that, that is part of that project as well. You will likely get a lot of calls from this Country Woods area. We will be putting in a brand new water main in this area, and as you can tell, it's pretty tight. Actually, I consider it a utility nightmare. I personally wouldn't have bid this project, but we needed to have it done, so I didn't, but someone else did. Anyways, this is going to take a lot of time. It'll probably be a little conflicting with— actually, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't have too much of an impact on the construction traffic for the temple since their main construction access is here off of Geneva Road. But this will likely have a lot of questions, comments, complaints, because it's going to take some time to install the water main through, through here with all of the other laterals, both sewer and water, and trying to keep them in service. A project that we will be getting on here shortly within the week with this Golden Pond Phase 7 project that's happening, we're also going to combine some efforts with the contractor on site and put in this storm drain master plan project. We will be installing a 54-inch pipe from Springwater Park that will discharge into the Clegg/Golden Pond, as well as putting in a brand new outfall structure here so it can actually discharge the amount of stormwater that, that comes in while still maintaining the elevation of the pond. The hope is to get this portion of it done here within the next few months as to not interrupt the Golf Course Act activity, because if we don't get any more snow, people will be golfing sooner than we think. Trying to think another project that's going to be big. Yes, you guys did discuss the 10 million gallon tank. We will look to have that project RFPs out soon with a designer on board and likely be moving dirt this late summer, fall. We'll actually start with that project with the tank in this area and then a well house. Pump station in close proximity to that. This big yellow area is where we're going to be starting out with our street lighting Phase 2. We finally got most of those agreements in place for the easements, so we'll start that here before too long. We will advertise that project. We will also be re-advertising the Center Street Hillside landscaping project. We did put that project on hold when we did the library and the fitness center in case we needed some extra funding for change orders. Those projects both came in as expected, so we now have that extra money and we will do that work as well as far as getting that done and buttoned up. We also have some intersection improvements that we're going to do. We did have an email from the mayor concerning some of the traffic operations here. I know Taylor did some signal work that seems to be working better, and now with this project we have, we're actually going to extend the right turn pocket and do some other things, some striping to make that a little bit more—

Sam, just to let you know, by changing the flow of the lights, it has made all the difference in the world. So What happened is the exit and entrance to Harmons kept getting clogged up due to the left turn lane, and by actually changing the left turn lane headed north where that yellow line is to coincide with the straight flow traffic, it clears everything out so that the people going in and out of Harmons now can do so well and not get stuck. So it's worked really, really well. And I hope that those streetlight changes and the direction flow will now stay the way they are. I know you're going to widen the road, but I hope you don't change how those lights work because they're working really well right now.

Well, if it was up to me, I wouldn't change those, and I don't think they will, but there is that chance that something could happen, someone could switch it, but I highly doubt it. I think With what they've done now, Taylor's aware of it. It'll likely stay where it's at. We will also be doing with that project, we will be extending this left turn pocket here out here at Center Street, which will just allow this exit here closest to State Street just to be a right-in, right-out. So we won't be able to make a left out of there anymore. We will actually be extending that median back a ways.

So on 8th East going north of 8th North, you have a red line right there. And I might have missed it. Keep going north. Keep going up north to— there you go. So what is that red line then?

The red line here is going to be a microsurface. So we'll come in, it looks like a slurry, it's a little heavier. It actually wears better because there's more traffic in that area.

Plus, Are you taking part of the surface off of the road?

No, no, no, we'll actually just be adding a small little structural component to that.

Okay.

We also have— I'm glad you brought me up to this area because we also have a water main project that we will be doing in here. Initially, we thought that there were some groundwater issues in here and that we would have to put in some storm drain pipe to pick up that water and then convey it down here into our storm system. But as we've gone out and potholed, we actually realized that this water main is leaking a lot more than we had originally thought. So now we will actually be putting in a new water main project up in this area. And it's incidentally, this area was— we, back in the mid-2000s, we actually did a water bond. And a lot of the piping in this area was replaced with that bond. This area at the time did not have a lot of maintenance, didn't have a lot of leaks, and was not part of that. But now that we found out that it is leaking, we will come in here and do this project as well.

So, Sam, can you keep the screen just the way it is right now? If you go north of the blue water main work you're going to do right along the Murdock Canal right there. Yeah, don't change it. Go back if you would.

It—

yeah, you're getting, you're getting mini. If you can get max, go back to where you can— it's bigger.

Tell me when.

The other way, you're going the wrong direction.

You want it so you can go big?

Anyway, we're— yeah, right there. That, that field right there above 2,000. You keep going smaller. If you go back the other way, Oh, it must be a lag.

I'm sorry.

You can just keep it big and leave it there for a minute.

How's that?

A little bigger. Okay, right there. If you could just stop and not go mini. Okay, so that field right there next to the track, uh, is a field where everybody plays lacrosse and whatnot. But the area that I wanted to show is just to the north of that, and that field that you see just to the north is the new site for the Lindon Temple. So they have purchased— I mean, they've had donated to them all the homes along that field. And that entire field, there's 14 acres right there. And that's where the new Lindon Temple is going.

Oh, wow.

So it's just north of 2000 North, just to the west of the Murdock Canal. But that's where the temple site's going to be. So, I don't know yet how the traffic will play out. But, you know, you can see the 2 roads coming out to the east and the west of this site. But that is the new temple site.

Interesting. That is good to know. I'll have to make a note to coordinate with Lyndon to see what they plan on doing there. Because you're right, that'll change a lot. Because I would imagine, portion of Orem that, that will be their assigned temple. So traffic patterns in here are going to change a lot.

The interesting thing is that temple is going to be 80,000 square feet, where the Orem Temple is 70,000 square feet. And they're making a few special changes with this temple, I think related to the size of the baptismal area.

Interesting.

But you'll have a lot of traffic there is what I'm saying that is now going to flow on to 2000 North.

Yeah, it's either going to be there or it'll be along the street in Linden, and I don't know which street that is, but either way, yeah, it's going to get busy. I think the only other thing I was going to discuss is we are looking at With all of the impact fees and utility master plans, we are doing an update to our transportation master plan and currently evaluating signals, both— probably one, it'll just be one signal, but looking at the areas of 4th North, 8th East, as well as 4th West, 4th South.

And then I—

and then too, likely as well, just as a side note, it's not a major CIP project, but we are looking to make this little 200 East and 12 South an all-way stop. We've been looking at that. There seems to be some concern. Traffic analysis, it's meeting some warrants. The queues aren't backing up into this signal, so likely you'll see some sort of a change in traffic pattern here, like likely a 4-way stop. Other than that, are there any other questions? I'm sure you guys are super thrilled. Engineers, we're kind of an exciting bunch. We just get excited about boring things, really. But anyways—

It's good to know ahead of time. Yeah.

Any other questions, comments, concerns? Thank you for your time.

Okay, you bet. Thank you, Sam and Taggart. Now go on to a presentation, FEMA Utah Strong Recovery Project. Cindy Wilmhurst is here. Cindy, are you unmuted? You okay?

Yes, I'm unmuted. I just need to be able to share my screen.

I just gave you those permissions, Cindy.

Oh, fabulous. Okay, thank you so much. I appreciate you all having me. I also want to thank Jackie Lambert for facilitating this tonight for us. I am with the Department of Human Services for the State of Utah, the Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, and I'm a FEMA-trained counselor. And I'm going to share a little bit about— with you today about the Utah Strong Recovery Project. And I hope that you all can see this okay. If you could let me know, does everyone see that all right?

Yes.

We don't see anything yet.

Okay, let me see. I've shared it. Let's see. Um, okay, so that's right, you are on Zoom. So let me just see if I can—

Uh, so Cindy, you should be able to hit the share screen and then it should pop up with Select a window or application that you want to share.

Let's see here. If I hit, if I hit share or present, let's see. This is interesting here. If I hit the share, I'm in Google Meets right now, Google Slides.

Yeah, so you should be able to hit share screen and then it should have, uh, like your Google browser is one of the options, I think.

Okay, let's see here.

Yeah, share screen in the Zoom call.

Oh, okay, hold on just a second. Okay, let's try that. Okay, there we go. Okay, thanks. Um, boy, that's— can you see that now?

Yep.

Okay, let me see. I want to go to present. Can you see this now?

Perfect.

Oh, excellent. Thanks for your help on this. It's always a little confusing for me. Let me just kind of Minimize that. Okay, well, so anyway, I'm on the Utah County team for the Utah Strong Recovery Project, and the project is funded by FEMA. It's facilitated by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration out of Maryland on the federal level and operated again by the Utah State Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health. So the purpose of the Utah Strong Recovery Project is it's to assist people in finding ways to cope with the stressors of COVID-19 in the present and to help prevent persistent mental health problems. This program is happening in all 50 states. It might have a little bit of a different name, but the federal government is very concerned about the effects of— the long-term effects of the pandemic on people, those who have had COVID, those who have lost loved ones who have had COVID, those who are still struggling with COVID those who are worried about getting COVID, and just the impact on their lives, you know. have people that have lost jobs, all kinds of things. So I'd like to share with you a little bit. We were— Channel 2 News showcased us a little while back, and I just want to play this for you so you can hear a little bit more about this project.

This has tens of thousands of Utahns asking for help to survive COVID stress and anxiety. It's a program that just started in June to tackle the ever-growing demand for Regular people trying to get through the pandemic. Jim Spiwak found anyone in the state can access the information.

Jim?

Yeah, Mark, so there are counselors that can help people in every single county in the, in the entire state of Utah. And here's how it works. People can reach out to this program. They can email, they can call on their phone, and if they want to, they can even text. In this story, you're not going to hear from the people who have reached out for help with their COVID-related anxiety or stress. That's because the program set up to help is entirely anonymous. It's actually good that you don't need a name because we are free and a confidential program, so I don't have a person's name. Rebecca Minnick runs the Utah Strong Recovery Project. What is 50 counselors all over the state now started up the 3rd week of June, and they've already served more than 68,000 people. We are available to talk with folks that are struggling right now. Like the person who just recovered from COVID that reached out to Rebecca to talk to her right before she got to our interview. Man, it's really He's struggling right now because his friends, family, and coworkers don't want to be around him. They're afraid that he's still contagious and they're going to be sick. Rebecca says the anonymity is what propels people to reach out.

And nobody's broken here. I mean, we were all struggling with this very uncommon situation.

Rebecca says many times the people stressed out calling in for help are the same people who post perfectly happy pictures on social media.

I'm going to think there's really something wrong with me.

Not realizing that if I were to ask them how are they really doing, they're probably having that same anxiety and stress that you are. Even with all of the demand, Rebecca says the program has enough people on staff right now. And it's not just people reaching out to these counselors directly for help. These counselors will go to schools, elementary schools, middle schools. They're at the Maverick Center talking to folks, and they speak in front of groups of people to try to Give them tips on how to deal with a lot of this anxiety and stress. If you or someone you know wants to reach out, again, totally anonymously, we've put all the resources and the phone numbers that you can call, email, or text over on our website, kutv.com. We're live downtown on HMC Way.

Okay, so as you know, COVID is a new experience in our century. A lot of us have been FEMA-trained disaster counselors So they were— they've called us out and also hired new people to come help with this Utah Strong project. As you know, natural disasters are usually localized to a specific area. They're usually time-limited. Most people know how to escape the effects, and the source of the disaster is recognizable. But as you know, COVID-19 is everywhere. It's worldwide. There's an uncertain timeframe, even with the vaccine coming out. We have been told by the CDC that we're probably looking at at least another year of social distancing, mask wearing, hand washing, getting the vaccine as well. And as you know, it's invisible, so we can't detect it. And the only thing that really protects us from the, from the virus is behavior change, which is the things that I just talked about, which will save lives. You might want to ask yourself, where do you think your community is, the Orem community is? There's a phase of disaster to this, and this is a form of a disaster, this COVID pandemic that we've all been experiencing since March of last year. You might ask, you know, are we in the honeymoon phase, the disillusionment phase, are we in the reconstruction phase? And everybody might have a little bit of a different opinion on that. So as I finish and go through the rest of these slides, I'd like you to think about, if you would, as a city council, you know, how can we, as the Utah Strong Recovery Project counselors that are based throughout the state and especially here in Utah County, help your community? As you know, COVID has a mental health impact. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Harvard Medical School reported— and this is in June— that U.S. adults reported considerable elevated mental health conditions associated with COVID-19. As you can see there, they've had 31% increase of their depressive and anxiety symptoms, feeling stressed, 26%, people with substance use problems, 13%, and adults, some of them have seriously considered actually ending their lives. The Kaiser Family Foundation recently did a poll in California in July, but in late March after the pandemic hit, it was conducting Asking American Adults What Are Pandemic-Related Worries, were harming their health. 45% said they were, and then by the end of July, that figure had risen to 53%. And so I, I would be interested to find out if they'll do another poll here in California and give us some idea perhaps what's happening here in Utah too with people. We're hoping maybe with the vaccine rolling out now, maybe it'll lift people's spirits a little bit. But as we know, people are still struggling. Just some mental health— some more mental health statistics. Young adults, racial and ethnic minorities, essential workers, and unpaid adult caregivers experience disproportionately worse mental health outcomes, increased substance abuse, and elevated suicidal ideation. Thankfully, Utah's suicide rate has not increased according to the Utah Department of Health, but 25.5% of young adults 18 to 25 reported that they had considered suicide. During this pandemic. And calls to the state suicide hotline have also increased. From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, again, this is March to last June, despite representing 24% of workers in all affected sectors— manufacturing, wholesale trade, and construction— Hispanic and non-white workers accounted for 73% of workplace outbreak-associated COVID cases. And from the Utah Department of Health in July, While our Latino population only makes up 14.2% of the entire Utah population, they account for more than 40% of the total cases of COVID-19 in Utah. And of course, you know, that's because they're some of our frontline workers. So Utah Strong is here. We serve all Utahns— individuals, families, nursing homes, service organizations, schools, homeless, cultural minority groups, people in assisted living facilities. We have actually have had people out and working with our Native American tribes who've also been hit disproportionately. We are offering free— this is being paid for by the federal government— we are offering free and confidential counseling to anyone in Utah who wants to talk. We have in-person outreach, virtual outreach like we're doing here on our computers, offering some emotional support, public education about how to deal with stress anxiety, depression, and we also give information and referrals for people that want perhaps to see someone else or if they need help with rent or utilities, anything we can do that they are— that they're struggling with, we are also offering referrals on that. So counseling provides an opportunity for people to talk about their thoughts and feelings about this experience. And some people, they, they just are— they feel isolated still because, as you know, we have— all of us just experienced a very unusual Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday probably than any of us have ever had before. We're also offering education groups on how to protect and maintain your mental health during this pandemic. We're offering support groups. We get people together online where they can offer encouragement to one another, share coping strategies, how they're handling things, and it gives them a sense of community and it helps them feel empowered. We have a statewide hotline now, a Utah Strong helpline. It's 7 days a week from 7 AM to 7 PM. There's people right now you could call, and, and that's one of the things Jim Spivak was talking about on Channel 2 News. We really want to get this out to people so they know how to reach us. This Utah Strong Recovery Project is funded by FEMA through June of 2021, this year. One of the things we've also been doing is we've been— I've been reaching out to, like I'm reaching out to your city, the City of Orem, and I've been also getting our information in their city newsletter that goes out with the utility bill because then it goes to individual names and families at unique addresses. And I'm hoping that maybe we can, we can work something out with you and Orem to do the same thing. And so I have my contact information here, and I'm happy to forward this PowerPoint presentation to whoever you want me to forward it to if you would like to look at it again. Again, we have other helpline supports besides the, besides the hotline. People can email us. We have a warm line for people that want to talk more often, and then we have after-hours help, which now will be at called the Huntsman Mental Health Institute, which was formerly known as UNI. That's rolling out now. We have a SAMHSA nationwide distress line. I want to thank you so much for having me today, and I just want to find out if we could take a few moments to talk and see if some things that come to mind of how I might be able to best help you in the city of Orem. And I'm trying to see how I can stop my screen sharing. There we go.

Well, Cindy, thank you for that presentation. I think getting that information out through our social media to the residents of Orem will be excellent.

And who would I work with for that, Mayor?

So you could talk to Steve Downs and he can get that set up with you.

Okay, I just want you to know I've also been meeting with police chiefs and all the county sheriffs that I'm involved with. And then we have a Utah Strong card that the law enforcement is handing out to people when they go out on calls. And I've actually met with your police chief as well. It's been very helpful. So we're just really trying to get the word out to people, just give them the support they need. Research has shown that at least 20%, close to 20% of people are really struggling while the 80% are doing fairly well. So I want to thank you for your support tonight.

Well, thank you. Appreciate it very much.

Thank you.

We'll need to move on on our schedule, but great to have you here.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mayor.

So let's go ahead and go to our agenda preview this evening. Our prayer this evening will be given by Tom McDonald and our pledge by Wrenn Bybee. On our consent items, we have 3. Approval of meeting minutes of December 8th, 2020. Appointments to boards and commission. One is a new one, Bill Blile, to the Summerfest Committee. And then we have 4 reappointments to the Recreation Advisory Commission: Danny Miller, Ember Harris, Skip McWhorter, Russ Byrd. Do all of you or any of you know those individuals?

Mayor, Bill, Bill Blyle, his wife's been serving on the commission and he's been attending with her and helping, and we just made it official.

Okay, and we know Bill. Any comments on those on the recreation reappointments? Dave Spencer, any comments from you?

I know them all. I think they're all, they're all good. I think Carl Hurst I agree with that too.

Okay, everybody okay with those appointments and reappointments? Okay, not hearing any nays. Our 3rd one is a resolution approving certain sections of the City of Orem's City Manager's Department retention schedule. Then going on to our scheduled items, we have a public hearing on a resolution This is the city will receive public comment on the Community Development Block Grant projected use of funds for CARES Act funding and consider approval of a substantial amendment to the 2019-2020 Annual Action Plan. Ken Ransom is our presenter. Kenna Jo Matthews, are you here, Kenna Jo?

She's, she's not here yet, but I can speak Okay. Yeah, this is, this is again some additional, the CV money, the additional CARES Act funding for CDBG projects. We have until September of this year to allocate all the money.

This is just another round of allocations to public services.

As we do in our traditional CDBG allocation process, us, Utah County, and Provo met together, looked at all the applications, And then each took our shares so that to make administrative— administratively this more convenient for the recipient of these funds. Kenna has the exact number. Her presentation will show what Provo and Utah County are doing as well. I still think we're left with about $270,000 to allocate between now and September after tonight's allocation.

Okay. All right, thanks, Steve. Our next scheduled item is a public hearing on an ordinance amending Article 22-5-3A and the zoning map of the City of Orem by changing the zone on approximately 1.96 acres from the R-20 zone to the R-12 zone at 925 South Carterville Road. Jason's our presenter. Jason, anything you want to mention on that?

It is just under 2 acres. It is consistent with the general plan, so they're just requesting it to go to R-12, and I'll have more information at the council meeting.

I noticed that the neighborhood meeting, there were no objections, just questions.

Correct.

Okay, then let's go back if we could before we go to the city manager items and see— hear from Jeff Lampson from our— on our city council on his Commission assignments. Jeff, are you there? Jeff, I think you're muted.

Sorry.

Yeah, so my, my 4, the 4 commissions that I serve on, I serve on the CARE Commission, and I believe that everything's went along nicely there. Steve, correct me if I'm wrong. I also serve on the Transportation Advisory Commission, and they're doing an awesome job there. I think one of their— the biggest projects that's been talked about the most of late is the roundabout down near UVU in Southwest Storham. They did a presentation at our City Council meeting not long ago about that. And then also the Natural Resources Stewardship Committee, and they, they've been working on recognizing some of this— the businesses in Orem that are basically going green, that are, that are doing all that they can to use renewable energy within their businesses. And so really excited about that. Also, our last meeting, we had a presentation. Sam Kelly and Brady were both involved in that one with kind of looking at the bike paths and the bike trails in Orem. And the idea was brought up again, Mayor, about doing a ride with the mayor if COVID will allow us to do so sometime in the Kind of late, late spring, early summer.

Love to do it if we can do it.

I told him you would— I knew you would be willing to do that.

So a lot of fun.

Yeah, sounds like a blast. And then also the last one is the Utah Lake Commission. And their main projects that they're focusing on right now are the Waucara Way, the trail, that bike and walking path that'll go along the west side of— or excuse me, the east side of Utah Lake. And with the help of Chris Shirkey and others, we're going to be able to help them with a project that'll be starting this summer, taking some dirt down to them that we'll be pulling out of the 10-million-gallon water station. So, and then also, they started, oh, just this fall, you might remember the 2 girls that drowned on the west side of Utah Lake. And so they, in Orem City, thank you to Kenna for kind of spearheading this. We were able to round up some donated life preservers that are at strategic places in different areas at Utah Lake so that if people are going to go out in a kayak or, you know, just playing in the water and they don't have a life preserver, then those are there for anyone to just grab and use and, and take with them out into the water. And then they, when they're done, they bring them back and hang them back on the rack. And then also something that they've, they've been working on is the, the June sucker recovery program. And I found this interesting. I didn't know this, but the June sucker— Utah Lake is the only place that the June sucker exists. And it got its name, the June sucker, because it spawns during the month of June in Hobble Creek and Provo River. And so the federal government has been— they've been spending a lot of time and energy in that regards, making it possible to help that species of fish that's unique to this area, to the Utah Lake. And they just announced that it's been on the endangered species list. They just announced that it will very soon be moving from the endangered list to the threatened list, which is good news for the June sucker. That has only happened 4 other times with different species of fish that they've been able to help revive them and help them, I guess, thrive a little better. So they're not thriving yet, but they're doing better. So, and that's it in a nutshell.

Okay, well, thank you, Jeff, and we appreciate your service on those committees. Jamie, do you have anything you'd like to bring up?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I just have a number of, you know, informational items for you. Just a couple of reminders about some events. Obviously, the first one is your City Council retreat. It is scheduled for the 23rd, which is a Saturday, and the mayor has distributed— I have distributed a tentative agenda, and we look forward to having you participate in that effort. And we will, as the date approaches, send you a Zoom link so you all have an opportunity to participate virtually.

And we'll be able to get our Orders in for our lunch meal at the same time?

No, I think what we are going to do is we are actually going to send you a— essentially a login to one of these, these delivery services that will have a specific credit tied to it. Okay, you can order from wherever you'd like. Okay, and use it during a certain Generally, it's a 24 to 48 hour period, so, but we'll get that information to you shortly along with the link to the meeting. Just another just FYI, the UVU pedestrian bridge is scheduled for a ribbon cutting this Thursday. This is obviously a much anticipated pedestrian bridge. It's a 30 plus million dollar bridge, and we're excited to. Have that and add that to the campus community as a means to safely cross the interstate and allow students the opportunity to get to UVU faster than they currently have been able to. So that's a really positive thing, and we appreciate obviously the cooperation of the university, UDOT, and others who have made that project possible here in Orem. You may have noticed that we canceled a meeting on your agenda with the Vineyard City Council. This was at the request of Vineyard City, and they have just made the request that we reschedule when we have a time to convene in person. And so I believe Christy or Jackie took that meeting off of your agendas and your schedules. So you haven't lost your mind if you thought there was a meeting. It's now gone. It's been removed. And I wanted to let you know just the reason for it. Wanted to, to have just a brief conversation with you about SummerFest and some of our efforts and plans prospectively for 2021. Obviously, the pandemic is still something that's at the forefront of all of our minds. And there have been questions that are arising as to the timing, for example, of Summerfest, and if we do plan to proceed forward with our scheduled event at the first part of June. The question right now that we have is, or the answer that we have is maybe. And by that I mean, obviously some of that is going to be predicated on where we are as a state in relation to the risk level that we continue to monitor on a daily basis, or at least a weekly basis, and whether or not or how progress is being made in the vaccination of state residents associated with this pandemic. So for example, today, Stephen, Christy, and myself had a conversation about our scheduled Float construction. It's necessary for us many months in advance to coordinate with Modern Display, for example, who is our float vendor, and to get that effort underway. We've made the decision that we're going to get the effort underway, understanding and anticipating that we are looking forward to a parade. Whether or not we will actually have the event the first part of June, or whether or not Or if we need to shift it into the future remains to be seen, but we're confident enough that the needle is going to move in a way that we can enjoy obviously at least some of our Summerfest activities. The 2 biggest question marks honestly are the parade and the carnival. We have had conversations with Modern Display And they've advised us that there are certain organizations, for example, the Freedom Festival specifically, that as of now is planning to proceed over the Fourth of July weekend. So they at least have made the decision tentatively to move forward with their program this year, and I feel safe enough that we can move forward knowing that we're going to have something, whether it be a full-blown Summerfest experience or whether it's necessary for us once again to at least pivot to a Summerfest-type light program remains to be, to be seen. Steven and the Summerfest committee actually are scheduled to meet for their first meeting of the year tomorrow night, and that will be part of their conversation as to how we proceed forward with Summerfest. Steven, did you want to add anything to what I've shared?

No, I think the only, the only other thing potentially is— and Jamie, forgive me, we actually are a week from Wednesday the 20th, and that, that's on me. I did mention tomorrow night earlier. Um, I haven't been in contact with the carnival company. They're checking a couple things on their calendar. I'll know tomorrow if the carnival, the same carnival company we've been using, is available in August. And that, if we did that, the week we'd be looking at is probably August 12th would be the Monday, kind of the week before school, around the time of the music festival that we've done as part of Summerfest Lite. So those are a couple updates, Jamie.

Okay, thank you. I don't know if the council has any additional questions or comments. Obviously, Steven and his Summerfest committee are going to circle back and provide an update as to where we are. But as of now, activities like Summerfest, like Miss Orem, are proceeding forward tentatively, and we may need to adjust as we get deeper into the year and we continue to evaluate if COVID remains a primary concern here within the state. We are drawing obviously towards the end of of our efforts with the library hall project. That is almost complete, and we are making great progress with our fitness center project. If any of you are interested in touring the facility, it's probably been a while since some of you have walked through that space. I know we would love to take you and show you the progress that's being made. Every time I go there, I'm amazed and excited about What is underway and what will be happening there. In recent days, I believe Ryan can report, we're in the process of laying down the floors in the facility, the wooden floors and the rubberized Mondo flooring that is part of all of the active fitness areas as well as the track. And of course, the exterior of the facility is, is quickly coming to completion as well. We are drawing to the close of our— both our police and fire operations studies. We have, as a result of the pandemic and some data issues, it's gone a little slower than we anticipated, but we're looking forward to sharing that information with you here in the next couple of months. I wanted to just let you know that that effort is still in process. The University Place CDA, thank you for your feedback, and we will be bringing that forward in a future redevelopment meeting for your review and consideration. We are in the process of kicking off our 2020 budget process. Of course, you as a City Council, and better understanding your areas of focus is in many respects the first step in that effort, and so we will look forward to having that conversation on January 23rd. We're making progress with our landscape architects and our architectural firm that is working with us on Hillcrest and the Hillcrest property. We are anticipating sharing with you some specific details about our efforts in that process on January 26th.

But we are—

I'm also, and I represented this to the mayor yesterday, we will work to see what we can provide to you on the 23rd during your retreat so that you have kind of an advance introduction to some of what these architects have prepared and will bring to you in detail on the 26th of January. We also are In the process of completing our— not completing, but we have our compensation study, citywide compensation study that we hit the pause button on last year. We have engaged, re-engaged on that effort and it's underway. The legislature, as Senator Kennedy noted last week, or excuse me, earlier today, begins next week and we are gearing up for those efforts as well. And then finally, we continue as an organization to work through issues associated with COVID-19 and the pandemic. I know several of you have become better acquainted with the, the virus in recent weeks. I'm glad to see and hear that you're doing better. We are now in some respects in the vaccination phase of the pandemic. We actually have extended opportunities for all of our public safety personnel to be vaccinated, and we are working. In fact, several specific dates and times were set aside last week and even again today for our public safety personnel, both police, fire, dispatchers, to receive the vaccination, and we are hopeful that in the near future we can extend that same opportunity to our general employees. As you know, teachers were this week also invited and given the green light to go forward with vaccinations. Right now, the Health Department is reserving appointments for individuals that are 70+, and, and they are doing that on an appointment basis through the county's website. Today, the CDC actually released added recommendations that individuals 65 and older be eligible immediately to receive the vaccination. And so, as you might expect, this is a very fluid effort, and it's something that sometimes changes day to day. There was some direction, for example, that we were looking to make as a city Last week, in less than 24 hours after we had shared that information, the governor brought forward some other information, and that's going to require us to revisit how we proceed with the vaccination and with employees as related to COVID-19. And so we continue to do the best we can, and we continue to ask for your patience as we work through all these challenges. So those are the things that I had to share tonight with you, Mayor, and Council, but I'm happy to entertain any questions if you have them.

I've got a question, Jamie. Dave here.

Sure.

On the email you sent out about the vaccine and the employees that don't want to get the vaccine, you know what other cities are doing? If in that case, do you know what the precedent Yeah, you know, that's a, that's a good question.

Frankly, right now, the, really the, the examples that we are looking to are organizations that are actually several, potentially several doses into the vaccination process. So for example, Timpanogos Hospital, we had a conversation. I was, I was over there today with our fire chief, and their policy as well as Intermountain Healthcare's policy is that with the COVID-19 vaccination, employees are not required to get the vaccination but strongly encouraged to get the vaccination. Those that have been vaccinated actually will have a sticker on their ID recognizing that in fact they have been vaccinated. Those that are not vaccinated will also have recognition on their identification. This is not a new process. For example, this is exactly what they do with the flu vaccine. And they also have a policy within their respective organizations that those that do not get the mask— do not get the vaccination are required to mask up at all times. And so in many respects, we are looking to Intermountain Healthcare and HCA, the parent company of Timpanogos Hospital, as examples as to how to proceed. The, I guess, the wisdom on in the, you know, in the business world, in the government world, is people are shying away from requiring vaccinations, even though the federal government suggests that there are reasons you can require. We've made that same decision to strongly encourage our employees to be vaccinated rather than require them to be vaccinated. We had a lengthy conversation last week with our executive leadership team and agreed that this is the path forward. And I don't think the path forward is one that is appreciated by all, but it is representative of, for example, organizations and employees that interact on a regular basis with the public. Jamie and Dave, I did happen to speak with Shane Farnsworth this morning with the School district, asked how things were going for them. They said that they were approaching about 4,000 of their staff members so far that were getting the vaccination, and they did a little survey. They said about 93% of their employees had expressed positive interest in wanting the vaccination. So he said they've been focusing on just trying to roll it out first and feel like, you know, the momentum and acceptance will build as I, I just thought my thought process was, you know, all along it's been, you know, social distance.

If you can't social distance, you wear a mask. So that's just where I was coming from. So I just wanted to ask the question. Thanks for the information, Jamie.

Yeah, it's—

I'll be honest with you, it is not, uh, it is not a conversation that everybody is, uh, on the same page with. In fact, there are You know, there are examples in every department of individuals who have apprehension about taking and getting the vaccine. And on the flip side, there are employees on the very opposite end of the spectrum who are frustrated that the city is not even— is not requiring people to get the vaccination. The medical director today at Timpanogos that I was talking to, he, he asked Chief Sanderson and I the question, well, how many people do you know who have smallpox, polio, tetanus, hepatitis A and B, rubella, the measles, the mumps, diphtheria? And we said, well, nobody. And he said, yeah, that's because they vaccinate. And in order for us to develop immunity from the virus, we need 80 to 95% of our population to get vaccinated. And right now we're not trending in that direction. We're not trending in that direction as a state. I'm afraid we're not going to trend in that direction as an organization, as a community. And so as a result, what may occur is additional strands of this virus may evolve and be able to resist the current strand. And we actually may never see this thing disappear in its entirety until hopefully people gain comfort in getting vaccinated.

Thank you.

Okay, anything else? Well, our time's Pretty close, so we've got 7 minutes. Let's go ahead and close the meeting, and we'll start our city council meeting at 6 o'clock. Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, it is now 6 o'clock and we should start our City Council meeting. Steve, are you there? Okay, we would like to begin. I'd like to read something. This is a notice of an all-electronic meeting and opportunity for public participation pursuant to Mayor Richard F. Brunson's proclamation dated January 5th, 2021, the Orem City Council meeting on January 12th, 2021 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. 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. To make a comment, please submit your comment through orem.org Comments. Written comments will be accepted before and during the meeting. All written comments received will be entered into the record and forwarded to each city council member for review. Written comments will also be read during the live meeting when required by law or when time permits. As technology permits, the city council may also accept oral comments. Once an item has been voted on, that item will be closed to additional comments. Thank you for your cooperation during these challenging times. We now would like to call this meeting to order, and we would like to begin with a prayer to be given by Councilmember Tom McDonnell and the Pledge of Allegiance to be given by Bryn Bybee. Tom, go ahead.

Thank you. Our Father in heaven, at this trying time in our nation, we bow our heads and seek the blessing of thee and of thy Son, Jesus Christ. We're mindful that we're gathered in a public setting as public officials and have a duty to try to serve all members of our community. We're mindful that at least nationally, and no doubt locally, there's divisiveness among us. May we do all we can this evening and throughout our service to appease some of that discouragement, and divisiveness. May we act in unity tonight. May we act in the best interest of all, and may we be guided by thee in all of our actions. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. Thank you. Brennan, I'll turn the time over to you.

Thank you.

You can see I've got the American flag in the background. If everyone will please rise and repeat the Pledge of Allegiance with me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Brandon and Tom. We'll now go ahead and move on to our personal appearance portion of our meeting. Steve, do we have anybody who has Called in or written in. Steve, are you there?

I am.

One, one second, Mayor.

Okay, while you're looking, we'll go ahead and start a 90-second period of time for anyone to call in or write in, and that'll start right now.

Mayor, we have, we have 2 comments. I'm just, I need to check with Jason to see if potentially these— one of them is for sure the public hearing on CDBG. Jason, there's one about the property near Gene Robinson. Would that be the public hearing tonight as well?

Yes.

Okay, no public comments, Mayor.

Okay, thank you. So we'll go ahead and close the personal appearance portion of our meeting and move on to our consent items. If there are any items that the council wishes to move to our scheduled items, please let me know. Otherwise, we will vote on the consent items. Our first one is 8.1, the approval of the city meeting minutes of December 8th, 2020. Item number 8.2 is appointments to boards and commissions. The first is an appointment to the Summerfest Committee of Bill Blau. And then the second is Recreation Advisory Commission reappointments of Danny Miller, Ember Harris, Skip McWhorter, and Russ Byrd. The third is a resolution approving certain sections of the City of Orem City Manager's Department Retention Schedule. Not hearing anyone that wishes to change that to a scheduled item, I move that we go ahead and accept these consent items. Is there an approve of them? Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, let's go ahead and vote on that accordingly. We'll start with Dave Spencer.

Aye.

Brent Sumner.

Aye.

Debbie Laree.

Aye.

Tom McDonald.

Aye.

Jeff Lampson.

Aye.

Terry Peterson.

Aye.

And I, as the mayor, vote aye as well. Our consent items pass. We'll move on to our scheduled items. The first one is a public hearing on a resolution. The city is to receive public comment on the Community Development Block Grant projected use of funds for the CARES Act CDBG-CV funding and consider approval of a substantial amendment. to the 2019-2020 Annual Action Plan. Our presenter is Ken Ransom, our chairperson of our CDBG Advisory Commission, and Kenna Jo Matthews, our Community Services Manager. So we'll turn the time over to Ken and Kenna Jo.

Hello, Mayor and Council. Can you hear me? This is Ken Ransom.

Not very well.

Am I soft?

Yeah, you're better now.

Okay. Try to turn up the volume a little bit. All right, can you still hear me?

Yeah, now it's better.

All right, thank you. So you can see before you, we have the PowerPoint for you. If we could advance to the next slide, please. This is a list of the projects that have been allocated to date from the COVID funding that the city has received and that the, that the commission has recommended be allocated. And at the bottom, you can see the total that is still left to allocate from this initial grant that the city has received. So there's $108,332 still left to allocate. And we have some recommendations for the council. If we could advance the slide, please. So these funds, the conditions for the use of these funds are to be used for the coronavirus pandemic in our community, and they cannot be used to offset revenue shortfalls. Next slide, please.

And we've—

our council's used the— excuse me, our commission has used these priorities from the council as we've tried to make these recommendations. Next slide, please. which we received last year from the City Council. And here's a summary of the allocation process. Orem, Provo, and Utah County are working together on these for last year and again this year on these COVID projects. And so these 3 entities are receiving requests from local public service providers. And then the entitlement staff members for each of these agencies are reviewing and vetting the applications and determining which entitlements should be funded. And then in number 3, amounts are assigned to each agency— to each entity, and ORMS projects have been reviewed, and we make these following recommendations to the council. Next slide, please. So here's the quick summary of Provo and Utah Counties' projects that they are funding with this COVID grant. They're there for your reference. Next slide, please. All right, so here's our first recommendation. We recommend that the council fund the Boys and Girls Club $60,000 for their after-school support project, which includes transportation, tablets and computers, PPE, and disinfecting supplies. Next slide, please. Next recommendation is for Project READ for their transition to virtual and job readiness instruction program. These— some of these agencies are trying to reinvent themselves with the pandemic since they can't meet in person with people. So, they're looking for funding for their virtual program design, technology, and program salary. They're requesting $5,000. The House of Hope is requesting $7,776 for their COVID relief project. for touchless faucets, towel and soap dispensers, iPads, and for their virtual visits. Next slide, please. In the Orem City Senior Friendship Center, we recommend that they be given $6,000 for their senior holiday meals. So Golden Corral has provided holiday meals for Orem seniors, and we recommend that the council fund this. The next recommendation is Centro Hispano for their Digital Inclusion Program. And they— the asterisk here on that $29,556 is because this finishes up the $108,000 that was left from the initial grant. And then we have initial recommendation from the city's second grant that'll be coming up here shortly. So this is going to be broken up between the 2 grants that the city has received. We recommend the council fund this as well. So the city has an additional COVID allocation of $287,940. Next slide, please. And so this, this might look familiar. Centro Hispano is for their digital inclusion program. We've already mentioned that, and we're recommending from the second grant that they be funded an additional $29,890. And then HUD requires that the remainder of that second grant be allocated to secure funding. So we recommend that it be allocated to general public services. And it's that there are no specific recommendations for this funding at this time, but, but to make HUD happy, that's the recommendation that we have. Next slide, please. So here's a summary of our recommendations for the council's consideration, and from those 2 grants. And then there's an— there will be an additional $258,000 to make recommendations on in the future. So as I mentioned, we'll make additional recommendations on this amount for the council. So the next step is for for the council to adopt a resolution.

Sure.

All right, well, thank you, Ken. Anyone have any comments or questions from the council? Debbie, go ahead.

Go ahead, Debbie.

Sorry.

For the Project Read, did they only ask for $5,000?

Was that what they asked for?

Yes, that's what they asked for.

Okay, it seems awfully low for a what they were needing it for. Also on the meals at the senior center, do they have greater needs for people who need meals but can't afford? I guess my question is, $6,000 for people who have hunger issues in our senior population, I'm concerned that's low too. I'm just wondering, is there other programs that care for people who have the need?

Yeah, so right now food is coming through Mountainlands Association of Governments.

for senior meals. These are just the special meals at holidays where they can't get other meals.

So if someone can't pay the $3 suggested meal, is that a problem, or are we running deficit, or is it not a problem right now?

I don't think that it's a problem right now, as far as I know.

This is Carl.

We don't turn anyone away. If they, if they cannot pay, we feed them.

So do we have a running deficit, or is it something that we're covering as needed?

MAG covers that for us.

Okay, thank you.

Councilor McDonald, did you have a question?

Yes, thank you. I wanted to make sure I was unmuted. Would all of these expenditures kind of pass an audit, if you will, that they are legitimately care-related expenses? Some of them seem to be somewhat general. I understand there's special needs during this period of time, but I wondered if these were all sustainable should we be audited.

Yes, so they're required to— we are required to monitor them and make sure that these things are correct, and it's all reimbursable.

So when they submit receipts, we make sure that they are valid expenses before we reimburse them. So they put the money up front, and then we reimburse. It's not like we're just giving them the grant.

And Kenna, maybe if I could add to that too. Kenna, since this CARES Act was passed, I guess almost 10 months ago now, there's been webinar after webinar, training after training, and Kenna has sat through I don't know how many hours of it. And all of these requests are things— Kenna, correct me if I'm wrong— that have been validated through the training that we've received on HUD as to what eligible expenses are. Is that fair to say, Kenna?

Yes, yes, correct.

Okay, any other questions or comments from the council? So this is a public hearing, so we will open it up to the public for any public comment for 90 seconds, and Steve, do you have— the 90 seconds will start right now. Do you have any comments right now?

I do, yep.

We will read the first one.

This is from Jocelyn White. Hello, my name is Jocelyn White. Today I am commenting on behalf of the House of Hope. We are honored to be under consideration for CDBG-CV funding. To provide disease-preventing upgrades to our residential facility in Utah County. This funding will be used to help protect some of Utah's most vulnerable residents during the pandemic by stopping disease spread. Thank you for your consideration. It is a delight listening in on behalf of such a wonderful organization. We appreciate all the work you do. And again, that's Jocelyn Wright from the House of Hope.

Okay.

And no other comments currently, but we'll continue to monitor as the 90 seconds run up.

We have 30 more seconds to go.

Okay, got another one that just came in. This is Shawna Brown, Executive Director from Project READ. Just want to personally thank the CDBG committee and the council for considering proposals for CDBG COVID funding, for recommending Project READ for funding to help us help adults with low literacy skills. We are specifically working to help adults gain the employment skills they will need to reenter the workforce. Many of the layoffs as a result of COVID-19 impacted the population we serve, and we want to get them back into the workforce as quickly as possible. This funding will help us accomplish these goals, not only by assisting these individuals, but also the community at large. We appreciate all you do. Again, Shawna Brown, Executive Director of Project READ.

All right, well, our public comment portion time has ended. Have you any other additional comments?

That's it, Mayor.

Okay, thank you. So we'll go ahead and close the public comment portion of the public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any other comments or questions from the council? All right, well, I would like to make a motion that the City Council of Orem adopt the recommendations of the CDBG Advisory Commission and approve a substantial amendment to the 2019-2020 Annual Action Plan. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Dave Spencer.

Aye.

Brent Sumner.

Aye.

Debbie Laree.

Aye.

Tom McDonald.

Aye.

Jeff Lampson.

Aye.

Terry Peterson.

Aye.

And I, as the mayor, vote aye as well. The resolution passes. We'll go down to 9.2 on our scheduled items, which also is a public hearing. This is on an ordinance amending Article 22-5-3A In the zoning map of the City of Orem by changing the zone on approximately 1.96 acres from the R-20 zone to the R-12 zone at 925 South Carterville Road. Jason Bench is our presenter and we'll turn the time over to you, Jason.

Thank you, Mayor. Can everybody see the screen?

Yes.

Okay, so this is a rezone down on Carterville Road, just under 2 acres. The applicant, Gene Robinson, requests that this be rezoned. He has a big— larger home in the back. He has some pastures out front, which we'll get a picture here coming up shortly. What he wants to do is, for future, be able to subdivide those 2 front lots and then sell them off in the future. In order to do that, he doesn't— he has enough acreage, he just doesn't have enough frontage to make that happen. So what he's This is the existing plat where he has a 2-lot subdivision. You can see the 1 lot out front, larger lot in the back. What he's proposing is to do a 3-lot subdivision, keep his home in the back on the larger lot, and then subdivide the 2 lots up front. You can see they're pretty substantial lots, even at an R-12, 18,000 and 16,000 square feet. And so he's proposing to do that. He did hold a neighborhood meeting. To my knowledge, everybody was in favor of that. It is Consistent with the lots to the south and to the north. Even though they're zoned R-20, they are a little smaller than 20,000 square feet.

So this is the property.

You can see his home in the back. You can see a small lane that he has there, and then the 2 lots would be on either side with white picket fences. So the Planning Commission did review it and did recommend that the council rezone that to the R-12. It is consistent with the general plan. And be glad to address any questions.

Jason, is the applicant on?

Mr. Robinson should be on the call.

Yes, he is.

Can he identify himself? I am here. Okay, great. So any questions or comments from the council?

Okay.

To me, it seems pretty straightforward and makes sense. But no comments from the council. We'll go to our public comment portion of our public hearing. And we will start right now. And Steve, do you have any comments written in or called I do.

Well, while the clock runs, Cole and Valerie Reese. We live in the house immediately north of Gene and Karen Robinson. We have discussed with the Robinsons the plans for their property. Our preference would be to have— to just have one home built on the lots instead of 2 homes, but we understand the reasons the Robinsons want to do it this way. Since our first preference doesn't seem possible, we don't object to the plans generally, but our hope is that the location and orientation of the new house will be built in careful consideration of the neighbors and allow us— allow for us to continue having country views and the most space possible between the new home and our home. We bought our home on Carnival Road 6 years ago precisely because we like the country feel and space between houses and views of nature rather than the walls of houses. So we would love to see larger lots and nature and less houses in this neighborhood. Having said all that, Most of all, we want to be kind and welcoming neighbors to anyone who will move here, and we pledge to not let new building plans, even plans that aren't our first preference, get in the way of being good neighbors. And again, that's Valerie and Cole Reese.

Okay, our 90 seconds are up. Have you received any further comments?

Mayor, no other comments.

All right, then we'll go ahead and close the public comment portion of the hearing. We appreciate that previous comment and bring it back to the council. Any questions or comments by the council? All right, I would like to make a motion that the City Council of Orem amend Article 22-5-3A and the zoning map of the City of Orem by changing the zone on approximately 1.96 acres from the R-20 zone to the R-12 zone at 925 South Carterville Road. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'd like to go ahead and start on the voting. Dave Spencer?

Aye.

Brent Sumner?

Aye.

Debbie Larray?

Aye.

Tom McDonald?

Mr. Mayor and Council, I'm going to vote aye, but I just thought that neighbor's comment was about as civil as any we've ever heard in this meeting, and I want to compliment them on their kind words, but aye.

Thank you. Jeff Lamson?

Aye.

Terry Peterson?

Aye.

And I vote aye, and I thought those comments were excellent as well. So the ordinance passes. We'll move down to communication items. Jamie, do you have anything you wish to mention?

I've already shared that which I had to, to share with you tonight, so no thank you.

All right, thank you. Then I would accept a motion to adjourn.

Someone—

Okay, is there a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, we're adjourned, and thank you everyone.