City Council · 2021-08-24

Thank you for all they've been doing. Like I said, I really appreciate Brady and all of his help, Steven, and everyone else that's been helping with this project. So other activities that our code enforcement have been involved with are our police picnics, our picnics with police. We have our last one tomorrow night at Hillcrest, so invite you all to come to that. We've done some back-to-school nights. We've been handing out these magnets, neighborhood information. at our neighborhood schools that we work with. We've been doing these service projects like this. We're also going to be doing Day of Caring, 9/11 Day of Service, some other things, and then just other community services as needed.

So one of the— I was just going to say the police picnics have been very well received. A lot of neighbors out there, they really appreciate the chance to get to know the police officers and To see each other.

I want to, I want to make sure that Kenny gets the credit for that because she's the one that invited the police to come to her picnics.

So she's the one that set all that up and done over the past couple years.

And so she's done a great job.

Thanks.

A lot of people have been involved with that, but we appreciate that. So, um, Karen McCallis gave me a book, um, that she had gotten from somewhere. So former city councilwoman, it was called Compassion-Based Code Enforcement. And so we've been thinking that's kind of what we want to be. You know, we need to enforce, you know, enforcement We also want to be compassionate. So that's kind of what our team is working towards, is more of a compassion-based code enforcement where we want enforcement, but if we can help people, we will. And so that's kind of the goal of our MIT team. So does anyone have any other questions?

I'm just going to say I'm glad to see this happening. The residents want to see the law enforced and see their streets in good condition, and it means a lot to them that we're actually taking action.

So I don't know if we ever answered your question, but just before we moved things over to the city, Lieutenant Pereskeva said he thought warning-based—

after people received a warning, he thought it was about 70% that came into compliance.

So just to get a sense of that.

70% do become compliant?

Yeah, with civilian-based, from what our research was when we were moving it from the police department here, they were getting at least 70% just on warning compliance.

And then, yeah, this software company that does it nationwide for cities all over the country, they said that that's the number they're seeing too, is you get them a warning and 70% of the time they become compliant, and then you deal with the 30%. So then the name of the game is how many warnings can you get out, because 70% of them are going to become compliant.

Yes, sir.

Just because I've heard several people complain, you know, these 2 houses right across the street, Have we approached them, or— I mean, I know that's, that's going to be a long-term issue, I think.

Yeah, they're not— they're actually in the process again right now.

It's a mental health issue with us.

Yeah, yeah, the dad's, um, yard actually looks better now than the daughter's, so I don't know how that's possible, but it is.

To Councilmember Pedersen's point, I mean, Officer Andreasen and the police department can tell you they They're long-term customers. I mean, decade-plus challenges, unfortunately. Mayor?

Yeah, I just want to give Ken a tip of the hat. I think this is a real—

and her team, her team.

The one that she showed up there, I saw, I don't know, there were more than 3 of you out there cleaning up. But it was a good team for 7, 8 hours.

And then next, it's ongoing.

It's really, really helped.

Didn't you have to move there?

And that situation has been going on 15 years, 20 years.

Okay.

Thanks, Brad.

So in those situations, I mean, you have someone that's been living there, do they come back? I mean, do they—

or do you talk with them and say, hey, you're going to have to move on down the road? What happens in those situations?

Are there others that come back and try to, you know, set up camp again?

Yeah, we had another one just with that corner.

These guys went and checked it out a couple days later and found some bedding or something.

The one over by Quick Quack?

Yeah, I noticed that.

And then I went by the next day and it was gone again.

So it's like, it seems like to be a—

So whenever there's a problem, we'll just try to keep checking those areas after we clean them up.

And if I may, if I may too, Jeff, I mean, in a situation like that too, there's cross-coordination with the police department. So during regular business hours, Gary and Rory may be taking the time to visit, but then there are extra patrols assigned in the overnight hours so that, for example, we can have personnel there too at the time where they're bedding down. We can say, hey, you're not supposed to be there. And that coordination is— there is one of the values of having, for example, Brady and, and that association with this team in cooperation with the police department. Yeah, another thing we're going to try to do to discourage homeless camps is issue citations, and that'll be a criminal charge. But then that'll be according to everything, so if they don't appear, they'll have a warrant issued, things like that. So hopefully That'll be a little more discouraging for people to set up camp, at least in Orem.

I think one thing too that Orem and other, you know, Orem, Provo, and other cities are unique in is most of our city is not in any kind of an HOA, right? It's older cities, they're not incorporated that way. Saratoga Springs, the majority of the city is in an HOA, and the HOA takes care of a lot of these problems for us. We become the HOA for 95% of the city. We get all the calls. On all those issues where other cities don't have to deal with it quite the same way. The other, the other thing that we've talked about before is a lot of these problems are in single-family homes that have become rentals. There are exceptions to that. We don't deal too many with issues on apartment complexes. There's property managers, they're professionally landscaped. We're not dealing with issues there because if there's an issue, they call the property manager. When there's an issue in a neighborhood, we get involved. And so There's just some unique dynamics to an Orem city versus maybe other cities you might hear about, Highlands or Saratoga Springs, where they're all in HOAs.

So appreciate what they do.

It's a hard, it's a hard job.

All right, well, thank you.

Thanks.

Okay, thank you very much.

Appreciate all of you. Okay, we'll now go to a presentation from our Metropolitan Water District of Orem, uh, Central Utah Water Conservancy District agreement. And Chris Shirk is our presenter and he's our public works director.

All right, council, mayor and council, it's my pleasure to be with you tonight. Chris Shirkey, I'm the Public Works Director. I have Neil Winterton with me, he's the Water Resources Division Manager in the back. We also have Casey Shaw representing Central Utah Water Conservancy District on the back row as well. And what we'd like to do tonight is talk to you about a little bit about the history of where we've been and how we've come to this point in our recommendation to you, which we'll be giving you recommendation to move forward with 2 agreements. But before I give that recommendation, I would like to provide some background. And that's going to require that you become familiar with some terms and acronyms that I'll be using. For example, when I say Orem, it's going to refer to the city of Orem.

Metro—

some of you may not know we have a metropolitan water district. That's called the Metropolitan Water District of Orem. I'll refer to that as Metro. Vineyard, City of Vineyard. District is Central Utah Water Conservancy District. DACR WTP, Donald A. Christianson Regional Water Treatment Plant. I'll just call that the plant. BCA is Bowen Collins and Associates. They're the engineering firm that did our 2016 and 2021 water, sewer, and stormwater master plans. Hansen, Allen, and Luce performed a study that we're going to be referring to, otherwise known as HAL. CWP stands for— this is a mouthful— Central Utah Water Conservancy District Water Project. So it's take the C off the front of the CUWCD, the W, and the P. What that refers to is a very specific project that Central Utah has been involved with over the last how many years, Casey?

7 years.

Since 2006.

2006. Central Utah Water Conservancy District acquired roughly 40,000, I think 48,000 acre-feet of groundwater. They're currently developing groundwater in the form of wells along the west side of Orem, west of Orem, and on the east side of Vineyard.

Chris, you mentioned the term groundwater. I've heard of gray water before.

Are they similar?

No.

Groundwater is drinking water that you drink right out of the ground.

It doesn't even need to be treated. Oh, you said ground, not brown with a B.

I said ground.

I misunderstood.

If I could take this off, that would help. No, you're not going to.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry, groundwater. Groundwater is different from gray water too.

You're thinking of the sewer water.

No, I wasn't.

So we don't usually refer to that as brown water, but that is another— that's sanitary. Okay, drinking water, culinary water, drinking water, Water, potable water. A capital improvement is CIP, and OMR&R is operations, maintenance, repair, and replacement. So we all know that when you build anything, it's man-made, it's going to fail at some point, whatever it might be. Could be a pipe, could be a dam, could be an airplane, could be a vehicle, any kind of engine moving part, so on and so forth. Once you invest in that capital investment or project, you need to operate it, you need to maintain it, you need to repair it as needed, and eventually someday you will have to replace it. So we're going to get to that a little bit here. In the history of Metro is in 1935, the state of Utah created a local district that's very specific to what we're talking about tonight is the Metropolitan Water District. Metropolitan Water District.

Local—

there are several types of local districts under state statute. Some are cemetery maintenance district, drainage district, fire protection district, so on and so forth, public transit districts, water conservancy districts like Central Utah, service districts like TSSD, Tippanogos Special Service District, that treats all of the sewage in the northern part of the county. What we're gonna be talking about is Metropolitan Water District. In 1935, the city council back in the day decided to, now that that law was created and passed to allow for metropolitan water districts, they wanted to create a metropolitan water district, and it was called the Metropolitan Water District of Orem. That happened in 1935. Some of the advantages of creating a water district is the water district is charged with the responsibility to obtain water rights, water shares, All things water for irrigation and culinary or drinking water purposes in the service area in which the district was created to provide those services. In this case, we believe that the Metropolitan Water District was charged to provide water every all the way to the east to the Provo River approximately to the boundary with Provo to Utah Lake, and then from 2,000 north to 2,000 south. At that time, there was no such thing as Vineyard. There might have been 10 people in that area farming, the Gallands or the Holdaways, probably. And then the municipal boundary for the city of Orem was much different than what it is today as well. So it's grown and it's expanded over time. So Vineyard wasn't officially incorporated of my research until 1989. It was a town, it was an area, I should say, that was known as a separate area. It wasn't officially incorporated until that time. 1990 census, they had 151 people. In 2000, they had 150. In 2010, it was 139. 2020, it went up to 12,543. Orem City's population just recently went up to 99,000, 98 and change.

Where's Ryan?

Right here.

It's 98 and change.

98 and change.

Your line's not here.

Oh, there you are. And then I think back 10 years ago, it might have been just under 90,000 or so. So the growth in comparison is very similar. The growth rate in Vineyard is much greater. Some key milestones and dates. Orem was incorporated in 1919. Metro was created in 1935. Vineyard was incorporated in 1989. The first Orem-Vineyard Water Agreement was executed in 1991. That was specific between the City of Orem and the City of Vineyard. It didn't involve the Metropolitan Water District of Orem. And that agreement was created to basically provide for retail water to businesses along the west side of Geneva Road. I think back in the day there was Parrish Chemical, there was Geneva Nitrogen, And a few other— handful of others. So it was primarily for those and also maybe some Holdaway. Mr. Holdaway, I think, lived on the southwest corner of 4th South and Geneva Road as well. Primarily though, Vineyard was incorporated residentially along its main street to the west of Lakeside Sports Park. The second agreement was created in 2003. That was again specifically between Orem City and Vineyard. That focused on Orem providing additional water to businesses and residences in Vineyard. So it reached farther to the west into the city. 2007, the agreement supplanted the 2003 agreement and also included Orem Metro. In this case, it expanded the scope to include all of Vineyard with— it had Metro's involvement. And it had Metro's involvement. So it included all of the service area All the way out to the lake. 2011, the agreement that we currently refer to now, it's our second Orange Metro Vineyard Water Agreement. That scope was further refined to service an area specifically south of our 400 North in Vineyard, up to 3,500 acre-feet. 1 acre-foot of water is more than enough for one family to live on over the course of a year. Our rule of thumb right now is at about 0.8 acre-feet, which is probably roughly 250,000 gallons a year for one residential property. In 2013, the Oro Metro Vineyard and District Water Agreement was created. This is essentially an MOU, but also an agreement that basically we were holding vineyards' feet to the fire in that they needed to create and build designed for a water storage facility. There's been a lot of discussion over the last 6, 7 years regarding Orem providing water to Vineyard and also Vineyard using some of Orem's water storage, for which we've allowed them to purchase 500,000 gallons of our 20 million gallon water tank. That agreement is in effect today, and I'm happy to report that Vineyard's making progress. They were supposed to have a tank ready to go on April 1st, 2021, I believe. It's not in place yet, but we have made substantial progress towards accomplishing that. When I say we, I'm saying the district, Orem Metro, Orem City, and Vineyard have collectively joined together in developing a plan that we feel strongly about and are recommending to you today.

Chris?

Yes?

Does Vineyard have a well to fill that tank, or are they getting the water from us to fill that tank?

Neither. They will get all of their water from Central Utah Water Conservancy District through its CWP system.

Thank you.

Currently today, we are providing water to them through our drinking water supply, which has a variety of sources, and, and this is a small percentage of what we actually have in our water portfolio. So we jointly Met together with Hanson Allen Luce to perform this 2017 water storage evaluation and location study. That came back with some very enlightening results and details. In short, it suggested that Vineyard needed about 7 million gallons of storage, water tank facility storage. Over the past several years, we've talked about where to locate that jointly with them, and the decision has now been made that they will be building their own water tank. Which is not in Orem, but I don't even believe it's in Vineyard. It's in Lyndon City as far as I can tell. Is that right, Casey?

That's correct.

So it's just east of the Lyndon Boat Harbor, right adjacent to the boundary between Lyndon and Vineyard, but in, in Lyndon. If you drive around over there on the west side by the lake, you'll notice that there's a large amount of material, meaning soil and so forth, that's been neatly spread across this whole area, creating a surcharge load on that in anticipation of the water tank being built here shortly. They anticipate that tank to be designed and built by 2 years— pardon?

July of '23.

July of '23. So the clock's ticking. Um, as I mentioned earlier, 2016, we had our water master plan and identified several needs for our capital improvement projects for Orem and also others that were very specific to Vineyard, including a major transmission line that would be very disruptive. It would travel almost 4 to 5 miles throughout the city in our, in our community from the treatment plant, possibly down 4th East, down 4th South, or down Center Street to Vineyard. Vineyard would be responsible to pay for anything that it would design and be required to build to provide water for its citizens. We've since met over the last 5 years with Vineyard and with the district and Lake Metro to develop a new concept and plan which would allow Vineyard to take water directly from Central Utah Water Conservancy District through its CWP or Central Water Project system. The 2021 master plan removed Orem providing water to Vineyard. And so what we see today and what we've adopted in April of this year Was a plan that included no more providing water to Vineyard, although we do today. But when the tanks built and all the infrastructure that's required to provide water to your community is completed, we are recommending that we then terminate our agreement with Vineyard and then engage into two other agreements that I'm going to speak to right now. There will be three agreements settled that will come as a result of terminating our agreement with. One is Vineyard will be obtaining water through the district, through Central Utah Water Conservancy District. They will obtain that water from them directly. And then what we're proposing in September 2021 is that next month that we adopt a new Orem Vineyard agreement, and that Orem adopts with Metro, meaning Metropolitan Water District of Orem, And the district a new Orem Metro District Water Agreement to make this work. And this is how we see— foresee this happening. First of all, the Orem-Vineyard Agreement will allow us to have interconnect points in our communities. What I mean by that is that we'll have connections with the City of Vineyard at key locations, some of which are at their request, in the event there's an emergency. where they may not have a line, or a line goes down and pressure's dropping, and they need to have water to, for whatever reason, that created that necessity. We would allow our system to be opened and water to flow to their system in an emergency condition. You might ask, well, that seems smart and logical, but how do you manage that and so forth? We currently have 2 of these in place right now with the City of Lynden. We've never used them or operated them. We've had them in place for probably over 30 years, and they've never been exercised. So they've been there, they've been available, they've been locked, they've been allowed to turn on and off as needed for an emergency.

Yes.

Does that go both ways?

Yes.

Okay.

It depends on how you design it, but I believe that system does. So in the case with Vineyard right now, they do have a couple locations that they're requesting. 1860 West, 400 South, that's Lakeside Sports Park, just on the west side of Orem, right to the south of, well, to the west of the far west entrance into Lakeside Sports Park. Center Street, Geneva Road location. So there's a master meter here, there's a master meter here at this location. This is on the northeast corner of the Maverick Station that goes up to Mill Road, Center Street. There's another one at 2150 West, 475 South. That is in Orem on the boundary just east of their development that goes around the golf course, essentially. We're requesting at least one interconnect at 1930 West, 180 South, which is in Eastlake Subdivision. That is just north of the existing Lakeside Sports Park. We currently have a dead-end line that we need to connect to provide water in the event that there was an emergency. We haven't had one to date. That's been there for over 20 years. Orem will provide the opportunity— or excuse me, this agreement will provide Orem the opportunity to purchase back Vineyards' portion of the shared Orem District-Vineyards facility. So the district currently owns 10 million gallons of the 20 million storage tank— gallon storage tank. Warren owns 9.5, Vineyard owns 500,000 gallons of water. By agreement, we're allowed to purchase that back based on a fair market value, which we would need to negotiate with Vineyard. They're amenable to doing this considering that they're building their new facility, not in Vineyard, but just adjacent to the community. The last portion of this agreement is much more detailed. This is going to be between Orem, Metro, and the district. And what this allows for is Metro to currently sell water to the district directly. Metro currently does that. We have a joint agreement with Metro and the City of Orem and the City of Vineyard. So we currently are— that's allowed for today, except we sell the water to Vineyard directly. This will switch and we will sell it to the district directly. The water will be diverted on the Olmsted Diversion on the Provo River, which is about 3/4 of a mile up the canyon as you leave Provo North. And then that water will be conveyed to Vineyard— excuse me, to the treatment plant where it will be treated by the district and then conveyed to Vineyard through Central Utah Water CWP system. This is not Warren's system. This is really important to understand this. This water will go through their— be conveyed through their system down 1,000 east from the treatment plant and then down 800 north in an existing pipe that they put in, hmm, 10 years ago?

15.

15 years ago, thank you. So in other words, none of this water will be conveyed through Warren City's system. It's going to be totally independent, which means that we'll have Great benefit from an operating maintenance repair replacement perspective. Our system, our pipes will not be degraded; they will be able to have a longer life. Although Vineyard is committed to and has paid for its proportional share of costs, they will be removed from our system altogether. Orm will no longer convey that water through our system as suggested. Major disruptions across Orm will be prevented in the form of a large transmission line that was. what was thought out in the 2016 master plan. That's been eliminated. And then ongoing operation, maintenance, repair and replacement, and future CIP cost sharing with the City of Vineyard will be eliminated altogether. So our relationship will be reduced to a very minimal amount with Vineyard, and our main relationship will now be with the district. In other words, we're going to provide water to them, they're going to treat it, and then convey that to Vineyard. The amount of water that has been included in this agreement is 3,500 acre-feet, which is in our current agreement that we have today that has actually gone back to 2007. Vineyard will then pay Orem also as they have new people come online via the district for an impact or subscription cost to the system. So that's a lot of information. Appreciate the comments. So far throughout, are there any additional comments or questions regarding this?

Please. So Chris, maybe to just to provide a little background. Back in the early 2010 to 2013, Vineyard needed us to provide to them water, they were desperate for resources. And then as community evolved and grew, then they approached Central Utah and the district, and the district began also providing water. The conversation we initiated relative to this agreement started around 2 years ago, where Vineyard said, you know what, we think we would prefer that we only work with one provider, not Orem and the district. We would prefer that it just be one. And we would like it to be the district. From the city's perspective, we looked at that as a positive because it would allow us an opportunity to forego some of the improvements Chris is talking about. And to also put to rest questions that come up time and again as to, is Orem subsidizing Vineyard's water? We have never subsidized Vineyard's water, but the allegations and the suggestions are because we have interconnectivity and because we have an agreement with them that somehow we are giving them water, when in fact they have been faithful in meeting all their payment obligations to us. So really, this meets our needs and the needs of the City of Vineyard in working directly with the district. It meets our needs in potentially minimizing some of the additional capital improvements we have in the future, that we identified in the future, which may or may not be necessary into the future. And finally, it puts to rest this question as to Whorem subsidizing or assisting Vineyard with their water resources into the future as well.

Thank you, James.

So Chris, question on that ditch that runs along Carterville. So that's been sold but not— can you give us a little background on that?

Yeah, sure. That's called the West Smith Ditch. It's also been called the West Union Canal. That currently has some, a few water right holders or water shareholders on that, one of which is the City of Provo. They're going— they have acquired and purchased a portion of that water. That company is slowly becoming defunct. Central Utah Water purchased some of the shares in that and will be using that to provide water for municipal and residential purposes in its portfolio. Warren City has had an interest in that in conveying stormwater. Oftentimes with a canal, we have stormwater that will flow into a canal. could become overburdened, or we might have a maintenance obligation for that. So that's the West Smith Ditch. It's essentially going to go out of service, I've been told, at the end of this calendar year for water season.

So we don't have to maintain— we don't maintain it? Well, there won't be any water in it after this year.

The only water that might go in it, at least now until we get the water out of it, will be stormwater that has inlets into that canal system. So we are required to maintain proportionately what we, what we are obligated to maintain for that system.

Because it has some pretty serious leaks. I don't know if we have to— if that's us or—

It does. We do not own it. We do pay into that, into their system to help operate and maintain it, to clean it, and to repair it as well. We do provide also in-kind services for them in cleaning and doing some repair and maintenance on that facility as well. So I think we have a pretty good relationship and have over the last many years. But if you'd like to talk, speak to it, you know, more detail, I'd be happy to.

If I may too, Councilmember Pedersen, you've identified one of the concerns that we have as a city, that historically we have discharged stormwater into these canals. And these ditches that have been unfortunately over time poorly maintained. And so we too are concerned about the liability that is shared prospectively long term. And so we are looking for essentially the development of our stormwater resources that will, to the degree possible, not discharge into those canals and those ditches in the future so that we can maintain and operate efficient and safe and essentially well-maintained storm drain facilities. Because the age of using agricultural ditches and relying on farmers to meet the stormwater needs of the city are gone. So our focus, and you'll see us, in fact, even the bonding we did a few months ago has $2 million dedicated to improving storm drain infrastructure that will help get us out of using these ditches and these canals for storm drain purposes.

Yes, please.

Chris, we plan and are putting gray water on the golf course in Southwest Newark.

Yes.

Is there a plan to put any other gray water on fields where we could do it? I mean, we can't plumb it to every house, I understand that, but there's a field down there near Vineyard would be a possibility. Or is that— am I out of my league? Is that a possibility anywhere?

It is possible. It's not currently designed or planned for to do it beyond these areas: Lakeside Sports Park, which is about 35 to 40 acres of grass; Springwater Park, which is a smaller community park area; the Orem Water Reclamation Facility, which is, you know, about 15 acres but has a large amount of water or landscaping; and then also Sleepy Ridge Golf Course. It's going to have a significant benefit to our drinking water system because traditionally and historically we've applied the culinary water that's been treated for drinking and thrown it out on grass.

Yeah.

And that during peak demands, yeah, you wouldn't believe what we see in our modeling at Lakeside and at Sleepy Ridge, but our pressures drop dramatically at night during the summer because of that. And so this is going to help with the pressures in those areas, in addition to the new water tank and the new well that's being planned for and designed at 4th South and 4th West. But there are other opportunities to put gray water elsewhere in the city. Water reuse is a great idea. We have a permit to do up to 9,600 acre-feet, which is about 20% of our overall water portfolio. It's also used for things like cooling in industrial operations. It would have been nice to have used that with Geneva Nitrogen, Geneva Steel, and so forth, or other operations that require water for cooling purposes. We have nothing else designated right now for that, but it's potentially scalable and expandable.

Neil?

Yeah, that's what I was going to say, is we are designing it to be expandable in the future, and our— I don't know if the right word is marketing, but talking to other individuals and entities and seeing if there's a need and a possibility to partner up for that future asset.

Thank you.

So, Chris, as I remember, um, seems like Sleepy Ridge uses about a million gallons of water a day in the summertime, and that right now is treated water coming from The plant up on the side of the hill.

That's right. Conveyed all the way across the city, 4 miles, 4.5 miles.

So we will save considerable amount of money by using gray water instead of treated water, and particularly treated water all the way across the city for our golf course.

It'll have a net positive impact on our overall water distribution system. I believe that will translate to many dollars saved.

Yeah.

Please.

What's the latest on our water tank? I know we purchased the property, but what—

Yeah, we had a, we had a good meeting today with the design team, which includes Bowen Collins and Associates as well as Ethic Engineering. We had Jamie and Brent there, our city engineer there, water resources team was there. And we made some significant headway. We have a, we have a public meeting planned for September 15th. 6:30. That'll be on the calendar coming up shortly. You'll see that. Prior to that, on September 7th, we will provide you an update. We had an intermediate update today that's going to be refined. We'll give you some cross-sections and some site plans for you to look at. Overall, the plan is to, to lower the tank as much as possible to provide drainage off of the site. So it's not going to be raised up terribly much. And there won't be an obstruction by any means. It's not going to be a playing field where you have maybe lacrosse or athletics events and things, but it'll have meandering paths that'll go through and over the tank perhaps, and then around the tank with some benches and other places for contemplation. It's going to be more of a passive facility. That's been contemplated with educational opportunities for water conservation. And, you know, basically telling the history of where Orem has come from, from the time of, you know, Orem Metro when that was created and how the lands were irrigated. And we're going to use it as an educational area to help people understand and look forward in the future as well. Conservation will be a key component of it as well.

Thank you.

How long a project is that? That's 2 years. Now, I just happened to notice today, all the— I mean, there's tons of kids going to school there.

Yes.

How are you going to address that? That's a good question, Mr. Sumner. So there's a crosswalk at about 480 West on the west side of the entrance to the school. That's going to be relocated to the west to 600 West. There's an existing school crossing guard there, but we're going to take that out of service during this time and relocate it and combine it with another one at a safer location. There will be students that will still come up from the east, north, and the south at 4th South and 4th West, and there will be some special routing plans and consideration there that we will develop with our design team. Safety is above all else.

So it's on the water tank above the ground, because originally people were calling me 8 to 10 feet above the ground. So is that drastically been reduced?

It has been reduced. It's been lowered.

Yes.

So effectively, if you're at the intersection of 4th South and 4th West, and you look at that property, you will essentially see a consistent grade across the entire That will somewhat reflect the elevation at that intersection. Now, understanding as you head a little farther to the west, the elevation drops a little bit. So you're going to have 4 or 5 feet of drop at the back end, the back corner, I guess it's the—

Southwest.

Southwest corner, but it would be no higher than the fence line surrounding it. So if a neighbor were to poke over their 6-foot fence and look at the property next to them, what they would see is the tank. They would not see a structure.

They'll see the surface.

Totally buried.

So in the— at our next council meeting, we'll bring before you the 2 agreements. And we'll be able to share that with you in advance so you have time to review that and ask any questions before the council meeting. If there's no other questions, or—

You said the 7th, but I'm assuming it's the 14th.

That's our meeting.

Our meeting is the 7th, internally as staff, and then the 14th is the next city council meeting. So before that council meeting, we will supply additional information regarding the water tank on the 7th. And then also, we'll have more information regarding these 2 agreements for you to be able to review and comment on. In advance of that meeting.

And the 15th is the neighborhood—

15th is the neighborhood meeting at 6:30. We had talked about postponing that a week or so. Which one? The 15th, the public meeting. Okay. So that'll be the 22nd, just to make sure we have enough time for review and advertising.

And Council, it would be my intention to have Chris place the approval of the agreements on the consent calendar if you're comfortable with that. Instead of having them as a scheduled item.

Sure.

And just so you know, also, Casey Shaw and the district have represented this same information, you know, conceptually to their board. I think it was maybe last week or 2 weeks ago, Casey.

It was approved.

It was approved in concept. So barring any, any substantial changes, we have their blessing to move forward with this. this as well. I personally feel, and Neil, I think I can speak for him as well, that we're at a place right now where we have never been.

We've been—

we've come down this path over the last many years. I've been here since '94, and the city's been working with Vineyard since '91 on a lot of these issues. And it's taken a lot of things to happen naturally and maybe organically, and then to get to this point. But we feel like everyone is having a win-win-win situation, I believe, with the district, City of Orem and its citizens, and also the City of Vineyard. So basically, we've helped and assisted Vineyard to grow into what it is today. And now it's time for them to take on the remaining burden of their system on their own in conjunction with the district. So there are no other questions. Appreciate your Support. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you, Chris. Well, now go ahead and move on to a request for advisory opinion from the State Property Rights and Recruiters. Presenter is Heather Schreiber, City Attorney.

So Mayor and Council, make up some serious time right now because this is not going to take 20 minutes. Just so that you all know, Wright Development has filed a request with the Property Rights Ombudsman for an advisory opinion on the completeness of their site plan application and also on the application of the moratorium to their development. We have retained outside counsel to assist the city through that process. We've retained Rob Keller of Snow Christiansen and Martinell. Steve is running point with Mr. Keller on that issue. I wish I could tell you and give you a solid timeframe about how that process will advance, but it's somewhat fungible at this point. The only thing that we've had to do is— here comes Steve right now— agree to use a staff attorney in the office of the ombudsman as opposed to using an independent third party.

Thank you.

So Steve, I've just introduced the topic. If anyone has any questions, just told them the only deadline we've had to meet so far is agreeing to a staff attorney issuing the advisory opinion.

So is there a timeline from the ombudsman? Like, do we have a certain time we have to respond to them?

So they'll probably set a timeline once they have a staff member assigned to issue the opinion. They'll do that. There's some preliminary matters that were Kind of going through to get resolved first, maybe Heather already mentioned that there was a question as to whether we would agree to have an ombudsman staff attorney issue the opinion or hire some outside person to do that.

Did you mention that, Heather?

Oh yeah, and I told them that we had agreed to have the staff attorney do that.

So, um, and there's also a couple of jurisdictional issues potentially as well that we need to get resolved. Before we actually get into the merits of their request.

So, and is the outside counsel— is that someone that specializes in land use, or what?

How do we pick them?

I guess my question—

Yes, Mr. Keller has a very strong background in land use. We have used him on other cases in the city. We have an established, developed relationship, and he comes highly recommended from other municipalities as well.

So you may remember that we've traditionally used Jody Burnett on our land use, and he's, he's been working with Jody Burnett on those cases for 15 years, maybe longer than that even.

So Jody retired, and so it was necessary for us to find additional counsel. And maybe if I may, just for point of clarification, the primary focus of this advisory opinion, a request is filed by Wright Development is to essentially review the adjacency issue that was the topic of conversation in the last City Council meeting.

Yeah, their primary request was to determine whether their development application for the project was vested before the moratorium was enacted.

And that, you know, as we've kind of talked about, really kind of hinges on whether they were required to have a neighborhood meeting.

Right Development is obviously arguing that they're not.

You know, you heard that at the last meeting a little bit.

So that's kind of the argument they're making beyond Budson as well.

And yeah, I never heard— did that go ahead with their meeting they had scheduled?

Their neighborhood meeting?

They did.

Yeah.

Jamie, have you heard from any legislators over this? Uh, I did talk to one and he, uh, expressed concern that You know, obviously what's happening in Orem, but he didn't say— It was, it was more of a— obviously this conversation of housing, housing affordability, density is going to be at the forefront of this next legislative session. And obviously, as, as the legislature looks at this matter, They're looking at examples of communities that are trying to strategically find ways to accommodate growth and affordability. And they're also going to pay attention to those who are not. So I think this unfortunately puts a little bit of a target on our back.

Jamie, I got a question. I think that it would be very important to have our legislature come and meet with us and talk about this. Because, you know, from what I'm hearing, we're not on the same page, and they're up for reelection too.

Yeah.

So, you know, I think they need— we need all of them in the room and so we can talk. Yeah, this is, uh, to me, I think it's garbage that, you know, they need to see where we're coming from and we can see where they're coming from, but we need to talk face to face because If not, it's just hearsay.

Well, there's a Commission on Housing Affordability that was put together by the legislature that holds regular meetings. They have representatives of both the Senate and the House, as well as local representation from municipalities, housing authority, and obviously nonprofits who are focused in, and they are tackling this This very issue of housing and housing developers are part of this effort too. And so, like I said, this is not, this is not an OREM-specific issue. This is very focused on—

Understood, but I think we need to be focused on the legislature, we need to be with them like we did, you know, in the past. But I think we all need to have them in here and we can talk.

But how— I would, I would represent to you that House leadership is very focused on this issue. And obviously, our legislators respond to leadership and the will and the agenda of leadership. And so I anticipate that housing in this discussion will be very much a part of the 2022 General Session.

I mean, can we do a work session with them?

I'm more than happy to reach out to anybody else.

Sure, for sure.

Because I think it was very helpful when he talked to—

And there's other issues too we could talk to him about.

Well, if you did that, you'd want to have leadership, but you'd also want to have local legislators involved.

Yeah, I mean, obviously our legislative delegation is the group that I would primarily focus on.

Right, that's what I mean.

Because they're not all on that Side you're hearing, Jamie, because the state senator talked to me and is very supportive of what just happened. So he thinks it's a great thing.

Well, I think too, I mean, you talk about percentage, I mean, right now Orem's at 40-42% of what I hear apartments and housing, single-family dwellings. And, you know, is there a percentage, right? Because you go to Alpine and they got nothing, right? So in reality, Who's sharing the burden? Is it all Orem because everyone wants to live in Orem? Or is it Alpine?

So they don't want it. So here's, here's the dilemma with any, any discussion up at the legislature. The legislature is all about solving state problems and not site-specific problems. So when they adopt legislation and they amend the code, unfortunately, at times it becomes a one-size-fits-nobody solution. And we saw that with—

Accessory dwellings.

Accessory apartments, where for as supportive as they were, there was almost a unanimous approval of amending the accessory dwelling unit ordinance or code in the state. So, you know, they, they clearly have constituents that they respond and report to. But they are not looking at issues from the granular perspective you are. They're looking at it from the perspective of the entire state, and they are hearing from not just communities, but they're hearing from developers and others who are saying there is an imbalance in housing here in the state of Utah, we've got to fix it. So, you know, I think, I think Orem's voice is part of the overall conversation, but it is definitely not driving. the conversation. And if there are examples of good or bad, as related to housing, legislators, regardless of where they're from, will pull those into the conversation and the dialogue. And I think unfortunately, when we start adopting ordinances throughout the state that deal with exclusionary type zoning, or moratoriums, or not permitting, for example, accessory dwelling units, or whatever the circumstance may be, those ordinances, those local laws get the attention of the legislature. And then the legislature says, we've got to jump in, we've got to address these problems, we're going to address these problems at a statewide level. And we're going to do it in a way where we are going to pull local control and the opportunity for local councils such as yourself to make decisions regarding housing. And, and I will be upfront in saying that, and maybe I'm being too forward, because this is not a universally held opinion. But at the legislature right now, there is not a lot of warm feelings for municipalities. So the voice of cities is at a little bit of a disadvantage right now, in my opinion. So I guess what I'm trying to say is what we are doing as a city makes a difference, and people will pay attention to what we're doing, whether it be for good or for bad. Either it's going to be held up as an example of what other cities should be doing, or it's going to be used as a hammer and noted as something that other cities should not be doing. I was listening to the last meeting of the Commission on Housing Affordability earlier today. There was probably one of the largest developers in the state that was using city-specific examples of this is what they're doing, this is why it's wrong. And the voice from the commission as a whole in general was saying, thank you for bringing this to our attention. This is a problem. We need to fix this.

Were we mentioned?

No, we were not. And the developer did not mention the city by name. He did actually bring forward the documentation, but he blocked out or blacked out the city's logo so you couldn't see who it specifically was. But Again, we are all being painted with the same brush.

Was that Chris?

Yes.

So I just think we have that meeting with our local legislatures, and I think that's a starting point. And then, you know, I'm not sure what the Utah Lake Cities Town, what their view is, but—

Well, they came and shared their view with you several weeks ago, and they're very concerned too.

Yeah, so I mean, this moratorium, it's a pause. As we mentioned before, to step back and look and see exactly what the states are master planning, exactly each district. So I don't think we have a red flag or bulls on our back because we can't pause and the state legislature's gonna have to act.

No, but respectfully, I will, while internally the understanding and the agreement is that this is a pause, I think there are others who will paint it in a much different light.

So that's what you're trying to get ahead of?

Absolutely.

So the question is, as a city council, do we act on fear or do we act on what we think is in the best interest of the city?

Well, we're moving forward like we're moving in the best interest of the citizens.

Well, I think, I think though, I think David's suggestion of bringing at least some of the state legislators who ought to have the same concerns we do because their voters are our voters and their citizens are our citizens, let's bring them in.

Absolutely.

Let's see.

I think it's a good, good idea.

It'll be interesting if they voice life differently here than they do when they get to the Capitol.

Right.

That's the—

so part of our legislators, yeah, are actually in leadership at the Capitol, right? So Val Peterson is in leadership, and so he works and follows and, and, you know, talks with the leadership up there. So he's an important piece.

Absolutely.

So he definitely needs the beers.

The other thing is, uh, we are— we've grown 11% in the last 10 years. We're growing at 1% per year. So that means our population is growing at 1,000 people per year. And we have one of the higher rates of growth in the state. No, actually, overall it's one of the higher rates of growth. Herriman's like 53% over 10 years, not 1 year. We're 11% over 10 years, but we're actually averaging 1% per year, and that's actually averaging 1,000 new people in our community every year.

But compared to Lehi, Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs. We're one of the lowest in the Utah County.

Compared to those, but overall we're actually up there.

Well, our percentage is lower, but our numbers might be— I mean, our numbers were about the same as Vineyard.

1,000 years because we're at 90,000.

Yeah, yeah. And Vineyard grows at 1,000 a year and they were at a couple hundred. Yeah, that's a big number.

Correct.

Percentage is different.

So if we could do that, that'd be great.

Jamie, what The League of Cities is coming up.

Would it do any good?

Is there anything we can do up there to plead our case? So the League is very involved and engaged in this conversation. They participate actively in this Commission on Housing Affordability. In fact, there was a meeting that was scheduled and held today. They're meeting quite frequently. The chair is Senator Andrae out of Lehi. And the House side of the committee—

One thing I might mention on Senator Andrade, he is not enthused with city councils. He does not like city councils. He feels basically they're made up of a woman who had one issue that she wanted to get solved, so she got elected, and after that they're just a waste of time. So I actually challenged and fought with him in a meeting up at the state capitol while he degraded city councils. I thought otherwise.

Where is he from?

What city?

Lehi.

I think—

I think partially down here too.

I think though the bigger, the broader issue is the state, the legislature, the governor wants to have a conversation about How to grow this state in a way that, that allows everybody the opportunity to shoulder some of that responsibility.

Agreed.

And, and they are having conversations about impact fees. They're having conversations about zoning and local control. They're having conversations about sales tax allocations. They're having conversations as well about the cost of materials and the deficiencies that exist in the labor industry. I mean, you can see the contractor world. You know, we're kind of hitting or have hit kind of a perfect storm of challenge here where we have all this need. But the cost of materials is super high. There's no labor to build what we need built. And then of course, we also have this, this challenge of The perception that cities are not zoning to properly accommodate this growth in the future. Their motivations are much different, i.e., they want to go after retail sales. And this suggestion is that cities are zoning for dollars rather than trying to grow a community that obviously can accommodate retail, can accommodate commercial, and of course residential. At the same time too, I'll represent to you that as a state, we are transitioning from a rural suburban-type economy to more of an urban-based economy. And these questions and these discussions are the very same type of discussions that they had in Denver, or that they had in California, or that they had in Phoenix 10, 15 years ago, because now all of a sudden we have become a destination. for work and education and industry.

We have the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, 2.5%, and we're the fastest growing state in the nation. So all that growth puts tremendous pressure on us as a state and on the legislature to figure out how can people find a place to live and where are they going to live.

So I guess in response to your question, Councilmember Sumner, the league The league is all over this, but the league feels like they are at a significant, I would say, disadvantage because they don't feel like their message is resonating with those that are making decisions.

So they're not respected? Is that harsh?

Well, they don't hold the cards.

I don't— I think the voice of other interests are just as or maybe louder than municipalities. And frankly, they obviously serve a lot of— they serve a lot of publics, and the development community is a big part of the Utah State Legislature.

And how many of our leadership are developers?

And that's the problem.

And I'm, you know, I know this is a public meeting here, and I want to be direct and frank, but at the same time, you kind of got to know what players are on the field and how you're going to appropriately respond and play defense or play offense against what is happening. And you're absolutely right, there are, you know, it's, it's, it's no— you do a, you do a search of legislators up at the Utah State Capitol, and many, many of them have ties to real estate development, property management, and, and that type of industry. So they are— I'm not saying anything inappropriate is going on. I'm saying they're hyper-focused on this because that's their professional industry. That's what they know and do in the day-to-day.

And from a public service standpoint, not many of them have municipal backgrounds. To be honest, we've had a lot more in years past.

And I think too, I think that the key thing is with our local legislators is we need to make sure that it's the percentage in my mind that has to be pushed forward to say, you know what, we're not against high-density housing. But we need to make sure that the percentage is fair to every city instead of Provo, Orem, you know, because I guarantee Alpine, if you did it, they're gonna have a cow. Absolute cow.

Because there's nothing there.

But again, that's what the legislature, legislature is about, is solving statewide problems. And they're going to do it with the application of statewide solutions that may or may not benefit Orem, which we have to push the percentages.

One size fits all. That's how they do it.

So I know we got off track.

I was gonna say, for the record, we were way less than 20 minutes.

Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. Let's go ahead and move on then to State Street Districts, uh, and Jason Bench is our presenter.

Can't hear your hand.

Steven, you got the remote there? Is he still there?

Oh yeah, yeah.

Hey Jamie, when, when those—

when the legislative body meets, the housing, whatever, are we able to go over that?

For— to the legislature?

Their meeting? I mean, the housing? Oh yeah, it's a public meeting. So it's said the I'll send you the link because I'll go to—

I'll send you the link so you can listen to or tune in via Zoom to watch the meeting.

Is it a remote meeting?

Fully remote?

Just Zoom?

It's mixed.

Yeah, it's half and half.

I can go.

Okay, you ready? Yep. Save the best for last.

Okay.

Thanks, Jason.

So Let's put this in 2 different parts. One is the items that went to the Planning Commission last week. We discussed some of those things. The council is already aware of what's coming forward. I want to review what we did propose. Just a little recap of what happened at Planning Commission over the height issue. That was a 4-2 for a negative recommendation, but I think there was some discussion on maybe some of the districts have a little different feel than other districts, and I think there's some negotiating that's I said negotiation, but some discussion on maybe some differential heights in some of the districts. The Hub District, for example, the City Center District, maybe those 2 have a difference in the height overall, which is why—

Did they think it was higher was better in those, or that their students did?

Yes. And Mr. Peterson, you were there and you can give your opinion on that.

Yeah. So it was very interesting, Jason. They voted, all of them voted, well, not all of them, 4 of them, there was only 6 there, but 4 of them voted against everything. They said, we're against everything.

Individual.

And Steve did a great job, I thought, of saying you can't just be against something, you've got to come up with an alternative or some kind of a choice, right, Steve? I mean, it's like Steve said, you're against everything? You're against height, you're against setbacks, you're against Parking. Parking. And so a lot of the meeting was Jason and Steve trying to say, you can't— but it's kind of like what Jamie's saying. You've got a heavy situation with a developer, a realtor. You know, you had some people with their interests saying, we don't want any height restrictions, we don't want any— anyway, so it became a long meeting of Steve saying, you can't just say we're against everything that's City Council sent to you. Anyway, is that fair, Jason?

Well, maybe to clarify, I think I said you could be against everything, but you just need to make a motion to do that.

No, you're right.

And they couldn't get, you know, a majority basically. And so we tried to break it down into separate issues and see if we could get a majority positive, negative on each one.

Ultimately, we did that.

No, Steve's right. I mean, he did say you can do this, but normally you would come up with—

Right. If you can't get a motion to recommend approve, then try a motion to deny or recommend denial.

Instead of denying, we just deny everything the City Council sent to us. That's it.

The initial motion was— didn't pass, right? That's where they kind of got off track. But we ended up back on track. We got hopefully some—

And my question is, I haven't listened to the meeting. Did they offer, like, certain heights? Like, we kind of set down the 60, right? We sent them the 60. And they were saying that was okay for some of them, maybe the other ones to be higher.

I think the point— what did they say? The height was more than probably look at— maybe the council would want to do that, look at each individual district and determine on a case-by-case or individual district rather than a blanket, we're just going to do 60 feet. Because I think there are some justifications for a hub district where you got across the malls building an 80-foot-tall parking structure with a office building. Maybe that height fits better into the Hub District than it does in the North District. So that's kind of their discussion. I think why they recommended denial is that they wanted a little bit more discussion on what was going on. The setback issue, the 75-35, you know, it's 5 to 1 for that. They felt comfortable with that because if you look at each individual district, there are certain sections that actually abut a residential, but it's not the entire district. So they were positive in the fact that they felt that was appropriate. The other— so they split it out into 3, obviously. The other one was parking. They felt that there was still some ability to look at the parking, and I'll show you a slide coming up on how we maybe can look at that a little differently. But felt that just a flat-out change of the parking was not the answer, that maybe we look at it case by case or district by district. district thing as well. So that's kind of that. I'm just going to go through quickly and show you what was presented before them.

Jason, so on that last one, it was a negative 4-2?

It was a 4-2 negative, yeah.

They thought it was too high, right?

That's what—

2.25 was too high.

Well, the 4 of them felt the existing ratios in the 4 districts was affirmative.

But yes, which is 1.75. What is the current?

1.75 and then the 3 per 1,000.

Okay. Jason?

There was also the point that they want to split the residential and commercial and not vote on them together. Some were supportive of a residential increase but not the commercial. So there's that element too that they were—

Right. We'll get into that as we get into the ratios and different things that council can look at. And maybe some districts would be different than the others. I don't know that we need to have a set standard for all the districts. I think we can look at parking ratios in different districts. with mass transit on the Parkway is a different situation than it is in the North Village. There's just differences in those districts. So that's kind of the direction they want. I think the bottom line from what I took away from the Planning Commission is that they just want a little more discussion on what's going on. And maybe as we go back with some different amendments, that we discuss that as well. And I think they'll come around to a point where they can agree on some standards.

Thank you.

that the council also could agree on. That's my hope anyway, but we'll see how that goes.

Was there other messages, look at each district and do specific things for each district? I think that's what you seem to be messaging, look at the unique parameters of each and then determine that way.

Some of them I think would appreciate it if staff or as council maybe would go to the Planning Commission in a study session or work session and kind of discuss. We just basically presented this as the option. I think they would appreciate maybe to go case by case, or not case by case, District by district, and maybe to have their discussion so they can have their input. And then we can bring that back to the council.

But isn't that—

the application was sent to the Planning Commission, now it comes to us, then we take over from here, correct?

Correct. But we can still have an overall discussion. There's some other things we want to look at to possibly amend. So that could still be in part of the mix.

So we could have a joint work session with them at some point soon, if we chose, right?

If we chose to, we could. Absolutely. Or we can invite them, you know, this meeting or however you want to work that out. So as discussed by the council's recommendation, we did take it forward to 60-foot height. This is in all the districts, so they have all the different slides, but all these slides represent the same. It's a 60-foot option with a 35 if there's— in some districts there is a Residential B, which is what's adjacent to residential typically. There's a Res A in some districts and Res B. The Res B is typically next to, like, first north here is the Res B next to the residential. That's a 35-foot cap. So that was purposely designed to fit next to residential. Res A, which is over by the post office, for example, which already has some high-density housing, that's where that would go. And that's a different standard. But that would be 60 feet, the Res B would be 35 feet, with the caveat that if it's Non-habitable. But there is the ability to go an additional 10 feet for like penthouse or those types of things that enclose air conditioners, things like that. So it's non-habitable spaces, cupolas, domes, balconies, things like that. And that's standard in all the different districts.

And the North Village, that's basically what we did with the 48 feet, right? In the core, right?

And then the setback, the Planning Commission was positive on that, the 75/35 component, but when is it specifically adjacent to a residential zone? So if there's a street separating it, that's not adjacent, at least according to this definition. If it's abutting property to property, that would— when this would be coming. And then the standard was to take it from 3 to 4 parking per 1,000 and then take 1.75 to 2. As a starting point. And obviously, the council can have a discussion about how that moves forward. So the hub district— so I'm just going to go through these very quickly. They're the same language in each of the zones.

I think we were— I mean, we're 2.25 on the North Village.

Yes, that is correct. So these are all the same.

So I'm not going to—

the North Village, you take that from That's one thing that we didn't change in North Village. This is proposed to take that one to 4 per 1,000 rather than 3 per 1,000.

Correct.

Actually, that's this one here. So overall, that's what's pending, right? It doesn't— so it's basically vested at this point. So you can take your time. You don't have to approve this immediately. It's a pending. So as we look at some other discussion items, which I'm going to point out some of the things that I think Maybe council wants to discuss. And then we can bring those back, go back through the Planning Commission process and bring them all at the same time. Because these are pending now, anybody would have to at least meet the 60 feet. With the moratorium, obviously, that's a different story. The 60 feet, 35, 75, the 4 per 1,000, and then the 2 is the minimum they would have to meet if the moratorium wasn't on. Because that's on, that's a moot point right now. That's something we can discuss. Any specific questions on that portion of the amendments? So a couple of things that I want to bring forward that was in the staff report as well. The limitation on residential uses. This is the standard that's in each of the zones. So if you look at North Village District in the core, 20% of any redevelopment has to be commercial, 80% Can be residential. But I want to point out the fact that residential is not required in the district. If somebody chooses to do residential, they have to have a minimum of 20% of that development to be commercial.

So Jason, I don't know if you know this, but on Wright Development on the Art Lofts, do you know if they're hitting 20% commercial or 10%?

They are In the Arts District.

There.

I know what you're saying.

They're 11%.

11%?

Okay.

So I guess the question bringing this up is, does the council want to look at those numbers and change them? And that— this is why we're here to have this kind of preliminary discussion. Do we want to bring this item back to make some modifications? This is simply a discussion. There's nothing proposed, nothing pending. That's the question. If somebody comes in and wants to do 100% commercial, these standards don't apply. If somebody comes in and wants to do a mixed-use where we want to do residential, then they have to meet the minimum. Most developers meet minimums, they don't meet maximums. But that would be— well, they meet the minimum. But I mean, if somebody comes into North Village, so they take out the Del Taco, they want to redevelop on that corner, 20% of it would have to be some type With Wright, they told us a couple weeks ago that their initial approach had been straight commercial, just a bank there, correct?

And we didn't allow that, is that correct?

That was right during the time that we had pending legislation to the council.

Yeah, a bank is 100% commercial, right?

Could they do that there today?

No.

Okay.

Oh yeah, they could. If they want to do that, they would have to meet the—

Okay.

Jason, do you know why the Arts District has the 10% commercial where the other ones have 20% in their core?

So parts of them, we wanted to focus on the majority of those to be residential. Because it was an arts district, we had the CIRA, we had some other things that we wanted it to be more of a residential feel.

Okay, so just the feel of that district is why that one was lower.

And I think it's important to note too that some of this discussion was generated by the public meetings, the open houses, the comments that we collected. via the community outreach efforts that we had in place. So we tried to shape and form these consistent, obviously, with planning principles, but also with the will of those that were participating in this process.

So Jason, have you gotten any feedback in the whole State Street Master Plan process from developers on the 20% minimal Minimum commercial, if that's acceptable, workable.

So Ryan and I, I think a couple others went to Bountiful. We've done some other projects talking to developers as we were doing this, and between 10 and 20% is kind of their optimal, because if you require more commercial than the residential, and together it doesn't pay for itself, it's just not—

But they felt like they could meet 20%?

Typically, yeah, between 10 and 20%. The reason we did 20%, like in the core or the hub, is that is predominantly, you know, commercial corridor. We want to maintain at least a sense of that commercial, even though the residential would bring, you know, shoppers and other—

Because commercial is not a high occupancy type situation. I mean, commercial is a stretch to get the commercial in.

But yeah, part of the 5.5, you know, State Street is 5 and a quarter miles, I believe. Back when we were doing the master plan, I mean, to maintain that level of retail on that whole corridor, you were getting obviously piecemeal as it goes down. So the idea was to focus the density in these 5 districts, allow some residential, but also maintain some of that commercial aspect as well. That was the whole point of this split as we went forward. So I guess my question to the council is, is that something we want to discuss? Is that something you want to—

I personally think everything should be on the table, land use and everything in those districts. So that's what we're doing. We're trying to get it right. Let's make sure we dissect everything, every district, and make sure we get it right because I don't want to do it again.

So when you say land use, define that.

Different land uses of what can be in the property in those districts or whatever. I mean, I talk about the subway over here. You know, here in this hub, or city center district, if they remodel, they've got to put something on top. That's not, that's not what the vision of—

But that's a— and I don't disagree, but that doesn't speak to the mix. That just speaks to the, for example, minimum, minimum floors or requirements that are different. One of the things I wanted Jason to do today was, as we start down this path of discussing these districts, making you aware of where there are differences within each of the zones so that you can gain kind of a 20,000-foot perspective as to these are some of the things where differences do manifest themselves along the corridor. One of the areas where there is differences are in these kind of limitations that we have on residential uses. Some of them is a 20% commercial requirement, some of it is a 10%. We're going to talk about the number of floors. Parking is an issue. Setbacks are an issue. We've already talked about building heights. So, you know, this was intended to be kind of an opportunity of an introduction to say, these are some of the things that you probably should consider. When you say, Councilmember Spencer, I want to look at each of the zones, these are kind of the big, the big rocks that are in the zones and that essentially are— could be different across all of the districts.

So I want to bring your attention to what I think, or we as staff think, might be some issues. I want to resolve those as we go forward.

And one thing I think it's important to remember is That we have tried to determine to be strategic about where we put high density. And we've looked at high density being put in the 5 districts along State Street, where you have a major road there, you have commercial, so you can put in a mixed-use facility. So this is not just looking at this and saying, We're going to put, you know, big commercial in here. This is really where we're looking at putting high density, so we're keeping it out of the neighborhoods. So on 8th North, 1600 North, there are prime pieces of property that are coming up for sale, and people are looking at those to put high density. So I know a piece of property in Southeast Orem that the owner is looking to put and make that high density in a residential zone. Those are the kinds of things we've tried to keep out, and we've been successful. I can think of 5 different areas in residential that developers want to put high density, and because of the laws that we've passed and the direction that we've taken, They have not been allowed to, and they've gone into residential lots, which is what the neighbors wanted. But we are coming up with some major pieces of property that if we're not strategic and working with State Street to put high density, high density will go to neighborhoods, and that will—

the whole thing will change.

I think the main takeaway from this, and the reason why we stuck it in there, put it in the districts, It was the fact that we didn't want standalone high-density housing by itself on State Street. If you're going to have a mixed-use that fronted State Street, it had to have a mix of uses, which is why we had the minimum. Now you can, if you jump through a bunch of hoops, do behind an existing building 100% residential, but that's behind. And so what you would see on State Street is a mixed-use development. That's the reason behind this. So we didn't get, you know, a 5-story residential that was just Residential on State Street. That's why we put these in. Now, obviously, we can adjust them, but that was the reasoning behind having the minimums so that the developer comes in, you know, he wants high-density housing, great, but you also have to incorporate mixed uses as well.

Almost. So Jason, I like the idea that kind of what Dave's saying, that we do it district by district because each district's unique in their challenges and We invite people from that district to come so we hear their input. It's kind of like what we're concerned about with the state legislature. I don't want to be making a decision for the Hub District or the Canyon Crossing District or some other district without me hearing from the folks that live there. I mean, I don't want to be sitting in this room saying, well, let's do this master plan for everybody and find out we just ran into a 1600 North situation on 4th West. So I, I mean, I'm really supportive that we break it down, start the process.

So a neighborhood meeting for each or some type of discussion?

I would like to hear from people in each. Yeah, just, just so I make sure. It's kind of what Dave's saying, let's don't do this again. Let's— I'd like to hear from each.

So you— I mean, I'm just trying to clarify. So if we were to schedule neighborhood meetings for each district, that's kind of what I'm understanding, you want to talk about maybe these issues in that meeting? Have neighbors come and discuss.

So I think we need to have meetings first amongst the council to decide what we're doing. But then, as Terry and Dave said, invite those that this will affect in, in later.

But I don't want to determine what we're going to do, do to them and then have them fight. I'd like to hear their concerns, and then we'll determine what we're going to do after we hear their input. Because I don't know. I don't know how that impacts.

Oh, sorry. So I guess that I think citizen input is critical to this whole discussion. I think it was equally as critical when we started down this path 5 years ago, and we engaged the community. So, you know, it's a much broader discussion than just a Community meeting. It includes a lot of other communication tools and outreach efforts. Because with a community meeting, you're going to probably face the same criticism we're facing now. And that is, well, how come we didn't know about this? How come such a small group was engaged in this? You held one community meeting. I should have had more of an opportunity to respond. What if I couldn't attend that meeting on Tuesday?

they—

is there somewhere for me to— you get what I'm saying? So it needs to be more comprehensive than that, which is the path that we went down back in 2015 through 2018. And you're talking about doing the same thing again, is what I'm hearing.

Just having been involved heavily in the communications that happened 5 years ago, the zoning along the major Road through the city is not just a small pockets of people discussion, right? This is the same State Street that impacts people in the entire community. So to say every neighborhood gets to decide, just, just let's hear from just them.

Well, it's, you know, I probably would be honest, I live close enough to State Street.

But for somebody else, it's their State Street too. And what happens there or doesn't happen there impacts their neighborhood on East Orem.

I think And that's a fair point.

West Orem. So it'd be difficult to just say, hey, we're just getting here for these pockets and kind of close the communication to the rest of the community.

Steve, if you, if you're on 400 West, that was your neighborhood.

Oh, of course.

So if you're on the Arts District, if you're in the Hub District, and there's a high-density apartment going across the street, that is your neighborhood. They have the right to understand the master plan, what's going to happen. And in all due respect, About this 5 years ago study, when we showed— when we had the list of everybody that was on the study that was shown a few years or maybe a year ago, my wife and my name was on that study. I didn't have a damn thing to do with it. I went to one meeting and signed my name, and all of a sudden I was part of the decision-making.

Go, what?

But you were part of the process.

No, I wasn't.

I went through one meeting. So you attended a meeting.

But I went— I attended the meeting that was going to be supposed to hear more about it. But Jamie, Go up and down State Street and ask the people and state the businesses. But what I— Let me finish, please. How many of them are happy with the master plan?

But what I am, what I'm just representing is that you attended the meeting. There was some reason that brought you to that meeting. And you consciously chose to participate and you signed your name. So that's—

I had no input. So to say that I had input and discussion, there was— I had no input. No one ever asked my opinion.

But I don't think it's a It's not a fair representation to say I knew nothing about it because you actually attended the meeting and signed your name.

I didn't say I knew nothing about it. I said that I went to the meeting and signed it, but then there was never— I never had any input into what happened. But more than that is asking the people up and down. I just say the people that are affected should be able to have a voice.

Yeah, I agree.

And I misunderstood. I thought you were saying, and only they get to come.

No, no, no. I'm just saying before we make the— Like the mayor's saying, we'll make the decisions at City Council, but before we do that, we ought to hear people that are going to be impacted where 25 feet from their house is a 6-story building. They ought to be able to have input on that.

Yeah.

And I'm not saying they change it. I'm just saying let's hear from them so that we protect what happened to the people in the North Village.

Yeah.

Let's just let them— and whether they're going to be happy with our decision or not, at least we hear. That's my point. Just let's just listen to their concerns.

You do on each district, could you do an overlay and say, okay, this is 20% commercial on this district and what it looks like?

So we'll go through the maps. Yeah, I got some maps coming. Remind me because I might forget. So I guess what I'm hearing is this will be part of our discussion. This is what we refer to a little bit So North Village District, in the core, is a 2-story minimum. So this is basically if you remodel your building. Let's say across the street here they want to remodel their sandwich shop. They don't have to make it a 2-story building. But if they want to tear it down and rebuild it, they do. That's, that's the difference between someone that wants to come in and just keep what they have, which we've made a point back when the council adopted this. I think several of you had some issues with us requiring them to fix it or bring it into current standards. What we did do is allow them to keep their existing building and they can maintain it for perpetuity. So if somebody wants to do the Subway shop for 50 more years, they can do that. If they want to redevelop—

The concern there is, you know, they're a quarter of an acre, whatever, and you're going to make them do a 3-story.

Well, part of that is to force— not necessarily force, but to encourage them to amass other properties so you have a bigger project instead of having this little piece, little tiny shops. So I guess that's the big discussion. Do we want to keep that, or is that something that's— obviously it's on the table.

I think that's definitely on the table.

Right. So in the hub district, which is the University Parkway, the minimum is 3 stories except for the hub, which we are— the edge, excuse me, which we just changed about 7, 8 months ago to allow those pad sites out front to have a minimum of 1 story. So this is the requirements now. I'm just bringing it up. These are what we require. If somebody comes in and wants to take down the Burger King, across the street, they would have to build a minimum 2-story— excuse me, 3-story building to replace it.

But we have a moratorium, so they can't do it.

Right. If it deals with anything.

Right, Steve?

That's right.

Depending on what you do tonight as far as amending it.

Yeah. So this is a little busy. So I guess if you work with me here, I'll explain what you So as an example, there's what's called base residential density. Midtown Village is what they've done. That's what we based it on, which is kind of a standard throughout the country. When somebody does a mixed-use, they typically allow a commercial development to come in, and then they share a portion of that with a residential component, a mixed-use development. So in this example, we have 7,200 square feet of commercial property.

Thank you. And by the way, there, it makes quite a bit of sense because the people who are coming to sleep at night are different than the people who are coming during the day to shop, right?

That's the idea behind it.

That's that, that one, it makes great sense.

So if you look at that, so here's the 7 units of 7,200 square feet, which requires 22 stalls of commercial. If you divide that by 3, which is what the districts allow for shared, and 7 units can be a part of that 7,200 units, And they're required to have 22 total parking stalls. In addition, if they want anything over and above that, so in this example, they want 40 additional units for a total of 47. So if you take that across, 1.75 per unit, which is what's in the other 4 districts, they require 70 additional stalls. 2 is 80, 2.25 is 90. Here are the total stalls required. Here's the ratio based on residential uses. So if we're looking to try to get to a 2 stall ratio for residential uses. And this ratio would work at a 2.0 stall with 3 points, or 3 per 1,000. This is the same scenario with 4 per 1,000, which gives you a little different share. So 29 is required, but 9 stalls now are allowed to share. So if we take the same number of units, 47, so they have 38 units in each park. These are the different ones, and this is The ratio is— You can see the different requirements obviously increase the ratio. So the idea is to get to a 2 or somewhere like that. And if you do that, then it's the 2 and the 4 per 1,000, each at 2.23. This one is at 2.17. So they're similar. The other idea is if you don't like the base residential density, take that out. Each of them have to require their own parking. So this has 22. each of these, 47 total units. You can see the ratio goes up, whether it's 3 per 1,000, 4 per 1,000. Interesting thing though is that this ratio, if they do independent, you do 1.75, 2.23, gets you the same ratio as if you do the 4 per 1,000 and the 2, which shows that almost 2.25 per residential share.

If—

take, uh, on 1600 North, there's an Osman furniture store. They're commercial, and so is True Religion. But Osman gets a whole lot less traffic per 1,000 square feet than True Religion does. I mean, you go in there and it's busy, as it should be, or around the other restaurants the other side. So can we have different classifications of commercials? Because a restaurant has more demand than a furniture store or some other things.

To use your example, True Religion, they're only open for breakfast and lunch, right?

So dinnertime, the other stores kind of spill over.

I get that. But they all close at a certain hour, and then the residential takes into that space that's shared.

Yeah, again, I understand the commercial and residential, but it seems like there's different types of commercial. A bank wouldn't have as near as much traffic, a furniture store, whatever. Whereas a restaurant at lunchtime, that's a busy place. You know, if you're trying to eat at any of those places, it's—

I think what you're saying is a great idea. I think the challenge would be is we wouldn't know what those commercial uses were.

And what they are today doesn't mean that's what they'll be in 3 years, right?

Right, they could change over at any time.

That's the tough part.

The way the parking works is basically we're betting on the average.

Yeah.

Right, so right now it's by zone, not in the regular C-2 zone, it's just a zone. So whatever you want to put in there that's permitted, whether it's the furniture store or whether it's an office building that has a different We're going to require the same amount of parking. Over, over time, we're hoping that the averages work out, that whatever is in that building, the parking standard is sufficient. So in a mixed-use development, the same is true. If you have a restaurant like True Legend, which is phenomenal, by the way, if you haven't been. But, you know, it just depends if you have that or if you have a restaurant that's not as busy. I mean, you're going to have the same parking standard, the same mix.

Versus those soda pop places that have a horrendous number of cars pulling up for a 400-square-foot place, right?

Right.

Nobody in, but they're all going through the drive-through.

And I think the reason why we did the 2.25 in the North Village was the 0.25 was for visitors, because that's where we see the problem is there's no visitor parking. You go down to Vineyard and it's like you got no visitor parking and you're getting towed. So that's the concern, I think, with that.

Right.

I think the only point of showing this is that I think it's other districts, like the Hub, for example, that does have the BRT. I mean, I think there's probably some different parking ratios that you can come up with, would be shared, or you have other modes of transportation versus the North District.

I like this because we're dissecting— you've given us information that we can look and say, okay, the Hub zone or the other zone, or districts this applies or doesn't, or makes sense or doesn't. So this is good.

And I'll email this to you guys.

That's great.

Thanks, Jason.

If you don't like it, don't call me. But these are just kind of going through. The one on the right is the existing zone that was done prior to the district was put in place. So you can see the North Village was all C-2, with the exception of one There's a lot right there that was residential, which is right next to the— what's it called— the restaurant right there. Anyway, the majority of it was C-2. You can see where the core and the edge and the Res A were relocated. This is the Canyon Crossing District. You can see prior to that, all the red was C-2. We didn't add any additional other than this portion there, which also we've made Res B, which fits into the character of that. This is the trade park, which we've made residential, so you could do standalone residential there. But the majority of it was C-2 zone. So the question I think Mr. Spencer had was, does that make sense to stay that alarm in? Just when this went through, this property owner requested that they be included in the district, which is why we went through the process.

Yeah, that's my, that's my concern right there.

So that's something we'll discuss.

Sure.

This is the City Center District. You can see the majority of different commercial properties. This was zoned residential, even though it's City Center. So that was put into the Civic. Majority of all the property was part of the commercial zone prior to the districts. Parks District was the same except the R-6-5, which is City, school district with a few homes around there. The ones on the north were put into the Res B. So if they ever want to do a res, I guess, want to do any residential, they'd be at max of 35 feet.

And Jason, basically that Res B is basically the max they can do is a townhouse.

That's the maximum type density.

35-foot max, no stacks. And then the The hub district, which was obviously all, with the exception of one PV zone, which was the high-density project that's down there now, was all commercial.

Well, and you also left out the current business park there on the right side of the border to single-family homes.

Yeah, we did.

So that kind of is a buffer between single-family and RV, so there would be no change.

So I guess the question we've pretty much discussed a little bit tonight, there's going to be— need to be an overall— many methods of, I guess, incorporating and trying to encourage people to be a part of it, whether it's a neighborhood meeting, some open houses, probably do some mailers, some online forums as well to get people involved in the next few months. Any other ideas on how we want to proceed as far as involving citizens?

I do like the idea of a joint meeting with the Planning Commission. Because I think, you know, we look to them to do a lot of our vetting and due diligence. So I think it'd be good as soon as we can to at least brainstorm, come up with the best ideas, hear them, they hear us. And then, and I don't know when we can set that up, the next few weeks, month, I don't know. But I'd like to bring them in. There's, there's people on there, I respect their opinions. And I certainly would like to hear what they say. And, you know, it's an important committee with the city. And And they obviously have some opinions either way.

So I don't know if that'd be at this meeting or a separate meeting.

I don't know. I don't know.

What do you—

I could meet on a Saturday if it's difficult.

I think they pretty well draw the line in the sand. We don't agree with those guys.

So I don't know what value comes from it, Debbie.

I agree.

Well, because they're our Planning Commission. And these are, these are citizens.

They've already given their opinion.

Well, what I heard from him is they had some ideas on the different ones related to maybe this one would be a different high than this one. I'd like to— or maybe they can write us a letter what their recommendations would be. Because I don't think it was all no. It sounded like they kind of— it sounded like they didn't want to do a blanket thing across. And that I'd like to hear their specific—

Well, I don't think we're doing a blanket thing across the thing. I think we're taking each district and We've got their votes and what they want.

We'll figure out what we want to do.

Debbie, it might be good for you to go to the Planning Commission meeting during the public input.

Happy to do that.

Because they're pretty good at responding to people that come and do the public input. So I think if you went with a series of questions at the Planning Commission meeting, they would probably address some of your concerns.

Sounds good.

It would need to be in a work session though. We don't allow public comment just as an off-topic. Any other comments, questions? That's pretty much all I have, Mayor. Okay, thanks, Jason.

All right, thanks, Jason.

Um, looks like our meal is here, so let's go ahead and have a prayer. Tom, do you mind giving us a prayer?

Of course, thank you.

Father in heaven, we find ourselves in pleasant surroundings and we thank thee We're grateful for the safety of our police officers in the last couple days as they responded to many dangerous situations, but particularly one that made news. We're thankful for the food that's before us and those who arranged for it. We ask a blessing to be upon it. Help us to conduct our business with dignity.

We pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

Hey, Jeff, so do you have somebody for prayer and the flag?

Oh, I don't even have to eat it. What other building? Oh, the big one?

No, it's—

So you know how the people that wanted to, like, that they almost, like, undermined us?

Yeah.

I think they took that building out. Really?

Yeah.

Oh, a gunshot.

Yeah, space is good. I agree with you. But yeah, if you have questions, just feel free to give me a call.

I'm purple.

I love it.

What's your name?

Oh, I'm Jared.

Where do you guys live? Uh, we live over in, uh, Northwood. Oh, the medical.

Yeah.

I was like, what am I— I just texted her and I said, people are sharing everything you're doing. That's why I stopped. Listen, I'm just kidding. Listen here. I had a girlfriend who was also a skirt kid.

Did you really?

Oh, you've known her for a long time. Oh, wow.

I moved here from New York and I was a little kid and I grew up late.

And she was this grown-up girl down the road, you know, who was the same age. I had to go here.

City.

35+ years. I was just— yes, we do. Um, yeah, I was just bleeding, but it's fine.

Anyway, how are you?

Well, you got my number.

These are the folks who had the problems on their remodel.

Yes.

Okay, so her claim to fame is her mother-in-law's 40-year-old furnace.

And these 2 are partners in the deal, is that right?

With your husband or with your—

one of your husbands involved? That was really funny.

Or inspiring.

Or slap-happy.

I knew you could. Well, those chandeliers.

I forgot.

I was like, how am I gonna do this? So I unscrewed some of them.

We would like to welcome everyone out to our city council meeting this evening and would like to call this meeting to order. We'd like to begin by having a prayer— I'm sorry, a prayer to be given by Jeff Lampson and then the Pledge of Allegiance to be given by Jody So we'll start out with Jeff.

Our beloved Father in Heaven, with gratitude and in humility, we humbly bow our heads before thee and express our love and appreciation unto thee for all which thou hast blessed us with. Father, we're so grateful to be able to live in this beautiful city, to live in this beautiful valley surrounded by mountains and surrounded by wonderful neighbors and friends, grateful to be here together as citizens and fellow citizens. We ask of thee, Father, to be with us as we are together, that we might have thy Holy Spirit to be with us to guide and direct those actions which will be taken this evening. We pray, Father, for those who work so hard to Amen. We pray for those who keep us safe, our first responders and those who serve in the military. We pray that thou would bless each of them and their families. We pray also, Father, that thou would bless those in our community who are less fortunate or who are going through difficult times, that they might reach out unto thee to seek thy help. And we pray that thou would help us as community to know how we can reach out to them and to lift their burdens. and to strengthen them as our brothers and sisters. Father, we pray now for— again, for thy Spirit to be with us, most humbly and gratefully, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Audience, please rise and repeat the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I'd like to make mention that per the CDC's request and per the governor's request, that any people within this room who cannot social distance 6 feet away from another person, wear a mask. We have a box of masks in the back, but we would request your compliance and help with that. We'd now like to go ahead and start on a report item, and that is a Public Safety Advisory Commission introduction to be given by Fire Chief Mark Sanderson, after which the same to be given by Police Chief Josh Adams. Make sure you turn that on there.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Is that good? Yeah, thank you for this opportunity, and I think this Public Safety Commission that, that is being resurrected, I think, is— or developed— is going to be something that will take us into the future with really good community support. The 2 names after it was several months of trying to figure out just who in the community would fit our needs moving forward. I actually have— or I guess they submitted applications, both Scott Ash and Donna Cauderow, as the fire chief appointees to this commission. And if I just give you a little update, Scott Ash is a long-term Orem resident. He's a fire captain currently working for Pleasant Grove City. He's one of those guys that he'll speak his mind, he'll stand up for the community, he's well vested in public safety, and I think he'll add a lot to this first committee. The second person, Donna Cottrell, she is also a long-term Orem resident. She is a current employee at the Utah Fire and Rescue Academy, so she's, she's well versed with fire service as well as she spent some time with Provo Police Department. And so those are the 2 names that I bring to you as my appointees and look forward to this commission taking place.

Okay, one thing maybe I could just mention to those in attendance is we're forming a Public Safety Advisory Commission, and we're taking 2 appointees from our fire chief, 2 appointees from our police chief, and 3 appointees from the City Council. So we'll have 7 members on the Public Safety Advisory Commission that are residents within the city. Police Chief Jonathan Adams, go ahead.

Thank you. It's good to be here tonight. From the police department, the 2 people that we have commissioned for, for this service, the first one is Abril Lopez. Uh, Abril is a, um, relatively young citizen in the community. She's 20 years old, uh, born and raised here in Orem. Her family's been involved in community service and, and so forth for a long time, and, uh, she's currently a student, uh, and we feel that, uh, her service in— she's been in Latinos in Action and several other church and, uh, service opportunity in her life that I feel that she's in a good position to represent several different communities within our, our city. We have a large youth population, we have a large population of students, and a wonderful population of Latino people, and she is anxious to represent them all on this committee. The second person that we brought on is Fui Taotua. He's also a lifelong— well, not a lifelong, he's, he's from Samoa. He's been in living in Orem for approximately 20 years. He is involved in IT as a, as a professional and has been involved in church organization— organizations, scouting organizations, and so forth. for a number of years. He was one that was— he didn't actually express any interest in it. He was one that we recruited. We felt, myself and my staff felt, it would be important to bring on a member of the Pacific Islander community that is also an important group within our community, and Also, we felt that it would be a positive thing to have somebody that doesn't have a public safety background and doesn't have any, uh, motives or, or anything like that.

He—

and he's a very, uh, fun person to, to talk to. He's a very fun person to visit with. He's got a lot of good, important perspective on life, and he is a very, very highly respected person within his neighborhood and the community at large. So we're excited to have him on board.

Thank you, Chief. Those 4 appointees I think are excellent and will be a great benefit to the community. I want to turn some time over now to Fire Chief Mark Sanderson to give an employee recognition.

Thank you, Mayor. If I could just have Braden Partridge come up while I'm talking, I just wanted to take this opportunity to spotlight The paramedic program that we have here in Pleasant— or in, in Orem that is strongly supported financially as well as from an education perspective. Clear back, I mean, 1997 when Orem sent me to paramedic school at Weber State, um, for the next several years hiring EMTs and transitioning them into paramedic program Was something that, uh, the city did. Then there was a span of years where, based on the department was primarily made up of paramedics, there wasn't that need. A few years ago, of course, with not being able to hire paramedics, there wasn't— the school wasn't putting out so many, or it was just relatively assigned to current departments. We found ourselves in a position hiring EMTs. And so with the continued support financially, with the focus on the education and the service we provide, which is substantial, um, these guys spend 3 or 4 months off of the floor doing their regular duties, signed up into the office administratively helping us or studying so that they can pass their tests and earn their certifications. Um, it just comes at a cost to the city, which is very much appreciated. I mean, the hiring philosophy we currently have now is, you know, if we hire the right person, not so much focused on just the paramedic certification, we'll just get better employees in the long run. So the continued support for our paramedic program, I think hiring EMTs, which they have the personality to match our programs, will just further our service. And so there have been many paramedics um, ahead of Braden, and this just is the first opportunity we've had to share, um, him as an— as our latest example of having just graduated, um, the current paramedic program. And I just want to turn a second over to him to address the council.

Mayor, you're at the mic.

So As part of the paramedic program, at the end of the program we make coins. It's called— it's a class coin, it's a challenge coin, and these are designed to give to people that's helped us through the program and assisted us in the way. And as Chief just mentioned, a huge support came from the council and from the city. As part of that, I would like to give each of the council members one of these coins as a token of appreciation for that and Not only from me, but from the previous students as well that have been through the program and hopefully continued throughout as, as we continue putting paramedics through the program. So I have these that I would like to give to the council.

Here, come on up and start over here.

Mayor, I would say that if you don't have a coin box, I think with the number of EMTs that we've recently hired and putting them through the paramedic program, You guys will all be receiving many of these coins in the future, so— well, they're all going to earn theirs, I promise that.

So we could all use a coin box on the counter.

That's right.

Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it. We'll now go to the personal appearance portion of our meeting. I'd just like to read a paragraph that goes with that. Time has been set aside for the public to express their ideas, concerns, and comments on items not scheduled as public hearings on the agenda. Those wishing to speak are encouraged to show respect for those who serve the city. Comments should focus on issues concerning the city and not on individuals. Those wishing to speak should have signed in before the beginning of the meeting. Please limit, limit your comments to 3 minutes.

Thank you.

And please provide your name when you go to speak. First, we'd like to hear from Ethan Harris, then Jared Moore, and then Stephanie Visnauth.

Mr. Mayor and council members, my name is Ethan Harris. I am 28, and I live in the Hillcrest historic neighborhood. I have been there for nearly 6 years. When I bought this home, I was single, and now I have a wife, a 3-year-old daughter, and a 1-year-old son. I moved to this community with the intention of starting my family in this city. Since living in this neighborhood, the mall has been buying up properties and tearing down homes for— in the name of their expansion. These developments continue to shrink our neighborhood. The Wright Development Group has proposed a high-density housing complex with enough parking— or without enough parking to accommodate their commercial tenants, residents, and their guests. This means that we will experience the same thing that has happened at every other apartment complex in the valley. If we drive by the Aston Apartments on the same block, you will see that even during the day, their parking has overflowed into Costco's parking lot. This only gets worse in the Our neighborhood will not have something like Costco to accommodate this excess parking. This means the parking will overflow to our streets, making it difficult for Orem residents who have invested in this community by purchasing a home and deciding to raise their families here. Our neighborhood already has traffic from those who try to access the mall. And this complex will bring an increase along our residential streets where our children and grandchildren like to play. In the meeting on August 9th, Hassam Sakar mentioned that as a volunteer with Orem Police Department, they have seen increased crime rates and received many calls to high-density apartments such as this one. I lived in a complex like this where cars were parking along Geneva Road down in Vineyard, and many of them would have broken windows due to thefts. As a neighborhood, we would welcome commercial developments that will bring great businesses to our community in this location. There are some that argue that they need more affordable housing. I would like to bring up that high density does not mean the same thing as affordable, and that can be seen if you look at the Aston's prices for a 2-bedroom apartment. This is why we are asking the city to reject this high-density housing and and only allow commercial developments with appropriate separation so we can protect Orem's residential neighborhoods. Last week, I emailed each of you a 9-page petition that has been taken around to neighbors and businesses that will be surrounding this proposed complex. All of them share these same concerns about our parking, traffic, and public safety. Please, as residents of Orem, do not make us regret living here.

Thank you.

Thank you. Jared Moore.

My name is Jared Moore, and I appreciate the opportunity to come speak to you. This is— I've never done this before. I, too, am a citizen and a resident of the area where the Meadow Gold property is and I'm here talking about my concerns. I came just a few weeks ago when we discussed that and had the— and voted on the moratorium. And I remember at the beginning of that meeting, after listening to the lawyers and some of the things that were spoken, I felt really a feeling of dread that we wouldn't be heard as residents that live there, that our rights and our safety our lives that we've built wouldn't be listened to. I am grateful to those of you who did listen and voted for that moratorium. Thank you so much. As that meeting progressed, though, I didn't feel so much gloom because what I started— clarity started coming to my mind, and I started to understand that, you know, when the lawyers are talking, they're talking about things like the can and the can'ts, what's legal and what's not legal. And I understand that we're each going to use the legal system to get what we need and what we want. But that doesn't mean that we should. And that's what the residents, when we came last time, were talking about and trying to express, is that there are things that we should and shouldn't do. Just because we can doesn't mean we should. I've been extremely upset upset when I heard that originally this developer wanted to build a bank. I can't think of anything that would be more symbiotic for our residents in that neighborhood and for State Street itself than a bank. But for some reasons that are unknown to us, their permits were denied. And now we're in a situation where people are very upset. We are asking you to please reconsider what can be built there. Just because legally it can doesn't mean it should. We want to be represented as people who've built our homes there, our families, just as the previous person expressed, are raising our children. When I moved into that neighborhood, I purposefully drove around the neighborhood within a great distance to see if there was any apartment buildings, and there were none. Now we have nothing but apartments that are being built way up in the sky. I can guarantee you, you wouldn't be happy about that, and we aren't either.

So we're—

please, we're asking you to reconsider and work with this developer to build something that is appropriate for that lot.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. And now I'll turn some time over to Stephanie Vizna.

It gets cold in here. I am shaking, not because I'm nervous, but I am freezing. So anyway, if I chatter, it's— anyway, I also didn't type my words up today, so I'm going to kind of go off the cuff a little bit on, on my comments. But in the work meeting, we noticed several maps that were shown of the districts and how they used to be C2 and what they are now with the district And yes, I have property that abuts commercial property that was C-2 and now is an edge zone in the North Village District. So we know that with the new districts came unlimited height and the potential for high-density housing in a mixed-use element. So when you give unlimited height and high density together right next to a residence, it's a huge— much bigger impact than a C-2 zone. which was a 60-foot height maximum and no high density. So when you give— change something from something like C-2 to the districts with these huge amount of impact, there has to be something that is given to the residents to buffer them, to protect them, and to help them out. And we've been talking about height and setbacks and parking. So today I'm going to talk a little bit more about parking. Although I could go on and on about these other things, but I want to bring up a couple of things that came up. In the Planning Commission meeting, they recognized that the biggest problems of parking are around where we have high-density housing. That's undeniable. People have seen it. You've all seen it. We know there's problems around these high-density housing units because there's not enough parking. So recently, the Orem City Police Department put out on Facebook about their new parking enforcement program, and there was a large amount of comments and a lot of chatter. I actually stood up for it because I thought it was a great thing, but I want to read to you 3 separate comments from different residents that I don't know. These are strangers to me. A gentleman named Landon— I won't give last names, I'll just— said, some of the biggest parking problems are from weight. It's a big surprise. High-density living. It's ridiculous, the lack of parking at these places and people parking— with these people parking on corners, in front of stop signs, and parking across crosswalks, and so on. Another gentleman named Jonathan says, 100% this. Parking was not an issue at my house until the high-density housing was built. Now people park on top of the corners, on top of stop signs, fire hydrants, et cetera, all the time. Some of them have been parked there for weeks and haven't moved. No tickets, no nothing. Highly unsafe and cause all kinds of issues. I'm very shocked there haven't been a lot more wrecks since most people can't see around a corner to see if there is a vehicle coming or not. I've had one too many abandoned vehicles in front of my house. Also people parking in front of stop signs, but hey, college town. And there are many other comments. There's 2 pages front and back of ones I copied and pasted with parking concerns from residents who just commented on the Orem PD's Facebook post that they recently made. So it's clear that parking is one thing that high-density housing imposes upon residents with, and I think we all can agree on that. So my plea is to go through, like we talked about in the— well, not we, you talked about in the work meeting, Each district is different. Let's look at where there's neighborhoods nearby. Let's appropriately put high density and its parking ratios to reflect and protect neighborhoods.

Thank you. We'll now go ahead and move on to our consent items, and we'll close the personal appearance portion of our meeting. First consent item is approval of meeting minutes, City Council meetings July 13, 2021. July 27th, 2021. If anyone on the council, as I read through these consent items, would wish to put it on a scheduled item agenda, please let me know. 8.2 is a resolution approving an amendment to the March 10th, 2008 amended and restated agreement between the City of Orem, The Links at Sleepy Ridge, LLC, The Suites at Sleepy Ridge, LLC, and Plant Specialties, Inc., and authorizing the mayor to sign the amendment. 8.3 is acceptance and certification of the 2021 City of Orem primary elections. I would like to read the final results of the primary elections. For mayor, we have 2 candidates going forward into the general election. First one is Jim Evans receiving 5, 221 votes. Second is David Young receiving 4,125 votes. Both of them are going through into the general election. For council members, we have Lenee Millett receiving 7,357 votes, David Spencer receiving 6,507 votes, Tom McDonald receiving 6, 196 votes. Quinn Meekum receiving 3,912 votes. Shantae Ruiz-Zindel receiving 3,311 votes. And Nichelle Jensen receiving 3,147 votes. Those 6 candidates are going forward into the general election. 8.4 is a City Council appointment to the Public Safety Advisory Commission, uh, of 3 individuals: Rick Clark, Spencer Rand, and William Folk. I move that the consent item be accepted. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we will start with Councilmember Lamson.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The consent agenda is accepted, and we'll move on To our scheduled items. We have one scheduled item, and this is an ordinance, not a public hearing, but an ordinance amending, amending the temporary land use regulation moratorium previously adopted by the City Council on August 9th, 2021, with respect to the City Center District zones The Hub District Zones, the Canyon Crossing District Zones, the Arts District Zones, and the North Village District Zones, pursuant to Utah Code Section 10-9A-504, to exclude from the moratorium the following types of construction: interior remodels, exterior remodels, exterior finish materials, Roofing, windows, doors, awnings, canopies, decks, patios, and architectural features designed solely to enhance the aesthetic appeal of a building. Signs, fences, and retaining walls. Roof structures for parking and drive-through. Utility improvement infrastructure including electrical, natural gas, telephone, fiber, water, sewer, and stormwater. Parking lot and driveway improvements, curb, gutter, and sidewalks, lighting improvements, landscaping improvements, cellular infrastructure, and other structures and improvements that do not create or increase habitable building space, but in no case to exceed a height of 60 feet. And also to exempt from the moratorium all construction that is purely commercial, no residential uses in nature, that does not exceed a height of 60 feet and provides parking of at least 1 stall per 250 square feet of gross floor area. Our presenter is Steve Earle, and Steve, turn some time over to you.

Thank you, Mayor. On City Council, I pretty much covered what, what's being proposed, obviously, in reading that.

Thank you.

Basically, as a little bit of background, and for those who are in the audience who may not be aware, following the enactment of the moratorium on August 9th, the city has encountered some unexpected consequences, mainly people who have property in the district zones who wanted to obtain building permits for some of the items you've already mentioned, things like signs or interior remodels. roof structures, things like that. And I think we all realize, staff and the City Council, that those things were not— wasn't the council's intent to exclude those things from, from being constructed. And so we, uh, we quickly realized that we ought to propose an amendment to the moratorium to allow those kinds of things to continue forward and to be exempt from the provisions of the moratorium. And, uh, As a second alternative or in addition to that, those possible exclusions, we're also proposing that— or actually maybe opening up for council discussion exempting from the moratorium, as you mentioned, Mayor, all development that's purely commercial in nature that doesn't include any residential uses, provided that, you know, any such building doesn't exceed a height of 60 feet and does provide parking at at least 1 stall per 250 square feet of gross floor area. Now, my perception is that when the council enacted the moratorium, it was mainly due to concerns with the potential negative impacts resulting from the overconcentration of residential development, or the council's perception of that, and the desire to put a pause or moratorium on that while you studied what standards should be included in the district zones going forward. And so basically, this second possible exemption to allow this purely commercial development to go forward would essentially being— would be allowing C-2 type uses to go forward. As you know, most of State Street is zoned C-2 other than what's in the district zones right now, and the district zones themselves were mainly C-2 before, and that basically allows commercial development at a height of 60 feet, parked at a ratio of 1 stall per 250 square feet of gross leasable space. So if you, if you decide to do the second part of this exemption from the moratorium, you would basically be saying we're going to allow C-2 type development to go forward. Obviously, the rest of State Street is not exempt, is not subject to the moratorium, the C-2 development in that area of State Street is allowed to continue. So there's some argument that maybe it makes sense to allow that type of development to go forward and be exempt from the moratorium in the State Street District zones as well.

Okay, so this is an ordinance that we are here to pass or not pass. It is not a public hearing, and I wanted to open it up to the Council, for anyone who wanted to make a comment. Councilmember Spencer.

So, Steve, I've got a question on the North Village District that we put the height limit of 48 feet in the core and 35 in the edge. Does this 60 feet trump that?

No, it does not. So those, those, uh, those height limitations would apply to any development in the North Village District, even if it's purely commercial. They'd be subject to that 35.

It says does not exceed.

Right. So if you have a more restrictive standard already built into those zones—

Okay, I just wanted to clarify.

Yeah, that would apply.

Anyone else on the council wish to make a comment other than their phone? Okay, then I would accept a motion.

I'll make that motion, Mayor.

Okay.

I make a motion amending the temporary land use regulation moratorium previously adopted by the city council on August 9th 2021 with respect to the City Center District Zones, the Hub District Zones, the Canyon Crossing District Zones, the Art District Zones, and the North Village District Zones pursuant to Utah Code Section 10-9A-504 to exclude from the moratorium the following types of construction: interior remodels, exterior remodels, Exterior finish materials, roofing, windows, doors, awnings, canopies, decks, patios, and archaeological features—

Architectural.

Architectural features designed solely to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the building, signs, fences, and retaining walls, roof structures for parking and drive-through, utility improvements, Infrastructure— electric, natural gas, telephone, fiber, water, sewer, stormwater. Parking lot and parkway and driveway improvements. Curve, gutter, and sidewalks. Lighting improvements. Landscaping improvements. Cellular infrastructure. And other structures and improvement that do not create or increase Habitable building space, but in no case to exceed a height of 60 feet, and also to exempt from the moratorium all construction that is purely commercial, no residential uses in nature, that does not exceed a height of 60 feet and provide parking of at least 1 stall per 250 square feet of gross floor area.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, let's go ahead and vote. Jeff, we'll start with you.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the ordinance passes. Uh, we'll move down. Jamie, do you have anything that you wish to bring up? Okay, then I would accept a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

We are adjourned. Thank you.