City Council · 2021-09-28

I think it's a good starting point. I think for October 6th, I think that would give the citizens quite a, quite a, you know, a couple different options, and I think it would be— we can go from there. Hey, Brent, can you hear us?

Yeah, sure.

So, so what do you— what are your thoughts, Brent?

Well, I've had a few or a couple of people who approached me on the timeline and Of course, these things take time, and can you give us an overview of the timeline and when we actually turn dirt up to start the hole?

So, we're—

as soon as we can get the community to buy in on the concept, we can start in earnest on the design. The design, though, is a 4 to 6 month process by the time you Design, bid, etc.

So we would be looking at spring of next year, it's probably earliest we'd be.

Okay, and then, and then about a year and a half from there for completion?

Yeah, this is, this is probably 18 months to possibly 24 months with everything involved.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions? Okay, thank you. Now we'll go to update on Utah Valley University with Stephen White. And Val Peterson, looks like you weren't on here, Val. We'll write you in. Glad to have you.

Thank you.

We appreciate being here. Lots of exciting things going on on campus. Steven's here to tell you all about them.

Cool.

He'll answer all the questions and I'll just sit here and, and look pretty, I guess. But I will tell you, the pedestrian bridge has been a tremendous success. We have UDOT's— by UDOT's count, not our count— we have a little over 2,000 people a day that are utilizing the bridge, which translates into 300 to 500 less cars across the Spui, which will help lengthen its life cycle. And also, as we have less parking on campus, I think because of the green and because of the pedestrian bridge and We're actually going to do a traffic study to look at that because we think that the amount of traffic that we have impacting the neighborhood has actually decreased.

That'd be good. Okay, we're ready.

Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and for your service that you give to the city and to the community and also to the university. It's a privilege for us to be able to work with the mayor, with all of you as city council, with Jamie Davidson and Bren Bybee and Stephen Downs and the entire city team. So we really greatly appreciate all of you and to be able to provide an update for you for just the next 20 minutes here. This valuable partnership started many, many years ago. This year, we're celebrating UVU's 80th anniversary. And as we started with some very humble beginnings focused on helping students to succeed, that focus remains today as we help our students to succeed as well. And we do this because UVU is an what we call an integrated university and community college all under one roof that helps every student be prepared for success in work and in life. And we do that through exceptional teaching and scholarships and through services. And we have some amazing students as a part of this institution. I'll tell you a little bit about some of their backgrounds. 36% of the entire student body are the very first in their family to go to college. And 80% of all the students are working while they're going to school. Many of them have families and children and balancing work demands. 30% are 25 years and older. 19% of students are color. And these students have amazing backgrounds and amazing stories, and they're doing remarkable things. So I'll tell you just a couple of examples of what the students are doing right now and some successes that are taking place. This last May 7th, UVU celebrated the largest graduating class in UVU's history with 8,729 graduates who received over 10,000 degrees and certificates as they work to accomplish their goals of furthering their education. This last year, for the second straight year in a row, the UVU team of students won the Unmanned Aerial Racing Cargo International Drone Competition. which they're leading out in the pack and building some amazing drones for the future technology as well. Our students also returned to the national dance floor this year to defend their 2 national championship titles and came home with the 3rd straight Jazz National Championship and back-to-back Division I national champions. And what's been described as a David versus Goliath cybersecurity international competition, UBU undergraduate students competed against master and PhD students and took first place in the world, beating out students from Georgetown, Columbia, Duke, West Point, Air Force Academy, and the Naval Academy as well. And remaining true to UBU's core focus when it first started with its trade programs, this last year students brought home gold and silver medals from the National SkillsUSA competition, taking 5th place overall in the nation. They competed in areas ranging from firefighting to radio production to criminal justice and automation technology. Those are just a couple of examples of some great things that the students are doing. And then to complement that, there's all these different academic programs around campus as well. There we have the— for a couple of, just a couple of examples here, we have the new Master's in Engineering and Technology program. And this is designed to meet the state's and workforce and the area demands for, for helping engineers and technologists prepare for management positions. Speaking of engineering, UVU's civil, computer, electrical, mechanical, and software engineering programs received accreditation this year. And this is remarkable because those programs have just been around for a couple of years now. So all 5 engineering programs are now nationally accredited, accredited The School of Arts, after taking a 1-year delay because of the pandemic, returned to Sundance this last summer and presented Footloose: The Musical. This marked the 13th collaborative show between UVU and Sundance. And the new Master of Social Work program received full accreditation. This 2-year program prepares students to provide competent care to individuals and families, communities, and to groups within our area. The new Master of Physician Assistant Studies program received the provisional accreditation, and the first cohort will begin this January. This 28-month program includes 15 months of clinical experience, and then more than 300 clinical arrangements have been established for our students to work with healthcare providers within the state and with the surroundings— within the surrounding states. There's also the new Wasatch Resort Management program. This is one of my favorites as well. This program allows students to work in Park City while earning their degrees in hospitality management. So these students will be working, for example, at the Montage Deer Valley or the Waldorf Astoria Park City or the Autograph Collection in Park City and other 5-star resorts within the area. It's It's an incredible engaged learning opportunity to have hands-on experience while taking courses. Well, those are a couple of examples of some departments and programs. And building upon those academic successes, the student athletes are also doing amazing things both in the classroom and out on the courts and the fields. Just a couple of examples that you also may have seen in the news. Former Major League Soccer veteran and the Real Salt Lake star and the US men's national team member Kyle Beckerman was named the new head coach for the men's soccer program, and they are off to a great start this fall with 4 wins, 1 loss, and 2 ties. So if you've never been to a soccer game, let us know. We'd love to have you come. It's a great evening out on the field. Also, it was just announced yesterday, um, UVU's basketball men's coach Mark Matson, who previously played with the LA Lakers, renewed his contract for an additional 5 years. which everyone is very excited about. And speaking of basketball, UVU— the UVU and BYU men's basketball teams will be competing against each other this year at UVU on December 1st. So if you don't have your tickets yet, get them fast because they will sell out, and that will be really a fun game. This last year in the athletics program was the most successful year in UVU athletics history with 4 WAC championships, 3 different teams went to the NCAA finals, and at the same time, there were multiple All-American athletes. So we're very pleased with what those great student athletes are doing. There's also great and very valuable community partnerships that are also taking place that I'll give just a couple of examples with. This last summer, UVU had more than 200 7th, 8th, and 9th graders Come to campus for a free 7-week course focused on teaching principles of science, technology, engineering, and math. This is a very close partnership between the university and Alpine School Districts, Provo and Nebo School Districts, as well as the Boys and Girls Clubs within Utah County. Right now on campus, there are 10 different programs and certifications that are being taught. Through the state's Learn and Work in Utah grants that provide free short-term programs and certifications for those that might be underemployed or underemployed due to the pandemic. So it's a wonderful opportunity to be able to come receive certifications and training to be able to get back into the workforce or to be able to have advancement within your organization. And those are all free right now for community members because of the state's funding. Also, the Business Resource Center— oh, let me see right here. There's the state's Business Resource Center, which is such an important collaborative partnership between Orem City and UVU that really helps so many of our local businesses, is having a positive impact upon the city. A new element of this is offering this last year when the World Trade Center Utah opened up its first office outside of Salt Lake. at the BRC to be able to help Utah County companies right here also within the city have access to global business expertise, contacts, and services. Another way of our great involvement we, we love to have with the community is I'd like to invite all of you and those that are joining and listening today to come to this fall's Presidential Lecture Series, which will be taking place on campus this Friday, where Dr. Dambisa Moyo will discuss the role of corporations in the 21st century. She serves on the corporate boards of 3M, Chevron, Conde Nast, amongst many others. And she's worked at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs, is a New York Times bestselling author. She received her doctorate from Oxford University, a master's from Harvard, and she is named as one of the most 100 influential people in the world by Time Magazine. So you're invited to come to that either on campus or remotely online this coming Friday. And another upcoming event we invite everyone to participate in is on October 23rd, when UVU will hold its 31st annual Presidential Scholarship Ball, which is Utah County's premier black-tie event. The entertainment and the food and the program will be remarkable, and all of the proceeds fund full tuition scholarships for high-performing students that are awarded the Presidential Scholarship. Well, to kind of sum up a lot of these things, we've received some unsolicited recognitions this last year that we thought you might be interested in. UVU is ranked number 1 out of all the institutions in the state of Utah for alumni earnings after the students graduate, number 2 in the state of all institutions for the best bang for the buck, and then the national publication of Business Insider Ranked third— ranked UVU number 3 in the nation for the best return on investment. So this is all due to a very large and talented team of people working together to help our students to succeed. You are all key to this. We appreciate you, as well as the state legislature, our community partners, donors, community members, and very talented faculty and staff. I'll give you a little update about this fall semester at UVU with our student enrollment. The official fall enrollment numbers will be released about next week. It's looking like right now that our numbers might be just slightly higher, a little bit from last year, with approximately maybe about 11,000 of the students being in high school taking concurrent high school UVU classes, part of their high school education, for only 5 credit hours as well.

May I ask you a question?

Yes.

How bad did you get hit last year from the year— from '19 to '20?

Was—

did you— was that it?

Oh, good question. Our enrollment number last year was down 1.9% overall collectively for the university. That dip down of 1.9% came as a result of out-of-state and international students not coming to campus and travel because of the pandemic. But interestingly, even though we were down 1.9% overall, Our in-state numbers were actually higher, showing that students were going to school where they were living close by. Good question. Let me give you a little update about COVID and the pandemic at UVU as well, some COVID-19 updates. UVU is offering free COVID testing on campus for students, faculty, and staff, and approximately 45,000 COVID tests have been administered on campus since the testing started this last October. UVU is also offering free vaccinations on campus for students, faculty, staff, and their immediate family members. Nearly 1,900 vaccinations have been administered on campus since April. UVU students are now being required to be vaccinated begin— by the beginning of spring semester that starts in January. Compliant with state law, students may opt out of this requirement for medical, religious, or for personal reasons. Since this has gone into effect on September 13th, over 20,000 students have already responded, and 72% of them have at least one vaccination, and 66% are fully vaccinated. In terms of case counts on campus, we are not increasing or decreasing in COVID numbers, but we're remaining sustained— having sustainable numbers. The 7-day average positive case count is about 5 people per day, and the positivity rate of those being tested is 2.25%, which is very, very low. So UVU is continuing to carefully follow and to promote health and safety guidelines. We are very grateful for the UVU and Orem City Town-Gown Task Force of how that allows for collaboration and communication with this important partnership. In our recent meeting, one of the topics that was discussed was parking. So I'll give you just a little bit of update. And Val Peterson also just indicated that a little bit here as well. The new pedestrian bridge, we're seeing about 2,000 people using that on a daily basis. And students, faculty, and staff are using public transportation with the UVX bus system and Frontrunner, which is providing great transportation options. And this semester on campus, we're averaging about 3,500 open parking stalls on campus every day. Let's see, related to this, let me jump a little bit to provide some updates about some of the campus facilities that provide the teaching, learning, and laboratory space to help our students to succeed. The first one is the Scott C. Keller Building, which will be the new home to the business school, will be open in January. for spring semester classes. Also right next to that is the Gateway Building that will also open in January. That will be the new front entrance to campus from University Parkway. The Sorensen Center remodel is underway, and that will be completed next spring with a new bookstore, which is already open and under operation, an expanded food court area, and student gathering and learning spaces. We also have the Lake Mount Manor that will be opening this next year as really the premier destination museum in the state of Utah. It's located about 1 mile south of the Orem campus, and this incredible estate of Melanie Bastian was generously gifted to UVU by the Bastian family. And also we have the Alumni Center, whose footings and the foundations are going in right now, and the building will be completed a year from now. This has been made possible through a very generous $4.5 million donation from Young Living. And then the last update here will be that 2 weeks ago, the Utah Board of Higher Education voted and ranked UVU's need for a new engineering building as one of the top 3 needed higher ed building projects in the state. So as a result of that, the Utah Board of Higher Education and UVU will present this new engineering building request to the state legislature in this upcoming session. And this is as a result of just our local workforce needs as well as state force needs. UVU's limited space for our engineering students have really necessitated the need for a new engineering building. So we'll kind of finish where we just started off here, is that we're very focused on meeting the educational workforce needs of Orem, of our valley, and throughout the state. I have given you a lot of information, and it really all comes down to be able to helping our students succeed. I, in one of my classes that I'm teaching right now, I have a student that has received her associate's degree in high school, which is a remarkable accomplishment. I also have a mother with 5 children who is working full-time to get her degree. And she's going to graduate this next year. I also have students that are the very first in their family to go to college, and then also students that are planning to go to graduate school next year after they graduate. So it is really all about being able to help our students succeed. So we greatly appreciate the support that you provide, this very valuable partnership, this relationship. And I am— because of some organizational adjustments, I now have the opportunity as Associate Vice President of University Relations to be able to have responsibility for government relations. from the city, the county, state, and federal level. So I am your point of contact and would be happy to help you as well. We're also very grateful to have Orem resident Val Peterson with us here as a member of the legislature and also his role as Vice President of Administration and Strategic Relations at UVU. So on behalf of everyone at UVU, thank you, and we appreciate this opportunity to give you an update. And recognizing we might have just a couple minutes here, we'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

I know that we've— well, not us, the PEG Development built some new apartments and they're right next to campus, and it's my understanding that they're about half full. Has that— I know there was concern by the neighbors for traffic, for noise. How has that project gone? Is it half full? Is it— do you have any idea? The idea was to get people maybe closer to campus. They could walk. Maybe attract younger freshmen, so who wouldn't have a bunch of cars. Do you have any idea about that, or do I need to talk to the developer?

So that's one of the reasons why we want to do a traffic study. We want to get what's really going on on the streets around us. Our sense is that we have less traffic than we have had. The walking between the complex and the campus is working very well. The underpass that was created that connects that to the green with with UVU is, is working really well. They have about 1,200 beds of the 1,600 completed right now. I understand they're about 90% full of that 1,200, and they'll open up the rest of them this January. But like I said, I think the next step for us is really to do a traffic study and count and see what those—

Have you had any neighbors complaining, or has it been better than they expected? Do you have any idea for that?

That I know of, we haven't had any neighbors complaining. I don't know if Steven's had anybody. I haven't heard any complaints. Now, obviously, one of the things you have to remember is our numbers are down a little bit because we have— we still have a substantial amount of people who are online. Our numbers are 75% of 2019 versus online versus face-to-face. So that just generates less people coming to campus as well. So there's less people, even though we're still maintaining the numbers that that Stephen was just relating to you. But we are noticing that we have fewer cars on campus right now.

Do you anticipate this online model continuing as an option for people, or is this just still in relation to the COVID

I think our viewpoint right now is that our students are looking for the most flexibility they can get, which means they're taking a mix of face-to-face with online, and I see that continuing into the future. So how that all shakes out in the end, I'm not really sure. But I do know that students want as much flexibility as possible. The previous traffic study that we did on campus, people were making 2 to 3 trips per day to campus because they're working, they have children in daycare, so they're, they're, they're traveling back and forth between those locations. My sense is right now that you have a lot more students who, who are working, who instead of maybe coming to campus for one of those classes is taking that class while they're at work. In a remote opportunity, and so they're, they're reducing the amount of trips that they have to campus.

Thank you.

Anybody have anything else? Brent, do you have anything?

Uh, I was just thinking here, Val, how many, uh, of that 41,000, uh, are from Utah County and from the state of Utah? Do you have a number on that?

So 73% of our students come from Utah County. The other thing I'll add to that number is that 10 years later after graduation, 76% remain in the state of Utah. So we are actually the institution who is training a lot of students for the state of Utah, for that number one economy that we're all experiencing right now. The other thing I would say is that right now the majority of students that we have are actually coming from the state of Utah. So as Stephen pointed out, with COVID we've had a reduction in the amount of international and out-of-state students. And so As we've maintained our enrollment, the majority of students are coming from the state of Utah.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate what, what you've done down there and the leadership, and keep it moving.

Thank you, appreciate that, Councilmember Sumner.

So we appreciate your time and giving us this presentation. That was awesome, and we appreciate you.

So thank you.

Thank you, we appreciate all you do. And look forward to continuing to work with you.

Thanks.

Okay, now we'll go to a report, an annual human resources report by Carrie Rudd.

Appreciate you guys.

Appreciate you guys meeting with us today. I do want to introduce Jenica Jones. She's the city's management analyst, and Scott Swift. He is our compensation officer, so they'll be sharing part of the presentation with you as well. Happy to stop during any point if you guys have any questions. So we try and do this presentation for you once a year so that you can see where we are at as far as our staff is concerned here at the city. So we'll first talk about our employee demographics and our budget. So as of September 1st, a lot of this data will be as of September 1st, we have 433 full-time employees. And across our full-time, our variable hour, our seasonal, part-time benefited, and you as mayor and council, we have a total of 1,081 employees here at the city. And the years of service for full-time benefited employees ranges anywhere from a brand new employee to 36 years of service. The average years of service is 9.4, which is higher than the national average at 6.6. We're pretty proud of that, and the medium years of service is By any chance, is the most—

one of the most senior employees in this room right now?

That would be correct.

Thank you.

Good job, Ernesto. Thanks for taking our numbers up. I appreciate that. You're helping us keep our average higher, so I appreciate that. As far as our demographics goes, for gender, for all employees, about half and half, 53% male, 47% female. But for full-time employees, we're at 77% male and 23% female. For supervisors, 72% are male, 28% are female. We'll talk about some of the efforts that Councilmember Larray is helping us with to help bring those numbers up in a minute. But that's our current numbers. For race data, all employees, 90% white, 10% other. For full-time employees, it's about the same. As you recall, in December of 2020, we enacted our Equal Employment Opportunity Plan. We have identified that it's really important to our excellence and innovation that we have diversity in our workforce, so we're committed to being the model of diversity among public sector entities. So some of our diversity efforts we have done in the past fiscal year: we've gone on to LinkedIn more often for some of our hard-to-fill positions, as well as some of our more public positions. And then we are now partnering with UVU. They're having a big job fair tomorrow, and so Scott and Emma from HR are going to be down there doing, doing part of the job fair there. So we're excited to be part of that. We also removed salary requirements and previous salary history from all job applications. That's one thing that really does hurt diversity efforts is when you ask for those things. And then we have increased our training for current employees and for our supervisors on diversity and inclusion. And then what we have been most proud of and appreciative to the council and mayor is for our first inaugural year of our Women in Leadership Scholarship, we awarded $38,818 to 8 female employees, and many of them are going to UVU. So it's a great partnership that we have with UVU. Looking at budgeting on our personnel expenditures, we spend about 52.6% $11.5 million in fiscal year '22 for personnel, and that's throughout all of the funds. Through the general fund, we spent about $41 million, and then $11.5 from other funds. Diving a little bit deeper into that by departments, you can see that the police department is about 28% of all funds. The public works is next at 21.4, and then the fire department just above 16%, and then all the other departments are under 10%. Just looking at the general fund and not the other funds, the police department's at 36% of spending, 20% is the fire department, 10.5% for public works, and then everything else is below the 10% mark. With that, Jenica is going to talk about benefits.

So I'll just provide a quick overview of some of the benefits, the main benefits that we provide as a city. So this chart just shows the historical cost breakdown of the city's and employees' cost for the highest deductible family health coverage plan. This is the most common employee or plan used by employees, so that's the one we're displaying. So you can see that in 2015, the city's cost for both the coverage and HSA contribution was about $13,500. And then in the current year, that's risen to about $18,400, which is a total increase of about 36.5%, which equates to about 5.5% per year. So the city has elected to pick up almost 100% of this cost, with the exception being the current year. The employee premium has just raised $10 a month, so it's $80 a month for Family coverage, either with this plan or the lower deductible, and $40 a month for single coverage. So we have 405 employees that are enrolled in all of our health plans, which is about 90% of employees that are eligible for health coverage, and the city does cover up to $4,000 into the employee's HSA depending on which plan they choose and if they select to match. And for dental insurance, the city covers the entire premium for dental coverage for either individual or family coverage. And now I'll give a brief overview of employee turnover since fiscal year 2010 until the previous fiscal year. So this chart shows the first row, just the total number of separations, and then the second row is the average number of full-time employees throughout that fiscal year. And then the turnover rate, and then the bottom row, it compares it to the nationwide average turnover rate for state and local government employees. So we'll focus on fiscal year '21. We had 69 total separations, which equated to 16%, but it's important to note that for every year on this, we are below the national average of turnover rate. And this just shows Our turnover rate in a graphical form compared to the Utah state unemployment rate. So we do see an inverse relationship: as unemployment decreases, then our turnover rate increases, which we would expect, and that's common in all sectors. And this chart breaks down our employee turnover by reason, with the Most common reason in fiscal year '21 down to the lowest. So in fiscal year '21, we had 25 employees leave due to other employment. This is all full-time benefited employees, all departments. 19 resigned, 14 retired, 4 were dismissed, and then 7 for other reasons, which includes personal, death or disability, relocating, or returning to school. And in this chart, we pulled out some of the key departments and what their turnover rates are. And so in fiscal year '21, we saw the highest turnover rate in Development Services, 22.2%. And then all other departments just encompasses everyone that's not singled out on this chart, so not Development Services, not Public Works, not sworn police and fire, but every other city department. The turnover rate was 17.6%. Public Works was 16.3%. Sworn police was 15.1, and sworn fire was 10.8.

Before you go off this slide, I'm guessing in 2006 and '07 we had similar kind of turnover in our development services where contracting was up dramatically and there was temptations for them to go to more lucrative things. I know— I don't think either of you were here in '06 or '07, but I'm assuming that's accurate. Jamie or Carrie, maybe you can confirm that. And not asking you to go back that far, but I'm guessing.

That would be my guess too. And right now our biggest turnover is with our building inspectors and our engineering department, that it's just a really tight market for both of those things. But we are— we have also done quite a bit to try and attract some new people. We started an apprenticeship program for our building inspectors, and that was very popular and has been successful so far. So yes, I would say it would probably—

Equally as noteworthy, it was 0 in '12 and very low in '11, you know, when things were really tough.

Yeah.

If I may too, I mean, I think there's some pretty significant projects that have taken place in the last number of years that have made it difficult to retain employees. The Salt Lake International Airport, for example, almost $4 billion project. A lot of public works type employees, construction trades, are up at that project alone. So you can see that as the state has grown and developed, It's become increasingly difficult for us to keep some of our employees.

One other thing I wanted to note too is how low our sworn police and fire turnover is for this last fiscal year. That's due to a large part with your approval of the new step and career ladder program that we put into place last October, so we appreciate that.

I have a question. Do you know how we compared to other cities like Provo? Were our retention rates higher than like Provo or Pleasant Grove? Do you have any idea? Have you compared those at all?

We don't have specific data on that. We can look for it if that's something you're interested in.

I'd just be interested because, you know, you see Salt Lake is so— I mean, they're having to raise their rates. I thought it was 30% increase because they can't get enough people. And I'm just wondering if our— like you said, our career ladders are helping and help us maintain it. And but I'm just curious with our neighbors and how we're doing.

So thank you.

And then this chart is a little bit redundant. It's just a graphical form so we can see across all city departments. It's generally risen over the past 10 or so years, depending on the year, what department is the highest turnover rate. Again, we see that inverse relationship with the lower unemployment rates we're seeing. So we did pull out some additional data for our sworn police and fire employees, and this compares it for fiscal year '20 and fiscal year '21, but we'll just focus on the right-hand side for fiscal year '21. So for our sworn police employees, we had 14 separations in fiscal year '21, 9 left due to other employment, But of these, at least one of them did technically retire, and he went to work for another agency to double dip. And then also importantly, the ones that left to local nearby agencies, Utah County and Pleasant Grove, their wages are lower. So their reason, their primary motivator for moving to those other local agencies was not wages. It was other outstanding reasons. And I received 3 to the FBI was the biggest one for other employment. There were 2 employees that resigned, 1 was dismissed, 1 relocated, and 1 left due to personal reasons. And then for fire, we had 7 separations in fiscal year '21. 3 retired, 2 left due to other employment, and 1 of these was promoted, and 1 left to another city, but it was primarily motivated by family factors. And then 2 resigned, and 1 of these did not pass probation. Okay, with that, I'll turn it over to Scott.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about our recruitment efforts. Um, in fiscal year '21, you'll see we've had a total of 444 new hires, most of those being variable and seasonal employees, but we did have 78 full-time employees that were hired, and you'll see here, uh, particular what's— which departments, um, police, fire, and public works, uh, having the most new hires. But if we pull out the sworn officers against the civilian employees in the police department, public works actually has the most new hires in this fiscal year. Currently, as of a week ago, we do have 25 vacant full-time positions that we are looking to fill. Again, kind of correlating with what we saw on the last slide, Public Works has the most vacant positions, followed by Police, 3 sworn, 4 civilian. Of those 4 civilian, 3 of them are dispatchers, and so we are working hard on recruiting there as well. As was kind of mentioned previously, we have had some hard-to-fill positions, building inspector being probably one of the hardest ones. We have seen a complete turnover in our building inspector positions in the past fiscal year. We have 4 positions. All 4 of those left for other employment, other agencies, and so to tackle that problem, we did create that apprenticeship program that Carrie mentioned. We do have 2 building inspector apprentices working currently alongside our chief building official to gain that experience while working towards the certification so that they can become full-fledged building inspectors. And we do still have 2 open building inspector positions that we are still trying to fill.

Excuse me, for non-leadership, do we use headhunting firms or not?

No, we have not.

And when we post, do we get good applicants? Do we get a lot of applicants?

How are we—

how successful are we at getting people into the funnel to decide who we'd like?

It depends on the position, and that's another thing that made these ones so hard to fill. Once we introduced the apprenticeship position, we had that open for a week and we had 66 applicants through that. However, if we look at some of these other ones like the engineer positions, the senior engineer, the transportation engineer, those positions were open for a couple weeks and we didn't get any qualified applications through those. And so we are in the process of reopening those, reaching out to different— Through different— yes, yeah. Jumping down to the public works technicians and operators, on the last slide we saw that there were 8 open positions. Of those 8, 6 of them are represented by these technician and operator positions. The long-term stormwater project manager or program manager, he was one of those 2 that went to the building inspector apprenticeship position, and so we have opened that position. That was another one we didn't get any qualified applications for, so we've reopened that. The accountant position has been a struggle this year as well, but we have recently extended a job offer for an accountant that we are excited about to start on October 4th.

Yes, the question about police. So we have 7 spots of forsworn. Tell us what that means, forsworn. Is that full-time?

So the 4 sworn would be officers and the 3 would be dispatchers. Sorry, 3 sworn, but we do have several in backgrounds right now, and, and Scott will show that in a minute. So if those all panned out, we would be fully staffed.

Because have we ever been fully staffed?

We were fully staffed for a pay period right soon after we implemented the new STEP program last October. We were fully staffed for 2 weeks.

For 2 weeks.

Okay.

Up to 7. Yeah, we're down by 3, but we do have at least 3 in backgrounds right now. So, which is— and I wish we had the data from other cities, but we're doing really well on the police side.

So I have a question for Chief Adams on On the applicants, or Carrie, for the police and fire? I mean, we used to have minimal amount, but now we have— don't we have quite a few applicants now for the, for the police and the fire?

Yes, I think we're much more competitive in the market than we were a year ago, for sure.

Okay.

We don't have the turnover and the culture issues that some of the other departments are dealing with right now.

And we'll talk a little bit more about that on the next slide, but I just wanted to show up here that in this past fiscal year we have hired 4 new department directors: Chief Adams, Fire Chief Mark Sanderson, Heather Shrevers, City Attorney, and Bryce Merrill as our new Recreation Director. So we'll get into this. So we mentioned we have 3 openings for the sworn officers, but we do have 2 in background. Or 5 in background. 2 of those are laterals from other, from other states. 3 of them are new, brand new out of the academy. In the past fiscal year, we have hired 9 lateral officers. So like Carrie was mentioning, once these pan out, if they pan out, we'll be fully staffed in the police department. As far as the fire department goes, we are fully staffed there. There are no vacant positions. We have hired 4 lateral firefighters in the past year, and they have been given year-for-year service credit towards the career ladder program that we implemented last October. Between police and fire, we've also given just shy of $37,000 in recruitment incentives. Moving on to compensation. We have just recently wrapped up a comprehensive compensation and benefits study with NFP, and they went out into the market to gather compensation benefits data. This is something we do every 5 years as a matter of practice, but it is a A fluid thing, as, as you're well aware. And so we do look at internal data every year through TechNet, which is a compensation benefits program that a supermajority of the municipalities in the state of Utah use and voluntarily report their pay and benefits structures. And so we can go in there. at any time and get a comparison for any positions that we feel we might need to. Some of the results of this compensation and benefits study: we did implement a hybrid step program for select public works positions, mostly the technicians and the operators, those hard-to-fill positions, to give them an opportunity to work through their pay grade a little bit quicker. It is our hope that this will also help to increase retention and improve morale within the department in these positions. Just really quickly, there's a police hybrid step program and the fire hybrid step program that we implemented last October. The results of the compensation and benefits study It came back that at the time of the study they were competitive with the market, which we have seen in helping us with our recruitment and our retention and getting fully staffed and almost fully staffed in the case of the police department. And then we have also, also completely redesigned our compensation program. New grades, new ranges. All of the positions have been placed appropriately based on the results of that compensation study. And then, unless there are any questions, I'll turn it back over to Carrie for training and development.

I did want to mention a little bit about the police. We are aware of pay changes that are going on around in Salt Lake County and other entities. that they're giving significant pay increases. So we are watching those very closely to make sure that we don't fall behind the market. Okay, employee development and training. We've really been focusing on that in the last year and a half. We used to hold sessions once a month for supervisors in person. Now we've moved those virtually, and that's increased the amount of supervisors that participate in these sessions. Our goal is to make sure that all of our supervisors have all the skills, the leadership and the management skills that they need to be successful supervisors. So you can see some of the topics that we've discussed in the last year. One of them that I'm pretty excited about is that we had Chief Mark Sanderson do a 3-part series over the book called The Culture Code, and that was very popular. And we use a lot of our leaders in these leadership trainings so that some of our lower supervisors get the opportunity to learn from our executive teams. Then we also implemented this last fiscal year a new session, and this is for all employees, not just full-time employees, but all city employees— seasonal, variable— all employees have the opportunity to attend these sessions. And these are very basic sessions that teach you the basics that you need to be successful in your career. So how you can interview better, what you can do to be prepared for a leadership opportunity in the future. What it means when you become a leader in the organization, and what's the difference between a manager and the leader, and then what's your why. Our new session in October will be talking about what it is that you can do to find happiness here at work, and we'll be hearing from many of— in the executive team on that. So for our COVID-19 efforts, just thought we'd talk about that really quickly. We did have an on-site vaccination clinic now We had quite a few employees sign up for that. We were happy with the turnout there. We are actively tracking COVID-19 cases and exposures in Human Resources so that we know which departments are hotspots. We've been providing reusable masks as well as N95 masks for employees. We've tried to improve safety measures. We've done all of our open enrollment— or our new hire enrollment now is all paperless. So that there's less face-to-face time with employees in Human Resources. We encourage social distancing. We've done improved supervisor trainings, and the city has enacted some remote, remote work options as well. So that's the end of our presentation. Happy to answer any questions that you have.

So how many people are working remote now? So like 3 days on, 2 days off, or something like that?

Right now, I think our policy is that we allow employees to work one day at home a week. They do have to sign a contract, and it is not a right but a privilege, so we can pull them back if it's not working out.

Brent, do you have anything to ask?

I'm good.

Okay.

Terry?

Well, Carrie, just to comment, which you know, but I hope— hopefully the employees of the city know that private versus public, having full dental insurance is really unheard of in the private sector. And having your health insurance capped for the last 10 years and never moved a penny is, is unheard of in private sector. And then this last year, you went up $10 a month.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I hope— I know we all look at the salary part, but the benefits are really not out— that's not what you normally see in the private sector. So I don't know, I don't know if you communicate that or if people understand that.

We do try to do that often. And I'll give you an example of that. My husband works for UnitedHealthcare. So he works for a healthcare company. And we have the city's insurance because it's much less expensive here, even though he works for UnitedHealthcare. So that's a good example. And we do try to educate our employees, for example, There's a program called GoodRx that Stephen Downs has brought to the employees' attention, and we saw our Rx spending go down significantly on our utilization with PEHP recently. So we do do a lot of education for that.

I did want to comment also, if it's okay, about the women's leadership. And I know I just met today with Tara, and I think we've got some great women. And I don't know how the other people are doing, but I can tell you that she's doing well, and I feel like she feels support from her— from Chief Adams as well as other people. And I think, I think it's been a great program, and I commend you for that. I think sometimes women just need some confidence and a little bit of saying, you can do this, and I think it's been great. Have you heard from other women? Are they having success? Has it been positive overall?

Absolutely, and I really appreciate you bringing that up. I know that your support has been very instrumental in getting this passed, so I appreciate that. I have heard from some of the mentors and the mentees, and they both find a lot of value in, in that relationship and also the support that they get from each other. So it's been very successful so far. Excellent.

Thank you.

Everything's on. I just want to make a comment on the— to let the employees know that we do support them. And if you look at the, the last 5 years, we did the analysis and, and the grade changes. I think that's a good thing. But I think the reason that Salt Lake City's increased their rates by 30% is because they wanted to defund the police, and everybody left. So they're still down by 50, 60 things. So just let our police and fire know that we, we support them and that we will not be defunding the police or the fire. So with that note, I think we appreciate your time.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Okay, so do we want to— is the food here? Okay, so let's— we'll take a break for a for dinner. And Debbie, would you want to say the prayer for us, please?

Do it here or in there?

Okay.

Our Father in heaven, grateful for the opportunity we have together and to enjoy a meal together. We appreciate the opportunity we have to serve with the city, and we ask for thy spirit and wisdom as we look at things that will benefit our community. We ask a blessing on the food to our nourishment and strength, and appreciate those who have, who've arranged this for us. And we ask these favors and blessings in the holy name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

You don't look that old, honestly.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Exactly. Something is crazy. So All right, no, it is cranked all the way down. Maybe we got to start this. Around people up.

Yes.

Okay.

Brent, are you still there? Could we have the city council members come forward so we can review our agenda?

Oh, he does it.

So, so Brent, can you hear us? Brent, are you on the phone? Okay, well, as City Council, we're going to go ahead and go over our agenda before our City Council meeting. Thank you, Councilmember Spencer, for filling in for me. So tonight we'll have our personal appearances. We have consent items. The first one is the approval of meeting minutes of council meeting September 14, 2021. Next one is appointments to boards and commissions. Heritage Advisory Commission, that's a reappointment of Russ Sneddon. And next one is an ordinance on city code updates, an ordinance amending various chapters, articles, and sections of the Orem City Code. And the last one is a resolution on our 2021 utility financial plan.

Does—

is everyone comfortable with consenting to these items? Okay.

I will have a consent— I will have an issue with 8.3. I want to have a discussion on it.

So, okay, would you like to move that to a scheduled item?

I would.

Okay, so Jamie, when we move that to a scheduled item, would that be in this meeting or the next meeting?

I think they need to do that by motion.

Right, but then to actually—

In the formal meeting, when you review the consent calendar Just ask, is there any council members?

No, no, I know that, that. And once we decide that we want to move this one item to a scheduled item, is that a scheduled item for this evening?

Yes.

Or for our next city council?

Yes, it's for this evening's discussion.

No, that's fine. Gotta be difficult, huh? So our next one is scheduled items, public hearing resolution on the Crandall Orchard open Open Space Conservation Easement Resolution of Support. The presenter is Matt Taylor. Is Matt here?

He will be, Mayor. He's just down the hall in his office.

Okay, anything you wish to bring up with this?

I will just go over again what we did in the work session last meeting, and then there needs to be a period of public comment in order for it to take a step forward and, and be reviewed.

Okay, and it is a resolution, correct?

Resolution of support.

Okay.

Mayor, may I ask a question of Mr. Peterson? Mr. Peterson, were you referring to the code update or the utility plan, 8.3 or 8.4?

I'm referring to the code update on 8.3.

Okay, then from there, Jamie, any items that you have?

Just a couple of informational items, Mayor, if I may.

Sure.

Just wish Councilmember Spencer a happy birthday tomorrow, and we'll have treats in the council conference room recognizing his special day tomorrow. The Utah League of Cities and Towns, their conference kicks off tomorrow at the Salt Palace. I know several of you are registered for that meeting. I just wanted to remind you that that is scheduled to go beginning tomorrow morning, and more information about the conference is available at ulct.org. Also want to follow up with you that per a majority of the council, we will go ahead and cancel the scheduled city council meeting on October 12th. There are just not scheduled items that are, that are, have been noticed on that meeting, and so there's just really not a reason to hold the meeting but for the sake of the meeting. So we're going to cancel that per your direction. Another calendar reminder, I believe Christy has communicated with you as well as in an email that was sent to the city, the annual Touch a Truck event is returning this year, the 9th of October at the University Place Orchard Park from 10 AM to 2 PM. Just invite all of you to participate and attend that. It's always a well-attended event with many children who have an opportunity to experience and touch all of our equipment that we use, as well as we have some partners who are joining us construction contractors and other government agencies that are participating as well. Just by way of information, the restrooms here in the city center, both the gender-neutral bathrooms that are now to the north of the City Council chambers, as well as the renovated restrooms down towards our 311 center, are now open. And I think as staff, we're excited about that, and we appreciate everybody Patience in getting that work down— done. And finally, just an update relative to parking. I just want to make sure that you're aware there were particular parking concerns associated with the Axis Apartments off of Geneva Road, as well as another project along Geneva Road, South Geneva Road, the Fields at Lakeview. We have had some very productive conversations with the property owners and managers of those developments, and we are putting in place parking arrangements that can accommodate additional parking. For, for example, the Axis Apartments, there is a UVU parking lot that is adjacent to that development, and the property owners of the Axis Apartments are entering into an agreement with UVU to accommodate overnight parking in that specific UVU parking lot, as well as some additional parking down at the fields at Lakeview. This is Mr. Mansell's project that we talked about last council meeting. He has actually already been preparing some of his acreage for parking to accommodate the concerns that we— that you noted along Geneva Road. In fact, Ryan was down there yesterday, had an opportunity to see that in fact he was following through with his commitment to provide additional parking. But I just wanted you to know, both, both those projects and their parking issues are being addressed.

Thank you.

Thank you, appreciate that. There's no further business. We'll go ahead and close our meeting for the work session, and I move that we do that. You want to second that?

Second.

Everybody in favor of work session closing?

Aye.

Okay, we'll start our city council meeting in 5 minutes. Anybody wants to take a break, you can do that, but please be back by 6 o'clock. Um, Steve Downs, could you come here for a minute?

All right.

Hello?

Hello?

Ernesto?

Hello, I'm not on, but my light's on. We good? All right, if we could have the council come back to the dais so we can start our meeting. So we would like to welcome everyone out to our city council meeting this evening, and I'd like to call this meeting to order. And would like to begin the meeting with a prayer by Terry Smith and the Pledge of Allegiance by John Berry.

Our righteous and eternal Father in heaven, we thank thee for the many blessings that we have been given, even for citizenship in this This land of freedom and democracy. We thank thee for the opportunity to participate in the democratic process, and we pray for those who will be speaking today, that, that they will speak clearly their, their thoughts, and that those who are making decisions, that they will have a clear mind and understanding, and that they too will, will make good decisions, decisions that will benefit all of the citizens of this this city. And we offer this prayer unto thee in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. Thank you.

All rise. Please repeat after me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Thank you for the pledge. We appreciate that. Jeff Lampson is not with us this evening. Brent Sumner is on the phone, I believe. Brent, are you there? Brent Sumner? Okay, well, hopefully he'll join us. I want to make a special announcement for a birthday. Janelle Pugmire, our reporter with the Daily Herald, is watching us as we stream live, and we wanted to wish her a special birthday. And we love to work with her, so if we could give her a round of applause, please. Okay, we'd now like to go on to our personal appearance portion of our meeting. Okay. Hi, Brent, how are you? Can you hear us?

Gotcha.

Okay, good. So time has been set aside for the public to express their ideas, concerns, or 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. Those wishing to speak should have signed in before the beginning of the meeting. We ask that you limit your time to 3 minutes or less, and that when you come forward that you give us your name. So we'd like to begin with Stephanie Visna and then Debbie Lamb.

Stephanie Visna. City Council, thank you for continuing to pursue changes to the State Street districts. I would venture to say that we have all learned a lot these past several months. Now is our opportunity to take what we've learned and apply it to improve our city as it grows, specifically for small business owners and nearby residents of State Street. I've been concerned lately with some things I've heard from residents who live near State Street and other developments in the city. Residents have observed that developers and commercial property owners have taken some liberties and are not being held accountable for all city ordinances. Residents near 400 West 1600 North, Midtown 360, and University Place specifically have all expressed concerns for how the commercial property owners have maintained and used their land. Residential and commercial property owners must be good neighbors and held equally accountable to city ordinances. Oftentimes it's the residents that suffer and who put up with whatever the commercial property owners choose to do. Commercial property owners, especially large developers, seem to be running the show at times. It appears to residents that developers more easily get the attention of city staff and are given preferential treatment. Even at city council meetings, we have seen developers receive a lot more mic time and opportunity for open discussion, whereas citizens only get 3 minutes without any opportunity for open discussion. where questions could be asked to achieve understanding and clarity on both sides. We all know that residents have some strong opinions about some pretty big topics— parking and high-density housing, to name just a couple. Developers often don't live here in Orem and generally do not share the same opinions as residents. Many feel that developers are being heard and accommodated over the residents, and that communication is lopsided here in Orem City, and this needs to change. Now, during the moratorium, is an opportunity for Orem City to hold discussions with residents and small business owners, not just developers. Every small business owner I've talked to that owns property on State Street is frustrated with the master plan for one reason or another. It is clear to me that the meetings held years ago presenting the State Street master plan did not present an accurate picture. I know several city council members who would agree. I would appreciate hearing from the council. Council, what is being done to move forward during the moratorium. It is my hope that meetings are being planned where a balanced perspective can be achieved and where accurate and honest information is shared. Maintaining transparency with citizens is crucial to achieve full understanding. I thank you again for all the work you've done as a council to listen to and act on what residents want for Orem City.

Okay, now hear from Debbie Lamb.

Good evening.

So I wanted to let you know that I have actually lived in the Hillcrest neighborhood on 1000 South and 500 East for about 30 years now. My father grew up in this neighborhood, he raised his children, and I am currently raising my children in this neighborhood. I'm here to discuss some concerns that we have regarding the Hillcrest neighborhood. First, let's talk about the Mall and Woodbury Corporation. Woodbury continues to purchase property in our neighborhood and then use that for commercial use. The problem with this is that our neighborhood is zoned residential. For example, the fence off the property of 1070 South, the property that is housing all the construction equipment, zoned residential. This is a— there is a large fence around the property. I'm concerned that the fence is illegal. It is right up to the sidewalk. The driveway is blocked to the house to the east, and there is lots of commercial equipment and garbage being housed on that property that is zoned residential. However, I've noticed that there have been workers over at the home that was just purchased by Woodbury that closed at the end of July. They have been taking out cabinets, countertops, plants, all sorts of things around the home. I overheard a gentleman say, we're planning on tearing it down. That home is still zoned residential. And the overly huge parking lot to the north of the mall that should— that is extremely close to the property that is right there on about 1300 or 1200 South, that is still zoned residential. But the park— the parking lot should be at least 50 feet away. I don't believe it's 50 feet. It's more like in the 20s. Third, the property on 590 East, again zoned residential. But being used for commercial use, used for equipment and garbage. There's a gate on 1000 South, illegal. That should be a cinder block fence all the way across. The 4th thing, why does Woodbury get to do what he wants when he wants? As stated earlier, he should be having things zoned and following laws like the rest of us do. He's not in compliance with several city codes or zoning. These zoning laws are in place for a reason, to protect our neighborhood. Why doesn't he have to abide by them like the rest of us? Let's talk about affordable housing. I live in affordable housing. My neighborhood is affordable housing. If you were to buy my house from me, I could not replace the square footage that I have to be affordable housing. Let's talk about the traffic. The traffic on— in our neighborhood is horrible. People are trying to get to the mall or Costco. They go through our neighborhood to avoid State Street. Once they realize they can't get through, 500 East is a speedway. Let's see how fast we can get out of the neighborhood. My husband went to the city to ask for a stop sign at the end of our street. We were told that a stop sign was too expensive. We asked for speed bumps. We can't do that because they ruin the emergency vehicles. So the best that we could do were bullouts. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now hear from Ethan Harris and then Annette Olson.

Members of the council, my name is Ethan Harris. I have been a resident of the Hillcrest neighborhood for almost 6 years. Our neighborhood has been part of the Orem community since the late '30s and early '40s. In that short time that I have lived here, I find that our homes are under constant threat from all sides. Recently, we've discussed our concerns over the Meadow Gold development. Today, we have a group here and others that couldn't make it that feel our homes are being threatened by the Woodbury Corporation. Currently, we have multiple areas where chain-link fences have been put up in an illegal fashion according to Orem City Code. On 1070 South, you will find that one of these areas that has been used for construction laydown yard If you drive to the corner of 1000 South and 590 East, you will find another such chain-link fence on the other side. It appears this area has been used to gather garbage and construction debris. These areas are zoned for residential use but are being used for commercial purposes. This blatant disregard for our homes will impact our property values and standard of living. To my knowledge, it takes a vote from this council to change these zoning requirements. This is a requirement that Woodbury has ignored and has historically asked for forgiveness rather than for permission. Woodbury has a history of hounding our neighbors until they sell their homes, all in the name of expansion. Into an area where they are not allowed to expand. One resident had a representative show up at their door with legal documents in hand asking them to sell. Woodbury's solution to those who won't sell is to try and destroy the value of the homes in the neighborhood. Because other residents have refused to sell, there have been rumors that Woodbury intends to retaliate by opening roads from our neighborhood for mall access. I've even heard that Costco has plans to expand into our neighborhood as well. There are claims that we need more affordable housing. I would challenge anyone here to find a neighborhood with single-family homes more affordable than ours. Apartments— buildings are not the solution. The Aston Apartment website lists a single bedroom starting at $1,250 per month, 2 bedrooms starting at $1,480, and 3 bedrooms starting at $2,000. None of these include mandatory communication packages, parking fees, or other monthly expenses. Even without all the extras, these 3-bedroom apartments are more than double my mortgage. If Orem really wants to be known as Family City, USA, help us protect our homes against those who illegally encroach into residential zones for commercial expansion. Thank you.

Thank you. Now hear from Annette Olson, and then John Barrick.

My name is Annette Olson. I have lived in next to the mall for 45 years, and I've loved living in Orem. But now we have dozens of cars driving up and down our residential streets all day, every day, looking for a way to get through to the mall and Costco. There are 7 signs saying no Costco or mall access, but there is still a very big traffic problem in our neighborhood. The signs are a Band-Aid. They have not solved the problem. Additional high-density housing will only add a lot more traffic to an already strangling problem. We scarcely eat a meal without watching several cars zoom in and out of the neighborhood, past our house, and we live on a dead-end street. Years ago, when Sierra was organized, it had goals to provide a good place to live in a community where young people could grow up with good, healthy entertainment and a sense of community. I remember a lady from our neighborhood who served for years on those committees. She was passionate about this wonderful community. I love the history when we moved here. I am sad and disappointed that those feelings of strong community neighborhoods is giving way to high-density density housing, which adds hundreds and thousands of additional cars to an already congested traffic problem. We have watched our shrinking neighborhood be gradually gobbled up from 8th South and 8th East and State Street, not to mention the mall and its construction creeping closer and closer every year. Now, not only are they crowding in on us, they are looking down on us from high-rise buildings. We smell the muffins baking in the morning at Costco whether we want to or not. We hear the constant noise of the car wash when we are trying to enjoy a quiet moment in the backyard, and the beep beep of construction vehicles loading and unloading dirt and building supplies right next to our backyard, not to mention the blaring loudspeakers of entertainment at the mall. Honestly, sometimes I feel like I'm in the garbage compactor of the Death Star in Star Wars, and the walls are pressing in, pressing in relentlessly, pressing in from all sides. Can you just This must stop. I urge you as elected officials of the City of Orem to look at your stewardship. Are you serving developers and big business, or are you serving the people who elected you because you promised to preserve the feeling of families and safe neighborhoods and a great place to live and raise families? Are you upholding the laws and statutes and regulations of new developments and land use that are in place in Orem, or are you allowing favors and relaxed requirements of developers and big business? Are you protecting the interests and rights of the citizens that already live in Orem and pay taxes and create strength in neighborhoods? Or are you looking to fill up Orem with lots of people who have little permanency in their lives and hop about from one apartment building to the next, never making a contribution to the community except to buy groceries and gas for their cars? Please support us as Orem residents. Please support and preserve our neighborhood. Thank you.

Thank you. John Barrett.

My name is John Barrett. I live at 365 West 1750 North in Orem. I'd like to talk about site plan application process, the Development Services Office, and the DRC within the City of Orem. Orem City Municipal Code 22-14-20 talks about site plans. It says that Development Services shall forward a site plan only if it complies with all city ordinances. And by forward, that means the Development Review Committee. Anyone requesting a site plan application shall submit to the Department of Development Services all of the following. It's required under city code. A complete site DRC application, a stormwater plan, a traffic study, evidence of complete— having completed, complied with the neighborhood meeting provisions. Orem City Code also says the applicant for a site plan within or adjacent to a residential zone shall hold a neighborhood meeting prior to submitting an application for site plan approval. The application for a site plan approval shall include, and it must include, a list of individuals who were notified of the meeting, roster of attendees, and copy of minutes. This is required to be submitted with a completed application, DRC application. Through grammar requests, we know that certain developers have filed applications that Orem Development Services Office has deemed complete without compliance with the neighborhood meeting requirements. Yet Development Services Office has violated our grammar request as well, which we've discussed with the Utah Ombudsman's Office and the Orem City Attorney's Office. For one project, fees were paid on April 13th. A complete— an incomplete application was filed on April 14th. Development Services told the mayor it was complete on the 19th of April, yet there was not a neighborhood meeting allegedly held until the 26th of April, and none of the compliance with that neighborhood meeting has been filed. With the city to date, yet we are told it's a completed application. Legal counsel for Right Development, who filed who filed an application without a neighborhood meeting, told this city council last month that city employees told them not to hold a neighborhood meeting, which is a violation of Orem City Code. This violates the rights of Orem residents. What has been done to identify these employees identified by the Right Development Group. Is Orem City going to be subject to a lawsuit and be subject to damages because of these employees' actions? We need transparency, not more backroom deals and violations of Orem City Code.

Thank you.

Thank you. I see that we have Natalie and Jim Crandall to speak next. Is that related to the Crandall property? Okay, fine. Thank you. We'll take you off our list. We'll go ahead and close our public hearing portion of our meeting and move to consent items. I'd like to begin with the first one, which is 8.1, approval of meeting minutes of City Council meeting September 14, 2021. 8.2, appointments to boards and commissions of Russ Needham to be reappointed to the Heritage Advisory Commission. 8.3, an ordinance for city code updates. 8.4, resolution on a utility financial plan. Is there anybody on the council who wishes to move one of these items to a scheduled item?

Yes, Mayor, I'd like to move 8.3 to a scheduled item.

Okay, we will go ahead and do that with the rest of the items on the consent agenda. I would accept a motion to go ahead and approve those.

So moved, Mr. Mayor, to approve— if I should be more specific— 8.1, 8.2, and 8.4 scheduled items.

And do we have a second?

Second.

Okay, Tom, we'll go ahead and start with you.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

And Brent?

Aye.

Okay, consent agenda is passed with the one item being moved. We'll now go to our scheduled items. The first one will be our public hearing resolution on the Crandall Orchard Open Space Conservation Easement Resolution of Support. Presenter is Matt Taylor, if he is here.

Members of the council, it's a pleasure to be with you today.

Um, Ryan, presentation. Presentation. Yep.

Counsel, I apologize.

I haven't done this enough yet.

I'll be ready next time.

All right.

Uh, you reviewed this in your last work session 2 weeks ago. Um, I will be brief, but I will recap some of the highlights for the public's information. Um, Tim and Natalie Crandall are the main operators of Crandall Orchards at 800 East Center Street in Orem. Um, I think actually there's Contrary to this slide, about 12.75 acres that they control themselves as property owners. The Crandalls have been working with Darren Hopkins, another member of this community, in the preparation of a conservation easement. And the conservation to continue the property shown in green as a working orchard in perpetuity. Conservation easements are binding legal documents setting aside land for particular purposes. In this case, it would be for an orchard, and future owners, should they buy or inherit the property, would be obligated to maintain that obligation. The easement itself is like any other easement, like a utility easement, where there's another interested party that holds a right to enforce the provisions of a limited land right. In this case, it, it may be Orem City in the future if, if it goes as they are planning. The cost of the easement is typically the land value if it was developed minus the value in its less developed state. And so because of the location of this property, it's fairly significant It'll probably be assessed at a fairly significant rate for the value of that easement. However, there are opportunities for the raising of funding, which the property owner will be working on through either private fundraising, nonprofits, federal tax credits. But the one that's specifically relevant tonight is the Utah State Open Lands McAllister Fund. And the McAllister Fund is state money set aside for the preservation of open space, and one of their current focuses right now is the preservation of agricultural lands. However, the McAllister Fund would only provide up to 50%, and there's no guarantee they provide the entire 50% of the cost of the easement. And they do require that if they approve the funding, Orem City would hold the easement. So the request from Orem today is twofold. One, they ask that a public hearing be given on this issue to the city council. Followed by a city resolution of support. The resolutions before you, there is one note in there that I would highlight in that the language is such that I'm going to go back to this slide. There are other property owners that are adjacent that are also orchard properties. They are not included in this proposal. However, the way this resolution reads, that if they should voluntarily elect to participate in the future, this resolution support would cover those additional properties that are currently operating as orchards in that vicinity. Those are specifically identified in Exhibit A. With that, is there any Oh, one more. The Natural Resources Stewardship Committee in April adopted a motion to the council recommendation stating that they support the creation of agricultural easements on the remaining agricultural orchard lands within Orem City. With that, is there any questions for me?

The only question I've got is when we make this resolution, do we need to include some language about the nature About the neighbors that come and speak tonight? No, the neighbors that may want to join in with this at a later time.

It's written in the ordinance, and so a motion to approve would capture that.

Okay. All right. Any comments from the council? Yes, Debbie, go ahead.

2 questions. You've been saying there's payments. on this land, who receives those payments? Is it paid to who?

So the property owner would remain the property owner until such time that they either sell the property or it's inherited by others.

But if they get money from the state for this grant, do they retain the money?

Yes.

Okay, that's my question. The other thing is if at some point they're grandchildren, whoever inherits this property eventually, and they want to change this to something or sell the property, would they have to try to undo this, or is this, is this just go on forever?

So the intent is for it to go on in perpetuity, forever. There are ways out of it, but it would, one, require a repayment of the McAllister Fund grant. With, with inflation. Another factor would be they would have to negotiate a release of the easement from Orem City.

Okay, thank you. But this would be— a lot of times we hear there's no more orchards in Orem and we're losing our green space. So this would satisfy that this would be preserved, it would be a working orchard, and it would be a place where Chalupa comes to see an orchard.

So there is some advantages to quality of life, maintaining our And that's, that's the policy consideration the council needs to weigh tonight.

Okay, thank you.

Any other comments from the council? Mayor Terry, go ahead.

Comment about the Crandalls. Was it 1887? Was that— you said that the Crandalls settled out in 1887.

You remember that?

Yes.

Yeah, I remember that.

No, no. So just a comment about Tim and Natalie.

Absolutely.

These are just amazing citizens, as is their family and extended family. And what a great thing this would be for the community, since many of us remember when this city was orchards, including the neighbor— the Hillcrest neighborhood remembers that very well. And so I strongly support this, and I think it's a great sacrifice for the Crandalls to do this and to continue to have And by the way, in about another week or two is apples. So everybody needs to stop by and get apples or apple juice from this family. But so I strongly support it. I'd love to have this corner of our city stay with what our heritage once was.

Okay, if no other comments— Dave, do you have a comment?

Yes, Matt, I have a question. It's on this resolution of support. What does that, what does that do? What are we doing?

Essentially, the McAllister Fund requires a letter of support from the city before they'll consider an application for the grant funding. So you're basically saying we support the direction that they're headed, and the McAllister Fund has confidence that you're supportive of entertaining the idea of entering easement down the road. It doesn't obligate you to do so, but they, they know that you're open to the idea and willing to discuss it.

And the city holds the easement?

If executed at the end of the process, yes.

Yes.

Okay.

All right. If no further comments from the council, we'll open it up to the public. Anyone wishing to make a comment, please give us your name and hold your comments to 3 minutes. We're now open for public comment.

Mayor and Council, Don Ruski, Leah as my wife, we are property owners in the area of the Crandall Orchard. I would just like to mention a couple of things that you probably already are aware of and already have talked about. We have been residents in the area for 34 years, so we have kind of a special relationship there, and it has been kind of unique for us to be able to have that in view of the fact that most places that you live is 180 degrees, 360 60 degrees of houses, so it's very warm and welcoming. The open space, you probably appreciate that as much as I, is critical, and we've lost a great deal of it. It's very important, so we need to have that green visual in the city maintained the best that we can. Obviously, the history and the heritage of the Crandall Farm is a big part of what's going on up there in our neighborhood. It's interesting that Tim and Natalie have come to the conclusion that they want to preserve this for perpetuity, perpetually, every generation to come, which is contrary to most perspectives, which is money and a profit. So I was really encouraged to see them make this decision. And obviously it's a family decision that It involves more than just Tim and Natalie. Remember also that once the open space is lost, it's lost forever. And I would urge you to take and support the resolution. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council. My name is Quinn Meekum. I'm delighted that this is under consideration tonight. I also want to say thank you to my fellow residents of the Hillcrest neighborhood for their thoughtful and passionate comments about our neighborhood and the way it's changing and the way that we hope to preserve it. When I moved into the Hillcrest neighborhood and wanted to get to know it better, I took on a bit of a voluntary assignment, which was I became the neighborhood historian. and spent my evenings and weekends interviewing people that had lived in that neighborhood for many, many decades. And it became clear to me that this was a very different city decades ago. It was rich in orchards, it was overflowing with fruit, and orchards are a fundamental part of Orem's heritage. It is essential As we seek to preserve our history, to preserve our orchards, orchards are a monument to our past, and they are a tribute, I think, also to the quality of life that we crave for our future. 92% of Orms land is currently developed. There's very little left that is green and open space and agricultural land. I agree with our previous commentators. that the preservation of agricultural spaces in our city deeply contributes to our quality of life, contributes to the way we think of ourselves and to our identity as we, we drive past Center Street and to and from our daily activities. I think that this conservation easement is an awesome gift to our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I dream of a future where my children and grandchildren pick and eat locally grown fruit and see Orem as a place that is tied to the land and is tied, tied to nature. It will take a considerable effort to get this easement, and I want to say thank you to Matt and other members of the city staff who have put a lot of time and energy into this. It will be hard to get the funding for this, but it will never, ever, ever be easier to do that than it is today. So I urge the City Council to do everything possible to enthusiastically support a conservation easement on these orchards and to other orchard owners who may choose to join in the future. Thanks.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to come forward?

Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Corey Ramage. I grew up in Norum, just down the street from this farm, and as I was growing up, got the chance to work in many orchards with friends with the Pines. We grew up with them, and their orchard backed up to our home. I think it's noble of the Crandalls to be able to have this green space in perpetuity. And as was mentioned before, this city was orchard, and there was a lot of orchards. I remember working on many of them on 800 East and up by— up where the new high school is. And as we know, all those have since been gone and have been developed into housing. So I think it's commendable to have a location that stays green and stays orchard and gives back to some of the heritage that our great city has given to us. And I'm in full support and would also welcome the City Council to enthusiastically endorse this.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other person wishing to make a comment?

Thank you, City Council. And Terry, thank you, that's very kind. This is something that we've thought about for a long time.

And what is your name?

Oh, it's Jim Crandall. Okay, it's something that we've thought about for a long time, is how do we preserve our, our orchard? And, and this is one option that we are looking at that we think is important. And we look at the legacy that is from Orem. And I don't remember my great-grandfather, but I remember my grandfather barely making ends meet. I know that my great-grandfather, for the first 5 years he owned the property, he lost it because of taxes, but nobody else wanted it. And so he got it back. And then I watched my parents as they struggled to survive on a farm. And I have great admiration for them because at that time property became somewhat valuable in Orem and many sold. And so we're grateful for them and we would like to give back. Orem is a great place and we love farming. It's a great— it's a business that we we enjoy doing. So not only is there a legacy, but there's a future. And I think we may have one of the few businesses in the country that when we say, we sure appreciate you coming to our store, they say, no, thank you very much for being here. And so we believe that it gets— it will become even more important. We heard a I read a statistic the other day that 30% of what is raised on a farm, fruits and vegetables, is thrown away by the farmer. Another 30% is thrown away by the wholesale or the store. And, and we can assure you that at Crandall's, we throw very little away. We have some places that we give it to, that, that we can't use. And sell the rest. A few days ago, we put on our Facebook and mentioned that we were coming to this meeting. May I just share with you just quickly 2 things that was written? My family moved to Orem, Utah in 1977 when there were still some fruit orchards in the area. Over the years, most of these orchards have gone, but a few like the Crandalls have remained. I think it's very important to protect Our last orchards in Orem. It's fitting that an orchard is at the top of the Center Street Hill as you come into Orem. And then the second one, please keep this space as a green space. It provides a place of refuge and is like another home. Right now, with more houses and condominium buildings, there is hardly any space to sit and meditate. Seeing the Crandall Fruit Farm helps me realize that I am loved by a greater being because there are still spots like these where I can go and be among God's creations. Also like to thank Darren Hawkins for his help in this. Thank you very much.

You bet. Thank you.

I don't really want to spend any of your time, but—

What is your name?

Darren Hawkins. Excuse me. Thank you. Darren Hawkins. Thank you for considering this. And thanks to the city staff for helping us out on this idea. Just one small thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is that if we do get the funding from the McAllister Fund, and if this results, there will be an opportunity for some public access, most likely in the form of, say, schoolchildren on field trips, which provides a really cool educational aspect of this as well. Everybody else has covered everything else, so that was just a small addition. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to come forward? All right, we'll close the public comment portion of our public meeting. I just would like to mention one thing. In 1977, the City of Orem shipped 4.9 million pounds of cherries out to stores throughout the United States. And our population at that time was 1/4 what it is today. So I would like to make a motion.

I have a comment.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

Okay, Jim, I think we met the other day when I was out for a walk and you were in your orchard, and I introduced myself and you acted like you knew who I was, and I ashamedly didn't know who you were. I apologize. My wife does the shopping at your store, not I, so I have not met you. repetitively as she has, although I am a benefactor of your products. Thank you very much. My, my, I'm going to mention a couple concerns I have. We talked about before that future roads may need to be expanded, and we just need to work through how that happens if this becomes an easement. If we can have that same thing, I don't know if Center Street will one day need to expand, or the other road to the north of you. So I just add that as a caveat, as something we need to work through as we go through this. So I add that as my thought. Obviously, you have the real battle of trying to raise a lot of funds, and we wish you success in that. And as a young man, I picked for the Rowleys, and regrettably, they allowed us to eat their product. And after a day of picking cherries and eating as many as I put in the bin, that was not a good second-day experience. So I did learn a little bit about farming as a kid from New York. But my wife grew up here, and her dad was the mayor of Warren many years ago, Jim Mangan. And whenever she will tell one of our grandchildren what used to be there, she has a statement that now a smart-alecky little 7-year-old grandson repeats back to her. You know what used to be here, Grandpa? All this used to be orchards. You know, all this used to be orchards where the Orm Community Hospital or the Tippenogos Hospital or many other things or many of the homes that we all live in. And so with others who have spoken tonight, I am grateful to consider this easement, but I do want to figure out how we work out those things so that city— the city isn't restricted as it moves forward, and I wish you good luck as you move forward.

Mr. Mayor, if I may.

Yes, go ahead.

I am remiss in mentioning that in the body of the resolution, sub 4, it specifically says the council does not support an easement on any property where adopted city infrastructure master plans call for expansion of right-of-way or other other critical city infrastructure. So we'll be closely looking at that. We heard that concern out of the last meeting as they move forward. And so when we get down to the details, we will request that Crandall exempt any areas in our master plans for infrastructure.

Okay, thank you. All right, I'd like to make a motion that the Orem City Council pass a resolution supporting the Crandall Orchard Open Space Conservation easement Resolution of support. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, let's go ahead and vote. Brent, let's have you vote first.

Aye.

Okay, Debbie.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the resolution passes. Thank you, appreciate that. Okay. Item 9.2, which we pulled up from the consent agenda, and this is an ordinance on city code updates, an ordinance amending various chapters, articles, and sections of the Orem City Code. Heather, do you want to come forward and— or I don't know if you want to sit in that seat, but—

If it's okay, I'll just stay here.

Okay.

And Terry, would you like to bring up your concerns?

Yes, Heather, I briefly talked before this meeting, but when we talked, when we went through the work session last time we met, you know, my understanding was we were cleaning up a lot of gender issues and, you know, lining up with state code and those kind of things. And since the work session 2 weeks ago, you know, it's come to my attention that we also need to have an explanation from the city as far as if this changed some of the GRAMA policies. For example, the Development Review Committee, the DRC, when they meet— before, before that was something you could GRAMA and see, and then, and there's, there's a concern that what we just talked about in the work session is going to change it, so it's not going to be open. And so, can you, can you go over that and make sure that we're comfortable? I know there's some citizens here that are concerned about that, just changed, Grandma, and what we can and cannot do.

Of course, Mr. Peterson. And actually, it might be helpful if I do put my computer up here so you can see the proposed amendment and the Senate bill from 2018 where that language was taken from. Okay, this is the proposed amendment to Section 226-9. This is part of the city's GRAMA ordinance. It has a list of documents within that ordinance that are, that are considered protected records under the GRAMA statute, which is a state statute, the Government Records Access Management Act, found in Title 63G. And I apologize for my voice, I'm having some vocal cord issues, so my apologies. But anyway, in 2018, Senator Bramble proposed some changes to the Open and Public Meetings Act statute that's in the state code that clarified that not just recordings and written minutes of closed meetings that are held by public bodies are protected, but also so are the transcripts, reports, and written minutes of those meetings. So let me just See if I can jump to that bill. This is a copy of Senate Bill 137 proposed by Senator Bramble, and you can see the changes here. Let me see if I can make that a little bit larger. So a recording, transcript, report, and written minutes of a closed meeting are protected under Title 63G Chapter 2, except that the records may just be disclosed under a court order. And that was a change again that we decided to codify in our own ordinance so that it would match up with the state's Open and Public Meetings Act language, as well as their GRAMA classifications. So this was done in 2018. It was one of those cleanup things that we hadn't caught before. If the city council is uncomfortable with it in any way, it's already codified in the state statute. We do try to keep our ordinances in line with the state statute, but it is, it is essentially the law of the land. And I just want to be clear what this amendment is speaking to. When a public body is subject to the Open Public Meetings Act, such as this body, we meet in an open forum. When we go to a closed meeting in those very limited circumstances, and we go to discuss pending litigation or the character of an employee or something like that, we go into a closed session so that we can discuss that openly. We do keep records of that, right? We keep transcripts, reports, and written minutes of that closed meeting, and we have to maintain those, but they are protected under grammar and they are not subject to public disclosure. That is what this amendment is speaking to. Does that clarify the issue?

So, well, just a follow-up question with that. So I understand, you know, personnel, real estate issues the city might be doing, or litigation— that's a closed meeting.

Yes. So it's a closed meeting of a public body.

Yes, correct.

Okay.

So my question is, development review, the DRC, does that fit in personnel, litigation, or real estate?

It would be my position that the Development Review Committee is not a public body. So it is not subject to the Open Public Meetings Act.

But we have given— we have— that has been GRAMA'd. You could do a GRAMA request for that in the past, but now we can't because of this, or is that—

That has nothing to do with this. I'm not really sure what that issue is that is percolating. That's not before the council. That's not an issue here for That's been noticed up for public debate. I— my opinion to you is that the Development Review Committee is not a public, public body, so it wouldn't even be subject to this. They don't keep transcripts, reports, written meetings of their closed meetings because they don't have closed meetings because they're not a public body.

Okay, you see my concern with the theme we're hearing about Hillcrest and developers and all of that.

I absolutely do. I heard the public comment. This particular amendment has absolutely nothing to do with that. This was a statute that was enacted by the state legislature in 2018. We're merely codifying it. Again, if you're uncomfortable with it, we can remove it from the proposed amendments because it's already codified in state code. And we are subject to the Open and Public Meetings Act as well.

I'm not sure that's the issue. The issue is, for example, the DRC with records There, and residents being told that they can't grandma request them.

So I don't know that anyone's ever been told they can't grandma request something, whether or not they have access to the records under grandma.

So that would be the question, is to clarify that. Do they?

Yes. And that amendment has nothing to do— no, no, no, it has nothing to do—

right, this has nothing to do with that. So forget this.

Okay.

But if you're looking at a grandma request of that body, And residents being told no. Can you clarify that, or is there no clarification at the moment?

Well, first of all, public records are subject to GRAMA. Not every record that is created by or maintained by the City of Orem or any other public entity is a public record. Records are classified under GRAMA in 4 categories. They're either public, private, protected, controlled, or there's a 5th category actually, exempt. And that means some other law, federal law or some other state law keeps them from being controlled.

How would you know what's exempt or what's controlled?

That is defined in the statutes. If you go through GRAMA, Section 302 will give you a list of records that are classified private. Section 304, I believe, is the controlled list of records. 305 is a list of the protected records. Our city ordinance mirrors those records classifications. So, for example, an example of a protected record would be personal information that we might have Such as Social Security numbers, home addresses, certain utility billing information.

Could you send that to us on the council, that list of all those names?

Yes, it's, it's actually a Utah state statute. Its title, it's 63G-2-101 et seq. So everything that comes after that. That is the Utah Government Records Access Management Act, and it defines what types of records are private, protected, and controlled. And I'd be more than happy to send you the link to that, of course.

Because I'm still trying to go along with what the mayor said, I'm just trying to understand when, when I'm hearing concerns about a developer in the Hillcrest neighborhood. The Development Review Committee would be the committee that would be meeting with a developer going over what they're doing. Is that correct? I mean, is that the process? That'd be part of the process, it'd be meeting with that group?

Yeah, Ryan, if you'd like to give some further insight into that.

Yeah, our Development Review Committee typically does not meet with developer. It's an internal meeting between staff with members representing, representing different departments, stormwater, water, sewer, street lighting, fiber, planning, as well as engineering. We meet and go over the application, we go over the plans, and we compile a redline list, and that redline list is then sent to the developer. The developer does not attend DRC meetings in Orem like other cities do. We do that internally.

So, so the DRC meeting, developers not in that meeting?

No, we do meet with developers. We do meet in preliminary meetings For example, if someone wants to come into the city and bring a new grocery store and they want to know our process, we'll sit down with them as planning staff and give them ideas on, on things that we think the council will want to see or they won't want to see. We go over the code, we help them through that process so that they can make sure their plans the first time are done in a manner that helps them to be more successful so that they aren't wasting a lot of money generating a plan that doesn't meet code. Those, those are different kinds of meetings. Those are not with the Development Review Committee. Those are kind of preliminary. We do our best to help people develop properly.

So, so when does the neighborhood find out about the store coming in?

They can find out when that neighborhood meeting is held by the developer. Up until a certain point, many of those meetings are private. They are protected. I think Heather would agree with me. Because often they're in a due diligence period. So if any information is leaked, it jeopardizes a real estate transaction or creates an uncompetitive advantage for someone else.

Okay, Councilor McDonald, you have a question?

I think I was gonna— I think you just answered it, but let me just rephrase it, if I may. If I'm XYZ Grocery Store, I don't want Safeways and Macy's and I don't want other groups to know I'm thinking about coming in. And so if I come to you, I, I expect some degree of confidentiality during that process. And is that confidentiality protected by law in your opinion, Heather?

Are you talking about—

I'm having a preliminary meeting. I might buy some property. I might buy the old Allen store.

So you're having verbal conversations.

I'm trying to discuss feasibility before I invest a lot of money in it. in real estate. Is that protected, in your opinion, by—

Well, it's not protected by GRAMA because it's not a record.

Okay, so, so I have a discussion with Ryan. He may or may not send me an email about this. Is that email protected?

You know, the—

it's—

the hypothetical question is difficult, and I'm not trying to be difficult. You know, we classify records when we're asked to classify them, and we review them at that time to determine whether or not they fit within one of the classifications, i.e., private, controlled, or protected. But yeah, I mean, that would be a record that we would absolutely examine under GRAMA and then determine what the proper classification is. And then we would either turn it over or not turn it over based on the statute in our local ordinance.

Thank you very much. And by the way, I think the neighborhood would much rather have a grocery store go back into Allen's and many other things in that area. But thank you for that clarification.

Yes.

No.

Okay.

You sure?

Jody's our records expert, so.

Okay. Any other comments on the records, Debbie?

Well, I'll just make one more. Also, go ahead.

No, I was gonna say, so something like your review committee that goes over it, you're just taking notes on what you're going to send to the developer? It's not a— it's not a—

I'm just—

it's more informal.

Is that how— is that what you're saying?

Yeah, I mean, you're not recording it, you're not— No, and we are making sure the application complies with city code and with engineering standards. We're not doing anything other than validating that, for example, if it's a site plan for a grocery store, did they meet the setbacks that's in the code? Did they meet the landscape requirements? We are redlining the plans. You don't have enough trees, you don't have enough parking stalls, make these corrections and resubmit. That's essentially all the Development Review Committee is doing is ensuring the standards are followed.

Okay, so it's just reviewing the plans is what I'm getting.

Correct.

It's exactly what it— what its name entails, development review.

So just last comment, my concern is just as I hear the Hillcrest neighborhood concerns, is it's nice if you're the homeowner, you're not the last to know. And that's my concern about making sure we're not doing something that's making us less transparent so that if I'm a homeowner, homeowner, I'm not too worried about the grocery store, Tom, because they have an option to buy the property, they're not going to get hurt no matter who finds out or doesn't find out. It's— I'm worried about that homeowner that's going to have a 5-story building in his backyard that doesn't know anything about it. And so that's, that's my making sure that we're as open as possible.

I do have another question.

question.

Excuse me. When a project is maybe for a neighborhood meeting, will it appear on like our website as these are projects we're working on, or does that not happen until it's everything— everything is, you know, crossed and dotted?

Well, for example, with building permits, as soon as we receive an application, that's public record, so we post those on the APB, the active building projects list. As far as development applications Until that neighborhood meeting is held, that we consider that is a confidential development at that point. And until that application is accepted and we've started the development review process and it's complete, then that is when they hold that neighborhood meeting is when it goes public typically.

And then at that point it would go on our, our website as a—

Yeah, and to, to kind of add to what Councilman Peterson said, a grocery store has an option, correct? But another grocery store could beat them into the market if they know that that's happening. And so that's why that confidentiality is important. If it's market share, if a restaurant's coming in and they want to capture this market share, but another restaurant's in that same due diligence process on a different piece of parcel of property, that's where things could get kind of hairy in terms of someone finding out about another site coming in.

Okay, so if I understand that it doesn't go on any website, no one could know about it before they got the neighborhood meeting unless they pulled the building.

If a neighborhood meeting is required.

Yeah.

Okay.

Each, each application, each— and Jason can help me out with this. He's the expert on it. He's been doing this for a number of years. I think he's, he's in the back, but it depends on— some require neighborhood meetings, others don't.

Okay, thanks.

Okay, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, yes, I was just wondering, go ahead. The last several months, probably, well, consider all this year, we've had several grandma requests. Um, if we pass this tonight, would it have affected any of those that were, were given the last Say, year as protected meetings?

Again, I'll just clarify that this was an amendment that was proposed by the legislature in 2018 clarifying that the recordings, transcripts, written reports of meetings, closed meetings as established by the Utah State Legislature are protected. So no, I I don't believe so, Councilman Sumner.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, Terry has another comment.

So Heather, sorry, I can't help this. I'm just going to make up a question just to see if we can make you lose your voice before the night's over. I have no more comments.

Let's do it. Okay, thank you.

All right, any other comments from the council?

Okay.

Well, I would like to go ahead and make a motion then that City Council pass an ordinance amending various chapters, articles, and sections of the Orem City Code as outlined. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start with Brent.

Aye.

Okay, Debbie.

Aye.

Terry.

Aye.

I vote aye.

Aye.

Okay, the ordinance passes. Move on to communication items. Anything from you, Jamie?

No, I covered mine earlier in the meeting.

Thank you.

All right, well, let's go ahead and adjourn to Room 107 for birthday, birthday bash for Dave Spencer. Would someone like to make that motion?

So moved.

Okay, is there a second?

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thanks, Brent.

72.

Thank you.

I knew you're just a little older than the mayor, right?