City Council · 2021-11-10

Our dear Heavenly Father, we humbly bow our heads before you this day. We're thankful for our many blessings and for the moisture we received overnight. It's truly needed, and we're thankful for that. We're thankful for thy Son, the sacrifice, and bless that we might be able to understand the things that we need to do as a city and, and for the citizens, and that we might make the right decisions and move forward. And we're grateful for everything that was given us, and we say this in Jesus' name, Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen. Thank you. We do have the full City Council in attendance and we have our city management in attendance, and so we appreciate the opportunity to get together. I just want to go over the agenda so that we all know what we're doing. 9 AM, we're going to have a discussion on affordable housing, which I'll be leading. At 9:45, we'll turn Time over for a general City Council discussion. 10:45, we'll take a 15-minute break. At 11 AM, we have previous Senator Dan Hemmert joining us, who is now the Executive Director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development. He will be discussing legislative relationships and economic development. From noon to 1, we'll go ahead and break for lunch. At 1 o'clock, we have an environmental stewardship presentation on algae blooms and decreasing emissions in Utah Valley given by UVU Associate Professor Dr. Kevin Shurtleff. At 2 o'clock, we will move into a general City Council discussion again. 2:45, we'll take a break, and at 3 o'clock, we'll review the 2020 areas. of focus and identify the 2021 areas of focus for the future, and we will adjourn by 4 o'clock or possibly earlier depending on how the discussions go. So I would like to lead a discussion on affordable housing. Here in Utah, we are growing, we're growing very fast, and because of that 3 areas have come into play. That is traffic congestion, it's clean air, and it's affordable housing. So affordable housing is one area that we as a city can do something in our limited means about, and I wanted to just discuss some of that as we go through. So I've asked Steve Downs if he would go ahead and run the presentation for me as we go through it. So Steve, if you'd like to go on. This is about a 9-minute presentation over several— Times on Channel 5 on unaffordable housing in Utah, and I think it gives us a good premise to start out with. So Steve, if you'd like to go ahead and start this video. And we have no sound, Steve. None whatsoever. Okay, okay, try—

hold on. I think I had to unmute my—

can you hear it now?

I would say nothing's really affordable.

Uh, yes, but it needs to be louder.

Apartments all over the valley. Everywhere you go, someone's trying to get the same home as you because there's nothing. We really got to get ahead of this problem because there's no—

Can you start it back over and can you—

Thanks for staying with us.

What's that, ma'am?

Can you start it back at the beginning and can you get the sound louder?

You may have to turn up your mics too.

I have everything cranked.

It's not just this apartment complex, it's apartments all over the valley. Everywhere you go, someone's trying to get the same home as you because there's nothing. We really gotta get ahead of this problem.

So we're still not hearing it. We had it earlier.

I'm hearing it fine, Mayor.

Are you?

Yeah, check your mic.

Okay. Is everybody else hearing it okay?

I am.

Okay, all right, go ahead then, Steve.

I would say nothing's really affordable. It's not just this apartment complex, it's apartments all over the valley. Everywhere you go, someone's trying to get the same home as you because there's nothing. We really got to get ahead of this problem because there's nowhere for us to go. Thanks for staying with us for a special report on unaffordable Welcome back to Affordable Utah. A growing concern for all of Utahns, you've heard it, affordable housing.

Certainly, as a landmark new study out this week revealed, if home prices in Utah keep on climbing at the rate that they have been in 25 years, we could see the median home price top $1.3 million.

Economists say we need to take action now to stop the trend, create more affordable housing for Utahns, and keep our economy thriving. It's chaotic. In a word, it's chaotic.

That's how real estate agent Amy Wilson describes Utah's housing market.

We just cannot keep up with the demand.

Buyers are frustrated as they compete against dozens of other offers, and it doesn't show any signs of stopping.

I've listed homes over the last few months where we had cash offers within an hour.

Amid the buying frenzy, a new study from the University of Utah's Policy Institute says there are dangers and that a jump to a 6% interest rate would jeopardize homeownership opportunities for many households with higher incomes and seriously reduce housing affordability in Utah.

You know, the big issue here now is that we're not building enough housing to meet the households that are growing in Utah.

It's called the housing gap, and Clark Ivory with Ivory Homes says we need to make room for our growing population if we want to keep attracting companies.

Relative to other cities and states, we sort of price ourselves out of the market. Then we're gonna see jobs going elsewhere.

Already, when the Wasatch Front is compared to Boise, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, our median home prices are 20% higher And those are cities we compete against for new business.

We don't wanna lose that competitive advantage that we have today.

That's why the Salt Lake Chamber teamed up to create the Housing Gap Coalition to search for solutions.

What are the options and what are the levers that we can start to pull now that will impact us 20, 30, 40 years down the road?

Ladd Egan, KSL 5 News. Ladd, thank you.

So how did we get here?

Well, Utah is growing.

From 2010 to 2016, we were the fastest growing population in the country at 2.03%. At the same time, we led the nation in job growth at 20.7%.

And while those are good things for our state, they've led to a challenge. Demand for housing is high, the supply isn't keeping pace. Take a look at these numbers. Last year, the number of new families or households in Utah increased by 28,000, but the number of new housing units increased by just 23,500. The housing shortage is leading to a dramatic rise in housing prices. The median cost of a home in Salt Lake rose from $216,000 in 2012 to $315,000 between 2017. That's a jump of more than 45%. And from 2010 to 2016, the median cost of a rental in Salt Lake County rose nearly 24%.

KSL investigator Debbie Dijanovic recently took an in-depth look at rental costs in Utah. We're going to have her report when we come back.

Welcome back.

More and more people moving into Utah is pushing up our prices in our rental market.

KSL investigator Debbie Janovic found an unaffordable Utah is stretching families thin.

It's definitely difficult finding something that I can afford. For 3 years, Janice Thompson and her cat Lynx have called this studio apartment in West Valley City home, but at the end of the month, they're moving out. If I come home and park at night, I'm scared to walk from my car to my home. She's seen fights. Her car window was busted. A neighbor set the building on fire. On top of all that, her rent has shot up from $575 a month to $800 for a studio. There's like a gap that keeps building and building, and now I'm, I'm in debt and I can't make ends meet. Thompson says she earns about $30,000 a year at her job. She's given up Netflix and internet service, but the rent has outpaced her pay. Here in Salt Lake City, a housing study shows rent rose twice as fast as people's take-home pay in just 3 years. And now half of all renters spend 30% of their income on rent. That's a figure the government considers unaffordable. The cost of living is so high. It's not just this apartment complex, it's apartments all over the valley. Federal data show she's right. Rent has risen 20% on average since 2010. A 2-bedroom in St. George went up 24%. 2-bedroom prices in Grant County jumped 42%. $1,250 a month for a 1-bedroom. So what does that mean for apartment hunters? We compared rental prices for a 2-bedroom apartment in a dozen cities across the state. Not surprising, Park City and Salt Lake City, you're going to pay the most, about $1,400 a month. Salt Lake City believes if unchecked, the problem here will only get worse. People are really struggling to figure out how to stay in the city. City Housing Director Melissa Jensen Says the city needs cheaper apartments and more of them— 7,500 more. The shortage of affordable housing squeezes people earning under $20,000 a year the most. That means they're giving up food, they're not paying their bills, they're maybe not fixing their car. So you have about 54 units. She showed us this apartment building as one solution to the housing crunch. It's mixed income, meaning 14 apartments charge the market rate— $1,450 for a 2-bedroom, 2-bath apartment— but the other 58 units charge between $303 and $950 based on the person's take-home pay. And these aren't housing projects from 50 years ago. This 500-square-foot apartment comes with quartz countertops, stainless steel appliances, even a marble surround in the bathroom. Do you have enough of these apartments around town?

We don't, we don't. I mean, just like everybody else in the city, we're fighting to determine where we can put these units.

Jensen says the city wants to encourage more developers to build affordable housing And big buildings aren't the only answer. The city wants more duplexes, row houses, even more mother-in-law apartments. All of those can blend in with the city's existing neighborhoods. She says the city can't afford to become unaffordable.

If everybody moved out of the city who couldn't afford to live here, imagine the commute coming in. Imagine the effect on air quality.

We all need a place to live. Janice was lucky. She found a new place for her stuff and her cat. But for so many others, the cost of housing is growing more unaffordable here in Utah. Debbie Dujanovic, KSL 5 News.

Interesting, Debbie.

Thank you.

Coming up next here, we look at what is next, what experts want lawmakers to do, and one thing we can all do that they say will make the most impact.

Welcome back.

We have talked about how the increase in Utah's housing costs is actually putting a strain on Utah families.

This is especially hard on lower-income families who are putting more and more of their income toward housing. We've also talked about how the shortage and unaffordability of housing across our state could hurt our economy, pushing new businesses elsewhere where the cost of living is lower for employees.

Okay, so we're not in crisis yet, but experts want to be proactive. They're calling on lawmakers to find funding for more affordable housing. A bill that would have created a $100 million bond for this did not pass in the last legislative session, but lawmakers did create an affordable housing commission.

And they're calling on us, residents of Utah, to move past what they call NIMBYism, the feeling not in my backyard, when it comes to higher-density affordable housing. Economists say we all need to change our views on affordable housing in our own neighborhoods.

That would be the one thing that I think would have the most dramatic impact.

An affordable A little tiny one-bedroom apartment that's affordable changes lives.

We'll have much more on this topic Sunday morning at 9 on KSL's Sunday Edition. And tune in to KSL News Radio Wednesday from 12 to 1 for another special report on Utah's affordable housing concerns.

KSL is committed to helping you make your dollar stretch.

Join us Monday night at 10 o'clock as we tackle high prescription costs and find ways to make the unaffordable now affordable.

Thanks for staying up with us. Have a great weekend and go Jazz!

Go Jazz!

Okay, so that was a pretty stark reality on what's occurring. Steve, if we can go now to the— this is from the Utah Central Association of Realtors monthly statistics. So this is the latest statistics from UCAR. Many of us know them. Peter is the CEO down on Center Street. And go ahead, Steve.

Hello, and welcome to UCAR's monthly statistic update for real estate in Utah. Here are the top stats about Utah real estate for the state and counties for December 2020. Number 5, the average active listings throughout December was 2,920, a 4,835 decrease from 2019's 7,000 Number 4, 3,214 homes went under contract in December 2020 compared to 2,776 in 2019, a 438% increase. Number 3, the median sold price for the state of Utah in December 2020 was $415,000 compared to Utah County's $435,000. Number 2, in the state of Utah, December 2020, homes stayed on the market for 9 cumulative days on average compared to 2019's 39. Utah County was recorded at 9 cumulative days on the market this month, a fantastic 35 less than 2019's 44 cumulative days on market. Number 1, there were 3,142 homes sold in the state of Utah for December 2020. In December 2019, there were 2,849. The next stats are from counties that make up the Utah Central Area for both December of 2020 and 2019. Carbon, Emery Counties listed 11 homes and sold 28. In 2019, they listed 18 and sold 25. Grand and San Juan Counties listed 14 homes and sold 30. In 2019, they listed 13 and sold 20. DuSane, Uinta, and Daggett Counties listed 66 homes and sold 75. In 2019, they listed 50 and sold 33. Garfield, Wayne, Sevier, and Paiute Counties listed 27 homes and sold 27. In 2019, they listed 14 and sold 23. That's all for this month. To get more statistics, visit our stats page at ucaor.com or go to utahrealestate.com.

So, it's interesting, uh, UCAR brings up a couple of facts there that show what is occurring. So days on market have gone from 44 days on the market to 9 days on the market average. Listings are down by 50%. And the price for homes in Utah County, which is a median price home, which is pretty hard to fathom, but is hitting $433,000. So there's huge price appreciation and the stock of homes is way down and they cannot build enough homes and we don't have enough homes going for sale. So I just wanted to read a little item here from the Kemsey Gardner Policy Institute research brief, and they just said that the greatest challenge is households with income below the median. The current affordable housing crisis In Utah is concentrated in households with income below the median. A household with income below the median has a 1 in 5 chance of a severe housing cost burden, paying at least, at least 50% of their income towards housing, while a household with income above the median has a 1 in 130 chance. By another measure, a household with income below the median is 32 times as likely to have a severe housing cost burden As a household with income above the median. Okay, Steve, if you want to move to the next one. In the United States, Utah has had— is 3rd in the highest amount of appreciation in housing prices in the nation. And you can see what a difference that makes. I mean, California is at 167% increase, and we are at 276%. Go ahead, Steve, to the next slide. Again, as brought up in the previous presentation by Channel 5, job growth in Utah is the highest of any place in the nation. And you can see the top 10 states, and of the top 10 states, we are number 1 in job growth. Okay, go to the next one. In the top 10 states in growth of population, Again, we are number one above everybody else. This is an interesting chart right here. This compares households to housing units. So we have always had more housing units being built to households being formed until the last 10 years. And now we have a lot more households being formed than housing units being built. And this shows a variance of about 40,000 to 50,000 that were in deficit. This is a chart from Utah County. The part that I really wanted to show, you can see the sales price in the middle, average sales price on this one, and this is a recent one, shows $380,000. with a 7.5% increase. Actually, Utah increased by 11% in the last year for housing price— prices, and rents increased by 5%. So, if you look down, this is May of last year. If you look down on the bottom on new listings, new listings are down 10%. Closed sales are down 16%. Median sales price is up a half a percent, and months' supply of homes available is down by 40%. Pretty dramatic. Go ahead, Steve. This shows it even better. In 2010, housing prices were at $200,000, and in 2012 even went down to $175,000. Today, 10 years later, those prices have doubled. Okay, Steve. So for a $378,000 house, your mortgage payment together with your taxes and insurance and P&I is about $2,000 a month.

Okay.

Rent trends in Orem. have been going up on a pretty substantial regular basis. And if you look at the bottom right there, so for all apartments in Orem, the average price is $1,240 a month. For a 2-bedroom, it's $1,270 a month, and that has gone up dramatically. So let's go ahead and pass this one here. This one I wanted to show. The rental vacancy rate in Utah County is for a little over 4%, and there just isn't enough stock in there in our county. Okay, Steve. So this is a Housing Affordability and Neighborhood Partnership Initiative that OREM prepared 2 years ago. I'm not going to go through the neighborhood partnership portion, but I did want to go through the housing portion. So housing is affordable if a household can attain it, including rent, mortgage, taxes, property taxes, utilities, with no more than 30% of that household's gross income. Affordable housing doesn't necessarily mean large multiple-family— go back for just a second— family complexes. It can be medium-density townhouses, Townhomes, small duplexes and triplexes, accessory apartments, or even single-family homes. On the bottom, it shows— hold on one second, Steve. It just shows homes that range from $192,000 to $280,000, which is less than comparable dwellings in the area. That's in Park City. Okay. So affordable housing matters because high housing costs reduce disposable income. Which means that families with modest incomes have less money to pay bills, buy groceries, healthcare, and other necessities. High housing costs also prevent people from spending money at local restaurants and shops, so the economy is affected, and high housing costs can push families into homelessness. So affordable housing matters, and here's some of the reason why. Studies show that children in stable housing do better in school and are less likely to experience disruption in their education due to unwanted moves. Decent affordable housing reduces stress, which leads to improvement in both physical and mental health. Affordable homes can attract and retain employees to your community. Affordable homes can also support the local workforce. In revitalizing communities, the construction of affordable homes can also stimulate economic growth. A healthy mix of housing options from market rate and affordable rental housing, single-family homes and duplexes, as well as development for seniors, ensures opportunities for all individuals to improve their economic situation. Okay, so many important professions are significantly impacted by the lack of affordable housing. These include healthcare workers, first responders, educators, construction workers. So HUD uses the following categories, and this is from, again, the presentation: households below the poverty level, individuals that are making less than $12,490 per year, That includes approximately 6% of Orem's population. Low-wage workers, those less than— earning less than $29,000 a year, and that accounts for 12% of Orem's population. Low-income households— there's a difference between workers and households— but households making less than $46,000 per year, or 80% of the area median household income, This accounts for 24% of Orem's population. Moderate-income households making less than $69,000 a year, or between 80% to 120% of the area median household income, this accounts for 22% of Orem's population. Okay, Steve. So households below the poverty level, housing that's affordable for those below the poverty level needs to be $312 a month. Housing that's affordable for low-wage workers needs to be less than $726 a month. Low-income households available for— affordable for low-income families must be less than $1,162 a month. And housing that is affordable for moderate-income families must be less than $1,742 a month. So the number of new housing units, as we've mentioned before, and you can see on the right, is not meeting the number of new households being formed. As of 2018, 24.6% of moderate to low-income households in Orem were paying more than 30% of their monthly income towards housing costs. This corresponds to 6,769 households living in unaffordable housing. Common impediments to affordable housing is lack of funding, supply of rental units, limited land for development, construction and land costs, current zoning, NIMBYism, current continued high housing costs, belief that low-income housing is a detriment to economic development, and high mortgage application denials for Hispanics and other minorities, and we have a fairly large population of Hispanic and other minorities within our city. So what has Orem done to promote housing affordability? So we've had new student housing developments, we've had new multi-family developments, we have— and worked on even this year— accessory apartments. We have senior overlay zones. We have State Street mixed-use districts. We've had housing summits. We've provided CDBG funding to Habitat for Humanity. We have built 2 housing projects in Orem, and those are great projects, and my family and I have helped to frame one of those houses. The city's partnered with Utah Valley Consortium to offer a loan-to-own program. For area individuals and families looking to purchase a home for their first time and currently looking to partner with local affordable housing developers on senior apartment projects and pocket neighborhood concept projects. Jim, I think I'm— Yes, Debbie, you have a question?

No, I think my screen is frozen.

Okay.

Everybody else see their screen okay? Okay. Utah law now mandates cities take the biennial plan further by requiring cities to produce an updated moderate income housing plan, which we have filled out, that has about 23 different categories, and you need to pick 3. A recommendation to implement 3 or more of the moderate income strategies. and annual reports on the implementation of moderate-income housing strategies due by December of last year. So ORM's biennial plan examines the current challenges in the housing market, explores the options available, it recommends strategies, and provides the basis for ongoing conversations to develop a moderate-income housing plan. And ensures that Orem remains a city where everybody is welcome. Go ahead, Steve. So some of the recommendations are to update and adopt the Orem Moderate Income Housing Plan, consider inclusionary zoning. So that's what's known as IZ zoning. Inclusionary zoning means that when a project is being developed, that a certain percentage Percentage of that project is set aside for low and moderate income individuals or families. Fast-track affordable housing projects reduce some of the lot sizes, so maybe from an R-8 to an R-6. Housing unit sizes minimums, reducing some of those. Exploring a community land trust. Focus on the middle— I'm sorry, missing middle housing, and reinvest in Orem's older neighborhoods. So these are from a moderate income report summary from Orem, and I wanted to go over mainly on the strategies on the left if I could. So create or allow for reduced regulations related to accessory dwelling units and residential zones. We've been working on that. K, utilize strategies that preserve subsidized low to moderate income units on a long-term basis. Okay, next page, Steve. F, this is to allow for higher density or moderate income residential development in commercial or mixed-use zones, commercial centers, or employment centers. I think that's important to remember. G, encourage higher density or moderate income residential development near major transit investment corridors. That's actually happening next to our Orem intermodal facility there where the FrontRunner comes down and UVX meets the FrontRunner. Okay. And W, any other program or strategy implemented by a municipality to address the housing needs of residents of the municipality earn less than 80% of the area median income. And then rezone for densities necessary to assure the production of MIH. Okay, Steve. Framework for implementation. The level of participation in housing issues by the Utah legislature, cities, counties, municipalities, is unprecedented. The convergence of 3 issues has prompted this engagement: the homeless crisis, the housing shortage, and the housing affordability challenge. These related issues pose near and long-term threats.

Okay.

So the 23— I'm sorry, the 34 strategies selected by SP 34 last year, of which we are to meet 3 of them, I just wanted to go over a couple of them real quickly. Create or allow for reduced regulations, allow for higher density in commercial zones, encourage higher density residential development near transit, facilitate the rehabilitation of infrastructure, older infrastructure, implement zoning incentives for low to moderate income. And any other program or strategy implemented by the municipality to address the housing needs to make things more affordable. Okay, next. Consider general fund subsidies or other sources of revenue to waive construction-related fees, reduced impact fees, implement mortgage assistance, and allow for single-room occupancy development.

Okay, Steve.

So as I've looked at this, I've thought about— we are doing a lot of things in our city, and we do meet the strategies required by the legislature. But the question that comes to my mind is, what will benefit our community? What can we do to plan ahead? And are there ideas to better utilize property for our community for the future? So as Dan Lofgren stated in one of the previous videos there, if, if we have apartments that are more affordable, it helps our community tremendously. And we need to look and search for solutions. So I wanted to look at some possible creative solutions and present them today, and there's 3 that I have in mind. And would like to have you look at them. So if we could go to the first one. Right there. So if you remember, one of our strategies and one of the things that was mentioned is to include some high-density housing availability within a commercial zone. So on Thursday, Jamie and Debbie and I and staff They attended a meeting about what to do with the land and the future for the land in the Geneva Road to the freeway area. So there were 4 districts that they have outlined, basically the districts of the Gateway, which is from 1600 North, which you can see on the top there, down to 800 North. And then the Geneva Crossing District at 800 North down to Center, and then the Center Street District from Center Street down to 12 South, and then the South District in the area that we've annexed new land. So in this particular Gateway District, and one thing I wanted to mention, in the Geneva Crossing District they did a study and they put out a survey, and the survey came back and said that 46% of the respondents are in favor of mixed-use facilities within this area plan. Mixed-use meaning that it's industrial, retail, and residential. So not just all commercial, but residential is included in there together with retail. And they felt like that applied to all of the 4 districts Not just the Geneva Crossing District. So in this particular district, which is the Gateway District of the Geneva Plan, are 14 acres. They're right in the very middle and they border the freeway on the right. And if you look at them, it's a rectangular piece. And to the north is Cook's Farm and Greenhouse. Cooks has purchased the land to the east of them. And then if you come down right where you see some trailers right in the middle, right there, and then go down to the retention pond, which comes further down, which Orange City has— that 14 acres going out towards the freeway is zoned Highway Services, HS, and it's mostly for commercial. My thought is that this could be a very beneficial piece, as we said in, in the work session on Thursday, that in fact could be devoted towards residential. And as I look at it, this piece has been for sale for about 10 years. I have no idea what the owner is looking or doing or be involved with, but I do know that this piece has been zoned HS. So the question is, could we take this particular piece that's bordered by 50 acres of commercial to the south and 30 acres of commercial to the north and turn that into a residential piece that could be— have high-density homes built on there, and more particularly, high-density affordable condos built there. Could this be done? Well, first of all, the city of Lehi has done this. The city of Lindon has put high density along the freeway and changed their commercial zones in certain spots. Payson has done this. Could the city of Orem do this? Well, in fact, we actually have done this. If you could go to the next slide, Steve. And if you can turn that video on, if it's going to work.

You see that?

Yep.

So these are the Running Horse condos built down on Sand Hill Road, uh, south of Walmart. Uh, if you can go back, Steve, and yeah, if you can stay back. Um, anyway, and these, uh, are built right along the freeway. You heard the freeway noise along there. That particular zone was an HS zone for highway services, and we changed it to a PRD zone for the Running Horse condos. They sold for $150,000, 1,900 to 1,000 square feet, and they were sold out before they even got anywhere near to being finished. But those are great condos for Young families trying to build equity, trying to start out having a place to find to live. I believe that we could do that same kind of item up there on the Kirk Farm and use those 14 acres. We could build 500 high-density apartments. They can be high-density, but hopefully they could be low-density condos for sale. And for families to actually find a place to live. So we have done it. I think we could do it again. And if you look at the strategies that we have within our outline of where we'd like to go, and if we look at what we want to do with our Geneva area gateway district, the idea of having commercial as part of the mixed use, having residential as part of the mixed use, I believe would work. So I would like to have the council consider that and, and talk about that. All right, the second one that I'd like to bring up, this is 4.5 acres located at generally at 360 West 1600 now South in Orem. So the way you look at that is if you look at the projects, high density to the left in a little V right there with the red tops. And if you go to the bottom of that V, come down a little bit, Steve. Okay, and then move over to the right. And then right there, and then come straight down to where the West Union Canal hits 1600 South. This is a V area of irregular land height. It's an area that UDOT used to own and the City of Orem purchased it 30 years ago or so. And it has just been sitting there ever since. Now it's been purposed to be a park for that area, but again, this sits at 1600 South Orem. If you go to 1900 South Orem, and I won't show this to you, but we have the Nielsen Grove Park over there. And so that's only 6 blocks away. So I don't know that holding this for a park is the highest and best use. Park would be nice, but we have a huge park at Nielsen's Grove. So the question is, could we use this land for something different? The thought that I have— a couple of thoughts. You have high density at the top left, you have high density further over to the right. I am not suggesting high density for this land. The neighbors, I don't think, really want that. But I am suggesting that maybe we could use it for medium density. Could we look at taking that land, surplusing it, putting it out for sale, and rezoning it to an R-6 where we have 6,000-square-foot lots? And then limiting the size of the homes that go on there to make those homes more affordable and, and finish this area, because this is a Unfinished area. If you notice, the roads don't connect. There's 3 roads that don't connect. But this could be a great spot for housing, and to let it sit there and not use it when we have this need, I think, needs to be changed and could be a great spot. Now, have you know, can we do this? Have we done this before? Well, we have done this before. Steve, if you can go to the next slide. So this is an area over on 550 South and 1100 West. And if you look where the red dot is, and then if you look just to the right along that street, you'll notice that those lots are smaller lots. Those are actually our 6,000— our 6 lots. They're 6,000 square foot lots. The homes are smaller. They're 1,200 to 1,500 square foot per home, and you see them there above towards 500 South as well. So we have done R-6 lots, and if you remember, as part of our strategy that we put forward and that the government has put forward is to look at the possibility of allowing smaller lots. Now the other thing that could be done with this besides an R- 6 is we could also possibly work with Habitat for Humanity and, and put together a program where they could purchase this. And this could be a great subdivision. They're looking for a new one, a great subdivision for homes. The homes they build are for the disadvantaged and the low income. So for example, the home area that we're building on right now, and Debbie has been out to all the groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings, and I have as well. We're built— they're building homes that are 1,500 square foot, slab on grade. They're 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 2-car garage, nice home. So they have a family, an electrician, lower-income family with 3 kids bought one. A divorced Hispanic family, a lady with 3 kids bought one. A disabled lady was able to buy one. Great homes for those in the lower income area. This could be a great area to look at that. And instead of letting this land sit here for another 20, 30 years and not be productive, I think this could help part of the problem we have for unaffordable housing in Orem. Okay, Steve, if you want to go to the last one. So, the last idea I have is a little creative, but I wanted to bring this up. So, throughout the United States, there are a lot of box stores that are freestanding or in a strip mall that the owner or the lessee has left. So we have something like 25% of the big box stores are— have left and are not filling these spaces anymore. And the question is what to do with them. Throughout the nation, there's quite a bit of discussion about trying to change retail to residential. Well, can you really change retail to residential? So one way you would do it is you would go in there and knock down That building where Shopko is, if we were to use this as an example, and this is right across from the city center by Smith's. Or is there something else we could do? And has anybody else done anything with this kind of idea of changing retail to residential? Well, in fact, they have, and I wanted to bring that up. If you could go to the next slide, Steve. So this is— before you hit it, this is a video about a mall in Providence, Rhode Island. They classify it as the oldest mall in the United States. But they lost their tenants and they said, what can we do? And they have a real need for housing. So they have turned this mall from retail to residential. So I wanted to show you what they're doing in Providence, Rhode Island. Go ahead, Steve. It's the Arcade Providence Mall.

The Providence Arcade, designed by Russell Warren and James Buckland, was America's first indoor shopping mall. The Greek Revival building boasts Ionic columns at both entrances, plus granite, iron, and marble marble features. The arcade survived fires, hurricanes, demolition threats, and economic downturns over the years. Sadly, it was shuttered in 2008, prompting Providence Preservation Society to place it on the organization's 10 Most Endangered Properties list. In 2012, Northeast Collaborative Architects unveiled a $7 million adaptive reuse project to help restore the landmark. The renovation The renovation created 48 micro lofts and 17 micro retail spaces in the Arcade. The Arcade brings much-needed affordable housing to Providence while respecting the building's historic design and old-world features. The project proves that a historically significant building can be repurposed for live, work, and play.

So the apartments they have in there, a lot of them are studio apartments.

Oh, sorry.

Sure.

So a lot of them are studio apartments, some of them are 1-bedroom and some are 2-bedroom, and they rent anywhere from $500 to $700 a month to $800 a month. So this is an area that, for example, in Orem, we don't really have any micro apartments per se. But if you were to, as an example, to go into Shopko, and this is just an idea. And it's 100— Shopko's 100,000 square foot on 9 acres with the parking. But you could put in 100 to 200 micro apartments that would be lower rent and be available and not compete with the high rent or the other apartments, but be a smaller apartment and be a possibility for people to live in. And, and provide additional affordable housing for our community. So I just want you to think about those. We're at the end of our time right now, so we would like to go ahead and move now to a general City Council discussion. I'd like to come back to the housing discussion later, but right now we want to open it up to a general City Council session. And I appreciate that. I would like to start out with a couple of items first. and then open it up to the council. The first item I wanted to bring up is our committee assignments. So I've spoken with Jamie about this, and it's been my thought that we keep the same city council assignments this year in 2021 that we had in 2020, since it's kind of been an abbreviated year in many ways. But at the same time, I want to— I wanted to open it up to the council To see if anyone would like to change their particular committee assignment, if anyone else would like to keep all the committee assignments they have. So I just like you to think about that, and then this afternoon after lunch, we could all have a discussion. I'd like to hear from each of you if you'd like to keep your committee assignment, if you'd like to change your committee assignment, and you know, what will be occurring as far as that goes. One other thing I wanted to bring up real quickly is we are trying to get our population vaccinated. And as you know, right now the governor has said the first ones out the door are the healthcare workers, they're the educators, they're the first responders, and now they've opened it up to the 70-plus crowd. But the problem is the educators, as an example, the Alpine School District, they have 2 Saturdays in which they're bringing everybody in. So last Saturday they vaccinated 3,800 of their teachers. Today they're vaccinating another 2,800, and they feel like that by the end of today they will have gotten most of those who want to be vaccinated vaccinated. Now they're only getting 70 75% that want to, 25% are saying they don't want to, and that's up to them. Our first responders have been going there and mostly getting vaccinated and, and doing well. And so now, you know, we come down to the 70-plus, and the 70-plus are trying to get on there, and they're getting a lot of frustration. I've received emails phone calls, letters, because they can't get on. So the way the county— and I sent this out to everybody— but the way the county's working is they will notify anybody who's on their notify list of the day before, 24 hours before vaccination appointments open up. And so, for example, this week they didn't open on Wednesday, they opened on Thursday, and they opened at 7. And so anybody who was there at 7 for the next 10 minutes and knew about that was able to go ahead and get on the list. My son checked it out. He stayed with it for 8 minutes. There were 4 opportunities for multiple people to sign up, and there was plenty of room for that to happen. This is the same week that I received a very derogatory letter saying that I— this person's very upset because he gets on the website and he can't get a spot. Well, the problem is he's getting on a Tuesday or a Wednesday at 6 PM and he's thinking that it opens up. Well, it didn't open up and he can't get in. My thought or question is, is there a way as we as a city that we could get on the list with the county to be notified 24 hours in advance of when the appointments open up? And then put that on our social media that the following day for the 70-plus crowd at whatever day it is, because it changes every week and the time changes every week, put it on there and say, this is available to you. We want you to know about it. You need to be there right when it opens up, but there should be time for you to get your appointment to be vaccinated. I think that might be a help to our populace. Jamie, I don't know if you have any thoughts.

Mayor, can you hear me?

This is Tom. We were on Thursday night trying to get Kay's mother. We had 3 devices. Every time we clicked on one of those openings, they disappeared. So I can understand the frustration of our people.

We finally did get one, but have to go to Spanish Fork.

But they, they disappear within nanoseconds. So I appreciate that citizen's concerns.

Sure.

And all I'm saying is, can we help people understand when it is they need to be on? Because right now, that's what I'm seeing is they don't understand when to get on. And to your point, Tom, I understand your frustration of getting your appointment. My son Will was able to get 4 appointments if he wanted them. So anyway, there's, you know, We need to look at it and see if we can help. So Jamie, is this something we could do with our social media?

I don't, I don't think your son could have actually gotten them if he clicked on them. We had a half dozen open, and when we clicked on them, they were gone. I don't think—

unless your son actually tried to get it, I'm not sure that's a good litmus test.

No, he did not want to sign up, but he wanted to see if the appointment was available.

So when you click on them, that's what's even more frustrating is they're not available. Even though they say they are.

Okay. So any thoughts from Jamie or Steve on that? If we want to give that information out?

Mayor, I mean, we're happy to publish that information and make it available when we receive it. I think one of the— I guess one of the concerns I would have is this is something that's completely out of our control.

Sure.

And so the moment we start engaging in this effort, we build to some degree an assumption that we have a level of responsibility or involvement in this when we don't.

Well, we would have to put that as a disclaimer, certainly.

And unfortunately too, I mean, we're talking about a population that may not be as technologically connected as others. And so, I mean, that, that too is, that too is difficult.

Sure. I just think we're happy to do it.

We're happy to put the information out. We're happy to make people aware. But I also believe in the course of doing that, we're going to generate frustration towards us, which is really something that we have no control over.

Well, I would put a disclaimer personally and throw it out there.

My understanding too is based on the governor's executive order that he signed, this week. All of those doses in facilities that are non-health department facilities, hospitals and such, are required to be used within 7 days. And then they will be, if unused, forwarded to the health departments. And then in addition, I understand that pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens are going— Walmart are going to start receiving doses of the vaccination as well. So Hopefully that will also lead to greater accessibility.

The other thing that would be— that we should note is that the educators will be finished by the end of this month or the end of this week. And so they're taking 3,000 out of the 6,000 doses that the county receives per week. The county receives 3,000 to 6,000 doses per week. Right now, the educators have been taking the majority of that, and then the first responders. Most of those will be done by the end of this next week. And so as an example, 3,800— 3,000 to 3,800 doses could open up the first week of February and be available for the 70-plus crowd. So anyway, I appreciate that. That's all I have at this point. I wanted to open it up for the next hour, um, to allow anyone who wants to bring up any particular topic. I have a couple of more topics I want to cover, but I'd like to open it up to the council, and anyone who wants to bring something up is welcome to do so.

Mayor?

Yes, go ahead, Brent.

Yeah, this is Brent.

I just—

we put in this licensing program for the rentals or accessory apartments last year, and Stephen's done a great job with that. And maybe Stephen can comment on it, but we've had a couple of glitches in it. I've personally had several people call me One of the concerns is, is an individual has, say, 4 apartments and he has each one in an LLC, a different name, but the owner's the same. And so he's getting hit with a $200 bill where he owns all 4 of the apartments. And I don't know if Steven— Steven and I have talked about that, maybe. Stephen can give me any updates, but I think that's something we need to look at.

Yeah, Brent, I know we have had that conversation. I know Councilmember McDonald has had that one as well. Yeah, you know, it's— we looked around at other cities to see how they do it, to see if there's maybe a way. And what we have been finding is that most treat every LLC like an individual owner. And, and license each one individually. Is there something we could do to maybe group? I, I think we could consider something there. Um, it has been something that multiple people have brought up. The, the challenge, of course, is if we have to work on any individual property, we have to work with that unique LLC. We don't, we don't get to group all the LLCs and work with the one individual. That individual is going to send us to their LLC to pursue any type of issue we have with collections or you know, property-type issues. So, that's not— again, no way suggesting there's nothing we can do. I think the reason most cities keep a license at the LLC level is the owner of those LLCs makes us work with each LLC to resolve issues. We don't get to go after the owner directly. We have to go through their LLC. So, I think that's probably some of the the thoughts behind it, but it is something that Councilmember McDonald brought up and you have as well, Councilmember Sumner. And I'm not suggesting it isn't something we can't look at because I think it is.

Yeah, I don't know what the answer is, but if we could take a look at it and— I don't know, I can see why they put them in different LLCs, but at the same time, we're kind of in most cases punishing the small guy that, you know, just has the 4 or 5 or 6, uh, apartments. Anyway, if you can just take a look at that, Stephen.

We will.

And I will say, Brent, only because we've talked to a lot of the landlords, it's generally in our experiences the person that has 4 or 5 LLCs isn't this— isn't the small guy. This is the— this is the one that have established this as a business, and they have a lot of properties that they own. And it's a, um, it's generally not the small guy. Um, but again, not suggesting we, we can't look at it. There's, there's other things that have been brought up. I, I think like any new program we have, and I pulled up my, my list and my Google Keep of all of the things we need to kind of consider as we go into next, next July, which is our next, you know, the second year of it, of what things might we do different and Pete and I are preparing— you've made a lot of changes as it relates to that and utilities. We're preparing a kind of a presentation for a work session so we can update you as to where we're at, what we're seeing, what the compliance looks like, and is the benefit that we hope to garner being garnered. So we'll, we'll continue to discuss that, Brent.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Tom.

Let me make sure my— okay, my mute is off. Thank you. I just wanted to echo and support Councilman Sumner. I guess for me, if the contact person is the same, I don't care what LLC owns it because we're calling one person. So if the contact person is the same, I'm happy to go $50 for one and $75 for up to 5 or something. And as long as the contact person is the same, I feel great about that. Thank you.

Dave, did you have a comment?

Yeah, so I talked to Steve about a homeowner that owns— the mother-in-law passed away and they own the home and their kid is living in it. It's family member and we're charging them $50. And I don't know if that's really— we probably want to look at that also. It's the house right next to them. They're not renting it. The kids, the kids just got married. It's family and we're charging them $50. So I don't know if that's right either. I'm going to look at that.

Steve, one thing I was going to say, when we send out the notice of the fee to be paid next year, is there some way maybe to send out a sheet of explanation, an updated one that maybe helps answer questions and the reasons behind it? I've actually received quite a few calls from individuals that own units, and they were actually pretty upset about it. And I was pretty amazed that they are upset over the $50. And I explained to them why. Some of them accepted it, some of them didn't. But I think maybe an information campaign would be helpful.

Yeah, we can, we can continue that. We're Just so you know, we're about— there's about 3,500 unique rental property owners in, um, in Orem. About 3,100 are licensed now, and there's a— I think there was 479 as of like Thursday or something that, that aren't. So majority have. I, to Councilmember Spencer's, I did have a conversation with that individual. What one of the things that we're struggling with in that one, and, and It's— I understand, you know, this individual's feelings is somebody's decision not to charge rent isn't what determines whether it's a rental. It's whether the owner is living in the home. And in our opinion, whether the owner lives in the home is what makes it a rental. And somebody's decision not to charge rent doesn't, doesn't take away the impacts to the neighborhood of these homes becoming rentals. And so I understand that. And, and I knew this individual well, that Spencer— Councilmember Spencer. I've worked with them close on some projects, so I told him that I think— I still think $50 a year would be a really good rent rate for the individual if he feels like he has to pass that on. Um, $4 a month would fit in that affordable housing, uh, kind of tier that Mayor Brunst put out. But the impact to the neighborhoods is what we're trying to solve. And, um, to kind of Councilmember Peterson's and the council members both of last year's Retreat, the idea of homeowner focus and how do we protect those that are living in their home and owning their home from the negative impacts of homes becoming rentals. This is where that program is really stemming from and we feel like it has a big opportunity and whether it's somebody's kids or whether they choose to charge rent, the impact doesn't necessarily go away. So, that's what— and I had a good conversation and To be fair, he seemed to understand that idea a little bit. Granted, I don't think he'd be happy to pay the bill, but he understood why, what we're doing. And he's a very big one who's very vocal against all of these rental properties.

So—

Yeah. I think he's still not happy with the $50 because it's his kid living there. He's not charging rent and it is family. So, I think that might be a, you know, something we need to look at, in my opinion.

So, Stephen, you don't have, you don't have any plans to raise the $50 this year, do you?

No, no, no plans.

Okay.

In fact, we just were going through our fees and charges, and there we just looked at that one. Yeah, absolutely no plans to raise it this year.

Okay, any other comments from any council members?

While you're there, this is Terry. I have some comments.

Pardon me?

You there? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, sorry, I cut you off. So I was just thinking about— I'm just gonna— there's just one that I want to bring up, and there's other things we think about. But first of all, I'd like to make a comment that I've enjoyed this last year of working on the City Council. I've had people ask me, what's it like being on the City Council? And I find all the people on the council are polite to each other, are respectful. We might have differences of opinion, but I found it really refreshing that people listen to each other. Anyway, I just want to make that comment as, as I've gone through a year. It's a very strange year when most of it I've sat behind a computer instead of getting to be face-to-face. But anyway, my, uh, the one thing I wanted to bring up is, and we've had discussions about that, but it's the Hillcrest, uh, Park. And I just wanted to just some, some comments about it, um, that I, that I think kind of tie into what I'm hearing, what you said, Mayor, about affordable housing and about lifestyles and, um, making this a great place to live. Um, So, I picture the Hillcrest Park being a destination park. I think if this— if we do this right as a city, there's one— we see a strong demand for pickleball courts. And the nice thing about pickleball courts— and I'm not a pickleball player— but the nice thing about pickleball courts is old, young, rich, poor, everyone can play it. And it fits into your concerns, Mayor, about affordable housing and things that people can afford to do. You don't have to be a member of a gym to go play pickleball. In the city, we've made the attempt, but we're very under-pickleballed in Orem. We have 2 places that you can play, so a lot of residents go to other places. It was interesting, after a city council meeting in November, I went up to Sharon Park. and watched the people lined up to play. But it was interesting, old, young. I saw this couple meeting afterwards and the guy said, what was your name? I thought, wow, this is great. This is a great thing that people— anyway, I think if we do it right with Hillcrest Park, that should be a play. It's a long skinny piece of property. It's not a— but it'd be a great place for pickleball. Just because there's no neighborhoods, there's no neighbors that are going to be complaining about the lights or the noise, which we've had, you know, that challenge at Bonneville and, and, and probably Sharon is the parking anyway. So this is just not me. There's, there's a petition that's been going around the city, not just this area, but a lot of pickleball people have signed it. I have There's about 450 signatures I have sitting on my desk. I know there's a lot more floating around the city, but let me just read what this petition says that these people have signed. Says petition summary and background: we would like a park built in Southeast Orem using the entire 9.3 acres of the former Hillcrest Elementary property. There could be pickleball courts, a water feature, Playgrounds, a walking path, and other amenities to attract individuals and families. Parks increase community involvement, health, and safety. The park would revitalize the Hillcrest neighborhood and provide a dedicated green space similar to those enjoyed in other areas of the city. Then it says, action petition for: We the undersigned urge our leaders to build a park on the entire 9.3 acres of the Hillcrest Elementary By the way, I did not write that. That was— that's the petition that people are signing. But I just, I just really hope that this is— when I look at my list of things that Sherri has for me to do or that I want to do, it's always nice to have something that I can check off that I completed. So for me, if I go wash the car, it's done, it's completed, and now I go on to another task. Where if my job is to clean the garage, that's never-ending. I mean, that will never happen because as soon as I start, something else happens, reminds me of something else I was going to do. And I see that with the park. Hopefully, as a city council, we can say, let's, let's make that a destination park. This is where people come to shop. This is where people come to eat. A lot of our fast food and restaurants are right by the park, our shopping. A major bus stop is right across, is right next to the park, just through the wall from the park. So I hope as a city we can say, you know, and we bought the park, we own it. And we do have money. We do have the million dollars a year we've been putting towards the rec center will be going away in the next year or two. So yeah, I just, that's, and it's not my lobby, it's a lot of people in the city. I think that I'm hearing from people all throughout the city. And if people come from other cities and played on our racquetball courts, good. Come to our city, go across to the mall, go over to the mall, buy you some clothes, go buy you a car down the street at one of our stores, and then you can go back home. Anyway, I think everyone knows my concern, but I think it does a lot for the mental issues right now. There's a lot of stress. Since Hillcrest has been closed, there's a— there will be, with the new addition the mall is doing, there will be 1,000 apartments across the street from the park. Vasa is full. The Vasa on North Orm is full. And hopefully with the new strain of COVID-19, they're talking— it's not 19— the new pandemic that they're seeing in Great Britain, hopefully we can still keep Places like our VAS is open, but a park is always a place people can go. Anyway, I think everyone knows my concern. It's not me. It's— I'm hearing it from people throughout our city, and I just hope that when we look at that, we don't say, let's give them a few pickleball courts. Let's put in 18 pickleball courts like they do in Spanish Fork. Let's, let's put in a splash pad. Let's, let's let the citizens tell us what they want. Anyway, appreciate everybody's time and just listening because I think this would add a lot to the center of our city. Thanks.

Thank you, Terry.

Mayor, can I, can I add to that?

Sure.

I also agree that Hillcrest should be a major priority for us. As I've been thinking about the last week, I know we spent a lot of time with these neighborhood plans. I believe it's been the last 5 years. I'd really like to If possible, there's goals in each of those neighborhood plans. I'd like to at least do one or two goals if we can start budgeting. I mean things like sidewalks, bike paths, things that the neighbors have asked, and I feel like if we do that, then the neighbors will feel like they didn't waste their time and we're actually going to do it. So I would just encourage us to go to each of those plans and pull out one or two things that we know we can complete this year, or at least get it in the budgeting cycle that when the next.

year or two we can get done.

So I just wanted to add, and I think the parks and the rec and the sidewalks, those things make a big difference for families, for safety and security. So I just wanted to see, see if we could make that a priority to actually utilize those projects and those neighborhood plans. So that's all I wanted to say.

You sound like a Parks and Rec TV show. So Steve, a question—

Tom has his hand raised, Mayor.

Okay, go ahead, Tom.

I just want to, you know, Terry, first of all, I concur with everything Terry said, but I, but I am always concerned about the money. And I, and Jamie, I don't know if you're going to present how big our balance sheet is. I do know we have $1 million a year that maybe won't be going to the rec center, but I hate for us each to earmark that million bucks for something else, or each earmark The $17 million we have somewhere else that may be going for a water tank. I want to be sure we're not double-counting our money. So while we do— we go to great efforts to approve the annual budget from a P&L standpoint, I'm not clear exactly what our reserves are. And at some point, a report of that being sent out by the finance group would be helpful in making these type of decisions.

Thank you. And we can do that, Tom, and we'll do that. I will look right now in what we have as our capital project account to give you a general idea as to monies that we have in reserves for projects.

But, and also, if you have them already earmarked for someone, clearly we have the authority to change the earmark, but it'd be helpful to know that.

Yes. So, for example, what we have identified as future projects, that is money that does not have, at least at present, a current project assigned to it. We have $9.2 million.

So, Jamie and Steve, not to go away from the money side, but with Debbie's thought on the goals for each of the neighborhoods, is there a way to summarize those goals from the different neighborhoods and put that in a summary sheet. So I'm not aware, for example, of a neighborhood that needs a new sidewalk or that wants a new sidewalk, but if we could just go through the neighborhood plans, summarize their thoughts, and let us see that.

Yes, in fact, we, we actually have that. We've asked our Development Services Department to keep a running tally on what those projects are. you know, specific projects.

Right.

Some of the goals and objectives are not capital-related, but rather, for example, like the conversation we just had a few minutes ago about landlords, rentals. I mean, those things don't have necessarily a specific capital project tied to it. But yes, we do keep that, and we actually are keeping track of what we have accomplished, because we want to go back to each of those respective neighborhoods and those groups that worked with us to say, these are the projects that we have completed, these are the projects that we're working on, these are the projects that we have scheduled in the future, so that they know that this document is not something that's simply sitting on a bookshelf, but rather it's a living, breathing resource that we are incorporating into our budget process on an annual basis.

That would be great, and I think that's important. I know years ago the sidewalk on the north side of the Cirrus Theater was always chewed up, and every time I went to an event, I just thought, you know, this really needs to be taken care of. So I contacted the city and And Jamie and we worked through it and Public Works built a new sidewalk there. It's beautiful and we got that completed.

And I will represent to you that oftentimes the needs of a particular neighborhood are not as critical as needs in other neighborhoods. So for example, in the case of a Seara sidewalk, Yes, the sidewalk may not be in the same level of repair as others, but it is a sidewalk. And in other neighborhoods, other parts of the city, there are no sidewalks. And so we always are trying to balance those, I guess you could say, competing interests and competing needs.

But it's just nice to see those things get done. Yeah, you know, and you see that throughout the city. You know, one that's probably not on everybody's mind, but we are completing the build-out of the streetlights for the city, and there's an area south of the city center that has old lights that are not the green kind and are not LED lights. And some residents down there have asked for years to have that completed, and that will be completed this year. So those are great things to get done for the residents of Orem.

Mayor, I've got a few things I need to— would like to talk about.

Sure, go ahead, Dave.

So, um, I think overall, I think as I look back over this year, very positive that we have a new police and fire chief in Orem. And I think that was a great, great get. for us, those 2 gentlemen. Also, my concern with, you know, State Street Master Plan, we talked about that. I know that's going to be an upcoming topic in City Council. Also the water. I know we've done a good job there and hopefully we have some good results. We can talk about that on Tuesday. My one question about Utopia, all this new money that they're bringing, Jamie, my question is, in 2 or 3 years, let's say we have a downfall in Utopia and the revenues go down, who's on the hook for that additional new money? Is it, is it Orem, or is it—

who, who has to pay that?

It's Utopia as an agency.

So Orem wouldn't have to pay the, the new debt? No.

So that is backed by, that is backed by the, the agency itself in years Earlier years it was backed by city franchise fees.

Okay.

But it is, it is currently backed by, uh, agency revenues.

Because our debt that we have over the 40 years is just— it's going to stay put and that's what we have?

Yes.

So not—

no additional— if they go under, let's say 5 years, something drastic happens, they go under, we're not going to be holding the bill?

Well, I mean, I, I think, I, I think I would be I wouldn't be— I guess you could say sincere if I said we are not, you know, potentially going to face a circumstance where, for example, creditors would come after each of the respective cities. But we have not pledged anything. That is not our debt. It's Utopia's debt. Whether or not a financial agency would try and come after us. You know, I would imagine that if, if all of a sudden somebody's holding $50 million worth of notes and they're looking for somebody to help pay for them, they will come our way. But the way the debt is structured, no, it's not our responsibility.

No, that's good. That was just a concern. Also, Mayor, I appreciate the information on the affordable housing. The question I have there is With the affordable housing, is that going to be a federal government subsidy to help, you know, because the land price is so expensive? So if somebody's going to spend, you know, on 9 acres, whatever, that— how does that pencil? Is there gonna be a subsidy or how does that work?

Well, on the 14 acres that I brought up on the Kirk Farm, that would strictly be between a landowner and a developer. So we as a city are not necessarily saying we're going to subsidize anything. All I'm saying is I would like to make it open where it's not held just as HS zoning but would be open to a PRD or PD zone if in fact the owner of the land wanted to sell to a developer who then wanted to develop that into affordable high-density housing. So, I just want us to be open to that idea.

Okay.

And I—

we've done it in other places, other cities have done it. It would be a huge thing. The other thing to remember is that particular piece of land has no neighbors around it. You have commercial neighbors, but you don't have any housing neighbors. So, for example, what we saw in 1600 North when all the neighbors came out with the proposal that was put up, And I don't, I don't think that was done in a proper way by the developer. But in this area, there is no NIMBYism. So that part of it is eliminated. The other part is, it's a piece of property that other cities have put high density along their freeway. And we have done it as well. I think it would be open to that kind of thing, but Not looking for any subsidies from anybody on it.

The only thing I would say with that, because the Habitat projects and the senior apartment projects, they do have the opportunity to apply for Community Development Block Grant. You're correct.

Resources.

Yep.

On the 4.5 acres.

Already come.

And then there's the—

Yeah. And then there's the home consortium that's administered by Provo that we're part of. So there are resources if they're going to make it affordable housing. where they can help with some of those costs to make it, make it work so that they can get the necessary investment they need to make the project happen.

And that's a good point. The 4.5 acres for sure. If we could get housing subsidies for the 14 acres, that'd be great. Not planning on it, but could be a possibility.

And my other concern would be, you know, with the affordable housing and medium to low density housing, I, I don't want to see— and I'm not dissing on Vineyard, but you go down there and those apartments down there, you cannot even drive, you can't even park. It's, it's terrible. We go visit the YSA missionaries down there and it's like you got to park 4 blocks away just to get to their apartments.

Like, poor—

that's barely poorly planned development. And we need to make sure that we don't do that because it's terrible. I mean, it—

And I I totally agree with that.

Terrible.

But also, uh, my other thing was just an update maybe from Jamie on the, uh, city center drawings, because, um, I've had quite a few, uh, citizens ask me, you know, because that's more of a visual that you can really show, and I'm not sure how long that takes.

Okay, if I can just respond to just this affordable housing comment first, and then I'm happy to I'll touch base on the city center. The, the idea of inclusionary zoning is also a powerful tool and resource that we have to essentially, within our ordinances, compel a developer to build affordable housing into their projects. So that doesn't mean that they have to, for example, provide an inordinate amount of affordable housing. But if you, for example, have a developer and he or she wants to come in and develop 50 units, 50, and generally all that we have in this city right now is primarily market-rate units. You could, as a condition of approval, provided our ordinances dictate this, require them to build a certain percentage of those units as affordable units. So, let's say out of 50, you could require them to build 6 or 7 units that were affordable. Now, of course, that plays into the overall financing of a project, because at the end of the day, the developer is going to build to a certain specification, and if he has to subsidize some of those units, then he's going to pass those costs onto others. So, I mean, it doesn't necessarily— it's not necessarily perfect, but it is a way for us within the city to encourage affordable housing without, for example, having to invest financially in some of these projects. In regards to the city center, we actually had our last meeting was on Thursday. We spent an hour and a half with the architect reviewing a couple of concepts. They are looking for a few more weeks to put those concepts, kind of further refine those concepts, and I think we will have them ready for you to, to see in February.

And thanks, Jamie. I'm also thankful that the new lights will be going up around Orem High because that's been a You know, going— think that I get phone calls all the time for a certain— from a certain person. So that, that's great.

I appreciate that. But, and then also, let me see what my—

oh, I think Debbie said about the neighborhood goals. I think in our neighborhood that 950 North Street really needs to be redone. So maybe you can take it, make a note of that, Steve, and get that over to Chris Shirkey or something. Okay, I'm done.

Thanks, Dave. Jamie, one thought on inclusionary zoning. Could we, or could you as staff, look at that and maybe come back to us in a work session? Yes, just give us some thoughts or ideas. I think it's something that would play well in the legislature. I think it's something that would be beneficial to low-income residents in Orem. And I think if we did it in a measured approach where it would not run a developer out, that certainly it would be an option. And as we know, they're doing this in other cities, Salt Lake and other cities in Utah. And I think, I think it's a necessary thing we need to consider.

Yes, be happy to do that.

Okay.

Mayor, this is Debbie again. I want to ask a question for Bryn. I know you were getting some renderings for Hillcrest Park. Tell me the status of that and just give us an update, if you would.

Yeah, we got the concept some design concepts essentially late last night and early this morning, and we can distribute those or, you know, give you a sneak peek, even talk about them for a little bit. And then we're planning to do a formal presentation on Tuesday in the work session. So in terms of how you want to see those or discuss them, it's Essentially up to how you want to use your time today.

How many concept plans did you end up with?

We had 3: one that shows it with the school building, one that shows keeping a portion of the school building, and one without the school building at all.

Okay, thanks.

Sounds like you've covered it there.

Mayor, I've had my hand raised for a minute.

Can I make a couple?

So, um, I just want to say thank you to Jamie.

The email that you sent out earlier, kind of last year in review, was fun to look back on and to really see all of the accomplishments, all of the things that have taken place last year in spite of a pandemic.

And so thank you to Jamie and staff and everyone for for sharing that with us and for making 2020 the best out of a really tough situation.

On the ADUs, we have an opportunity for accessory apartments that would possibly help strengthen some of our neighborhoods, give us an opportunity for cheaper housing costs for the owners and the renter.

And, you know, we've got probably hundreds of mother-in-law apartments that could easily fit into the city without, you know, injuring or making it hard on our current infrastructure.

Also wanted to go back to Hillcrest Park with Sharon Park and the pickleball courts that were there. It's my understanding that we used CDBG money to put those pickleball courts in and the lighting, which was obviously a benefit to the community, and as has been mentioned, is a hotspot in the city. And I wonder if to help cover some of the costs of building that park, if we could use some CDBG monies. It's a similar kind of neighborhood. And I wonder if that would be something that we could use to also help even strengthen the park and the opportunities that would be there using that extra or that outside CDBG money.

Jamie, any comments on that, or Steve?

Yeah, Steven can comment, but yes, that has been part of the conversation. Hillcrest, the Hillcrest neighborhood, is in fact in a CDBG qualifying area. Of course, we would need to go through the CDBG process and work with Kenna Matthews and the CDBG committee in making that request. But yes, my understanding is it is a qualifying area.

Yeah, and then Jamie's right, it is. We, we use about $300,000 for Sharon Park pickleball courts. Uh, that was, that was, that represented a couple years worth of savings to do it. Um, but yeah, I think, I think there's no reason we couldn't. The only thing I will suggest is they— there's some weird rules when you, when you get federal money involved in a project. There's a lot of other strings that come with that, and one of them is called the Davis-Bacon wages. So anytime you have $2,000 worth of federal money in a project, then the whole project becomes subject to Davis-Bacon wages, where the federal government sets the the wages for all workers that were going to be done on that project. There's a lot of documentation, a lot of paperwork. So while it absolutely can, we'll just want to make sure that it's enough money from it that it makes it worth all of that other kind of the strings that come with it. But for Sharon, it was a huge blessing to that neighborhood. So we've used it for Geneva Park to replace that playground and Westmore. So it's something we do.

could do here. In fact, to Steven's point, we do this all the time at MAG when it comes to road projects. We try and congregate federal money into, into a small number of projects because it does trigger all sorts of federal requirements, and we can actually build more for our money if we stick to state and local dollars. than if we use federal dollars, it just ups the cost of projects. So yeah, that is something that we weigh, and that's a good point, Steven. We'd have to consider in this, in this situation too. But what it may then result in is us being able to, for example, direct CDBG dollars or additional CDBG dollars to projects we were already planning to do in cooperation with general fund money. And then move that general fund money over to Hillcrest Park so that we don't have all those strings tied to a particular project.

Yeah, Jamie's, Jamie's actually been really good about that in the past, and one of the ones that are coming up that way is our Sharon Park north of the pickleball courts. That playground is set to be replaced, and one of the things Jamie's encouraged us is to find a way to use CDBG money to do that, and then that $200,000 that we would have used for a playground out of general fund money can now be put in a neighborhood that isn't going to qualify or we won't be using.

Okay.

Any other comments? So I've had a, a lot of emails burning up my, my city website or email site about the water tank. And it seems that with the notification to some of the residents, the offer to purchase a home there, that everybody is— has concerns. They don't seem to know. They're upset. So, Jamie, I'm wondering if you can tell us, is there a way to get information out to everybody? Is there a way to talk about how long the project will be and why it's necessary? And why that particular location. But it seems like we have a very upset neighborhood down there right now.

So, Mayor, I do in my inbox— late last night I received a communication from Public Works. They put together a 2-page, I guess you could say, summary sheet as to what we're talking about in terms of a water storage facility. I just have not had a chance to review it yet. This is obviously a very, a very fluid situation in that we only talked with you a few weeks ago, in fact a week and a half ago, about this particular project. And obviously we knew that this was going to generate concern. At the same time, though, I think the concerns that many of the neighbors have raised are going to be universally applied across the entire community, regardless of where we were to build this tank. The problem that we have from a hydrology and engineering perspective is there are only certain spots in the neighborhood in terms of elevation, necessary acreage, accessibility to, for example, large roads where we can connect to these these systems to these, these, this infrastructure to our systems that can accommodate this kind of use. And so, you know, the narrowing in on community park is not just at our recommendation, but we actually hired an engineering firm, Hanson Allen and Luce, to actually help us understand where is, where are the best places For the tank. And so this is not just us trying to spitball where we think it should be. My hope is that we can get this information out to the residents, answer some of their questions. Yes, it will be a buried tank. Yes, it will have seismic, obviously, systems in place. Yes, it is going to be an inconvenience. There's no doubt about that. At the same time, and, and this is not necessarily what people want to hear, it's the very residents in those areas of the community that are creating the need for the tank. And I don't mean just them, I mean all of southwest Orem. Because we're getting to the point now where everything that we have up on the bench is not meeting our current needs. And so it makes sense for us to build infrastructure throughout the community. So I know, I know Chris and Neil met with a particular resident for 4 hours yesterday. In fact, her name is Braylin VanderLuven. And they— she— both Neil and Chris met with Bree Lynn and George and Gay Lynn Rosenthal, and they talked about this project for about 4 hours yesterday.

If I may, if I may, Mayor, I mean, in addition to creating better water pressure and, you know, redundancy in our water system and everything, I think we also want to get the message out to the neighborhood and to our citizens that, you know, with this, if we can get through this sort of short-term interruption and inconvenience, afterwards we'll have a better park with, you know, an improved, essentially new park above, above where the storage tank will be that'll last over 100 years. And, you know, so I think we want to get some of the, some of the positives out there and also, you know, reassure them that we're going to do— we're going to take extra measures to mitigate noise, you know, to make sure that the tank is as far away from those homes as possible, mitigate dust, etc.

So I'm just wondering, Jamie, if we could do an open house and show with charts, timelines, pictures, the need Maybe down at Mountain View High School, close to their neighborhood, and be transparent and open so they know ahead of time. I do remember when Dominion Energy— it was then Questar— came through with new pipelines, major pipelines in our city about 4 years ago, I think it was, and a lot of people were very upset over how much time it took, where they were going, what was happening. But I remember that when people understood the reason for that, the need that you have the integrity of the pipeline there, and that there is additional use due to our city growing, that people seem to calm down. So I'm just wondering if we could do that.

Yeah, in fact, we're in the process now of developing a request for proposal bid documents for the project, and a significant part of the project and the bid document will be public outreach. And we are going to require the contractor to hire a PR firm or a communications firm to help and assist with that very effort. The challenge we have now is the neighborhoods are concerned about something that we don't even have answers to, in terms of where, you know, How deep it's going to be. We have a general idea as to potentially where it could be and how big it needs to be, but we haven't done any of the engineering. We don't have a contractor. We don't have an engineer on retainer now to actually build this project. A lot of those questions, a lot of those answers to questions, are going to come when we have this team on board. Our plan is to have this RFP out by the end of January, by the end of this month. So the moment 2 weeks ago or a week and a half ago, all of you said, yes, we understand, we're going to move forward, then we got our public works staff working on this, and we're getting it out to bid. And, you know, I'm hopeful that come March, we will have a contractor on board and engineering on board, and we can start giving residents specific answers to questions and resolving concerns.

One, one question I have just personally, do you have any kind of thought as far as how much time it will take to build the tank?

Yeah, it probably is a 2-year project.

Okay. All right. I know they're spreading around that it's a 3 to 5 year project, and I thought that doesn't sound correct to me.

Jamie?

Yes, conservative.

Do you know, do you know how many homes you need to purchase on that west side, or—

Just one.

Just one?

Okay.

And, and again, we're not, we're not trying to force anybody to sell us that. There are actually several, there are actually several homes for sale, and so we actually approached the realtors and the property owners And said, you have your home for sale, we're interested in buying it as a city. And that, I believe, is what triggered this conversation. We have a verbal agreement with a property owner to, to get a formal purchase agreement to him next week, but we just haven't— I mean, we literally finalized— well, we literally shook hands Yesterday.

And, and it was essentially a house flipper.

Okay. So he's happy to sell. Okay. Well, that's certainly a concern of a bunch of citizens. I know that, you know, it's happening quicker than we thought. But yeah, any transparency we can do would be great.

So, I mean, I know that, for example, the concerns of the neighbors were, well, you realize you're building too close to the school. Ironically, our first plan actually had us building the tank on the softball fields right next door to the school.

Right.

But from an engineering perspective, it didn't work out as well as this other piece. Well, actually, actually, it didn't work out because the Alpine School District is interested in rebuilding Orem Elementary. So they are actually going to rebuild the school closer to those softball fields. So if the neighbors really are concerned about the water tank and safety, then obviously they're going to have an additional challenge at some point in the future with the school district when they rebuild Orem Elementary.

They want to constrain their own options.

Great.

Well, thank you. We're at the end of our second part of our session here. And appreciate everyone who's made comments. We'll now take a 15-minute break to 11 o'clock, and at that point we have Dan Hemmert that will be on the line with us and have a legislative discussion. So thank you, and we'll see everyone at 11 o'clock.

Hey, Dan, this is Steve Downs. Are you going to be sharing your screen today? I'll just give you the appropriate permissions if you're planning on that.

Oh, you're muted.

Sorry.

No slides, just my camera.

Okay, sounds great.

Thank you.

Hey, Mayor.

Hey, how are you, Dan?

Good.

Good to have you here, appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for the invite.

So we have actually an hour available to us. If you only make 45, that's fine, but, you know, we'd like to get into as much as possible and have you give us as much insight, particularly where, uh, you were the part of the leadership.

So, well, and, and for what it's worth, I, um, you know, I'm gonna try— you and I talked to try to accommodate that, and then I thought just open it up to questions.

Yeah, that'd be perfect.

So nothing's off the table, so whatever anyone wants to ask or think.

That's great. You know, we have a project that a bunch of us have been working on, which is the Central Corridor Transportation Project.

Yeah.

Are you familiar with that?

Uh-huh.

And I know that if you have $350 million that you're looking at to do the double tracking, That takes some monies that are available to that. Are they looking at also doing electrifying together with double tracking of FrontRunner?

So that always gets talked about. That's a few hundred million to do that, as you probably know. It didn't make it in the governor's budget. And when I was still in the legislature most recently, we were talking about putting in the legislative, you know, the budget for for this next year, but I haven't heard anyone talking about it since the session started. So I don't know if it's something for the future. There is talk of a bond again. People always ask me about that. There is talk of a bond, and that's something that you could see if there was a significant bond, like a multi-billion dollar bond. That's definitely something I think you'd see in there.

Right. Okay, we're gonna get started here in about 3 minutes.

Okay.

Hey, Dan, are you on?

Yeah.

Hey, Terry, how you doing?

How you doing?

Good, good to see you.

Good to see you. Congratulations on your new appointment.

Oh, thank you.

Don't, don't forget us when you're one of those big shots in Salt Lake.

Whatever, whatever. I don't think you can ever be a big shot to the, to the, uh, well, one, I'm just not one, first instance, but second, particularly people you grew up with.

So, or the neighborhood you grew up in.

I already thought you were a big shot, Dan.

Don't Don't sell yourself short.

Whatever.

And Tom, I remember when I was just trying to get you to answer my phone calls when I was working for Stan Rickes.

So—

I still have a hard time having him answer my phone call. No, not really. He's good.

So Steve, uh, can you put us on live? There you go. So it's now 11 o'clock. We would like to resume our City Council retreat, and this particular session from 11 to noon, we've invited Dan Hemmert, the Director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development, Development and former leader in the State Senate, and we appreciate having him here. And Dan, I don't know if you know everybody. So, on our council, we have Terry Peterson, Tom McDonald, we have Dave Spencer, we have Debbie Luray, we have Brent Sumner.

Hi.

And am I missing anybody? And Jeff, Jeff, and Jeff Lampson. Sorry, thank you. And anyway, we have an excellent council, and so we look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

And let me just start by saying, and appreciate the mayor asking me to do this. Actually, I don't appreciate it, but I was happy to do it. But I know a few of you reasonably well. And it's fun to— I don't know, I grew up in Orem. I moved away a couple times, but always came back. And I love Orem. And I live in Orem now at the mouth of Provo Canyon and hope to— this is maybe morbid, but hope to die in Orem. You know, I don't ever want to live anywhere else.

Well, hopefully you bought your plots in the cemetery, because they're going fast.

So That's the rumor on the street. My parents are a little bit, uh, man, this is so morbid, whatever I'm going with this. My parents are a little bit closer to that decision than I am, and, uh, I know they've been looking, and they came and told me they were shocked at the price.

So, yes.

Um, anyway, uh, so hopefully I can keep this pretty, um, casual in the sense that more than happy to answer any questions as they come up as we talk. The mayor asked me to talk about my experience in the legislature and particularly what I think— and mayor, correct me if I'm getting this wrong— but what the City of Orem could do perhaps to be more engaged with the legislature, or what, what are effective ways to interact with the legislature.

Yes. And so just give you a little bit of my Dan, if I could just break in, could you tell us what your position was in the Senate and what your responsibilities were?

Yeah, so I ran for office for the first time in 2016, had never run for office before, and ran for the State Senate. There was an open seat. Al Jackson was the senator representing Northeast Utah County, which includes Northeast Orem, right at the mouth of the canyon. And he had resigned and was moving. His son was going to go play basketball back east, and he wanted to move back there to watch him play. So there was an open seat. I ran for that seat and was fortunate enough to have won. That was 2016 into the State Senate. Shortly after that, well, and it's worth saying, in those first 2 years in the Senate is a little bit different than the House, that everyone chairs a committee out of the gate. And you can chair either what's called a standing committee, which are the committees that do policy, you know, bills or bills with words, or you can chair an appropriation committee, which are the ones that deal with the money. And in those first— so I was immediately put in a unique position where I chaired 2 committees out of the gate, and an appropriation committee and a standing committee out of the gate. And they were Retirement Independent Entities Committee. Shortly thereafter, I moved over and chaired the Business Economic Development and Labor Committee. And then that was my second year in the Senate. And then I had the fortune of getting elected to be the whip, the whip of the Senate. So you serve on Executive Appropriations Committee. You're a member of leadership, elected leadership, which is a little bit different than appointed leadership. In both bodies of the state legislature, you have a presiding officer, a speaker in the House, a president in the Senate. You have a majority leader, and then a majority whip, majority assistant whip. And those are the elected positions. Where Utah's legislature, both bodies are supermajority controlled by Republicans. There are Democrats, and they're important members and have an important voice, but they don't have a lot of impact on policy in the state of Utah. Because of supermajority ratios in both bodies, you don't need any Democrats to pass any legislation. I don't think that's a bad thing. We work closely with the minority party in the Senate, and there's great relationships across the aisle. But the reality is the Republican caucus, which is the most important body in the Senate, controls everything that through the Senate. And because both bodies have to agree on anything, you could argue— and the same is true for the House. The House Republican Caucus has this exact same power that I'm describing for the Senate. So not diminishing the House at all, but the— anything to get— for anything to get through the legislature, the Republican Majority Caucus has to support it. And as the whip, you are responsible for knowing where the Republican Majority Caucus is on any issue or any big issue. You know, there's too many bills to track them all, and most of them don't even matter. The vast majority of the bills that pass through legislature have no real impact on anyone's lives. But for those few policy decisions that are leadership bills, and those types of things are typically like tax reform, love it or hate it, that was something that was driven by leadership to address a problem. And, you know, as the whip, you're— I was responsible for going around the Republican caucus. We didn't twist arms in the Senate, but we tried to make sure that people were making the decision on the best information. So I would go around and know where everyone was. And then when we had leadership meetings, I could tell us if we had the votes or not, or tell the leadership team if we had the votes or not. And that's, and then the other thing the whip does, the last 3 days of the session, the Senate Majority Whip controls every bill that is run through the House the last 3 days. The same is true for the House Majority Whip. The House Majority Whip controls every bill that runs through the Senate the last 3 days, because what happens is both bills have to, all bills have to pass both bodies. And I know you know how a bill is made, so I won't go through all those details, but to work the end, all of the Senate bills will pass out of the Senate and they'll be sitting in the House. All the House bills will pass out of the House and they'll be sitting in the Senate. And so the House, the last few days, will only be running Senate bills. Similarly, the Senate, the last few days, will only be running the House bills. And it is the whip's responsibility to prioritize all those bills in the opposing body and basically dictate which bills run. So, so the last 3 days, you're either the most popular or unpopular person in the entire legislature because you are controlling the flow of every bill.

And if I'm not wrong, there's what, 400 or 500 bills you're working with?

Yeah, so typically in the typical legislative session, about 1,000 bills will be drafted. Well, not drafted, excuse me, about 1,000 to 1,200 bill files will be open. Of that, about 800, 900 will actually get drafted. About, I think it's about 700 will actually make it to some sort of a vote, whether committee or floor. And then of all of that, about 500 to 600, it's close, 550 to 600 will actually pass. And about 80% of those past the last 3 days. Just, and it's just the nature of the beast, you know, you're working through them all session, they all kind of build up. And, uh, and then you have the last 3 days and you push all the, you push all that hadn't passed out. Um, and the last 3 days, you know, so, so that's, if that answers that question, that's what the whip does. Um, you also are usually, because of the interaction you have with the opposing body, because you're over there so much, you're kind of typically the negotiator between the 2 bodies. So this is true and historically has been true with both the House Whip and the Senate Whip, where if there is an issue with the other body, it is typically the Whip that is sent over to go talk because the chambers are physically separated. And even though they're not very far apart, it is interesting if you go up there and spend time up there, how infrequently there is association between the Senate and the House. There's just, everyone's busy doing their thing. And so if there is an issue, it's the whip that gets sent over to go talk to the Speaker or another member of House leadership about issues as they're arising, and the flip side also occurs. Because you're a member of the Executive Appropriations Committee, that's in my mind still the single most important thing the legislature does, which is pass a budget. And how it works in Utah, there is a thing called a base budget, which we pass at the beginning of every session. And this was instituted when Olin Walker was the governor, because there was a fight about passing budgets. And someone who was, I don't know who, but someone that was pretty smart, decided we shouldn't hold our government hostage over issues like the federal government does. You know, the federal government hasn't passed a budget in like 8 years, continuing resolutions. And so what we did here in Utah is we passed a base budget at the beginning of every session. And what that is, it's last year's budget plus 5%. That's typically what it is. It can be modified, but that's typically what it is. It's just last year's budget plus cost of living. And then during the session, we'll have revenue estimates. that are, um, come out. And this is where Utah is also unique. We have a bipartisan fiscal analyst. The governor does have his own fiscal analyst. It's called the Governor's Office of Management and Budget, but the legislature only has one fiscal analyst. And why that's unique, some states the House or the Senate Republicans will have their own revenue estimates, the Senate Democrats will have their own revenue estimates, the House Republicans will have their own revenue estimates, and the Senate Republicans or the House Democrats hold their own revenue estimates. And you can imagine it's hard to pass a budget when everybody's working off of different numbers. So we are very fortunate in Utah that we do have a single bipartisan fiscal analyst office, and they're excellent. But they will come out with revenue estimates typically in February, where based on sales tax receipts and income tax receipts and projections on those, they will deliver Executive Appropriations Committee how much money we think the state will bring in in taxes. And when you hear about the money, for example, this year you'll hear about $1.5 billion. That is money in addition to what's already been appropriated historically. And when those base budgets pass at the very beginning of the session this year, It will be, it will be reappropriated for another fiscal year. And so this, this $1 point whatever billion— we don't like to use the word surplus in Utah because it's not, but it is new money, it is additional money. And that's when you start hearing about, you know, this year I think you'll see a number of different straight-up tax cuts. And, you know, not that you need to follow it, but Senate President talked about this will be the year of the tax cuts. And we'll see how that plays out because if there ever is money, there are always wants to spend that money. The single biggest want historically has been— well, there are 3 big nuggets in the state budget. One is social services, Medicare— excuse me, not Medicare, Medicaid, and other social services associated with that. It chews up a pretty significant portion of the state budget, and with federal match dollars, it is the single largest piece in the state budget. Education is also one of the biggest nuggets there. It's, it's actually, for just state dollars, it's the largest thing we spend money on in the state of Utah. We get beat up in Utah for being the lowest per pupil, but we also are— what no one talks about is historically, I don't know if it's true last year, but Prior to last year, Utah also had been the state that spends more per— as a percentage of its total budget on education than any other state. And then the third piece is transportation.

We—

and transportation infrastructure. That's both maintenance and new construction. We in Utah have an earmark on the sales tax, as you may know, that's around $700 million that go straight to UDOT every year. It's not appropriated, it's already been earmarked, and that's kind of unique too, which allows UDOT to make pretty long-term plans and have— which you're probably all familiar with— their priority, their prioritization lists, and plan out decades in advance and know to a relatively good degree that they'll have the money to pursue those plans. So unlike other states too that have kind of start-and-stop transportation planning processes, because of the earmark with the sales tax for transportation, UDOT is in a pretty good place fiscally and financially. So those are the big pieces of the budget. And so as a member of leadership, you're on EAC, and how the process works, you probably all know this, but you have a program appropriation subcommittees, they hear all the requests that come into the state and for, for new money or even just retention of old money. Although the old money typically gets passed in the base budget, so you don't talk about that that much. I do think that's a weakness in our budgeting process. Jeff Moss and I passed a bill 2 years ago that had a zero-based budgeting aspect that every year every appropriation committee would take 20% of their budget, so every 5 years you would review the entire budget because we don't do enough of looking back. There's too much emphasis only on looking forward with new money. But so as the— so these appropriation subcommittees, all the requests that are on the governor's budget, the power the governor has in the governor's budget is anything on his budget is automatically moved forward for consideration to the legislature. Otherwise, a legislator is required to submit either a request for appropriation or an RFA or run a bill that will have a fiscal note on it, or there will be an appropriation associated with the bill. Those are the only ways to even have the option of putting a money item in the budget. So there's some gates you have to run through. The governor has a super gate that anything he puts in his budget's automatically there. Legislators can also— I guess each legislator could run as many RFAs as they want to get items up for consideration, and then each legislator can run as many bills as they want. And where bills have fiscal notes, they can get stuff in the budget that way. So all of these items, be it governor's budget, be it a request for appropriation by a legislator— bills typically don't come up yet— but all of those Straight money items will run through the appropriation subcommittees. Those are chaired, you know, by us. Those are bicameral. I probably said that word. Both chambers man those committees. You have a House chair and a Senate chair, and then House members and Senate members. And all those— a lot of thoughts put in these appropriation subcommittees. All they do, they have no authority to spend money. All they do is one thing. They make a recommendation on ranking of the things they heard in their committee, ranking in priority which ones they think are— have the most merit. And it is a recommendation only that then is provided to executive appropriations. A lot of people get really wound up over their— what the appropriations subcommittees do in these presentations, these RFAs, but in reality, All those appropriation committees do are making a recommendation. EAC has all of the appropriating powers. So with the budget, what will happen is the appropriation committees will do their work. There are all the presentations. And for example, as the new director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development, we had to present our budget requests that are in the governor's budget to the Business, Economic Development, and Labor Appropriations Subcommittee yesterday. And gave an hour, hour-and-a-half-long presentation on the items we would like them to consider for funding. And all the agencies have to do that, and then again, all the legislators with requests for appropriations have to go through that process. It's kind of a—

How much was your request yesterday?

Oh man, so we have a $66 million kind of ongoing recurring budget. Most of that— so we administer most of the incentives and And not just incentives, but just tax credits for the state of Utah, be it for all sorts of stuff, for trails. You know, there's grants for trail construction and maintenance. There's film incentives to encourage film here. And there's— we do all of the tourism marketing for the state of Utah. You may be familiar with the Mighty 5 campaign, you know, the 5 main national parks that's marketed all over the world. That comes through GoED. We also do assistance programs for small businesses in particular. We have programs to assist small businesses apply for federal grants, for federal procurement process, help them get through the procurement process. And then we do a number of rural programs. And that's probably where we spend more time than anywhere else at GoEd is actually rural stuff. And then we also do corporate recruitment. Unfortunately, that's the most visible piece of GoEd, but it's actually one of the smallest pieces GOED, and we only really have one tool for corporate recruitment, which is a— it's an economic development tax increment financing program where if you bring jobs that are above the median job in the county where you're relocating, like Domo just received one in Utah County. They were expanding. They have to go look at other states, and if they're looking at other states and their jobs are higher than the median job in the county, they can receive a post- performance, so you have to earn it, you have to earn it every year, post-performance credit, refundable credit, equal to 30% of the income tax you actually remit or your employees remit to the state. So it's, it's a pretty robust program, but that's the only tool we have for recruitment. But unfortunately, that's the one everyone talks about. But in addition to that, in the governor's budget, we put in a $50 million request for broad broadband upgrades throughout the state, particularly rural Utah, upgrade speeds and upgrade backbone. We also put it— have a request for a $169 million rural Utah revolving loan fund to help some of these rural communities that don't have access like Orem does to good financing options through their tax increment financing because they're too small and whatnot. So something to help them basically leverage the state's balance sheet. So that was another one. And then the third one, the third big one was $100 million for roads and park upgrades. As you know, our state parks saw 300% increase in usage this last year from the pandemic. A lot of— there was, you know, there's a lot of— we need to fix them up. There is a lot of use that's really kind of hurt them across the state. So those were our big ones that we asked for.

as GOED.

So we went in, what is that, we asked for $69 plus $100 plus $50, a little over $200 million for programs to— that we would administer to work on infrastructure projects, not transportation but other infrastructure projects in the state of Utah, which GOED has, has been part of that in the past as well. We've run federal broadband initiatives and the Office of Outdoor Recreation, which administers grants to like build new trails and maintain existing trails, that's also coming out of GOED. So that was our process. But going back to that, goes to all the budget requests end up to EAC. And there's— everything is done. This is not a cynical view, it's just the reality. Everything's done behind closed doors, the negotiating. What will happen is The executive appropriations chairs will come together. They'll agree on initial budget. If those 2 agree that just— it's non-controversial, then the presiding officers will then weigh in and they'll add a few more things. And then it will go to the majority leadership team. We'll add a few more things in the Senate and the House. At that point, the 2 majority teams get together in a room called the Star Wars room because it has a cutout of Luke Skywalker. And we will haggle over, over the 2 different leadership teams and presiding officers' positions and finalize a budget, which is really just this giant spreadsheet with all the line items that were in the governor's budget and RFAs, and we'll agree what we're going to fund and not fund. From there, that will then be presented in executive appropriations in a public meeting, and then that will go into a bill which is called the Bill of Bills. which is usually passed the second to last day of the legislative session. And in that process too, by this point in time, we'll have a good idea of which bills have fiscal notes and will cost money. And in that budget process, we will also decide which bills we're going to fund. And that all goes into the Bill of Bills. It's passed the second to last day. Utah always balances its budget, always has. Tax cuts would also go into that Bill of Bills. And then once that's done, that's the biggest work that the legislature does, and then we finish up the rest of the bills.

So in, in reality, you could have your bill passed and it's supposed to be funded, but it may not be funded.

Yes, and that happens all the time. And in fact, Marcia Judkins and I ran a bill for Alpine School District last session where it was to fix some of the math on the WPU for children with disabilities. There's some legacy, it's just the way it's calculated. And we ran a bill, it passed all the way through, it had a, I want to say like a $9 million fiscal note on it that all would have just flowed into the WPU. So all would have just gone back to schools, and it was not funded in the budget. And so although we passed the bill, because it wasn't funded, no impact made, you know, there's no effect. And that is another way that you can kill a bill with a fiscal note. Bills with fiscal notes under $10,000 are automatically funded. Anything over $10 million— $10,000, excuse me, has to be itemized in the bill of bills to be funded. Bill of bills to be funded. So once that's done, you run the rest of the bills, and you're done. Talking about what it's like to be in the legislature, the Senate is a little more time intensive than the House because you serve on— there's fewer, there's 29 senators versus 75 House members, and what ends up happening is you serve on more committees, you're chairing a committee, which is not always the case with the House member, and you're based— and you also have confirmation committees. The Senate provides advice and consent for governor appointments. So I just had to go through an advice and consent process earlier this week where senators have— that's just a committee that House members don't even have. And then, so basically what the session's like, you typically have meetings starting at 7 AM and they run straight usually until about 5 PM. There's frequently dinners in the evening with other legislators, with lobbyists, And, and/or if you're in leadership, you're actually in leadership meetings until about 7 or 8 or 9 PM. And as the Senate progresses, you're up there, you're, you are up there more than 12 hours a day, every day, and you are just back-to-back meeting after meeting after meeting. Now you can talk to people, you can step out of committee meetings, you can step off the floor, you can take phone calls while you're on the floor voting on bills. You also take phone calls while you're in committee. But your time is so scarce because the other thing you're trying to do through all this is move your own legislation. So you're— you had bills drafted that you were working on, and you're getting input from stakeholders. So you're focused on your bills. You have to get them through committee hearings and through the floor, and you get constant feedback and thoughts on those. And then people are lobbying you on bills that are just coming up into committees you sit on and vote on. And then on the floor, you're also getting harassed by stakeholders. And harassed, I don't mean harassed in a negative sense, just people are always trying to reach out to you. And then you have constituents also. And I tried to be pretty dang accessible. Maybe some of you disagree, but like I gave people my cell number. I gave people, you know, the cell I kept in my pocket. And I'd get calls and texts and as much as possible try to respond, but it's just bonkers. You're getting, I mean, I was getting, I think about 150 emails a day. I did this math once. It was after the second year. And it got worse when I got in leadership, but I was getting about 150 emails a day. And I want to say it was like 70, 80 texts a day. I know when I was leadership, I added it up once. I got 250 texts a day on average. It is impossible to keep up. So you just do your best. And I would tell people like, hey, the best way to get me is just text me. And if I don't respond within 24 hours, you need to text me again because you just dropped down in need to go up to the top of the stack again. And I was pretty comfortable telling people to do that. And my favorite— well, so just the legislative session is bonkers. And it's bonkers. And then the last week, you're usually up there till 11 or 12 o'clock at night. And then the last night, per our constitution, the legislative session must end at midnight on the last day of the session, which is dictated as 45 days from the day it started. And so at midnight, we're done. So this happened last Senate session. Many of you know Senator Bramble. He had a tax bill he was running, got all the way through, was over at the House. But there's an administrative process with these bills. They have to be signed. And so he had passed his bill through the House. It had changed after it moved from the Senate to the House. And so it had to, we had in the Senate had to agree to the changes. I was literally sprinting over to the House after they had passed it. I had— they had to go to their bill room. It had the magical things had to happen to— I don't know, it's put in a packet. I had it, or I'm not allowed to touch it, excuse me. The House member who brings it back— not a House member, a staff member— they're walking back and I'm like pounding them, like whipping them, you know, like, run, run, Forrest! They were running back, I was running back. It's almost midnight. this lady slams the bill file down on the Senate Secretary's desk so we could then concur. Clock hit midnight, we're done. Uh, you know, so it will literally just— when it happens, it happens. Doesn't matter where you are in the process, it's over. Um, and so, you know, you got to manage your bills with the time. And it's just— it's crazy and bonkers. It's kind of fun.

Yeah.

Um, and it's fun, you know, but, but it is a rough time. And so After the session, then you got to go back to work. And some people have more flexible jobs than others. Mine was kind of tough. I ran a business that had 23 retail locations, we had 150 employees, and it was a demanding job. And so I tried to be very judicious in my time post-session as well. And I know a number of other legislators like this too. They want to go back to work because they always feel like they're employers giving them a unique opportunity to serve in the legislature. There's not many employers who will give you 45 days off every year and then 2 days a month after that to serve in the legislature, plus you still want vacation sometimes. You know, it's a rare employer, and I, I had the unique position that I was self-employed and so could make it work, but it's, it's tough. And so your time is just so valuable, which leads me to when Mayor Brunstad originally asked me to speak, you know, what's the most effective way to interact with a legislator. From my perspective, it's just tell me what you want me to do and I'll tell you if I can do it and do it bullet point fashion. I don't need a meeting. I actually kind of resented people who always wanted meetings, uh, and I would straight up tell lobbyists, like, if they ever— if I ever heard the words, we just want to give you an update, oh man, that was like No way for me. I had way too little time. I do not need updates. Um, you know, I don't need to know what you're doing unless I'm like a vendor or customer. If I'm in your chain and we're interacting naturally, this is going to sound jerky, but I don't care. Like, I got— I have too much going on. But if you needed something, tell me and I'll go do it. You know, I have no problem going and doing stuff. I have no problem, you know, running bills. I have no problem getting a appropriations funded if they agree with them. I have no problem putting pressure on you, Dot. And, you know, a very effective way to interact— like, I actually think Mayor Brunson's pretty good. Mayor Brunson and I have a decent relationship, I think, and he can call me and text me, and he knows I won't answer every time, but I think I usually get back to you. Um, and I've called him sometimes, he doesn't answer, but he usually gets back to me. And what I love is— and I'm going to use the example of 1600 North and Orem. You had a problem with 1600 North. You wanted the state to take it over, and UDOT, I think, as I remember, was kind of jerking you around. This was 2 years ago, if I recall. The problem had— one problem was it wasn't on. They had to go through some stupid UDOT process, I think. And so Mayor Brunson called me, hey, we have a problem with 1600 North. We want the state to take it. They're not. And that's all I needed to know. I didn't need to know the 20-year history about 1600 North. I didn't know who owned what houses along 1600 North. I didn't care about any of that. I just need to know there was a problem and I would go try to fix it. So I got on the phone with Carlos Braceras at UDOT. He told me, hey, here's the problem. You need to get some— had to go through some process at UDOT and it hadn't happened yet. And again, they were kind of jerking you around. So what did I go do? UDOT had a bill that they cared about that Wayne Harper— he's another senator— was running. I went up to Wayne, I said, we're going to circle that bill, it's going to stay circled until UDOT promises that they won't mess around with Orem. And so, uh, Linda Hull, who's UDOT's representative, she, she, uh, she's their government affairs, whatever her title is. She's basically the in-house lobbyist for UDOT. She got, uh, she was, she wasn't meeting with me and Val Peterson when we were trying to talk to her about the 1600 North thing, so I just went and circled the bill. Her bill stopped. And, uh, she called Wayne Harper, what's going on? And Wayne said, well, Dan told me I have to circle it and it won't move until you, he wants something from you. So she kind of freaked out. And the very next day, Carlos, you know, the director of UDOT, is up at the Capitol with Linda. Um, Val and I go talk to him. We talk about this issue, you know, we And he's like, look, I can't, I can't promise you anything until it's on the— gone through this process. But what Val and I basically said, I said, okay, Carlos, that's fine, but you have to commit to me you're not going to screw around with Orem. Like, you're just going to take it. Because that was part of the concern too, that they were going to require Orem to spend a bunch of money to bring it up to a higher standard. And we just said, you're just going to take it. And Carlos, to my face, said, I agree, we won't screw around with Orem. And Val was right. Val Peterson was right there too and said, okay, we're going to hold you to that. Went back out, we uncircled the bill. The UDOT bill passed, and I think they took 1600 North. And but that's that kind of communication is is is for me as a former legislator when I was in there, that's all I wanted. I just needed to know what you wanted me to do. I didn't need like I just I didn't have time for more than that, unfortunately. And it's if if you want to effectively engage with your legislators. You know, for me, it was just, just text me and just text me what you want me to do and I'll go do it. I didn't need you to go through a lobbyist. I mean, you can, and lobbyists are effective because I can't do everything. No legislator can. You're too busy. You're too busy shepherding your own bills through to do, to like do too much. And that's where a lobbyist can be helpful because they can go talk to everybody involved. But as far as some things, if you just needed someone to go in and do something quick, you know, any legislator can do that. And you just need to tell them what you need them to do and they'll typically go do it. And that I found was by far the most effective, at least for me, way for someone to interact. And I know talking to another— a number of other legislators, they all said similar things. They just want to be told what to do. And I don't mean that, that they're sheep. It's just they don't want to have to go figure crap out. They just want to be— and they don't want to learn the 50-year history. They just, they just need some talking points. And, and that is by far the most effective way to interact with the legislature. If you do think, you know, we need to develop a personal relationship, and that's good, but understand that that also can be a burden on the legislator. You can develop a personal relationship just interacting, just call every once in a while. Hey, I'm the, you know, I'm Terry Peterson, I'm on the city council and just want to, just want to meet you and chat with you for a little while. Then tell me about yourself. You know, if we just treat each other as neighbors, we may be further living further apart, but if we just treat each other neighbors and just reach out every once in a while and have a conversation, that's all, you know, all I need to hear is you're, you're somehow involved with Orem City. It's all I need to know. And then just tell me what you want me to do and we'll go try to get it done. Um, you know, we don't need to— uh, and nothing against you, Terry, but I don't need to come to your family Christmas party. I grew up in Terry's, Terry's neighborhood, so— I tried to go on a date with his daughter once. I think she said no. But, uh, anyway, um, it's, it's just, uh, That is by far the most effective way to interact with the legislature. And I don't know what else, what else you really want me to go into here. We have, I think, 10 minutes left from the original timeframe. I'm happy to answer any question. Nothing's off the table. I'll just tell you, you know, how I, how I view things, if that were for what that's worth. And there you go.

So, Dan, real quickly, oftentimes as a city, we need to be on the offense. And then again on the defense in regards to legislative issues. So we're trying to get some roads funded, but at the same time we're concerned on housing, what the legislature might be trying to take away from us as a city as far as our zoning rights and abilities. Can you give us an update on housing and your thoughts there? Where people are at.

So it is a constant battle. One of the biggest issues we have as a state is a housing shortage, and it's the cost of living which impacts quality of life and everything else, as you know. And this isn't just— I don't even know if this is true in Orem, actually. I do know it's an endemic problem across the state, usually wealthier communities, frankly. Where there is a real reticence against and resistance to creating density. You know, for transit to work, you need nodes of density, so it makes the most sense to create density in and around transit opportunities. But there is a real reluctance by planning commissions and then councils, whether it be city or county councils, to approve projects that have density. And it, it's, it's a problem, and legislators know about it. Affordable housing is something that's talked about every year. Uh, you know, we're seeing— if it wasn't double-digit, it was close— year-over-year increase in housing prices. And so affordability becomes an issue, and you start thinking, okay, what are your kids gonna— where are they gonna live? And, uh, you know, it's just, it's, it's a major issue in the state, and The state did try to do some carrot approaches with affordable housing, right? Which I'm sure Orem City, you have to have an affordable housing plan and send it in and, you know, follow that plan. It's, it's, it's, it's some like good vibes type stuff more than anything else. I don't know, you know, I saw Jamie, I saw you nodding your head. I don't know if it is much more than just like, hey, we're— And I'm not saying this is how Orem approaches it, but what I don't know is after you put the plan in place, is it— it feels like to me what I saw at least was more— and I'm not talking about Orem specifically. The only one I've really seen was Summit County's. It seemed more aspirational than practical. But, and like I said, that's Summit County's. I can't speak to anyone else's. I just saw theirs looking at some stuff. But—

Much of what's required are things we're already doing.

Yeah. And so they're there's always talk about housing, but there is also, and I think this is sincere, um, typically a sentiment of local control. It's something we always talk and, you know, government's better. The best government is the government's closest to the people. And so between local, you know, you have 2 issues though. If you have communities that are consistently resistant to any sort of density or multifamily versus the local control thing. Those are just 2 balancing acts. But I think right now, local control still trumps in the, I'd say, like where the legislature is in aggregate. So, I don't think you'll see any mandates. You might see more carrot approaches to, hey, if you do this, you'll get more of this. And you could see something saying like, Or maybe even some stick approaches. If you don't do this, maybe you lose some of your— and they probably will tie it to transportation funding if they're going to tie it to anything, because that's what communities care about. But other than just talk, uh, and this year in particular, I haven't seen anything substantive, um, other than just talking. It's not been talked by those I would say are the ones you really want to listen to. You know, when you hear the Speaker or the President talk, You know, it's worth listening to. When you hear members of leadership talk, that's worth listening to. If you hear just some member of the body, and not to diminish that any— every legislator adds value, but you just hear some random member of the legislature talking about something, I don't know that I'd put that much stock in it. I don't care what their title is or what committee they chair. If it's not coming from those leadership teams, you probably won't actually see much action. Does that answer that question, Mayor?

Yes, uh-huh, thank you.

This is Debbie Luray. You spoke at the Utah League of Cities and Towns, I don't know, maybe a year or two down in St. George. Does this sound familiar?

Maybe.

Okay, but one of the things that I remember asking you about was truth in taxation hearings for property tax Oh, and my concern was mostly just the ones that would just be tied to inflationary rates instead of having to do that every year, because we've lost so many buying power over the years just not keeping up with inflation. And you had said that you were maybe going to run some legislation that would, if it was just tied to some index, that we don't have to go through that every year. Did that ever go anywhere?

No. And I do actually remember that conversation now. And I did run legislation that would basically put a small cost of living allowance for a community to allow the rates to float a little bit, right? Or the total tax amount to go up every year. It never went anywhere. Truth in taxation is still pretty sacred up there. It's kind of like the local control thing. I'd still say it's pretty sacred up there. And yeah, I don't think you're going to see— give it Well, it's still pretty— transparency, truth in taxation, that was a big deal when it passed. And there's still a lot of people that believe in the value of that. And look, I do. In theory, it's nice to know what your governments are doing and how they're asking you to pay them, pay for those services they provide. And I think I maybe said to you, I know I said this to the Alpine School Board because they did a big— You probably followed this. They did a big tax increase last year, and I went and actually spoke against it. Maybe it was 2 years ago. And that was the first Truth in Taxation committee I ever went to. And after walking out of it, I said, these are stupid. I don't know why anyone even cares about these, because I went up there with this great speech about the injustice of Alpine School District raising its taxes because it fought against something else— equalization— which would have actually brought in more money than they were trying to get through their tax increase. By sharing, you know, the property taxes that were coming from all over the state. And Alpine fought against it. And I was just so frustrated at them. So I went and spoke and, you know, they don't have to respond. They just have to listen. And then you leave and it's like very anticlimactic. And so I actually went back and talked to, you know, one of the board members lives in my neighborhood, Sarah Hacken. And I was like, I don't know why you guys care about truth in taxation. Yeah, you have to take some punches with the public input But you don't have to respond to anything. You just listen, and then you go do what you want anyway. And that's kind of what Apple School does. And so while it is a bar, and it's tough to hear from your friends and neighbors, why are you raising taxes? But at the same time, there's there's value in transparency and having to to do it, having to hold the hearing. And and I I would hope it makes government a little bit. better and a little bit reluctant to raise taxes. But to me, in that one time I went, and I don't know, I've never sat on a city council or school district board, it didn't seem like that high of a bar.

So.

Well, you may have to be accountable at election time though.

Yeah.

And yeah. Yeah.

Okay. I just wondered if that ever went anywhere. Thank you.

No, it never got off the ground. Got crushed.

Right.

I don't even think I got it to a committee. I think it died just as soon as I started talking to people about it.

Mayor, I've got a question for Dan. Sure. So on the Inland Port Authority, just maybe you can give us an update and then maybe what your opinion is of the Inland Port Authority.

So the Inland Port Authority is a— it's basically a— they have planning rights, powers, they don't have rights, powers, they have planning powers there in that body that kind of took away those powers from Salt Lake City, which is where the inland port sits. And they also have the right to control all of the tax increment that is generated as property values go up within the inland port border. And so, it's kind of a, it's almost like a municipality. Even though it's a, you know, there's a board and then there's an operator. You know, so I've only been at GO-ED, so I've heard about the inland port, right, the entire time I'm there. Most of my interaction with it has been hearing people complain about how it's going to make the air worse. That's frankly most of my interaction. But since being at GO-ED, so we have a board seat at GO-ED. And I've only been at GOAT for 3 weeks, to be clear. But having interacted with the folks who work there and kind of looked more at what they're trying to accomplish, it could be pretty cool. Because one thing that Utah has that's unique, it has rail lines running into it both from all of the major West Coast ports. No other city has that that's inland as far as Utah is. Boise doesn't have that. Phoenix doesn't have that. Nothing in New Mexico has that. There's nothing in Nevada that has that. And so as far as getting goods into Utah and allowing them to go through customs here, I do think that could have a really big— you see this in the other big ports, all sorts of manufacturing grows up around it, other service providers grow up around it. So as far as an economic driver, I do think that's potentially real. The air quality issue is an issue that we don't want 100,000 more trucks on our road or a billion more trains, but that kind of comes with the territory. One thing they're working on now is nodes, which you may have heard of. The one that is probably the most realistic is one in Cedar City because Cedar City has a rail line that runs right into the city. It's an old abandoned rail line that wouldn't take that much to upgrade. upgrade. And again, that gives Cedar City access to all these same ports. And I think you could see an inland port popping up down there. Um, the one in Salt Lake's there. The, the negative of the ports is they're kind of a blight, you know. I probably shouldn't say that word. They're kind of— they're very industrial though. Um, and that's not very awesome. And I was actually talking to a bunch of folks in Cedar City who were expressing their excitement. I said, you know, Do you want this though? Not, not from an economic perspective, but just from a— I shouldn't use that word blight because it's going to get quoted somewhere that I said it was a blight. Do you want this ugly thing or less beautiful thing? You know, do you want this in your community? And I think that's a balancing act we have to figure out. Uh, but at least from what I've seen and talking to the folks there, I do think it could be a meaningful driver. We actually had a company from California, it's called Farm Girl Flowers. They're a flower distributor. That's all they do. They buy and sell flowers. And they're in California because they come through the port there. They're actually looking at moving to Utah solely because of our inland port. Because they could bring all their flowers here. They could do whatever they need to do with them here. Go through customs here. And then push them out of here because we still have all the logistical access to ship stuff nationwide. And so the last 3 weeks, that's an anecdote. It's just one, but I do think it could drive a meaningful economic impact.

So I do import-exports and custom brokerage here. So I understand all the facets, but the key thing is there's not a rail from Seattle down to Utah, which I think that needs to be done to make it really complete circle.

So I, so I saw a map.

So that's it.

So actually, what's funny about that, so someone brought this map in. This was like 2 weeks ago— not, sorry, 2 days ago. The weeks and days are already merging. And there was this map with these 3 big white arrows, right, all merging on Salt Lake. And, and I looked and said the same thing. I was like, because it had all the rail lines on it, and I said, I don't see one from up there. And the guy that was talking, and I just took him at his word, I don't know, you would know. I don't. He's like, no, there is one. Watch. You know, he ran his hand down some green line and it had to go through Idaho. And I don't know, he did all this squiggly stuff. He said, no, it's there. I was like, okay, whatever. But yeah, you would know and I wouldn't. But my understanding is there's a way to get rail from Seattle as well.

I mean, right now it's all truck because you don't have any rail into Boise and that's the key too. So, but no, that's— I appreciate your comments and just want to get your thoughts. Thank you.

Anything else?

So I've got one.

I—

you and I spoke and you said that you were given the responsibility to promote $350 million for double tracking the Frontrunner. And the FrontRunner goes through Orem. We have an intermodal station here. Double tracking would speed it up and make it much more efficient. But $350 million is a big ask of the legislature. Can you tell us about that?

So it goes back to that $1.5 billion— maybe I said $6 billion— number that I said at the outset. So what happened during the pandemic, and this is germane, I promise, We cut the budget significantly right after the pandemic started, about $1 billion. This was back in April or May of last year. And we did that because we thought we'd rather tighten our belt now than have to tighten it even more later. What happened in 2020 is people still consumed at about the same rate. They just shifted their patterns. They didn't consume locally. They started consuming more digitally or through e-commerce, but they still consume. So property— so sales tax receipts actually went up during the pandemic. Some industries were destroyed. I'm in the dry cleaning business. Our business was devastated. We closed half our stores permanently. So there was— but the consumption still continued. It just shifted. And also income tax receipts, and some of this is from the stimulus, we got $12 billion of federal stimulus in the state of Utah alone. It was something like, that's like something like 20%, 25% of our entire economy last year got covered by federal stimulus dollars. And so that propped up the economy arguably artificially, but it did. And so what happened with our tax receipts is when they went back in to do the budget projections this year, they found, holy cow, the billion we cut last year plus the increases of, call it another half billion, there's $1.5 billion sitting And the thought was we maybe have a once in a decade, once in a whatever number you want to put on an opportunity to do some major infrastructure-type investments because most of it's one-time money. And by the distinction you get this year in government between one-time and ongoing money, they all allocated it to one-time money because the economists didn't think it was sustainable. So one-time money's not great for a tax cut. Because you can only spend it once. And so that's also where people started thinking, well, maybe we can do some major infrastructure improvement stuff we've talked about forever, like double tracking, like electrification, but we never have the will to bond for it or the will to prioritize it over like a local road, you know, the political desire to get some, some local roads done. And so early on, and actually, I put the initial list together when we saw, because I was still in the legislature, still the whip, when we saw these first numbers, I put the initial list together. Let's take out some of these big nuggets that I hear people talking about all the time, but no one's willing to do when push comes to shove. And now we have a significant amount of one-time money. Why don't we start knocking off some of these big nuggets we know are out there? And double tracking In discussions with others, kind of rose to the top of the list because, as you know, one of the biggest issues with Frontrunner— this assumes that we're not afraid of sitting next to each other again in the future— but one of the issues with Frontrunner is time, and there's no express option. So for me, I've been commuting to Salt Lake for 15 years, and if I take Frontrunner, it takes an hour more, 30 minutes each way, for me to take Frontrunner. or get to downtown Salt Lake than I can just get there driving, even with traffic. And I'm not willing to give an hour to transit. If, on the other hand, there was an express train and it didn't cost me an hour, I might be more willing to take it. And I think a lot of people look at it that way. And so the idea is we could create and get more usage on these transit systems if we double-tracked. I do think it's credible that that's a good possibility that gets funded this year.

Okay, that's good to hear.

Yeah.

Any other comments from anyone else on the council or staff? Well, we certainly appreciate having you, Dan. I know you're a busy, busy, busy man, and I know GO-ED is certainly giving you some challenges to, to get everything on board and move ahead with it. But, you know, GO-ED has been a huge help for the expansion of the economy in Utah, and I hope that GOED will continue to sponsor and work with tax incentives. I know Governor Cox, part of his campaign was to pull the reins in on GOED and pull back, but anyway, I'm concerned about that.

Well, and I can say one thing to that. I think I'm the only guy in the state legislature who's been there that's actually shut down an agency. I shut down an agency called USTAR, Utah Science, Technology, and Research Agency. I'm the one that killed it. And that's not necessarily a good thing. But most of my career has been going into businesses and turning them around. And part of the thought from Governor Cox was, here's someone who's not afraid to, I hate to say it this way, but shut stuff down. And we're not shutting down GOED, to be clear, but we are going to take a hard look at it and focus on where we get most bang for buck. And if that's EdTIF, that's what it'll be. But, uh, we're, we're going to try to really get focused on where we can have the biggest bang for buck and, and recognize we can promote economic activity, but we don't cause it. And sometimes government's too quick to take credit for doing something that private sector did. And, well, I mean, we want to keep doing what we're doing that works, but stop doing stuff that doesn't work and just focus.

Mayor Tom, do you have a question you'd like to bring up?

Yes, thank you, Mayor and Jan. Jan, in the past, Senator Kennedy was also a senator, but he took your seat. Was there redistricting, or do you not have to live in your district? Could you explain that to me?

No, you do have to live in your district. He was a representative, so he ran for the Senate against Mitt Romney and, uh, wasn't able to, to win that. Um, and that was when he left the legislature, and then, uh, so he ran again. But yeah, he was a representative, not a senator.

Thank you for the clarity.

He's a good guy. It's worth, you know, it's worth getting to know him. He's a good guy. He's perhaps now probably will be the most principle-driven legislator up there. He's just, he's like a straight arrow. That can be bad.

He's not very— He spoke to our council a week or so ago.

So yeah, he's a good guy though.

And he's a doctor and a lawyer, if I remember correctly, right? He's both, so he has both backgrounds.

Correct.

Yeah.

Good.

Well, again, thank you, Dan. We appreciate it very much, and, uh, great to have you on board and look forward to working with you at Go Ahead. So thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

And can I say this before I'm going? Thank you for your service. In my short time being involved in government, I think city councils and our, our form of government from a mayor perspective are the worst. So thank you for doing what you do. It really is quite remarkable that you're willing to put in the time, and it's neat to see people willing to give public service. So thank you, thank you, thank you as a citizen of Orem.

And maybe we could say not the worst, but maybe the most challenging.

Yeah, that's fair.

All right, well, thank you, Dan.

Sure appreciate it.

Well, now, uh, council, go ahead and, uh, stop and take a 1-hour lunch break until 1 PM, and, uh, see you then.

Dad, guess what just came today?

Fat wings!

So—

And here's this one.

Hey, Mayor, are you getting lots of snow up at your place?

You're on, you're on mute.

Yes, we are. So the big problem is I'm in charge of the snow removal for our stake center. Oh, and our snowblower is not working.

properly.

Uh-oh.

So not quite sure how we're gonna solve that problem, but hopefully we can get her done. I've been on them for a couple of weeks to get the snowblower running, and so far we haven't gotten there yet.

You want us to call the city crews out?

Yeah, I think so.

Got any connections there, Steve?

I know a guy.

That sounds like Ocean's 11, 12, 13, one of them.

Exactly.

I know a guy.

If you can hear my vacuum, I'm vacuuming in the background.

You're just trying to get—

you're just trying to make us think you're an all-around guy, aren't you?

Working hard.

Steve, do you want to turn the screen on? Oh, he's lying to us. He's sitting there eating. He's not vacuuming.

He's vacuuming with his mouth.

I mean, some Reese's stuff, which I shouldn't be doing, but that's okay.

As long as it tastes good.

I'll walk with Tom this week, so I'll be good. Right, Jeff?

Jamie, thanks for lunch.

Yes, thank you.

I assume that's good for a couple days, right? That credit. I didn't order lunch today. My wife's not here. We'll probably do dinner in the next few days, right? It's good forever, isn't it?

It is.

Yeah.

I don't know if any of you use the code that Stephen sent out. I'm curious if that worked too.

The 50% one didn't. It said that, at least where we ordered from, it said that they had maxed out their number of their quota of—

Oh, so interesting.

Y'all talk to order from Mobetas.

Okay.

I did Market Street.

I didn't see that one on the list.

Yeah, I did the same as Tom.

We didn't order anything yet because I'm still vacuuming in the background.

I'm working hard. I'll call you.

Okay, we're starting.

So Steve, uh, do we have Dr. Shurtleff on the line?

I haven't seen him yet.

Okay.

Oh, here he is right now.

Okay, good.

Well, it's 1 o'clock. We would like to restart our session this afternoon. We're happy to have Dr. Kevin Shertliff here to speak to us from Utah Valley University on our environmental stewardship, specifically in regards to algae blooms and decreasing emissions in Utah Valley. And, uh, Dr. Shurtleff, uh, we have the council here and our staff, and we'll turn the time over to you.

Thank you.

Approximately 1 hour.

Approximately 1 hour. Uh, thank you very much. Sorry, I had to restart my computer to get the video to work, and so I joined right at the last second, but it's good to see all of you. Uh, and I really want to, uh, Give a thank you to the steward— or the Sustainability Committee, or this— I think it's the Stewardship Committee for giving me this invitation. Um, can I— will I be able to share my screen with you guys?

Yeah, I think we have it set up that way.

Perfect. So I'm going to start my PowerPoint here, see if I can share my screen, make sure this technology works. All right, so you can see my screen too now?

Yes.

Excellent.

Well, let me start this slideshow. And, uh, this is basically the, the title of my presentation is Clean Air, Clean Water, Renewable Energy: Ideas for Building a More Sustainable City for the Future. These are my ideas. It's a science-based perspective, and I want to introduce myself a little bit. I'm a 28-year resident of Orem, Utah. I raised all my 5 children that are now adults, were raised here. They went to Canyon View Junior High School, Orem High School. So I've been in Orem a long time. I have 8 grandchildren, 6 of which live in Utah County currently. And so I really thought about these sustainability issues and environmental stewardship issues quite a bit. I got my PhD in physical chemistry from Brigham Young University in 1994. That was a while ago. I went back later and got an MBA while I was working, doing what's called a postdoc at the University of Utah. I went back to the Marriott School and got my MBA because I love taking ideas out of the laboratory. I'm a very applied scientist, and I love creating businesses. So I started my career at Moxtec in Orem, before I even finished my PhD. Some of you may be familiar with MoxTech. They're pretty much a fixture here in Orem for many, many years now. I'm also a serial entrepreneur, which is why I got my MBA. I've started 5 companies, all in Orem, and they're all based on technologies that I've developed over the years. So I really like to see technologies not just sit in the laboratory, but to be spun out and become useful to the world around us. I'm currently associate professor of chemistry at Utah Valley University. I've been there for 8 years, and a lot of my research involves 2 things: low-cost renewable energy and also some new ideas and solutions for some of the environmental problems we're facing here in the valley, and not only in the valley but all over the world. So that's a little introduction to me. So this is my kind of my foundation for this talk, is I really believe that new technologies can be developed and implemented to solve problems that are going to be created by population growth, or that were created by, say, the Industrial Revolution when we developed all these new industrial technologies. And so I'm a real believer that we use technology to solve problems that earlier technology has caused. And so that's kind of the foundation of my approach to solving problems. So this is kind of an outline for discussion today. I would like it to be a discussion or dialogue. I want to really talk about the things that are of interest to you. I prepared some slides related to these. If you're not interested in any particular topic, fine, let me know and we'll move on to something else of greater interest. And also, I want you to feel free to ask me questions anytime during this, during the discussion. So we're going to Proposed topics: clean air. How do we guarantee our children and grandchildren have cleaner air or clean or cleaner air to breathe in the future, especially as the valley grows in population? I also want to talk about clean water. I've done a lot of research on this, in particular, how to clean up Utah Lake a little bit. So I'll present some ideas on that if you're interested. Also, I know that we really don't have a water scarcity issue currently, But as the population grows, I would like to present some ideas on how we can reduce our water consumption so we have sufficient supplies in the future. And once again, that's based upon population growth. And finally, renewable energy. I've done quite a bit of work in renewable energy, done a lot of research, and so I'm going to present some ideas that maybe might be helpful to you as a city council, as leaders of Orem City. And what you can do in the future to plan for the future. By the way, my, my presentation, I'm trying to make it science-based. I don't have all the answers. I haven't studied the— I mean, science doesn't always have all the answers, but it's certainly going to be based upon information from a lot of studies and work that have been done on these particular areas. So I'm going to try and share the truth as I can see it. And I have no, you know, personal kind of a pony in this race. In other words, I'm not trying to convince you that I'm right. I just want to present the data and you guys can make up your own mind. So hopefully we can go forward with that. Does that sound acceptable?

That'd be great.

Thank you.

Great. All right. So let's go on. So my initial thoughts here on, once again, my approach to solving problems is that conservation is always the least expensive option. in dealing with sustainability issues. Clean air, clean water, renewable energy. Conservation is always the best. It's the best. It's the cheapest. Because it's the cheapest, there is a problem with conservation, however, and it means that typically you have to convince people to change their behaviors in order to get them to follow these conservation techniques. So, for example, to reduce their energy usage or to reduce the amount of carbon that they're emitting or whatever. So that can be tricky, as you know. You probably know this better than I do. I'm a scientist. I don't deal with people's emotions so much. But you know, as city councilman and as the mayor, that it can be very difficult to get people to change behaviors. And so, once again, that's why I often fall back on my default, which is we can implement— develop and implement new technologies. that don't require changes in behavior, right? Of course, there's a problem with this as well, because typically implementing— developing and implementing new technologies are more expensive. So conservation is the best, it's the cheapest, but if you can't get people to change their behaviors, then you have to kind of go to the next thing, and that is develop some new technologies to solve the problem. Any questions about that so far? All right, let's go on. So let's start with clean air. I hope this is a topic of interest to you. Clearly, with the geography of Utah Valley, with our bowl shape with the mountains, we get these inversions. I know that recently— or, well, I think it was about a year or two ago— we were taken off the EPA's list of you know, polluters because we kept exceeding their limits. We didn't do that for several years now, and so we were taken off their list. But as you all know, if you have any type of asthma or COPD or any type of breathing problems like my wife, there's still issues with clean air here in Orem and in Utah Valley or Utah County in particular. So here's a A little note here that typically in the winter, the major pollutant is PM2.5. That's particulate matter. 2.5 refers to the size of the particulates. So they're little small particulates, on average 2.5 micron, or that's 1 times 10 to the minus 6 meters. So 1 millionth— or 2.5 1 millionth of a meter. And so it's very, very small particles. And these tend to be more damaging. And so that's the major pollutant in the winter. And in the summer, it's ozone from smog. Ozone is O3. And as you've heard about ozone in the upper atmosphere, it's great because it blocks UV light and reduces the occurrence of skin cancers. But when it's down on the ground, close to the ground where we can breathe it, it can be really dangerous. All right, so here's some of the health effects from poor air quality: asthma, COPD, heart disease, heart attacks. These are all well documented. Down there at the bottom in red, 1 in 3 Utahns have health issues related to poor air quality. And by the way, the COVID-19 pandemic has made these people has had an even greater impact on people with respiratory issues or even heart disease. So it's a real serious problem in Utah and certainly in Orem City. So what can we do about it? Well, we could— I'll talk about that in just a second, give you some ideas. This just shows you once again the 2 major pollutants: particulate matter in the winter, ozone in the summer. And this shows the Danger levels here. I won't spend a lot of time going through those, but it really, you know, it's not enough when it comes to being harmful. It's not enough to have something dangerous. You have to have certain concentrations of it. And that's really what it's showing here is you get to much higher concentrations down at the bottom, it becomes more hazardous. Okay, so the higher the concentration, the more danger there is. Questions about that? So hopefully you— I mean, you probably are all familiar somewhat with these issues. So I'll move on to some of the ideas. So how do we improve air quality? These are ideas that I've gotten from all over the place, from the EPA, from the State of Utah Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Air Quality. So these are things that we can actually do here in Orem to help improve the air quality. First of all, increase the use of public transportation. Here at UVU, not a lot of students or faculty were using public transportation until they made the passes free. So once they did that, wow, ridership increased significantly. Of course, it's, it's low now because not a lot of students are coming to campus. Most of our classes are now online, but this is something that we can implement now. Once again, I'm going to tell you kind of the facts. If you increase public transportation, it reduces air pollution. How do you do that? Well, unfortunately, I don't really have good ideas for that. That's why I'm not a politician. I'm not in politics. Because that's the hard part, right? How do we increase use of public— how do we encourage people to change their behavior and increase public transportation?

So, Dr. Shurtleff?

Sure.

The one thing we learned when we were working on UVX was that if it's frequent and if it's free, ridership doubles.

Yeah, yep, exactly right. That's how you motivate behavior. Unfortunately, a lot of behaviors are motivated by our pocketbook, right? How much it's going to cost. And when it's free, yeah, you'll get people to use it. So yeah, that means it's going to cost cities money, right? And the state— I don't know how you paid for the UVX, but it is definitely I read the other day it has as much ridership as TRAX, of 3 of the major routes in TRAX. Yeah, yeah. So it works, as you know. So there you go. Um, here's one that I don't know if you've thought about. Um, we, we implemented this at UVU. We put signs up, but this concept of no idle— and not a lot of new vehicles, when you come to a stoplight, uh, or you're stopped, they'll shut off. And it's a little disconcerting that your car shut off, but it actually is much better for the environment just not to sit and idle. So at UVU, we put up signs all over. I don't know if you can implement a no idle policy, at least for city vehicles. You could probably mandate that, but right, encouraging residents to just, yeah, turn off your vehicle. So today I came home and my son had parked in, uh, or my son-in-law had parked in my driveway, was picking up his dog who I was watching, and his car was idling. It almost drove me insane because I went in and he said, well, I've only been here a few minutes. Well, you know, if you're going to be stopped for more than a few minutes, you might want to turn it off, turn off your vehicle.

So, Dr. Shurtleff, the city does have a no idling policy, but one of the bigger ones that I'd like to actually look at is the Alpine School District. So the Alpine School District has 250 buses, and those buses will pull up to the particular school and will sit there and idle while all the students go on and all the students go off. In the Granite School District, they came up with a device that could keep the school bus heated while the school bus was off. So, they keep— the Alpine School District keeps their buses running. So, the bus is heated during the winter. But in Granite School District, they don't do that. So, it's $1,000 per bus for this device. And then they don't idle. And if you look at how much 250 buses do and put out when they're idling, During the school day, it's a lot.

It's a lot.

I would love to see— I've asked the Alpine School District to look at it, but I would love to see them find the $250,000 and spend it to get no idle buses within our city.

Yeah, I mean, that's a tough issue, right? Because you don't want the buses to be cold for the children. But yeah, buses are diesel, and diesels are the worst when it comes to PM 2.5. So yeah, I have a little, I have a little note on that a little bit later here. But yeah, that would be a great thing to implement. But once again, it always comes down to money, right? Unfortunately, great ideas cost, cost money. All right. Here's, here's another thing I'm sure you probably considered and thought about. Envision UCR came up with this. Well, it's not a new idea. It's not their idea. But they think that this is one way that we can really even as our population grows, control our pollution, and that is create more walkable cities. So that involves changing zoning so you have residential next to where people work and people can walk to their place of business and they don't have to drive. So it's something to think about or consider. I know they just came up with a plan and released it. Envision Utah did. You might be interested in looking that up. But it's an option to consider. I know, it seems to me Orem is fairly well built out though, so it's going to be a little harder to implement here than maybe in younger cities that have more available land where they can kind of mix this residential and commercial. Finally, encourage biking, making more and better bike paths. I just found this on your plan. You have a whole Orem City Plan for doing this. But once again, anything we can do to encourage people to not get in their vehicles and drive and produce pollution. It's better for the environment, and it's also better for the citizens if they're biking or walking as well. I won't say much more about that. Once again, these are all conservation ideas that I'm sure you've heard of. How do we reduce vehicle emissions is another way to conserve with the existing vehicles. Well, you can switch. Replace city gasoline and diesel vehicles with compressed natural gas, hybrid electric or electric vehicles. Now, maybe you're thinking— I hope you're thinking, well, natural gas, that's still a fossil fuel. Is that not still emitting carbon? And the answer is yes. However, here's some little notes. Natural gas reduces carbon monoxide emissions, which is also a problem in the winter here in Utah Valley, reduces by 90% to 97%. NOx emissions by 35% to 60%. And NOx, these are the nitrogen oxides. are some of the causes of the PM2.5. So natural gas is going to be, whether we like it or not— hopefully you like it— but it's going to be a transition fuel going from gasoline to, say, pure electricity or pure electric vehicles. Natural gas also produces significantly less carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide than other pollutants. I did look this up on my hybrid electric vehicle. They're basically 2 times more efficient than a gasoline vehicle. So hybrid vehicle, of course, has a gasoline engine plus some electric motors. But if you double the efficiency in terms of miles per gallon you can go on a single tank of gas, you're cutting the emissions in half. So if we can get people to switch to hybrid electric vehicles, that would be awesome. Of course, electric vehicles have no emissions. at the point they're at. However, in Utah, 66% of Utah's electricity is generated by coal still. That's down significantly. Just 5 years ago, it was— 5 years before this, so 2013, it was upwards of 80%. So that's— as we've closed coal-fired power plants, that's gone down. But remember, electric vehicles, when you plug them in, 66% of the energy is coming from coal. So you basically transferred your emissions to somewhere else. And that's Eastern Utah. That's where most of our coal-fired power plants are, in Eastern Utah. So this is some things to remember. There's always trade-offs here in everything. Most of the time, it's money versus free. All right, some other ideas. Encourage residents to replace gasoline and diesel vehicles with compressed natural gas. I'm a citizen of Orem, and that's exactly what I did. So one way we can encourage this is you have to build more compressed natural gas fueling stations. Now, I know the City of Orem doesn't actually build these fueling stations, but you certainly can work with those who do and encourage them providing space, if there's space available, to put in more natural gas fueling stations. Once again, you have a nice bully pulpit as city councilman and as a mayor to encourage people or encourage even businesses to say, oh, I have a gasoline station, maybe we should include compressed natural gas as well. so that natural gas vehicles are more readily— can be more readily refueled, which means they're going to be more likely to be used. And also installing more electric vehicle charging stalls around the city, that's something that you could definitely do. I know on UVU campus we've been doing this over time, and most of the time we've been getting grants from Utah Power to install these charging stalls. So, I have a picture here. This shows my truck that I used to drive all over the place. It got about 14 miles per gallon. And this today over here is my— over here is my new— well, it's not new. My truck has 256,000 miles on it. My hybrid electric vehicle here has over 100,000 miles on it. And I bought that from the state of Utah. It was a surplus vehicle. So, I've made the change. I am so happy I did. I still kept the truck because there's certain things, you know, you can't do with the hybrid electric vehicle that I can do in my truck. So if I did it, I think others can do it as well. And I'm actually glad I did do it. It saved me a lot of money in terms of transportation. All right, here's another one. Encourage use of ethanol-mixed gasoline during the winter months. I know this has been somewhat controversial over the years, but adding 10% ethanol to the gasoline in the winter months definitely reduces your carbon monoxide pollution. And so I know a lot of people don't like this, but sometimes we have to encourage people to do the right thing, even if they don't want to. And by the way, based on mice research, really there is no difference in performance overall between gasoline that has 10% ethanol in it and not, other than it decreases the amount of CO. Some people feel it doesn't have quite as much pickup and go when you have ethanol in there. But I think that's a trade-off that's definitely worth it if we want clean air. Another idea, not new, is to install smart thermostats. I don't know if you've done this in the city. You probably have. But the important point here I want to point out are these down here. Can you see my arrow? I don't know if you can see my arrow. But basically, this is what you're encouraged to do in order to save energy and also reduce emissions. In the winter, turn your thermostat down by 2 degrees F. So typically, that's 68 Fahrenheit or lower when occupied. So my house is at 68 when it's there. When I'm not there, I try and turn it down even lower, maybe down to 65 during the day if I'm not there. In the summer, Um, I've never gone to central cooling because I love my swamp cooler. In Utah, we have low humidity. Swamp coolers work fantastically well. I know they're not as uniform throughout the house, but I kept my swamp cooler. But if you have central air conditioning, you certainly want to turn that down by 2 degrees F. They suggest 72 Fahrenheit or higher in the summer in order to reduce your energy costs when occupied, and even higher than that Maybe even up to 75 or maybe even 78 during the day when it's unoccupied, unless you have pets. Of course, you have to consider your pets when considering your thermostat settings. My wife installed a Nest. She loves it because you can control it from her smartphone. Go figure. So yeah, I don't know, you know, some ideas. I've installed a lot of these smart thermostats for my family. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll offer to volunteer to go to the residents of Orem and install their smart things, or maybe you can find someone to do that. Who knows? But it's an idea that definitely will reduce emissions and reduce energy costs.

Oh, whoops.

All right, wood-burning stoves. We got to go there because wood stoves generate twice the number of harmful PM2.5 particles, particles, an equivalent amount of diesel exhaust. Right? So fireplaces are worse than diesel exhaust for any given amount of time they're, they're being used. So what do you do? You're encouraging people to switch from an old fireplace like this— it's very inefficient— to an insert. You can put inserts in the old fireplace, convert to natural gas. I know it's still fossil fuel, but way better, way less CO2 production. So either put an insert in And burn pellets that are much more efficient, so you produce a lot less particles. So these are all ideas on how to do it. By the way, the reason you produce more particles is because— or fewer particles in these inserts is because they operate at a higher temperature, right? So that tends to burn those little soot particles and prevents them from forming. All right, let's see. Ah, replacement of gasoline mowers and trimmers. So last summer I participated— oh, it wasn't last summer, must have been 2 summers ago. Last summer not much happened because of COVID but 2 summers ago at UVU, I think it was part of Orem and Provo, they did gasoline mower and trimmer replacements. But here's the interesting thing: 5% of the nation's total air pollution comes from mowers and trimmers. You think about that, that's a lot of pollution. So they have these lawnmower exchanges where people could bring in their old lawnmower or trimmer, and they exchanged them for free with an electric mower and electric trimmer. So once again, anything we can do— if we could reduce 5% of our pollution, that would make a big impact, actually, on the health of our citizens here. Now, some new ideas. These are kind of out there, a little bit radical. These are things I've studied. But what about installing electrostatic precipitators on chimneys, flue gas vents, on industrial gas exhaust gas pipes, and also tailpipes of vehicles, if possible? So what is an electrostatic precipitator? Well, they're the same things that are in your homes, but this is how they work. So you have dirty air with particulates coming in from the left side of your screen there. They're first passed through some wires that charge them up. So that means it creates an electrical charge on these little particulates. Usually that's by emitting electrons. And so the electrons go out and they stick to the particles, they make them negatively charged. And then you pass these charged particles now through these plates over here that have a positive charge on them, and the negative particles are attracted to the positive plates and they precipitate out right there. They're captured. And so these are the same things that you'll find in these home purifiers. And to clean them, right, you just basically take out the grid and you rinse it off, and that rinses the particles down. So electrostatic precipitators are things that can go on chimneys. This one down here is a research one at the very bottom. This is designed to go on diesel trucks. So once again, this is a technology that you can put on existing technologies to make them cleaner. So that's pretty interesting possibilities here is to encourage or install these— or require that they be installed, these electrostatic precipitators, as they come on. Here's an interesting one that really inspired me. This is Dan Rosgaard. He's a Danish guy who developed this giant electrostatic precipitator that he puts into parks. And he actually took this on tour in China because they have such a particulate problem and such a pollution problem there. And he was touring around China with this thing. But the one thing they don't show you is this is powered by electric fans. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. But these electrostatic precipitators, you could do something like this. Once again, new technologies solving the problems of older technologies like diesel vehicles. All right. So here's another somewhat radical bulk air filtration I've done some research on. We actually— a student and I designed some solar updraft towers, and we won the UVU Solar Innovation Challenge for clean air. a few years ago. And so once again, this is kind of thinking into the future, but we could install these solar updraft towers. So solar updraft tower, the principle works all on the fact that warm air is less dense than cold air. So if you heat the air, it naturally rises by convection. So what you do is you create a greenhouse. So you have this greenhouse down on the bottom there. This could be 10 to 20 feet tall. It's just greenhouse glass, or it doesn't need to be glass. It could be greenhouse plastic as well. So that heats the ground and air beneath it. That air naturally wants to flow up. So it flows towards the center here, where it goes up a tower, where it's finally discharged into much colder air. So these things actually are being used to create renewable energy. Because you surround the bottom of the tower with wind turbines, and the wind turns those wind turbines as it goes up the stack. These have actually been built and developed. This shows— oh, this shows another possibility with these. When there's sun out, you get just natural convection, and you can create very significant amounts of airflow or wind in these things. This shows one. What we're doing differently is instead of just using it to generate electricity, we would put these electrostatic air filters in the tower base so that as all that air flows by, it captures the particles out of it. So how much air can we filter with one of these? Well, a small one, a 4-acre, small 4-acre one running for 24 hours will actually filter 600 million cubic feet of air, removing the particulates. That's equivalent to a 20-foot-tall layer of air 1.2 miles around the tower, around this, the base of this thing. So are there places, 4-acre spots, uh, in Utah County that we could put these? I think there are. Um, and we'd have to put a number of them, but that would be one way to really— it's just bulk filtration. I mean, I know it's crazy, don't roll your eyes, but it's, it's something that could be done to filter the air. This shows one that was actually built in Manzanera, Spain. This was an 11-acre one. It produced 50 kilowatts of renewable electrical energy from this. And this is what it looks like underneath that greenhouse, right? It's green open space. So we envision that you could make these around a city for— like our city, if you had a 4-acre one, you could actually make these greenhouse parks that would be usable year-round. And these operate day and night because they heat the air underneath. So we thought of doing that. And If you don't really like the idea of those ugly smokestacks, you can see the smoke, ugly stacks there, you could do something like what they did in Singapore. They created these artificial tree towers, could be, and then they planted gardens along them. Those are actually plants climbing up those towers. So these are things that could be done where you could have these really, these open space greenhouse open spaces all around the valley working spring, summer, fall. winter, and filtering the air. So I know that's kind of out there, but if you're interested, talk to me. All right, that kind of finishes my section on clean air. The other sections will go a little faster. So do you have any questions about the clean air stuff?

No.

All right, let's go on. So clean water. So I know that Orem doesn't actually border a lake, Utah Lake, but a lot of our citizens like to recreate at Utah Lake. And this shows a picture of Utah Lake during one of its major algal blooms here in 2016. And so, it would really be nice if we can clean up Utah Lake. It would make it much more enjoyable as a recreation site. And so, I've done quite a bit of research on harmful algal blooms and how to fix them. So, this was the one in 2016. Here's the interesting thing about algal blooms. They can double in mass in 24 hours. And I don't know if you can see it right here. That's a little boat or something out there. I think it's a raft with some people in it out in the middle of this algal bloom. I don't know about you, but I actually, if it was this bad, I would not be out there fishing or recreating in it at all when it reaches these type of algal densities. Here shows where some other algal blooms happened in 2019. Deer Creek Reservoir. I know a lot of people in Orem go up to Deer Creek, including myself. I kayak there, but people boat there, they fish there. Jordanelle Reservoir feeds into Deer Creek. Deer Creek, of course, feeds into Utah Lake, which means that if you're having an algal problem on Deer Creek Reservoir, you're most likely having a problem in Provo River. Strawberry Reservoir is another one that feeds into Deer Creek Reservoir, and of course Utah Lake. is the one I showed you the picture of. So, this is a real growing problem throughout Utah. So, what are algae, you might be asking? Well, they're really water plants. They're plants that live in the water. They tend to be microscopic. This shows you these microscopic— these are about 3 to 6 micrometers in diameter. So, they're very small. And that's a problem because it makes it really hard to remove them from the water. And that's kind of where we went. There's all different types of Some of it's edible, some of it produces oil, like chlorella, and some of it is toxic. Dinoflagellate, it exists— it's the pink color to the Great Salt Lake. It's a saltwater algae, and it produces the pink color, and it's toxic. So, in Utah Lake, the ones that make the harmful algal blooms aren't actually real algae. They're called blue-green algae, which is actually a cyanobacteria. So, it's really a bacteria, but they're photosynthetic still, and they grow just like plants. plants. So those things apply. So if it's a plant, what does it need to grow? The same things that plants do. It needs a source of carbon or CO2 to do photosynthesis, needs some nitrogen, which is a fertilizer, needs some phosphorus, and also needs some of these other micronutrients: potassium, molybdenum, zinc, boron, copper. So the question is, where does it get these nutrients? Well, it gets it from us. in Orem and Provo and the surrounding areas of Utah Lake have them. Um, and so we'll talk about that a little bit more here and how to prevent these algal blooms. So here's a really important, interesting note. I always, when I talk about algal blooms, I like to add this in because when I visited the Royal Tyrrell Dinosaur Museum up in Drumheller, Canada, a few years ago, at the end of the The dinosaur exhibit, after looking at all these fantastic bones— and by the way, all these bones were dug up in the hillsides around where the museum is right now. Okay, so that means that dinosaurs lived in Alberta, Canada, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, back 208 million years ago. But at the end, there was a sign that said, back in that time, the carbon dioxide concentration was 2,500 to 3,000 parts per million. Today, we're concerned because it's at 400 parts per million. So my question to you is, where did all that CO2 go to take it from 3,000 parts per million down to 400 parts per million? Any ideas?

Yeah, I have an idea.

Yeah, it was ancient algae blooms. They're the ones— cyanobacteria are believed to be the main way that this CO2 was captured from the atmosphere. So we have these massive ancient algae blooms of cyanobacteria. When they died and sunk to the bottom, if they got covered over and buried, they eventually— this ancient algae was converted into oil, crude oil, which we are now using today. So that's where all that CO2 went. It went to produce the fossil fuels that we're now burning. So I always like to point that out, is that The Earth has had much higher CO2 concentration than it has today, and it survived. But there are some differences between today and back then. That was 208 million years ago. Today, it's happening very quickly. All right, so what can we do? Conservation to improve the water quality, at least in Utah Lake. We got to reduce our fertilizer use and our water requirements for the city. So use less fertilizer, install water sensors, allow the grass to go longer, so increase the raise up the decks of our lawn mowing systems so that the grass is longer because that requires less water and less fertilizer. There's this option now of xeriscaping, which means we actually live in a desert. We have very little precipitation here in Utah, and it's remarkable how much watering we do for our grass. I don't know why Orem citizens love their grass so much, but we do. But we have to start thinking in a different way if we're going to you know, prepare for the future and deal with these problems. So xeriscape means that you simply replace grass and other bushes that require a lot of water. You replace those with rocks, bushes, shrubs, bark, things like that. I don't know if you thought about that, but I know at UVU we're definitely considering that, how we can do that. Now, there's some places you really can't replace the grass. So We'll have to deal with that, and I have some ideas here that I'll share with you. So, here's some existing ideas for how to deal with it beyond conservation. Basically, buy or create these increased riparian buffers around rivers and lakes. What that means is if you have a marshland around Utah Lake, as the water flows into it carrying the fertilizer, the nitrogen and the phosphorus that we put on our lawns and then gets washed into stormwater systems. And even a lot of it comes from us, from urea, right, that we excrete. And we currently don't really take a lot of the nitrogen and phosphorus out of our wastewater. So, that goes— gets dumped into the riparian zone or the rivers. And if we have riparian zones, there's a lot of growth there. And that basically captures that nitrogen and phosphorus in the form of plants like phragmites, which I know are considered a nuisance bush or grass, but it does take up a lot of this nitrogen and phosphorus in the runoff materials. So, um, that's one way to do it, the cheaper way, I think. You could also— I think people have been talking about introducing nutrient removal technologies into our wastewater treatment facilities. I heard that would be upwards of $160 million to revamp, introduce Nitrogen-phosphorus removal in our wastewater facilities could cost upwards of $160 million for the 7 wastewater facilities around Utah Lake currently. That's a lot of money, so that could be a relatively expensive option. So how do we— what's another way of doing it? Well, we just reduce the amount of watering and amount of fertilizer in particular that we put on our lawns. So paint the lawns green. Okay, don't roll your eyes. Well, you can roll your eyes if you want. This is kind of out there. This is what was done in California quite a bit when there was a serious drought, and of course we're in a drought as well. But last summer I decided to try this. So here shows a picture of my lawn before and after being painted.

It works—

looks pretty good, right? It worked pretty well, but there were some drawbacks, and one of them was that it's only effective for one summer. Because when my grandkids came over, the dry grass is a little sticker—

sticky.

It does—

they don't like to walk in it in their bare feet. And then as they walked on it, it would actually pull out the grass, and that eventually blew away. So I have these bare spots that are just dirt now. Um, but it still looks green. It looks more of a fluorescent green now. But I would say that painting your lawn is only going to work for a summer, and we need a more sustainable long-term solution. So this coming summer, I will replace my natural grass with artificial turf. And by the way, the cool thing about this, I didn't have to mow once, I didn't have to weed, I didn't have to fertilize it, and I didn't have to water. My water bill dropped significantly in the summer because I wasn't doing it. So artificial turf is a more expensive solution, but it's what I'm going to do next summer so I don't have to do all these things. Either that or I'm putting in rocks or bark. All right, so how do we mitigate or prevent HABs? I've done quite a bit of research on this at UVU. And here are some possibilities. Well, first of all, you can kill the algae. Now, I'm not a big proponent of killing the algae on Utah Lake by spraying herbicides, because when you kill the algae, whether you killed it using herbicides or oxygen radicals is another one that's been suggested, or adding ozone to the water, another one that's been suggested, another one is ultrasonic sound. These are all ways that you can kill the algae. So, the water looks cleaner and clearer. But in reality, what happens when you kill the algae is that it releases some of its endotoxins. Another way to help hopefully prevent long-term these algal blooms is to reduce the nutrient load in the lake. Well, Utah Lake already has a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus that it's built up into it over the years. And so, this could take a long time to do, but it's something we probably should do. And the way we do that is we upgrade the wastewater facilities, reduce fertilizer use. or capture and treat runoff, which is currently going in, not going through a wastewater facility. And then the other idea is to harvest algae. So I'm going to go through these really quickly. If we kill the microalgae, the problem is death releases the toxins that make the algae toxic, right? That's why they're harmful algal blooms, is you kill them and they release their toxins. So even though the water looks clearer and looks safer, it actually could be more dangerous. once you kill the algae. Killing the algae also doesn't remove any of the nitrogen and phosphorus they captured to grow. It doesn't really— it doesn't remove any of that from the lake. So, they just go to the bottom, decompose, and they release all that nitrogen, phosphorus, and CO2 that they captured to grow is released back to the water. So, I'm not a proponent of that. I don't think that's the right way to do it. Another way is to upgrade the wastewater facilities. But once, as I already mentioned, this could be very, very expensive because they would have to then take out nitrogen and phosphorus, which have not been required in the past. So, I'm not a big fan of that because it's too expensive. So, my short-term solution was we developed these algae harvesting boats. What that means is we have a floating water filtration system on Utah Lake, or a number of them. Ultimately, we'll have a number of these boats, and they will basically go out and skim across the water in areas that have the highest concentration of algae. So, the entire lake doesn't get covered with the same amount of algae, right? It's usually in spots— Lincoln Beach, Utah State Park, Provo Bay, up in Saratoga Springs, Linden Marina and Harbor area. So, there's certain areas that have these higher concentrations, these algal blooms, every year. So, we would target those with this movable, transportable water filtration system. Essentially, we suck the water in, containing the algae at the, at the front, and we filter it in these filters here, and then we discharge cleaner water out. All right, so this is the technology we developed. It took us a lot of time, my students and I. It's called the plate and frame filter press. This shows our little test one. We tested it on algae that we were growing in our laboratory, and it creates these really cool filter cakes. So this is a filter cake of cellulose, which is paper fibers essentially, wood fibers, and the algae that we captured with our plate and frame filter press. So these little guys, once dry, we could burn them to make a carbon-neutral fuel, a renewable carbon-neutral fuel, or you could just landfill these so that they don't decompose, and you could make— you'd have carbon credits here. So these are things that we can do with it, and this is one way we could clean the lake. This shows a little test run we did with our little filter here. We were pulling water out of the lake, and that's the blue line here. Notice that we didn't change the concentration of the lake, but the water, once we filtered it, as time goes on, it filters better and better and better. And that shows that here, right? We had 45% removal here after about 10 minutes. And so the thing about these plate and frame filter presses is you open them up, you discharge the filter cake, those solids, and then you can start over. So this is our plan. We actually last year received $300,000 from the state of Utah to build one of these boats and operate it on Utah Lake. But when COVID hit, guess what they did? They probably took your money away too. They took this money right back. And so I didn't get it, but we're going to apply for it again this year. And hopefully we'll have— get the money in July and have this boat operating on the lake. by the end of July. By the way, this shows kind of the fact that these filter presses exist large scale. They're semi-automatic, they're fully automatic, and basically when they're full, these just open up and discharge the algae cake down into these containers. And so the boat will hold enough algae cake for the whole day. We can go 16 hours on the lake all day, come back to shore, and then we'll offload the filter cake after that, after harvesting all the algae. This shows just a quick view of what the boat will look like. These are our big filter presses in the middle here. This is the cellulose addition. Here's our boom out front sucking up the algae. By the way, algae, because they're photosynthetic, they float because they have to have sunlight to grow. So they've developed a mechanism for floating. So here's what we could do in one day, 2 8-hour shifts, 16 hours, filter 2.3 million gallons of water, collect 872 kilograms of dry algae. That's about half a ton, almost, metric ton. In that time, because we're adding cellulose, right, cellulose also uses CO2 to grow. So we'd actually capture 2.7 metric tons of CO2 in one day. We could go 25 miles at 1.8 miles per hour. It's not going to be a fun trip. It's not like we're water skiing out there. And we could clean 42 acres of water in one day. 42 acres, by the way, is the size of the Utah State Marina. The whole marina there is 42 acres, so we clean that whole— we can clean that whole marina once a day. So this is an idea that's moving forward. We'll hopefully have it, like I mentioned, a boat on the lake by August of next summer, and then this can operate, well, 16, probably 16 hours a day, every day. for the summer of 2022. At least that's our hope. So that's something that can be done. If you guys are interested in supporting that, great, talk to me after. But it's one way that we can clean up Utah Lake. And finally, I have, oh, what, 15 minutes left? I probably won't use all of that, but let's talk a little bit about renewable energy and the value proposition for renewable energy and how we can reduce our carbon emissions. Clearly, renewable energy takes us away from coal or even natural gas combustion in order to produce our electricity. Here in Orem, these are all the different types down here at the bottom: solar thermal, solar photovoltaic. Solar thermal, we could do in here. You could heat water with it. You know, individual residents could put solar thermal panels on their roof. I don't think they're very popular these days. They used to be more popular earlier on. Certainly solar photovoltaic. These are solar cells or solar panels that we talk about. Those are these guys right here. Those are getting more and more common, right? We have a lot of solar companies selling solar photovoltaic power production for individual residents, and it's growing, right? So more and more residents in Orem are picking this up. There's wind. Wind is a renewable resource, but here in Orem, really, really not enough wind to be useful unless we try one of my crazy ideas. Maybe I'll talk to that if I get there. I don't know if you knew this, but the Spanish Fork Wind Farm, they've never made money on that Spanish Fork Wind Farm. It never produced as much energy as they thought it would. That was in Spanish Fork Canyon. You can see that as you're going up Interstate or State Road 6. Geothermal, hydrothermal— this is high-temperature geothermal. We don't really have that around here. They do have some of that up at the point of the mountain. The prison used to do some of its heating with hydrothermal. This is high-temperature geothermal. We could do ground source heat pumps. I think there are businesses here in Orem that are doing this. Basically, ground source heat pumps work like this. where you use the temperature of the ground, which is fairly stable year-round, to cool in the summer. So in the summer, you pull in heat from the house, you dump that heat into the ground, the ground cools it. And so then you can take it to your heat pump unit, and you can cool your house this way. In the winter, you do just the opposite. You pump cold fluid out into the ground, and it loops around, picks up energy from the ground, becomes warmer here, inside, and then you can use that to heat your house. So this is ground-sourced heat pumps, sometimes called ground-source geothermal, which is a possibility. Here's a little fact here. So the electricity generated at the Linden Lakeside Natural Gas Power Plant, it's a combined cycle power plant, very efficient, 60% conversion efficiency of fuel into electricity, but it produces about 1,000 1/3 the amount of CO2 because of its efficiencies, because it's natural gas, than an equivalent amount of coal or equivalent amount of electricity generated by coal at the Huntington Power Plant. So that's significant, 1/3. I mean, more than 1/3 less, or 1/3 the amount of CO2 carbon emissions. So that's a really nice— we're lucky to have it here in the Valley. It's a very nice addition to the Valley. Because it really produces a lot less CO2. Installing more efficient LED lighting— you probably already know this, you're probably already doing it— but 20% of all electricity in the United States is used for just lighting. So LED bulbs, they use 75% less energy than an incandescent and 50% less than a compact fluorescent. So my house is compact fluorescent. Over time, I'm slowly converting to LEDs. Um, can the city purchase electricity from renewable sources? Yes, UVU is doing that. They joined 30% ownership in Electron Solar Project, and that will provide 90% of UVU's power consumption over the, over the years. And Electron Solar, if you didn't know, is a big solar farm going up in Tooele County. It's an 80-megawatt solar project. By the way, 80 megawatts is big. But the Linden Power Plant produces probably twice that. They're probably 600— well, more than twice that. They're like more around 400 megawatts, 400 to 600 megawatts they're producing there with natural gas. So this is a large solar project, but, you know, to replace all fossil fuels, we need a lot bigger ones. In fact, the Huntington Power Plant is 1 gigawatt. That's, you know, I never thought I'd use that in a sentence, but it's, it's a gigawatt Coal-fired power plant.

Yeah.

So can the city install its own renewable power? Sure. There's no doubt that you— if you have the money, the means, and the reason to do it, or the desire to do it, you could definitely install more solar. Wind, like I said, is not really possible here. But certainly you could do ground source heat pumps, which are really efficient systems.

Let's see.

Ah, so here's a new idea. You might roll your eyes at this, it's a little out there, but as you know, Provo City has their own power distribution system. Their residents pay Provo City for power. Provo City then buys that from a number of different suppliers, including Rocky Mountain Power, um, but other ones as well. Um, so the question is, could Orem City do that? And the answer is yes, you probably could. But here's something, if you were to do that, I would suggest going with my Point 2 here, you can install grid-scale electrical energy storage. What is grid-scale electrical energy storage? I'll just give a brief introduction here of what it is. This shows in the United— this is UK National Grid, but it's showing for different days, December of 2012, but it's the same today. This shows you the demand. The top black curve is the power demand. This is what their consumers, everybody in the country, are using on a day-to-day basis. Notice that it peaks Just after midday. Actually, it's in the evening it peaks, because that's when we're all getting home from work and turning on our TVs and using our stoves and doing laundry and everything like that. So it tends to peak here. And then, of course, this is at night where we're all sleeping and we're not using lighting or anything. So it goes up and down. So this is the demand. So these are the sources down here. They have coal here in blue. Notice it's going up and down, but it's hard to adjust quickly. Coal-fired power plants like to be turned on and just run. And you can turn them up a little bit and turn them down a little bit, but you really don't want to turn them up and down very quickly, which means that's why they have gas. So if you add all these sources up down here below, they have to equal the demand.

Why?

Because we don't store electricity anywhere in the world, really. We don't store electricity. That's now changing, and that's what I'm suggesting that maybe Orm City could do. We could change that. But these all have to add up. So that means that whenever the demand goes up, what they're doing is they're turning on their— what they call peaker plants to deal with the peak load. Here you notice wind is very variable. It's going up and down and up and down. Something else, in this case, it's the gas peaker plants there, these CCGT plants that you're turning up and down to match load. You have to match your production with load. It's like supply-demand, same thing. Notice the nuclear power plant there. It's baseload, right? It doesn't change. You turn on a nuclear power plant, you don't turn it up and down. You let it run and run and run. So the real issue here is, as we add more and more variable power coming from wind and solar, we need a way to store energy or electrical energy to make up for this, because we're going to run out of gas power plants. And right now in the United States, it's hydroelectric that makes up most of the difference here. It can be changed really, really quickly, and hydroelectric is renewable, which is nice, but we're going to run out of capacity to balance the grid. This shows us a typical hour of the day. Notice here that for sunshine, we get maximum solar energy production in the middle of the day, but that doesn't match with what our demand is. So how do I switch this over here?

Whoops.

How do I switch the energy being produced here over to here? You have to store it. That brings us to storage. It's a great way to balance the grid. Actually, you can make money at it. I'm running out of time here, so I'm going to just go a little more quickly here and show you some examples of how this is being done. Here in California, they have enough battery storage. These are huge facilities. They have enough battery storage that in this particular area— where was it? Oh, I don't think I have the area here. But they can power 300 California homes for about 4 hours in the evenings, or to deal with heat waves, which are high power demand times, or when basically demand outstrips supply. What that means is during the middle of the day here, you charge your batteries here when demand is low, but you have lots of solar power, and then you use that power over here when it's in high demand. By the way, power in the middle of the day, because there's so much of it and the demand is low, it's cheaper to buy it here So you charge your batteries with cheap electricity, and then you discharge your batteries when it's expensive. Um, I don't know, this is something that I think I'm a big believer in. I actually been doing research. Here's another one here. I thought in Kauai, Hawaii, they put in a 52-megawatt-hour lithium-ion project. And basically, they're— the reason they did it was so they can shift all their solar energy, their 13-megawatt solar farm, all that 13 megawatts can be shifted to the afternoon or evening where it's in higher demand because they don't need it then. And then this is one of my favorite here. This was in Australia. They designed a system that can produce a lot of power for a short amount of time from their batteries, or less power for a much longer amount of time. They had a 2-prong system here, but here down in red is what counts. In 2 days after it started, in 2 days, 2 days in January of 2018, because of They— the owners, which is the Australian energy company, made 1 million Australian dollars, which is about $0.77 million US dollars, in 2 days by charging with low-cost electricity, charging it in the middle of the day with low-cost electricity, and then selling it when the demand was higher and the value was higher. So could it be worked out so that Orem City could actually make money by buying cheaper power and then selling it back to their residents, maybe at a profit, but at a reduced price from what they could get from buying it directly from Rocky Mountain Power? I think that's what we can consider. All right, so that, that's my presentation there. I have some other things I can show you if you're interested, um, some of my other radical ideas, but, uh, I think we'll stop there. And if you have any questions, I'll I'll let you ask them.

Any questions from the council? Dr. Shurtleff, one question I have: have you considered Tier 3 gas as to how that's going to affect the air within the county?

Yeah, so in preparation for this, this meeting, I did look at Tier 3 gases. Absolutely. What a Tier 3 gas is, is it's reduced the amount of sulfur in the gasoline.

Yes.

Natural gas tends to be naturally low in sulfur. And so reducing the amount of sulfur reduces the amount of sulfur dioxides, or SOx, that are produced. I didn't see any clear numbers on how much it reduced SOx. But the advantage of reducing SOx is twofold. One, it reduces acid rain because SOx, sulfur oxides in the atmosphere, react with water and other chemicals. to produce sulfuric acid. That was the source of sulfur or acid rain back in the day. Less of a problem today. But the big problem today is sulfur oxides actually increase the amount of PM2.5 that's produced through other reactions in the atmosphere. So SOx and NOx contribute to PM2.5. And as we reduce the amount of sulfur in the fuel, less sulfur in the air— sulfur oxides in the air means less Less particulates.

But that's my understanding, it will reduce sulfur by 70%. So it should drop our air pollution by about 50% within the area.

Oh, really? So is that all pollutions or just the particulates or just the sulfur dioxides?

I don't know that I know the answer to that. I do know that the sulfur is reduced. And they're saying that by that, that, you know, it does create the PM2.5, etc., that will leave the air pollution, visible air pollution, lower by 50%.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'll do a little research into that and see what it's going to impact, but it's probably going to be the particulates primarily.

So Envision Utah worked with the legislature to give incentives to the refineries Refineries have taken that money and refitted their refineries to make Tier 3 gas, and it's now starting to come out and be sold within the state.

Yeah, yeah, anything we could do like that. I mean, that's, that's pretty amazing that the legislature was able to fund that, those reductions in the sulfur. And certainly, you know, you have off-road diesel that's still available. It's red versus the on-road diesel, which has much lower sulfur content. So in Utah, right, agricultural off-road vehicles, agricultural vehicles, trucks and tractors, they can use the off-road stuff. But once again, that's not really good for the environment.

Yes. Well, we certainly appreciate your presentation and your ideas. And I will be interested and watch to see how your boat comes out. Algae bloom on Utah Lake is a big item.

Yep.

And I know the legislature is funding about 10 different ideas out there to solve that problem, but I would love to see that problem solved.

Me too, as well. And thank you so much for your time and attention and for giving me this opportunity to talk about these issues.

You bet. Well, thank you, Dr. Turtlev.

All right, take care.

Thanks.

We'll now go ahead and go back to our City Council general discussion, and we will do this for about 45 minutes till 2:45. One thing I wanted to start out with just again, and I don't know that everybody's had a chance to think about it, but on our commission or committee assignments, I wanted to see if anyone wanted to make any changes, any additions. I know I've had 2 people mention things. Jeff Lampson has said that he's open to moving the Natural Resources to someone else if they're interested, otherwise he's happy to take it. And I know Councilmember Spencer said he would like to be on our Police Advisory Board as the representative of the City Council if, you know, when that is put forward.

I think that's until Dave knew that the Natural Resources one was a possibility.

That could be.

I think I would defer back to Jeff and he can keep that assignment and I'll move on with the Police Commission.

Mayor, I've served on virtually all of them now. I'm happy to stay where I'm at for the year. I think that makes sense given the COVID experience.

I agree.

Okay, how's everyone else feel?

Um, I can stay with mine. Originally you gave Utopia to Jeff Lampson, and I, um, I swapped him. I don't know if you want to swap back, Jeff, and I'll take Natural Resources and you take Utopia.

I, I'm, I'm honestly fine either way. Um, so I didn't know if someone else would like that opportunity.

I'm great there, so—

I could switch or I could stay. I'm happy with my other ones too.

Okay.

It's up to you two. I'm happy to facilitate either way.

Okay.

Maybe you and I could chat offline and—

Sure.

And let, let me know if you would the next week. Okay, anyone else want to make any changes? Okay, I will say, Debbie, I appreciate you taking Summerfest again. That's a big one, and we appreciate your expertise there.

I really like it. It's fun.

All right, well, we will leave everybody in the same position, uh, and Jeff and Debbie can let us know if they want to make any changes. I wanted to mention Wiggy Wash. So I've been in touch with Jay Boland with Acoustiblock. He's trying to get me an estimate from his engineer. Was hoping to have that to me yesterday. Did not. I should get that sometime next week. Again, the costs I've seen range between $5,000 and $35,000. I do not believe that the owners of Wiggy Wash want to spend that money. They might participate a little, but my question would be, is, are we willing as a council to find the funding to fix that problem? I can tell you the lady directly behind Wiggy Wash is deaf and does not hear what's going on. but does not want anything put on top of her wall to just, you know, interfere with her view. The gentleman to the west of Wiggy Wash, south and then west, works from home, particularly during COVID and it does bother him, and he would like to see something done. The gentleman to the east and to the south is an assistant fire marshal for the county in Utah County. To him, it's just background noise and he doesn't care. A lady further to the west cares very much and is upset over it. So any thoughts on that?

I have one, Mayor. So on the— so Wiggy Wash, they were going to pay to put in windows, correct?

They said they would do that, yes.

And then we just need— I mean, I think for me, once we get the information on the cost, then we can figure out if that's something that's feasible. But right now, we don't know what the cost is, so.

Well, correct. And we'll get the cost here fairly soon. My only thought was to have a discussion. Do we want to help front the cost? It won't be more than $35,000. It won't be less than 5, but do we want to help front part of that?

I'm all for that, and I have been a proponent of that since the beginning. So I am, to make that neighborhood maybe whole and, and get their lives back to normal. I feel that's definitely—

Okay.

So remind me, remind me, Mayor, did we inadvertently approve that without the right sound? So I mean, are we Somehow responsible for not making that better?

I think we're partially responsible. Originally, the car wash was going to exit out to the north, away from the homes. Our staff looked at it, and on the traffic pattern, that did not work well, and they didn't feel like that was safe, so they preferred to have them exit to the south. Which is what they do through a parking area, and then over on the road that—

Mayor, I think it's a little more— it's a little more complicated than that. The alignment of the— the alignment of the current car wash was set to the north and the south based on the developer wanting to extract one additional building lot. if he actually had to go east-west, he would not have been able to have 2 developable lots. He would have just had one.

What if he had gone with traffic exiting to the north rather than to the south?

All I'm— I don't have the specifics in front of me, but the representation of this is a city problem is, in my estimation, not Not a, uh, a fair representation of it.

Okay, well, he has mentioned that he wanted to go out the north and got forced to go out the south.

No, he got forced to go out the south if he wanted to keep his additional building lot.

Okay.

I'm concerned. First of all, I think if we spend the money and we make everyone happy, that's wonderful. I'm very concerned that we spend the money and everyone isn't happy.

Okay. So the proposition is that they would put in these acoustic blocks in the drying section of the car wash. So the car wash is unusual because it has 2 bays rather than one. And the bay area is approximately 80-foot wide by 50-foot deep. And the idea is that you put these acoustic blocks Along the walls around that bay and, and the exit to the bay. And that could possibly lower the decimals by 15 to 20.

Yeah, I think replacing the windows would make a big difference if they're the double-pane, you know, because that's an older neighborhood. So I just think that You know, we're putting a good faith effort towards it to meet the need and to make them whole.

So—

But the mayor's comment of possible scared me. It possibly could reduce the decimals.

Sure. So, um, why aren't we above—

are we like 72 or something decibels? And even if it dropped at 5 or 7, I mean, that would be pretty substantial, I think.

I think the report that was— and obviously I sent you a copy of the report, I can pull it up, but I think it was actually south of 70 decibels. With the additional adjustments, it would drop it 4 or 5 points.

I'm still all for it to move forward, and I think we're trying to help.

So.

How does the rest of the council feel?

Well, I'd like the company to participate a little bit. I don't know what that ratio is. I don't know, 1/4, 3/4. They were willing to do the windows, whatever value that was. I just, I don't think this is 100% our problem. Some of it's theirs too. So—

And I'm not saying it's 100% city's fault at all. I'm just saying it's a bad situation, and if we can help rectify it, then that's what we're here for.

So Okay, I think the windows are not a big item. I believe Wiggy Wash is happy to do that. But of course, that's not where the expense is.

So—

And I think, in fact, I think that the windows to surrounding neighbors would be the most effective. But there's one individual who lives farther to the west that is not going to appreciate that because her property is Several streets over, so she wouldn't have a window replacement, and therefore her concerns would remain.

And the windows make a difference for those in the house. For those wanting to come out of the house to have a barbecue or sit on the porch, that does not lower the decimals at all for that area. Correct.

So, Mayor, we're talking about windows, and are we talking about a wall?

So we're not talking about a wall. We're talking about the inside of the car wash, the outer perimeter walls of the drying area, which is the end of the car wash. On the inside of that building, putting panels that are sound absorption panels that are waterproof. So the idea is that it becomes a soundproof chamber, as it was. So you can do different soundproofing materials, but this is an unusual situation, different than others, because you have water flying around. So they have to be waterproof. So there's not a lot of companies that make those, but we have found one that does this with car washes. I thought that I had sent out their brochure, but let me send their brochure to every council member again and have you all look at it and see whether you feel like you want to participate as a council with some money to help solve the problem. I had asked Jamie, I don't know that we've had a discussion on it, but, you know, the gentleman behind is having to stay home due to COVID. And could this be— money be used from some of the CARES money to help solve a problem that these people are facing that could be related to COVID in the sense that they are having to stay in their homes more?

That's pretty good. This is not a CARES-eligible expense. However, there is money left over from obviously our CARES allocation to address non-CARES-related items.

Okay.

That's part of the $9.2 million I was telling you about earlier this week.

Well, this is $35,000 total. I can, I can send the pamphlet. You can look at it. I personally feel like it would be a good idea to do. There are no guarantees, Tom, that I know of, but this company is reputable and has done this in other places. So, but again, let me send out the pamphlet. I should be getting the cost estimate in, and then if everybody could come back and say whether they feel like this is something that they're interested in or not.

So, Mayor, is that company willing to come out and do a, like, a sound survey or something, or—

I'm sure they would for a cost. I mean, I, you know, I think we'd have to pay for them to do it, but—

Well, I mean, we may want to get that cost just to see if it's minimal because Then at least you have a study. And sure, I think, like I said, I'm all for it, but I want to see what the cost is. But if it's no more than $35,000, I think that's doable for me.

So sure. Okay.

Have they, have they actually had experience? I mean, do they have a similar situation where they've installed those panels where they feel comfortable that, that this could be a resolution to the problem?

So they have, and it's actually in their brochure, shows pictures of what they've done. The only difference is this is 2 bays coming out rather than one. They've never done a 2-bay project before. But it's— everything's the same. It's just wider.

So, Mayor, I mean, maybe we— there has— you have to do the soundproofing on all the way around on both sides, meaning on your right side when both, uh, you know, driveways or washes go together.

Well, and, and one thought would be, and I don't know if it's feasible, but if you could put in a sub-wall in the middle, just a wood frame wall in the middle between the 2 bays, and put some soundproofing panels on that as well.

Yeah, because the blower or the dryer area is not that long.

So it's 50-foot long.

Yeah, so I mean, it's not compared to the whole wash, so no, you look at— but I don't know if Wiggy Wash would want to do that. So I guess that's clarification.

It is.

They are—

they do know of this company. They are— have expressed some interest to see what this company has to say. They've not expressed any interest to pay for it, but But the idea of maybe having them come out and look at it might be a good idea. The sub-wall in the middle might be a good idea. I don't know.

I think that would give us some assurance, and then that would help maybe Tom and everybody on the council understand, maybe, if I was going to—

Sure.

Sure.

OK. All right, so I'd like to open it up to the council for other items. Things that would like to be brought up.

So, so I've got a question on, uh, on Kevin Shurtleff's, uh, presentation. I mean, I was like, uh, drinking from a fire hose. But, um, you know, like, like he mentioned, Provo's got their power plant and Lyndon has a power plant. So would it be— I guess it's probably not cost effective to see if Orem would do something like that, or maybe do the energy storage, or I don't know. So I don't know if we thought of that, but it piqued my interest for sure.

Provo, any thoughts there?

Provo is a public power city. They're a power utility and have been for, oh, for their history, I think. The power plant in Lindon is actually Rocky Mountain Power's power plant. And we are the beneficiaries of it. I think there are obviously merits to having a public power company. Spanish Fork, Springville, Salem, Lehi all have their own public power entities as well. I think at this point, given all the infrastructure is now the property of Rocky Mountain Power and it's we were to do anything like this and they were to sell their infrastructure to us, I think it definitely would be cost prohibitive.

Well, what about like the energy storage? I mean, is that something that maybe we can buy overflow?

I don't know.

I'm just—

So we, we are actually participating in a program right now with Rocky Mountain Power to explore ways to improve efficiencies in our, in our system. We also have purchased and participated in Rocky Mountain Power's essentially conservation programs where we've bought into some of these programs as a city and therefore are eligible for some of this cost, obviously efficient and I guess cost savings as a result of power. But we haven't bought any sort of capacity to store the power. That's relatively new technology.

So I'm wondering if maybe we go into— with Rocky Mountain Power and say, hey, you know, maybe it's a partnership and we try this energy storage and maybe the cost is split, whatever. I just don't know what the cost is. I have no idea since it's new, but that might be something we look at down the road for the future.

How would that be different from House Bill 411?

I mean, isn't that basically what that was, was House Bill 411 was essentially a commitment on our part to be 100%, uh, non-fossil fuel by a certain date. And in order to meet that obligation, we would aggressively pursue non-fossil fuel energy sources, and our customers would pay for that, I guess you could say, that additional effort on our part to pursue those non-fossil fuel energy sources. So our ratepayers would actually pay more so that we could accelerate moving to 100% efficiency or non-fossil fuels.

My thought was just the energy storage, right? The battery You know, for— yeah, so overflow or whatever, just to have it. Just like I know Tom's got, uh, solar, and I don't know if he's got a battery, but my neighbor does that, you know, he can store his power. So just, just a thought because it was a lot of information that Kevin gave us.

And, you know, I will look—

I will talk to, uh, our Rocky Mountain rep about that.

Okay.

One thing I did want to mention, and Maybe everyone knows about it, but in the West Desert, they are looking at 2 very substantial solar farms for generating electricity, very large farms south of Facebook there. And then down in Beaver, they have a very large geothermal project going on that it will produce a lot of electricity from the ground. So it's a pretty dynamic area. All right, anything else? All right. So one thing I wanted to ask is thoughts of the council on the affordable housing ideas. First one being the 14 acres there over in the Gateway District of the Geneva area. Would you be in favor of allowing that area to change zones if someone came forward with an affordable high-density project on that property? And right now—

You just said high—

Mayor, you just said high density. I think previously you'd said medium density. Am I getting confused?

So this project would actually be high density affordable. So there's medium density affordable, which is what the 4.5 acres down south of Walmart that I was talking about. But on the 14 acres next to the freeway, that would actually be high density. So they would be, as an example, like the Running Horse They would be 4-story condo buildings, 900 to 1,000 square foot per condo.

You're talking ownership versus rentals too, I think, aren't you, Mayor?

Yes, that is correct, Tom.

Yeah, I think if it's ownership, if it's to buy or to sell, I think I'll be for it. If it's rentals, I don't like it.

Okay.

Mayor, I'm also okay. This is Debbie with a similar product of those condos. I think those, they look nice, they've been well maintained. Without having a bunch of neighbors around it, I think it probably makes sense. Of course, if we change it, we, you know, we don't have any skin in the game. We would just allow someone to come in and do it if they have time for that.

Okay. All right, Mayor. Yes.

Yeah, I'm— that Running Horse, uh, condos down there, that of course we've all watched that. That's, in my views, turned into a pretty good thing. Um, I know you mentioned they started out at $150,000. Last time I talked to Bruce Dickerson, and by the way, he really controls that as far as the ownership and the percentage of renting, which is something we need to do if we're looking at other places. But anyway, he said they're getting close to 200,000 now, so—

Right.

It's probably pretty important that we do as much as we can with this affordable land we have left.

Right, and 200,000 actually is a great buy and allows a lot of the young families to actually be able to get in.

Yeah, but what I'm saying is the price goes up pretty quick.

I understand.

So on that project, that was, uh, a certain percentage was, uh, FHA, correct?

I believe so, yes.

So that—

I think that's the stipulation I think we have to have. I don't, um, I think that would work if it's FHA because then it's easier to get into. Less down payment. I'd be for that for sure.

Okay. Then the second— I'm sorry, go ahead.

Can we stipulate that to a developer?

I don't think so.

Okay.

Mayor, I would, you know, I'll voice concern with that. I mean, that's a prime piece of commercial property right at the S-curve. I think in terms of highest and best use, You're not going to generate the highest and best, essentially, return for the city by having that as residential. At the same time, I worry that as an island, that becomes somewhat of a project where you have an isolated group of residential properties that long-term may be a concern. If we are going to build affordable housing, I think it needs to be integrated with the rest of the community and not necessarily as a standalone type of development.

So I appreciate that concern, and that is a prime commercial piece of property, but at the same time, as we look at that area, we You know, took a survey and 46% said that they liked the idea of having mixed use. This is actually a mixed-use type of situation.

And I know that's the conversation you've had with Bruce as well.

Correct, but I'm talking about the survey of that area that was done, talked about on Thursday. That area there could be a mixed-use facility of residential, retail, and industrial. And if that were to occur, I think that would be beneficial for the affordable housing side. So it becomes a judgment call. You have to look at it and say, you know, one is better or one is greater need. But anyway.

If 46 were in favor, can I assume 54 were opposed?

No, 46 were in favor, 34 were opposed, and the remaining had no opinion.

And tell me the address of this again, please, Mayor.

So it's about 1420 North on Geneva Road, but then you go west where it's right along the freeway. So if you can see it right there, and the thing that I want to mention is if you come down to where it says Lenox Stores on the bottom left corner right there, there's a road going up along there. And they're developing flex warehouses along there, very nice ones. But that road is going all the way up and actually would— could border this piece of property where you would come in from the south onto that piece of property rather than a road that they have access to From Geneva Road.

And the property where those warehouse properties are, if you head due east towards the freeway, all of that has been programmed for Class A office space.

Correct, correct. And if you go along, like I say, the freeway, you'll see that Linden has done the same thing, Lehigh has done the same thing. And I realize that you know, this is an important piece of property, but also I think that we do need, you know, to give housing its fair share. So, then on the other one that I wanted to find out is on the 4.5 acres. Are you— is the council comfortable with looking at trying to do something with that, either to an R-6 zone or to do something with Habitat for Humanity? to put in a small subdivision for Habitat for Humanity, and, and they pay for it. So it's no money— I mean, they would pay us for the land value, whoever, if it was surplused and put up for sale. But if we worked with Habitat for Humanity, that would make a nice district. And their, their homes are very nice, uh, if any of you have seen them. They're, like I said, they're 3-bedroom, 2-bath homes 2-car garage, 1,500-square-foot slab-on-grade, 2-story.

So, Mayor, where would you— would you connect the road right there where the arrow is, or would you try to complete the 1600 South down?

So I would have to ask Jason that. The one coming down is one that would connect— connects right into the property. So the one coming headed south, yes. The 2 down below, I'm not totally positive on. 1600 South.

That would be the concern is the traffic and the— hopefully you have some good in and out.

So that property has a 40-foot elevation drop from the top of the property to the bottom of the property. And when they were looking at that property from a From a road connectivity perspective, yes, the road would extend there from 360 West, and it would have connected up at 1600 South.

So would you connect— would 1600 South connect through, or just—

I'm pulling it up right now.

Okay. I know we've done a study before about connecting roads in Orem.

Mayor, this is Steve Downs, and I could be wrong on this. We did look at this with Habitat for Humanity before Ken Matthews actually came to work at the city. Ryan Smith, who kind of oversees all the property that we own, if I'm remembering right, there's an agreement with UDOT that if we decide not to use it as a park, the, the property has to go back to the state.

There is.

Yeah, I wasn't aware of that.

Now, whether or not that, that could be amended—

Yeah, for sure.

The bigger problem that we ran into from a park perspective too is the fact, again, the 40-foot elevation drop from top to bottom.

Well, we've had a lot of housing developments deal with variations in the land. I think that's workable.

But typically when you develop on grades like that, that doesn't lend itself to affordability because there's a lot of engineering and a lot of retainage that needs to be developed to secure that property.

So I don't see this as being a great place for a park, considering we're only 4 blocks from another park, but I would like to explore that to see what our agreement with UDOT is. And if that could be amended, and then just property to the south. I'm sorry, what?

What's the property to the south?

I think that's privately owned.

So where is the 4 acres?

Where does it cut?

You know?

So you just follow the road headed south that you were talking about.

Okay.

And then it just does a V up and then over.

Land right there, south, that's privately owned?

Yes.

Uh-huh.

Can I share the screen if you wouldn't mind, Steven?

Yep, there you go, Jamie.

Can you see that now?

Yeah.

So there were a series of options that were developed. One of them had cul-de-sacs at 1600 South, 360 West. Another option included the running through of the road from 360 West up to 1600 South at 300 West. And then another one had an option where it essentially moved the opposite direction. And then there was just a dead-end option. So you'd have the cul-de-sacs there too. But again, the problem that, from what I talked with our staff about, was some of this area is just unbuildable based on the slopes.

So the purple area, that's not what we're just talking about, the little nub on the end, right?

Yeah.

So I'm aware of a 40-foot drop, but we have a lot of areas in other parts of the city that—

And I don't disagree. I just, I just know that if you develop on a grade, it's going to cost significantly more.

Do we know if that other property is for sale, the other property to the south?

I do not. We don't know.

It could certainly be approached or looked at.

Because why was it in purple? I mean, if it was included, that might be— then that might be a good— at least it's bigger than 4 acres and it might be a better affordable housing area.

But I—

So would the council be comfortable exploring to see what possibilities are there? I'm fine.

Sure. I think exploring is a good idea to see what we could maybe do there. I think we need to at least look at it.

Okay.

It's good that we've had, you know, Jamie pull up all those different designs. I think we have some work already done, so maybe we can just research the rest of it and see if it works.

Sure. And I would like to see what UDOT would have to say, because otherwise this land's just going to sit there and do nothing. And we need, you know, to come up with areas that we can do some affordable housing, and this, this could be one of those.

But that whole property is landlocked, even the one, even this property south, correct?

Unless you connect the roads, yeah.

So, Mayor, I would like to see, since I get to sit on the Planning Commission and hear their comments, I'd like to Yes, go through the system with the city looking at, you know, making sure we have the big picture on both of these properties and the other one you mentioned, so that we understand a lot of the details of things that we might not know as a city council that—

Sure.

Are part of the issues. I also like Jeff's comment earlier today about the assessment departments. I think the city's doing a a great job in trying to get a handle on those. But I think that's also an opportunity for affordable housing, not for people to own, but places for people to live. You know, if we continue to— affordable housing needs to be sure that they follow the rules, because that's one of the biggest complaints I think we hear is when people have too many homes or, you know, too many cars parked in a residential area. But it's also an opportunity for people that can't afford other options to be in an accessory apartment.

Sure. Sure. But Terry, are you looking at— are you talking about maybe looking at the accessory apartment code and stuff or changing that or just—

I just, I think that I don't want us to forget that opportunity. I think it's 2 things. It's very frustrating for people when you live in a neighborhood and someone violates the rules I think we really need to enforce the rules. Because if we've— I hear more complaints about that than probably anything is, you know, the people next to me have this or that many cars. But I think it's also an opportunity for young families and older families. There's a couple I know that's my age. They've always had an accessory apartment in their basement. And they live in a nice neighborhood. They follow the rules. And I think those are opportunities for people One, people that can't afford anything more than that, to live in a nice accessory apartment, and a way to help with the affordable housing issue. I'm just— I'm not— I'm a little concerned about, like what Jamie's saying, that we don't want to stick an island of all— here's all the folks that are in low income or affordable or whatever we're going to call it, and you're in that spot. it's probably not a bad idea if we have accessory apartments throughout the city if they follow the rules.

So, Terry, just so you know, we have about 1,500, 1,600 accessory apartments that are following the rules. We probably have 3 times that amount that aren't.

Yes, right. So, Mayor, I agree, and I think that's— that is a problem. And I appreciate why we're trying to get that under control to figure out who's doing it, where they are. But it is, you know, if they follow the rules, I think it's an option for people.

Yeah. Mayor?

Yes, Brent.

Going along with what Terry just said, I agree with everything that was mentioned. But for our budget coming, getting pretty close to us, I'd like to I would suggest we put additional NPU units or officers. We have 3 now. I think we could use 5 pretty easy. And those 3 are just overworked. And I would suggest that we include upgrading that force by a couple.

Jamie, do you mind if I speak to that a little bit? We've been working on this one quite a bit. Working with Chief Adams, I think I think they see the need for growth. I think they see it outside of officers, though. Officers obviously are trained, but they're trained to do a lot of things, and one of those being NPU. But they're also the first to get pulled off when there's an issue with a school resource officer being down, or you know a variety of other things that only law enforcement can address. And so putting cops in there, the challenge with that becomes, one, it's twice as expensive, but two, they get pulled off onto other assignments often. And so what they're looking to do is grow it on the civilian side. So they see it more as a, as a system and a program that needs to be improved, not necessarily more officers. Better reporting, better notifications, better tracking, better follow-up perhaps can be done by civilian Steven, I've—

yeah, I've— that's a good suggestion. I've heard that for a year and a half, but I don't see anything happening with it.

We just hired a full-time one with the rental licensing money. This last week was his first week.

Well, that's a good idea, but if we're going to do it, I think we ought to get off our dead center and Do it.

I agree, Brent. I think that if we have a citizen or, you know, not a police officer, or you still have the MPU plus additional 3 to help with this, because it is a problem. And sorry, my dog's barking. But so I'm all for it, Brent.

So.

Okay.

Last one.

Stephen, can you just maybe give us an update on those plans again at another work session? Or— I've just heard a lot, but I'd just like to see what we're doing.

Yeah, and I can give you a really quick just the overview. I mean, what we never had was the owner information on— we know that, and we did the study, that there is a much more likely— if there's an issue with a zoning violation, it's much more likely that it's a rental property than it is owner-occupied. So, we knew that. We go to— we went through the rental licensing program. Now, we have 3,100 addresses that we know the owner of that we didn't know before. We had renter information and we feel like we can make more progress when we get to the owner as opposed to the renter. So, we have that. Our software engine, we have a software developer who's developing a program that will link all of that owner information to our neighborhood preservation team. So as they go around through a completely automated electronic process, they would note the violations and it would all be tied back to send something to the owner, letting— putting them on notice and not just making it the renter's problem to resolve. So that's all what's in process right now. We've now hired this But we kind of, we kind of stepped back to say, well, what's the issues with the system? We've got to look at our whole NPU system. And while I think our officers work hard, anybody working hard in a system that isn't effective and isn't working very well, it doesn't matter how many people you put in the system. So we're, we've stepped back and really tried to evaluate the system that they're operating in, and that's what we're trying to improve. And then more resources can be put towards the officers. what we believe is a better functioning system. Jamie, maybe you can add to that in your conversation with Chief Adams, but you're muted, Jamie.

Sorry. Part, part of the conversation I've had with Chief Adams is if we have NPU officers, we need NPU— them to focus on NPU responsibilities. And It's difficult when obviously there are competing demands within the department to stay focused on NPU, and it also takes a unique officer and mindset to be engaged in that NPU activity. So you have the added challenge or burden of not only staying focused on NPU, but also finding individual officers who are interested in that kind of work. The challenge is always, you know, if we hire additional people, additional police officers, they are going to be sucked into answering calls and doing other police-related work, and then the MPU work may or may not get done. And so This idea of having civilian support is in part a way for us to ensure that we are not dedicating police officers or we're not dedicating staff to other police responsibilities because they do not and will not have police powers. There are a lot of things that an NPU unit can do that don't require them to be certified peace officers, and, and we're trying to find that balance.

So, Jamie, could you speak to the workload of what we need with NPU? I mean, I know Steve's talked about it. I mean, do we feel like that our officers are overloaded? We feel like we need double the amount of officers? What are your thoughts?

I mean, my thoughts are, I think obviously we have had deficiency in the MPU, but we have not seen a fully functioning MPU for a number of years because we've had officer shortages. And when we have officers that are down or have retired or have left for service, what has happened is we've siphoned them off from MPU and put them on regular duty. So we haven't had a fully operational functioning MPU unit for several years. The same can be said for traffic enforcement. We historically have had a traffic unit, but in recent years we haven't had a traffic unit. And if you look at our revenues associated with traffic, for example, you will see a dramatic decline. Now, obviously, we have officers in place. We're setting up a traffic unit again. We're bolstering, obviously, our MPU unit with this civilian position. And my hope is that the tides will turn. But I don't think the answer is simply just hiring more people. I think it's about working smarter, working different than we have in the past. Some of that is done with civilian employees. Some of that is done with greater cooperation with our legal department and the prosecutors and the court as it relates to an administrative law judge. Some of it is also done by way of obviously the rental licensing efforts that we put in place. I don't simply think hiring more police officers is going to solve our problem. And Frankly, I think as a community continues to age, we're going to have to dedicate more and more resources, whether civilian or otherwise, to this effort.

So, Jamie, what—

are these civilians? Are they paid? Are they trained?

Yes. In fact, the civilian officer that— or the civilian employee that we just hired does have a law enforcement background. But in his current role, will not have police powers, but works very closely with our police officers who obviously wear the uniform, have the badge, represent the city in a way different than this other civilian employee who, for example, will be able to mitigate and work on a number of Issues, but won't have obviously the same police power.

Well, I know in, in my end of the town, and I'm sure other parts of the town, it's a real problem. I, I think we ought to put some kind of plan together to get this under control, and I know it's sensitive, but, but I think we need to really study it. It sounds like a great plan to me, Jamie. Kind of the best of both worlds where you've got somebody that can be out there and dedicated full-time to doing that and not worried about them being pulled off on other maybe heavier responsibilities, but someone that has the personality and the, you know, the strength and everything needed to deal with those. Some of those are really hard situations, I'm sure, but you you know, having the wherewithal and the confidence to go in and handle those tough situations. So, you know, if this works out, maybe we could look at hiring a few retired police officers or, I don't know, other people that would make sense to help us get a handle on that.

I think that's a great idea.

I'll give you an example. As the summer approaches, we're going to have a lot of weed calls. high weeds, you know, unkempt neighborhoods. Do we need a police officer to go and make contact with that property owner and say you're in violation, or do we need a police officer to actually write a letter? Because obviously we have to go through a due process effort to essentially advise a property owner that they're out of compliance, give them an opportunity to cure the problem, And then when they haven't cured the problem, then we have a responsibility to initiate action. Well, everything up to the point of initiating action and issuing a citation can be done by somebody who is not a certified police officer. So if we can resolve those concerns without involving the limited police resources that we have and people comply, by way of the letter that they receive or the warnings that they receive, then I think we're actually putting better use of police resources on the street than in an MPU capacity. Now, that doesn't mean we don't need police support in MPU, but there are things that we can do, I think, on the civilian side of things to help that effort move forward. The same can be said for apartments. The same can be said for, you know, cars that have remained in the roadway that are inoperable. The same can be, you know, there are all sorts of things that can be accomplished by way of somebody who doesn't have a badge. And that's, that's kind of the mindset that we are, are trying to move forward with is Let's use a hybrid approach. I can hire a police officer, put them in MPU, and it probably costs $110,000 a year. I can put a civilian officer and it only costs me $75,000. So, you know, there's savings there as well.

So, Jimmy, I've got a question. So on that, with the different situations, you know, the high weeds or the You know, your yard's not kept and then the apartments. You know, with that analysis, how much— with all those calls, what would the manpower need to be to make sure that we have enough, you know, manpower to handle those situations and that scope of work? So maybe we do an analysis and see if we have to hire another 2 or 3 or 4 just to see if it works. Because we need to have the manpower. We'll never accomplish what our goal is.

And, and I don't disagree. I mean, I think we need to do more research and more review. Our focus is very reactionary right now. So much of the work that is generated in NPU is the result of citizens calling, expressing concern. But at the same time, if we can hire some more civilian people, They can, for example, drive through neighborhoods, identify problem properties, identify abandoned vehicles, you know, identify potential illegal apartments, and try and do some things administratively rather than doing it with a uniformed officer.

And Jamie, that's without even tapping the army of volunteers we might have who were— who could give a day a week or something and do something like that. So I think there is a plan that is a lot less expensive than a police officer who may rightfully be called to a more pressing need. And we could get volunteers and lower-paid, I mean, no disrespect, but lower-paid civilians who could do this and frankly do a great service to the community. And to Councilman Sumner's earlier point, we could hire 3 or 4 for the price we hire 1 or 2 and be a lot better off. And maybe one of them just is is a coordinator of a lot of volunteer efforts.

Okay. Well, I think that deserves some further investigation and study, and I think that's an important area.

Mayor, one comment.

I would just like to know, we have 3 MPU officers. What percentage of their time is done on NPU stuff and what— how often do they get other assignments? I think that, that stat right there would be crucial. Well, I mean, if it's 50/50—

So we have, for example, had one NPU officer last year who had— I don't know honestly if it was the end of 2018 or the start of— or excuse me, 2019 Or the start of 2020, but he had a workers' comp-related injury and he was out for months, and we didn't replace him. So I mean, those kind of things are again, if if you were to ask the police department where their greatest priorities are, MPU would be towards the bottom. And I'm just, I'm saying that not because I want to throw shade on the police department, but the police department's primary responsibility is emergency response, 911, you know, attending to calls that require immediate activity. And so they start looking at that level of response and responsibility, and if they have, for example, 8 calls at once and only 6 officers to serve those calls, they're going to grab the 2 MPU officers or the 3 MPU officers and throw them into that responsibility to make sure that we can maintain and respond to the most pressing issues in the city. At the same time too, This is just my assessment, having been in this business for a long time. Police officers generally don't want to hire on to a force so they can go deal with weed complaints. I mean, they become a police officer for reasons totally different than MPU. And when they find themselves in MPU, some of it look at it as not necessarily a choice or a crime opportunity, those that do actually do very well and they actually promote and they promote out of MPU, as we've had the case in, you know, for example, Lieutenant Paraskeva is one who promoted out of MPU. Chief Giles is another one who promoted out of MPU. You know, they generally don't stay that long in MPU because they're not necessarily wired that way.

Well, maybe your answer, maybe you just gave the answer to our problem. Hire all civilian people to do that.

Well, I mean, that's part of the— I mean, and Stephen can speak to this too. We had a conversation, what, Stephen, about 6 months ago as to does the MPU office really belong in the police department or would we be better served putting it in another Department of the city, so that we can give it 100% emphasis.

That sounds like a good idea, actually.

That and you know we're dealing with people, we're dealing with a certain level of investment on the part of the police department, and so we're watching that. And we had that conversation with them, and at the at the moment we decided well we're going to keep it in the police. Department for now. But I think we'll probably revisit that conversation in the future.

Jamie, if I could just— I think this, this came from a conversation from Jamie about— I mean, we have been thinking about these neighborhood plans, and those that sat in on the neighborhood plans, if you were to ask all of them what is their number one, it's the condition of their aging neighborhoods. That, that is their number one. And so this NPU can't be separated from the neighborhood plans. and the improvement of the neighborhood plans. And I think you have, for example, a Kenna Matthews who's overseeing our neighborhood partnership initiative. That's what he, she hears about all the time. Yeah, there's, there's some people that are very, very committed to wanting to make this situation better and again improve the system that we operate in so that we can be more effective. One other example, Carl Hurst shared this with us. He owned property down in Salem a while. And, uh, every now and again he'd let his property go. He didn't go down there for a while. He would get a letter from the city saying you need to cut your weeds by this date, or here's the process. And he would get that letter and get them cut the next week. Now, not 100% of the people are going to respond to that letter, but I could send out 100 letters in the amount of time it would take me to visit 2 homes. And so, if I can send out 100 letters and 60% of them are going to resolve it just from the letter, That's what kind of Jamie's saying about if we can be more efficient in how we do this, perhaps we can go much further than we've been going, than going door-to-door every time there's an issue.

No, that sounds good. Uh, and accessory apartments are a big part of it as well. So, well, we were supposed to break 10 minutes ago, so let's go ahead and take a 15-minute break and we'll start back back up at 3:10 on our review of our areas of focus.

Thanks.

Okay, thanks.

Where'd they go?

Okay, okay.

Did you get your vacuuming done, Dave?

What's that?

Get all your vacuum— vacuuming done?

Yeah, now I'm working on— I'm cleaning the toilets.

Hey, you can come to our house, Dave, if you want. Yeah, I'll send her up. I'm in trouble now.

I just cleaned my sinks.

I literally did just go clean my sinks.

I, I went and cleaned my smoker, so I did—

I'm doing really good.

You better empty those buckets from the leak.

I know, it started dripping this morning but now it stopped. So it was just— it had to have froze and went up by the turtle and Just coming down.

So, so I hate when it goes up underneath the shingles and gets into trouble that way.

Yep. So it had to just— with all that rain, it just must have. And then when it froze, it just backed up.

And yeah, that's what it does, freezes and goes back up under.

But I think we're good now. But I've got buckets up there now. So When you hear the drip, drip, drip, it's not a good sign from the ceiling.

So when you look up and you've got that balloon in the sheetrock—

I don't have that, luckily.

But yeah, because I was getting ready this morning, I'm like, all right, so I went up in the attic and yeah, I know right where it's coming from. It's that, that turtle, and then it comes down and hits the first seam of the plywood from the rough and the slick, so it's all good.

All right, well, we are back at it and our break is over, so let's go ahead and move on. Our last part of our city retreat is the review of the areas of focus for 2020 and to identify the areas of focus for for 2021. Bren, we've typically had you working on that. Are you working on it this time? Bren Bybee? Maybe our—

yeah, on the accomplishments, we put together from all of the departments their accomplishments during 2020, and I believe This week, Jamie sent you a PDF file that has a— there on the first page, just a bookmark link to each department and has all of their top accomplishments and visuals associated with those accomplishments provided in that document. So this year we provided that then in the form of this document so that you could focus on looking forward with the areas of focus.

So do we want to have any discussion on 2020 from any of the council? I think we've accomplished a lot. All right, so let's go to 2021. Uh, you have anything you want to say, Brent, or should we just do it as a council?

Um, I believe Steven, uh, has, uh, some Well, he's going to show us an outline of the areas of focus from previous years and then talk about what we might do moving forward.

Okay, we'll turn it over to you then, Steve.

Thanks, Mayor.

Let me just kind of preface this as we've been talking a lot about staff and wanting to— and maybe you know some of this, I don't know what Jamie maybe has shared already, but we're really wanting and planning to do— we want to do more with, um, being able to work your areas of focus into, into the whole budgeting process, right? So traditionally what we've done is we meet with every department and we go through all of their budget requests. What we want to do this year is actually by area of focus that you've identified as a council, have, have meetings that are dedicated to that area of focus, and then let, let departments bring budget requests related to how we're going to move the needle in that area that you've identified. And so it's kind of working backwards to make sure that, as Jamie's wanted to do, that your areas of focus are driving the entire budget process. We also want to be able to give you better data on, on what the citizens want in, in these areas and what they want in their community and what they— you know, you, you often get reached out to by individuals about needs, things that they're thinking about. Well, we're kind of— we're proposing today a different take on the areas of focus that doesn't do anything to take away from your ability to influence and express everything you want, but gives us as staff continuity year to year in making sure that the areas of the focus identified by the council are, if you will, kind of create an umbrella that every single department to move the needle in those areas of focus. And we went, we went back to all the areas of focus you've identified in previous years. And we found really, really common themes that generally, and I'm going to share you this list, these 5 areas encompass all of the areas of focus. And I can show you that as well. Yeah, that'd be great. that you've looked towards in the past. And if you can see that screen, what, what we're, what we're maybe considering is something like this. And, and, and we believe that this, this works and this kind of encompasses everything we do as a city. I've been taking notes and all the things that you've expressed concerns on in the end, and I've been putting them in bullet points under these areas, and I'll show you that. In just a minute as well. But what we believe is these, these 5 areas encompass what we do as a city. It also allows every department to play a part in those areas of focus, and it allows us to start creating messaging around these areas that would maybe live on from year to year, and we can incorporate them into our budget books, into our budget process. Into, you know, messaging that we put around our city hall about what it is that the city council is focused on, allows us to do things in the council chambers that would show that these are the areas that we as a city council, or you as a city council, are interested in. And then year to year, what it would provide you is an opportunity to, to put the bullet points beneath these of what is a safe and livable neighborhood look like?

And what do we need to focus on this year to make that—

our neighborhoods more safe and livable and business and infrastructure and effective government and skilled and talented workforce? So I'm going to show you that in a second. But here's the other thing we thought we could do that would be helpful in future retreats is what we would do is take these 5 areas and put a survey out to our citizens before your retreat that what we would ask of the citizen is, hey, vision for us in, in a paragraph or in a few statements what safe and livable neighborhoods mean to you. And vision for us what a thriving and balanced business environment looks like to you, and, and so on. And then we would compile all those results and we would provide those to you ahead of time so that you can see what citizens are saying about these areas this year, and we could do word clouds to show what, what are the common themes that are showing up in the citizens' comments and things like that. So with that said, throughout this meeting, throughout the day, you've been talking about areas that you want to see us, you want to see us focus on. And I've been bullet pointing those underneath what I believe would, how all of these fit under this umbrella. of these areas of focus. And I believe everything you've expressed fits, fits here and talks about, you know, for safe and livable neighborhoods, enforcing our codes, addressing this wiggy wash noise complaints, affordable housing, neighborhood plan implementation. We talked about continuing to invest in our utility system, energy storage exploration. We've talked about evaluating the effectiveness of our NPU. It was mentioned once about maybe some better financial reporting potentially so the council kind of knows where we're at on our balance sheet, maybe at all times and not just at the end of the year reports. And I'm not suggesting that this is the end of it all. What I'm just suggesting is I think, I think what we did was we went back and looked at all your old areas of focus. And we saw that they did fit under this umbrella. The areas you're talking about this year continue to fit under that umbrella. And so what we're proposing is that these 5 areas stay. And they can be adjusted from time to time, but these kind of become the core of what we do, and it gives you the opportunity every year to kind of evaluate what it looks like underneath each of those and what, what is it that city staff can do to move the needle. in each of these areas. But then it also lets city staff get creative to say, if safe and livable neighborhoods are important to you as a council and to the citizens, you know what you know, but we may know more because it's our day-to-day, 40-plus hours a week, and we think we can do additional things to make those. So as that being an introduction, that's our, that's our thought, is that we fill in the blanks the bullet points underneath these areas each year, as you already have, and then these kind of shape these areas of focus that live on through our budgeting process, through our City Hall messaging boards and posters and things like that.

So Steve, in suggesting this, are you looking at this as a way to provide more focus and more more stability, as it were, for our staff to know what the goals are and where they're headed?

I think so. Okay, you know, year-round we can always have that on top of mind. The other, the other, the other reason it came from is, while these are all really, you know, important things, in the past sometimes our areas of focus have been like a couple years ago, improve the relationships with UVU. And that, that is good. But if that's the main point, if instead of community-focused and effective government, not every department can do much in that area. Some can, but many can't. And so if that becomes instead a bullet point under this main area, every department can get behind this. And then some, and some areas will make a focus on this. So none of these you know, improve relationships with UVUs. Those ideas don't go away, they just become the bullet points under these ongoing areas of focus.

And as we, as we go through the different years, we actually accomplish some of the items that we're focusing on, and they're no longer, uh, you know, the first area of focus. So, so such as expanding our relations with UVUs. So I think that's been done well, and maybe that's not on the forefront at the moment.

So, so, Mayor, for example, extending this UVU example, what level of commitment does, for example, the fire department have to bettering our relationship with UVU?

Sure.

They don't really feel a sense of connection to it.

Sure.

But having a community-focused and effective government, that the goal of being community-focused, they can really rally around that. So to some degree, we're, as Stephen says, we're just trying to extend the message, the collective message that you, that we wish to share with the City Council in a way that will generate buy-in from all of the departments and all of the employees. Because if we get too specific, That doesn't mean we won't have specific, you know, action items, but if we get too specific, then we'll have departments who say, well, you know what, we're in the library and we don't really deal with any infrastructure issues, and as a result, we don't care about 1600 North or Geneva Road or whatever.

No, I like the idea. I think it's good.

So, and we, you know, we presented this to our executive staff on Wednesday just to get their thoughts, make sure we were, we were getting an umbrella that covers everybody. And truthfully, there was some, there was some excitement. There were departments that were talking about, we think we can, we can see how we insert ourselves into these areas and we start making plans. And then, and the message it shows to the public is safe and livable neighborhoods. That will be our focus until— I mean, not really, but essentially the end of time. That will always be what we do. Every year though, we may look and say, this year let's really invest in our parks, and next year let's really build out our sidewalk system, and next year, you know, things like that.

Sure.

Yeah.

So no, I like it. I like it.

If I may, we've also had conversations, uh, internally of if we can agree that these are, you know, that, uh, the core of what we do as an organization, then we can also better come up with proactive ways to solicit feedback via surveys with our citizenry as well, and ultimately get our citizenship— citizenry to buy into this vision and understand from them how they would define these areas of focus also.

Yeah, thanks, Brandon. Yeah, that's the part I was talking about, like, ahead of your retreat, getting that feedback. You'll have all of that coming into your retreat that can help you in the discussion.

Thanks. Great idea.

So these are the things that you've so far outlined. Now, what we've always wanted to do and why we've gotten down to a handful of areas of focus is we will keep all of these as notes that will go on to staff. But in each of these areas, we'd be interested in you kind of taking your top 2 and say, you know, identifying 2, maybe 3 in each of those areas as what you really want to make sure we've highlighted and, and address. And again, we'll take all of these notes, of course, of course, to all of our staff, but really kind of help visioning it for us and then let us kind of work through the objectives. And that's You know, kind of to Terry's point when he was talking about this retreat of you guys get to express your concerns and what you're hearing, vision for us, and then staff can take that back and really formulate a plan.

So, Steve, I've got a question. So on the, you know, what we have so far, I think, I think we need to add the, the water tank outreach for the citizens in that area. But I think, you know, this is a great starting point, but I think if we keep that— I mean, because some of these are quite— they might be done like Hillcrest. We might come up with a solution on Tuesday and it's done, and maybe that goes to a different color or something. It's done. And maybe that's a work in progress, but I like the— I like the 5 areas, and I think that's very positive. You know, the address of Wigwam should be soon to be figured out, and then that's— so I think it could be a moving target, but I think I like them all personally. I don't want to pick 2. I just think that maybe that's an area of focus and that we just keep plugging through, and then now we're more efficient and effective. So I don't know, just my 2 cents.

Any other comments from the council on it?

And in any of these areas, is there anything else you'd add or things you're not Seeing as you think of, you know, our workforce, as you think of making government more efficient and us doing our jobs better, infrastructure, the business environment, you know, we had our conversation with Senator Hemmert, anything as it relates to that?

So for me, under dependable infrastructure, I would add replacement of the city center, a new city center building.

Or just add, because the process, Mayor, is the drawings are going to be coming up and then—

Right, and that's why I haven't brought it up. Process, if you're gonna— right, put that in there.

Because it's the process. So once we have the plans, then we have to go to the public, have open house or whatever, and then that's— if they say yay or nay, then we either go forward.

Formulate the plan is fine.

Okay.

So, Mayor, just, just a suggestion. I would like to chew on this for a week or so.

Sure.

Because, and then we, you know, then we get back together and say, okay, now I've looked at this, I've thought about it, because like the issue with the accessory apartments that Brent talked about, and then the city's talking about we do it with non-police, and I'd like to spend some time and just think about that. And I'd also like to go see the properties that you're mentioning, Mayor, and just drive by and see, okay, this is where he was talking. I'd like to be able to let this sink in.

Sure.

And then come back and say, okay, here's what I heard. And plus I took a bunch of notes like Steve has done today. I have a bunch of notes of what people have said. For me, I need a little time to just have it settle. and then come back and address it. I don't, I don't know, maybe everybody else is, uh, on a different level than I am and they can just, uh, whip through it.

But—

Well, and I would, I would recommend too, this is in a Google Doc, so you could actually add comments to it and it can be a living, breathing document here in the next couple of weeks as each of you have an opportunity to view, comment, and provide input.

So you would send it out to us in a Google Doc so we can do that?

Yes.

I think that's a good idea.

Tom, I see your hand is raised, Tom.

Thank you. I'm concerned that although the decision on the City Center was already reached 4 to 3, that you're trying to sneak that back in, Mayor. We've reached a decision on that. It's interesting to me that when you showed us the mall that they were converting into housing, That thing was over 100 years old and you didn't have any problem with them converting that into housing, but you continue to beat the drum on a 50-year-old city center. And I, I think we've reached that decision and don't know why we're trying to bring that back up.

So I don't believe we've reached that decision, number one.

Well, hold on, we had a vote that was 4 to 3 not to move it forward, so how's that not a decision?

But since then we've had another vote that has been 5 to To, to go ahead and move forward with the drawings. So I think you have to recognize that, number one. Number two, it's interesting in talking to the Alpine School District on how they decide on their buildings, what they do with them. We spoke with Dr. Farnsworth just 2 days, 3 days ago. And his comment was, if a building doesn't meet ADA standards, If a building does not meet seismic standards, and if a building's 50 years of age, it's automatically replaced. So I think we need to realize that.

Well, they spend money more carelessly than we do.

And then, as far as the mall, I was trying to point out what they did to change the mall. I don't know anything about the construction of the mall, if it meets seismic standards or ADA standards, or they redid it later. But I was trying to point out that they reused, repurposed a building, taking it from retail to residential. So really was not looking at the building itself, but the idea of what they're doing with it.

So—

This is Terry. That's why I want to look at what's just been put here and think about this before I say, oh yeah, I'm good with all this.

I do—

I would like to say, wait a minute, as I look down the list and—

Well, I think on the comment of the city center, I'm, I'm, I think we did have a 5-2 just to do some drawings to be able to take it to the public to see exactly what their thought is. It wasn't to move forward to build the building. It was just to see what the citizenry wanted, or if they even thought it was a great idea. So I think that was my reason to vote for the, the drawings was just to be able to get an idea from the citizens what they thought.

So.

What does— is everybody comfortable with the idea of putting this into a Google Doc and and then we put in our comments.

Sure. Sure.

Does that work for the city, Jamie, for a couple of weeks while we do that?

Yes, of course.

Mayor, Council, as we, as we have our, we have our staff budget kickoff meeting on Monday. If you're okay with this part of it, what we'll, what we'll present to them are these 5 kind of the head, the titles, right? The safe and livable neighborhoods, thriving and balanced business environment, And we'll let them know that these are— again, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, so let me know otherwise— these are the areas that we want to focus on moving forward. The bullet points underneath is what will be kind of further vetted and explored. Is that, Terry, is that representative of kind of what you're feeling?

Yeah, I just want to take some time. Again, I heard a lot of great ideas today. I want to think about that, which you've listed some of those, and then put a list in my mind of the priorities.

Yeah.

So, and I just, I just want to say, let me, let me sleep on this, a few nights of sleep anyway. And then yes, and then, you know, I'm happy to say, here's what, here's what I feel, and then see what the other members feel.

And I don't mean, of course, to press it forward. And I, because I think what I'm hearing is, you know, these, for example, you know, evaluate the effectiveness, some of these details you need some more time on. The part that I'm going to highlight right now, these kind of bullet points, are you comfortable with those? Yeah, have no detail to them. It's just the— you're okay.

Okay.

Yeah, I think those are good. I think we should move forward with that idea. I like the idea of running a, you know, some ideas and thoughts before the public before our city retreat. to see what their thoughts are. And I like the idea of being able to put this before our staff so that maybe there are some ideas they have that we don't know about that would be helpful.

So—

So Steve, could you call the number 5?

Yep.

So skilled and talented workforce. So I don't know if we can also put that as the civilian MPU, whatever. So at least we have something there. And I think maybe asking Jamie a question is, on the staff of the city, you know, are there needs that you see that we're not— that we're deficient in that maybe we need to look at in this budget coming up to say, hey, we need to hire somebody here or there, and just maybe give us your thoughts?

Yes.

I— my focus and thoughts as of now is that I think our focus should continue to be on our existing workforce. You recall that prior to COVID, we initiated a compensation review with NFP, a private consultant, and we hit the pause button during the pandemic, and now we are up and running again. And we are doing— and by I say we, I mean the consultant in cooperation with the Human Resources Division— they're conducting that review now. And I would anticipate that as a result of that evaluation, we're going to need to make some adjustments to some of the compensation levels in our departments. I'm not seeing an across-the-board unified or uniform way, But there are going to be areas where we're going to have to strengthen some of our compensation ranges. So that's probably my primary concern. I also am anxious to receive the results of the citywide or the Citygate police and fire evaluations, operational assessments. We should have those in about the next month. That will help us better understand where we are as a city in relation to public safety and where we need to add resources if necessary in the future. I think, I think we will need to add resources in the future to both police and fire. Obviously, I'm also concerned about the opening of our new recreation center. Not, not that we need to hire additional people, but of course We're closely watching where we are in terms of new pass sales, and historically we've been subsidizing that facility to the tune of about $400,000 a year. I am hopeful, and, you know, increasingly hopeful as each day passes, that we're not going to have to subsidize that from the general fund. And then finally, I think there are Obviously, a number of capital projects that we need to make sure we continue to pay attention to. We've talked quite a bit about water infrastructure, but there are other things, other park amenities, road projects, other activities that we need to stay focused on as well. So, you know, I also— and finally, I also am a little worried that because we made Some of the adjustments that we made last year to our budget, some of our departments are going to say, well, this is our year to play catch up and to be made whole. I'm not sure we're ever going to be made whole, so to speak, nor do I think it's necessarily prudent that we just essentially revert back to everything pre-pandemic. We've learned from the pandemic, and I think we've made some decisions throughout the pandemic. That we didn't essentially budget for in the short term. And so, you know, I'm hopeful that we can move forward with a little bit of a different perspective that our future budgets are not necessarily going to focus on trying to make every department whole based on what they potentially have lost, but try and move forward and focus on what's important now and into the future, not what we had in the past.

Okay, um, so I'm comfortable with this idea that we move forward with these 5 bullet points and, and Work together with staff and with the residents on it. It sounds like everybody else is as well. That being said, rather than complete our goals at this point in time, we're going to spend some time to consider them and then work on the Google Doc. So with that said, I don't have anything else. Does staff Have anything else to say?

I, I promised Councilmember Pedersen that we would give him a preview of what we want to share with you as related to Hillcrest.

Okay.

And we got that information last night. And, Bryn, can I just have you pull up those, those documents? Obviously, we're not ready to go into them in detail, but we want you to see them in advance of Tuesday. And our conversation. I think we have 45 minutes on Tuesday to talk about this.

So, Jamie, if you're showing this to us now, can you send this to us so we can look at it prior to Tuesday? Yeah.

Okay, Brent, please go ahead.

And just want to make sure, are you seeing just the PDF here that I have up?

Yes.

Yes.

Great. So here on concept number 1, this is the one where you can see where we'd be keeping the school building as is. And just to kind of orient you here a little bit, here on the right is— you see a numbered list, and each of these numbers refers to a specific attribute onto the building, the overall property. Just maybe some highlights. We have different amounts of parking that's associated with each of the different concepts. Each of the concepts consider having a well A water well and some storm drainage or water drainage component to it. Each of them has consideration for several pickleball courts, nice playground amenities, including where we could, some natural playground amenities. All of them consider connection through pedestrians and those using their bikes from University Parkway at both kind of north-central and the northeast corners.

Bryn, one question I have for you on number 6. Is that an existing building and an existing well?

No.

No.

Right now in the south West area, our well number 1 is our oldest well and is reaching the end of its life. And so, the thought could be, well, that, for example, we could use some of those capital dollars to bring to help, you know, develop the site if we brought in some of that infrastructure.

So, as I've walked that property, it seems like there's an existing building where you have number 27 listed there?

The existing buildings are to the south, Mayor, right below 27, number 27.

Those—

okay, that's where they're at. Okay, that's fine.

And, and, and, Brent, could you point to where the tennis courts currently are?

Yeah, so right here where the parking kind of extends. In that southeast portion is where the existing tennis courts are, and there's— this is the property right underneath 11. Yep, that is right next to it.

Could you also— are any of those sketch courts, are those all pickleball courts or some of those tennis courts?

All of these on all of the concepts are just pickleball courts.

Thank you.

To maybe take one So, to take a step back, you know, we wanted these concept designs to establish a framework that can fit within, you know, space constraints and get an idea of what budget constraints might be. We wanted to take into account our Parks Master Plan and make sure we're kind of spreading, you know, different park amenities all around the city. We wanted to make sure that we were Well aware and review our outdoor recreation usage and demands that we're seeing there. And then, of course, I think I've either heard directly from a few of you or gotten some feedback indirectly from you and want to make sure we kind of incorporated that as well.

So I think—

Brent, a question for you. You've got 170 parking stalls. How many of those are dedicated to the building and how many of those are dedicated to the city for the park?

Yeah, our current standard for commercial-type buildings is about 3 stalls per 1,000 square feet. So the school is about 50,000 square feet. Now, that said, we didn't want the parking to take up— well, A, we didn't want the parking to take up all of the open space, and B, depending on how the building is used, there could be essentially aligning uses of the parking stalls that may not be in conflict.

Okay.

But, Mayor, you are keying into one of the big challenges of having this property operate as a park, while at the same time operating in some other— continuing to operate the building in some capacity. I'm not suggesting a particular user, but you can see that there's a lot of parking on this concept, and the reason being is we have to anticipate that there will be some level of shared use, but it will not be exclusive use in the day to the building, exclusive use after hours to the park. We've got to consider that there will be shared use during— of the entire property during the entire day. And that's why you have the parking that you have. Okay.

A couple of other highlights. So this one currently has the least amount of pickleball courts with 12. And it would be— it suggests to take advantage of the existing restroom and pavilion. One new concept that you'll see throughout is is the idea of a hammock park area that is increasing in popularity. There's also some kind of urban park features that are being recommended, and that includes everything from like a concrete table tennis or ping pong to gaming tables like for chess or permanent 9-square features or amenities on the site. We also wanted to have a gathering place, and here below would, would essentially have both an entrance and a place for people to gather. And number 21 here is a fire pit.

Would you be able to tell us how— what size is the park? I mean, how many acres that we have for this with the building? How much is going to be park? On Tuesday? That's fine.

The entire site is 9.8 acres, and we can get kind of a general idea as To what would be quote unquote park, what would be considered other uses?

Yeah, I mean, so high level, Dave, you can see that really half of it, so 4, 4.5 acres is more, you know, real park use. Obviously, if the, if the school is essentially all one level and it's 50,000 square feet, Plus this little kind of courtyard area, you're looking at acre, acre and a half. But then that doesn't take into account all of this extra parking that we've got to find space for as well. And again, we can go back and forth with these a little bit if there's additional questions, but just to kind of keep the preview going here on Concept number 2. Again, you can see right off, we, we still want to keep the ability to potentially tie into the retail area up in the northwest of the park property to create some additional connectivity and access. We're able to add in— I believe 4 more pickleball courts in this scenario. The other— if the building stays as is, you can see we're trying to essentially cram in a lot, and there's not a lot of just passive open space for just, you know, passive throwing a football or a baseball. And so just by taking out, just by taking out the oldest portions of the school and keeping that that was built in 2004, already that does a lot to open up and spread out these different features that I've already kind of summarized. But then, and then in addition to that, we probably have a little bit more space for playground, for a natural playground, and I'll show some pictures of some of these features that may be unfamiliar to you. And then we could still also use this portion of the 2004 portion of the school for indoor volleyball, indoor pickleball, even, you know, junior jazz practices and games during the winter months as well. So it could be incorporated into the recreational use of the park. And there's even some of these portions that could be kept, our existing classrooms and/or the library area. of the school, and so they could be used for other community-type uses, you know, whether it's a popular Lego class or, or, um, or maybe, uh, art class or things of that, uh, that type or nature as well. Um, this 3rd concept then This one shows the idea of without the building at all, and then kind of centralizes the pickleball courts. You can see that the parking demand is anticipated to be less in this scenario. We would be able to add a kind of a multi-sport court as well to the pickleball courts. It also allows us to add in another restroom and pavilion into the park as well. So, and again—

Do you have a cost estimate of options 1, 2, and 3, or A, B, and C? I don't know how you were Numbering or lettering them?

Yes, yep, and that's in this PDF that again I'll share with you, with the entire council. So these just kind of highlight some of those features that we were— that I was mentioning, whether it's a, you know, community fire pit. I failed to mention that one recommendation is to add little fitness stations around the walking trail that would go around the entire border of the site. These nature play features are very interaction intensive, and they, they kind of have a parkour aspect to them, if you're familiar with that term, where kids can kind of have to balance on it and jump from feature to feature. And yeah, it encourages very active play. Of course, talked about the tournament aspect of having so many pickleball courts together. We've talked about perhaps if we did that multi-use, multi-sport court, we could cover it still. almost like a giant pavilion, if you will, and then it can be used throughout the year or for, you know, a greater percentage of the year. And then, yeah, you can see kind of the permanent gaming tables for chess or table tennis. Another thing I failed to mention was this idea of these outdoor rooms. So if the building stayed or a portion of the building stayed, The idea came up that, you know, maybe we could pull out some of the use from the building outdoors and take advantage of, you know, the nature of the property. To— so that there's some flexibility and potential expansion, I guess, in that type of use. So, Both Landmark Design and Method Studio helped us come up with a detailed cost estimate that you can see here, and each one is associated with each concept. So in Concept 1, then, is with keeping the full building. And I'll just kind of quickly highlight here one of the reasons why One of the big cost factors here is that we did a structural review of the building, and it is not— it has not been seismically reinforced. There'd be a big cost to that. And then also making improvements inside so that— So if we had to update Kind of the appearance and/or walls or reorganize its layout, that would come at—

Oh yeah.

But other than that, it goes through, you know, the cost of trees and sprinkler and all these different features and amenities. Obviously, we've gone into this with really wanting to brainstorm and add ideas, but But, you know, when you dream big, it does have an effect on the overall cost. So the grand total for Concept 1 that kept the building was, or is, approximately $15 million.

Is that with land or without land?

That's just— yeah, without. That's just to develop it. just to improve it. Concept 2 then keeps just a portion of the school. It does have some money in here for— so the 2004 portion of the building wouldn't need to be seismically upgraded, but obviously if we took a portion of the building down, then we'd have to essentially create new walls that looked nice from the outside. So, it does include a little bit of money in for that. And then, of course, having more pickleball courts and I guess more space taken up for other park uses. It has all of that with their associated square footages and amounts, and that then total What was the first ones again? $15 million.

It was more to keep the building than to destroy part of it?

Yes, and again, it's because we would have to seismically retrofit the existing building.

Or the sections of the building that were not up to seismic code.

Yep, yep. Great, thank you.

So, but great question, Tom. Honestly, I was surprised with that too. But yes, that's where that cost mainly comes from. Then finally, Concept 3 then doesn't have the school building on there. Of course, Concept 2 and 3 take into account demolition costs. And then this Concept 3 does include you know, an additional feature in terms of that multi-sport court. But then that total for this comes in just under $10 million.

And the annual operating cost is obviously substantially less with no building.

Yeah, definitely different.

Yeah, I mean, it's not— it wouldn't necessarily be less. It would be different. We haven't done the work because obviously there's additional green space that would need to be maintained.

Yeah, but that's cheaper than heating and air conditioning and keeping up a building, I would— I've got to believe, on the back of a napkin.

Yes, agreed.

So, I'm happy to kind of go back to anything that you want to look at or discuss or ask questions or give feedback on. But that's kind of the quick run-through.

Brent?

Yeah.

Brent?

Please, Brent.

Why are there no tennis courts in any of the 3 layouts?

Primarily, it's because— Several years ago, we looked at adding new paint lines in our existing tennis courts to allow for people to come and use them for pickleball use. And it became a source of friction between the, you know, the tennis lovers versus the pickleball lovers. And then ultimately the pickleball people didn't like them. It wasn't as sort of true to the game. It was hard to get the height of the tent just right and the width and all of that. And so I think largely we've moved away from allowing our tennis courts to be used for pickleball courts, which then opens up the use of our existing tennis courts. And so we feel like based off of the demand currently for tennis and shifting the pickleball usage away from the tennis courts for pickleball courts specifically, that we're able to accommodate demand for both. And right now, the real demand and the real high usage is pickleball.

Thank you.

So, so, Bryn, the only one I see with new pavilions would be the Plan Number 3. It looks like the, the other 2 are just trying to keep that old pavilion, where 3, it looks like you've got 2 nice pavilions right by the pickleball courts. Is that— am I looking at that right?

Well, yes, except that you'll notice There's these little tiny pavilions that are put kind of around, like picnic table type, that are put around the site.

But you're keeping the existing pavilion and existing restrooms?

Yes.

And then adding to it?

Correct. Now, there could obviously be a review of of, you know, I guess upgrading or making sure that those existing facilities are freshened up as part of this whole process.

And on number 3, what does the playground look like?

So, really what we envision here is both that it would be similar to what we've been putting in recently in our other parks. Again, that encourages a lot of interaction and play value. We, of course, would want to make sure that some of it appealed to, you know, the 5-and-under kids versus, you know, kids of all ages. We wanted to keep in mind the value of shade structures over, over the playgrounds. But then again, In addition to that, this concept of a natural playground that you can kind of see a picture here. So it looks like wood, but it would really be some type of, you know, synthetic material, and then a lot of kind of ropes. And, and that's something that is essentially like a playground, but it's just I guess a little bit more non-traditional.

Okay, Brent, I'm assuming that those natural playgrounds, risk management is cool with that and that they've been used in other areas and there's not a lot of safety hazards or concerns there?

Absolutely, yeah. No, good.

I mean, I see some of those kids that do the parkour and they're just out and out crazy, but this would be for a younger A younger set.

These are designed absolutely with, with safety in mind and, you know, making sure there's fall zones and soft, soft landing underneath and that someone can't drop too far.

And I'm also concerned about the fire pit. A, I don't know how much demand there is for it, and B, I'm concerned about controlling activity there.

I think the fire pit is there simply as a representation. I mean, it could be, it could be an amphitheater-type setup with, you know, nothing in the middle. We don't have to have a fire pit there.

Thank you.

Is there a trail, a walking trail around the park?

Yeah, so every version has the walking trail that goes around.

Brian, tell me about the toddler features. Are they natural like those other playgrounds, or are they more like a small slide or a small climbing thing?

I mean, well, I would say, you know, keep in mind that this is concept, right? But what we've been doing in our other parks Because, I mean, Debbie, you know, we've gotten a lot of attention, a lot of demand recently to make sure that, if anything, where our playgrounds lean towards the 5 and under. And so we've been trying to do it, I think, about 60% of the area for kids that are younger. And then, yeah, then the other Third, for hopefully kids of all ages. So, you know, older sibling is, is helping younger sibling type thing. So I would imagine that that same kind of standard would apply.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, Brian, on number 3, I mean, on the walking park, I, I think, wouldn't you want to go over where the pump is and go all the way around the park to make it a big walking To the, to the left where the pump is, number 24 or 26.

That's a, that's a good point, Dave. I think that would be a relatively simple change.

Yeah, because then it would go all the way around the whole thing and you'd have a pretty good walk, and, and Tom would probably love walking there.

If you, if you see here though, this has essentially like 2 tracks, if you will. And so, um, technically Concept 3 does have a lot more walking paths. Um, but yes, that, you know, this could come out over here to the, uh, the northwest area too.

And it could just connect around and go all around the thing and still come into the two— the middle. But that looks good.

Sure.

Is there a need for a future water tank underneath this before we build it?

No.

For the next 100 years.

Exactly.

And all looks good, Brent. Thanks.

So, Brent, quick, quick question. A splash pad, have we looked at what that would cost to add to that, or is that already there and I just didn't see it?

So none of these concepts have a splash pad included in them. You know, this idea of a community fire pit, and again, it wouldn't have to be like logs or whatever, it could be a very controlled environment. But the thought was, you know, the purpose of a splash pad is to have, you know, a gathering place for people, and so, you know, the thought was something new with this fire pit concept. And it's something new and unique that costs a fraction of a splash pad. So when we put the splash pad into Palisade Park, just to install it, it was, I think, about $900,000, and I'm sure that's gone up. I would imagine that it would add at least $1 million, $1.1 million to add a splash pad in addition to this.

And it also cannibalizes some of our SERA revenue.

Correct. That's one of the other things I would point out is, in addition to operating our splash pad, we operate an indoor and an outdoor pool. And so we always are kind of cautious about not having one amenity, like Tom said, cannibalize another amenity.

And then I'll also say, we also had thoughts and ideas of we would rather add features to the Sierra outdoor pool, you know, maybe refurbish and add to the splash pad there, Maybe add in new. We've been getting a lot of feedback about our existing indoor pool, and maybe there's items in there that we could add. For example, you know, and again, just talking big here, right? But at the Provo pool, they just added this ninja course that drops down from the ceiling. into their pool. So, so again, all that to say that we thought that we could, rather than doing a whole additional splash pad that perhaps could cannibalize our existing facilities, we felt like maybe our money would be better spent improving in the future our existing pool facilities.

And the one other thing I'd add too is part of our tax increment financing incentive to University Place was for their Orchard Park, which has a splash pad in it as well. So just north of, of this park at University Place is a water feature facility.

That's right. And then, and that all speaks to, again, we wanted to make sure that we were incorporating maybe some new and unique concepts, and then also make sure we had enough space for, for what we were hearing the most demand on, which which was pickleball, the path, the playground systems.

I love the idea of a regional pickleball court. This area, this is superb. No secret that Terry and I would like C.

I think it's just the location is the perfect place to have it. I do like Jeff's idea, though, about a splash pad. I don't think it would— this is a free splash pad. This is not going to the Sierra and paying money. It's a whole different situation, different part of town. And when we're talking about the growth of our city, there is nothing like that in the south part of town. So what they have at University Place is a little pond where you can't throw your quarters into it.

That's 2 different— there is the pond with the fountains, and then outside the park there is the splash pad where there's water coming out of the ground and the kids run through it in their swimsuits.

Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Yeah, but, uh, but no quarters in the fountain was a huge oversight. My kids haven't had a wish come true in many years.

But, uh, but you know what, I'm excited.

So on the size of this park, Is one restroom big enough?

I mean, this, this Concept 3 does have 2 restrooms, so the existing and then—

Okay, that's good because existing, you wouldn't want, you wouldn't want to go in there.

If I could speak just— and I live in the Sharon neighborhood, and I know that many of you have connections to that neighborhood as well from growing up. Adding the, adding the pickleball component, as the majority, maybe you all already know, changed that park in a very significant way. And, and it does something more than I think any other amenity, including a splash pad, would do. And that it activates it from the morning until the evening, and the lights come on and they'll play till 10 PM, which is why, you know, Chief Giles reported this 50 to 60% drop in police calls. to that area. So I think that type of regional pickleball, like Tom and Terry and others have said, will in a very positive way change this area for the positive.

If, if I can also address your question a little bit too, Dave, on Concept 2, there's, there's a lot of restrooms inside that That portion of the building that would be kept. And so that would be— that would serve as the second restroom, if you will, in that particular concept too.

And on concept 3, so how many pickleball courts we have?

So this one had 12 or 16 to this number, 8, 10, 12, 14, plus we would have room to add pickleball inside the building. But this one is the 16.

Yeah, I mean, I like that. I like number 3 for sure.

So, Brent, I was at the Cedar Hills pickleball facility, and they have a similar court like that, 10. And there was a line of people wanting to play basketball there at night with lights on. I thought it was really neat. I don't know if we have anything like that in the city where we have nice cement courts and multi-use, but they were playing— people were playing basketball going sideways and up and back, you know, half court.

Well, but it's covered, then they could play in the winter too.

So, brrr.

Both Concept 3 and Concept 1 would speak to that of kind of multi-use. ability, either with a covered new facility or using the building and making sure that multiple sports could fit in there. Sorry, I got kids coming home here.

So we're past time. We'll send this to you so you can get a flavor for it before we bring Landmark in for our conversation on Tuesday, but we're pretty excited about what they've done. And I believe we have a number of really good options.

All right. Well, thank you. Appreciate it, Jamie and Bryn, and appreciate to the council for our retreat today. I think it's been productive and a lot of good things have been discussed.

So—

Mayor, Mayor, hats off to you and the staff. I, I kind of cringed at a 7-hour Zoom meeting. This has gone extremely well. Thank you very much for everyone who, who helped make that happen so nicely. Thank you.

Well, you bet. And hopefully the $35 of snacks helped a little.

So I have shared that Google Doc now with everybody, so it's all in your work email. You should be able to go in and edit it.

Mayor, I have a comment. Just a lot of good positive feedback on the Christmas lights. again. I think it was awesome, and I think we just need to keep it moving. So we have compliments big time on that. So appreciate it, Jamie and the team.

Next year we're just gonna paint them so we'll be more, uh, like our friend who painted his lawn. We'll be, uh, more comfortable.

They're already LED, so there's not much more we can do.

So, you know, Kevin Shirtliff's in my neighborhood, and his lawn was horrendous.

It was terrible.

This is being recorded, David. Be careful.

Yeah, we'll leave that comment out.

So, okay, it wasn't, it wasn't good.

It didn't look like grass.

So, again, thank you to the council and to staff and everyone for the retreat today. And we're 13 minutes over, so we'll go ahead and adjourn.

Just to give you a perspective, the crime rate overall in Utah is 235.6 and in the U.S., 379. So you guys are doing quite well. Property crime. Obviously, property crime more prevalent in, in all jurisdictions, and the same is consistent with Orem. Property crime consists of arson, burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft. Crime numbers for 2019 up modestly, modestly from 2018 at 1,980. The biggest jump occurring in motor vehicle theft. Again, 2020 numbers haven't been posted yet. Comparatively speaking, Orem's crime rate, 1,970 per 100,000. Utah overall is 2,169, and the U.S. overall is 2,109. So again, very low crime rate. Moving on to the organizational data review. Next couple of slides, we'll look at— we use the Benchmark City Survey. In 1997, 30— about 30 police chiefs from across the country came together and created a measurement tool used by agencies all across the country to ensure police departments are providing the best possible service within their respective communities. It's basically a survey of various demographic and data points that we, that Citygate finds useful. Although Provo PD is not a member of the Benchmark City Survey, we did put some Provo numbers up there just because as we interviewed Members of the command staff, it became apparent that there's a lot of comparison being done by Orem to Provo. So we thought that would be useful to you. Obviously, you see the population numbers, the number of sworn officers, and then you have the per capita rate of officers per 1,000 and residents per officer. And you can see where you compare with the benchmark averages and with the Provo Police Department.

Mayor, can we ask questions as we go? I'm sorry. This is—

go ahead, Tom.

I see the average per number of residents, but not the number of officers per crime. And it seems like there we would be— it would be more in our favor, it would seem.

The question is, do we have the average number of officers per crime? Was that the question?

Yeah, that's correct. We're lower per 1,000 residents, but we're not per crime, I would guess.

Okay. Yeah, I don't have that data offhand. So if I could move on. This is the command structure comparison. Basically what we're looking at here is the number of sworn and how it ranks in terms of the top heaviness of the organization. How many command staff versus mid-level managers versus frontline or first-line supervisors and officers. One item of note here in terms of frontline supervisors, you'll notice is a little bit high, although it's a fairly small number. We do have some commensurate recommendations later on for some minor changes there. So this slide takes a look at your turnover over the past several years. We got this information from OREM's human resource manager. Who was very cooperative, and it gives a good overview of the recent trends in terms of turnover. As you can see, since 2000, the sworn staff has been almost entirely turned over. Of course, what that means is that you have very low experience levels at times on patrol, and of course, this also reduces the experience pool for selection to other specialized assignments like detectives, etc. Now, it's under— it's our understanding that concurrent with our assessment, there was a pay and compensation study that occurred and has resulted in changes to the pay structure, which we feel will have a positive impact on the turnover rate. So organizationally, the key findings— while we assessed that there was a 2018 strategic plan, we reviewed that strategic plan. However, it doesn't appear that it's been fully implemented. Given the leadership change in the organization with the selection of Chief Adams, we feel it's a perfect opportunity to review, update, and fully implement the agency strategic plan. Okay, moving on, we'll now look at patrol and demands for service. So here you can see the trend line for CAD incident calls since 2017, which is the dataset that we looked at. And when I say CAD incident calls, that's real. There's really 2 types of CAD incidents. There's public-generated calls for service, i.e., somebody calls 911, and then there are officer-initiated activities, i.e., an officer does proactive policing, makes a car stop. Does a business check, stops a pedestrian for some sort of enforcement action. So when we say all calls, distinct CAD incident calls, that's both of these statistics combined. I'm going to slow it down a little bit just to make sure that you all can absorb this. There's a lot of data in this. This is a temporal, or we call a heat map, which it plots all the public-generated calls for service, as I was mentioning in the previous slide. So this is all the 911 or calls into the communication center for the 4-year time period by day of the week and hour of the day. So the hotter or more red the box is, the more calls for service were experienced.

So it appears that that's mostly during the working hours of the population.

From mid-morning to mid-evening, yes, where you see that red area, it's actually most intense. Can you see my cursor?

Uh-huh.

Yeah, so this would be the, the, the critical areas. If you look at the totals on the side, it would appear that the 4 o'clock hour 1600 obviously is using military time. 4 o'clock hour has the most call data. And then of course, it appears that Friday, Saturday, this area, Thursday, Friday have the most concentration of calls.

Yeah, it's just interesting. Saturday does not have as high a concentration of calls.

It is.

This is— yes, it is interesting. And this, this is what the data shows us now. Uh, yes, that would be correct.

Sunday, I, I can understand. Saturday, I would have thought it would have been higher.

Okay, now this is— again, I'm going to take a deep breath. In order to analyze the staffing levels, we took the 2019 as the baseline year. to eliminate any anomalies associated with 2020 and COVID-19. So what you see here in the temporal map on the left are the public-generated calls for service plus the officer-initiated incidents. So that's all calls plotted by hour of the day and then day of the week, and then they're annualized over the 52-week period. So for example, if you look at Monday, At 1300, which is 1:00 PM for you non-military or police time folks, you see that they average 3.6 hours of committed time. So what that means is over the course of the year, Mondays at 1:00, they're generally speaking about— it requires about 3.6 hour time, work unit time. So hours of a, of a police officer's time to, to handle calls for service. Now, again, this is both public-generated calls for service and officer-initiated. So then we applied that to both the minimum and full staffing levels and the minimum staffing levels as told to us by the department, which is 6 officers, which includes the sergeant. And that results in a percentage of committed time to available officer time, which is reflected in the table on the right. So if the percentage of committed time reaches 50%, we put a yellow triangle up as a warning, and if the committed time reaches 60% threshold, we put a red diamond. Now, going back to that same date and time, if you want, Monday at 1 o'clock, which is average of 3.6 hours of committed time, if you look over to this table here, based on a minimum staffing of 6, that would mean that they would be 60% committed. And, and at that point, you really start to reach a saturation point. So as you can see, we identified the areas where there's the highest concentration or closest to the committed time. One factor in here that I want to mention that's that's not calculated because there's no way to track this in CAD. And it's what we refer to as administrative time. And this is time that's not captured in the— and when I say CAD, I'm talking about the computer-aided dispatch system. And this is just as an example. When officers write reports, typically they're still available for calls for service. That's not captured in CAD. So that's administrative time. Time spent in court is not always reflected in CAD. There are various activities that, that we know that a police officer is engaged in, whether it's roll call briefing, whether it's court time, whether it's report writing, that, that take up their time where they're not available, but it's not reflected here. And so that would be on top of this 60% or 55%. So I just want to make sure that that's clear.

So do we have any background as to why 10:00 AM on Monday, it's higher, 1:00, and then 5:00?

OK, so 10:00 AM Monday.

Yeah, you're—

Right here.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah, keep in mind that's an average over 52 weeks. So you would have to, you know, we'd have to do a deeper dive, you know, to ascertain, you know, what the calls for service. I can say that it's pretty typical. There's, you know, during the business day, Mondays, everybody's back to work, that sort of thing. But we'd have to do a deeper dive to really unpack that number.

Yeah, I mean, it's just interesting how, Monday is so much higher than Thursday. So, right.

This is Stuart. Also, some of those calls are to support fire and EMS events. So you're seeing just the police metric, but it could well be a hybrid call, and that could be a traffic accident with an ambulance and fire truck, and police counts it as a call, and you'll see it in the fire slide, fire counts it as a call. So they're not always pure law enforcement activities in some of those counts. And we find across many communities, especially on the fire and EMS side, while it's clustered, it's also random. There's really never one targetable reason. It's just bad luck. Lightning strikes tend to strike more on Monday morning than Tuesday morning by a small mathematical difference. If we find a business, some kind of economic activity driving calls for service, then we would immediately go after that. For example, in an urban metro community, a hotspot for calls for service would be a transit rail station with a homeless camp on the sidewalk next door. So in other words, a tremendous number of people coming and going, plus an encampment of outdoor living will generate many more police and fire calls than, you know, 10 blocks the other direction at different times of the day. So it is a good question. We didn't find anything of note other than just the normal types of calls tend to happen a bit more frequently at those hours.

Okay.

So this slide here is the— it's the same analysis, and this is overlaid on A full staffing complement, a full staffing meaning 8 officers, which is probably pretty rare as it is in most police departments. And so our summary, essentially with the 6 units or the minimum staffing, time reaches 50 to 60% at peak hours for all calls. Committed time is significantly below 50% at all other times. So now we're going to take a look at patrol's response times. Quick comment about methodology, because we understand that unlike our firefighter brethren, not every police call is an emergency call. So we narrowed our response time analysis to those calls that we felt were most likely to require an emergency response. And those calls amounted to 19 nature codes. And we synchronized this with the department and came to an agreement on what those 19 codes were. And the detailed analysis of those 19 incidents are logged in the final report for your review later. But And then again, this is over the course of the full date spectrum, 2017 to 2020. We looked at 4,822 calls, and we used the fractal measure as opposed to the average response time. You may be more familiar with the average response time. We use the fractal response time, and as we get into the details, I'll explain More what I mean by that, and so really this response time chart is composed of two parts. You have the ring to queue time, which is calculated from when dispatch picks up the phone, whether it's a 911 call or a call into the non-emergency line, until such time that a dispatch or till the dispatcher. dispatches a police officer. And we refer to that as call handling time or ring-to-queue time. And then the second part of the time is the time it takes once the officer receives the, either the radio transmission or otherwise dispatched to the call until his driving, his or her driving time to the actual arrival on the scene. So it's 2 separate calculations. Dispatch has a piece of it, and then of course patrol has, has a piece of it. So ideally you want both of those times as short as possible. Now, when we talk about the fractal response or the fractal measure, and I'll go to the next slide and illustrate that a little better, so. And this, and this graph, it shows the total response time and, and as, as measured against the 90th percentile. And so stated narratively, when we say that the total response time is in the fractile measurement is 11.5, that means Orem residents can expect a response time of 11.5 minutes or less 90% of the time. And then for the same measurement, you see I put in there the average response times, 7.1 to 8.4, which is something that folks might be more familiar with. We, Citygate, likes to use the fractal response. We feel it's a more accurate measure. And so that's— but we did put the average in there so you have an understanding of the difference. And there will be a recommendation at the end of this section with regard to response times. But as an aside, we have found that the response times are not— for OREM response times are not outside of what we have seen in other studies. So just a key review. I had hit the highlights in terms of some of the data points, but then our patrol key findings and recommendations based on our interviews and the data is patrol is obviously a— supervision is critical. It's the touchpoint of the organization. It's where really the rubber meets the road, figuratively and literally. Where the organization is in contact with the community. Supervision is critical, particularly after hours, you know, when the chief and command staff are not on duty. I won't read every single one of those, but these are all enumerated in the, in the report. The traffic unit has been disbanded due to staffing. And as I mentioned before, with regard to the response time, there's no established reasonable response time goals. And that's something that in our recommendations we're going to ask the council to take a look at, working with the department to come up with that. So we'd recommended that, that the department increase management on patrol by redeploying one of the units from the support services to the patrol division. To his credit, Chief Adams, when he came on board, he had identified that prior to us even recommending that at the mid-project review, and it's my understanding that that's already implemented. So that's, that's a plus for the organization. And then again, you can see the, the rest of the recommendations, including at the bottom there to establish a reasonable response time goal, and that's something that, that we would recommend.

So Gary, a question for you. When you started your presentation, you mentioned that The strategic plan of the city has not been fully implemented. Is that in relationship to compensation or other items, and what are they?

So, so not this, not the city strategic plan, the, the department's strategic plan.

Right, sorry, that's what I meant.

Yeah, not with regard to pay and benefits. There's not, there's not a lot of— it's mostly goals and objectives for the organization. I could pull it, like, it's I could pull it up here. As we went through and interviewed the command staff and supervisors, I made several inquiries as to, hey, where are you at in terms of the goals and objectives that are enumerated in the department's strategic plan? And the sense I got was that the strategic plan wasn't really being fully inculcated into the daily operation. That's where that—

Right.

That's where that recommendation comes from. And that's— and really, that's some low-hanging fruit. I reviewed the strategic plan. We found it to be quite salient. And some of the— and it appeared that it was published in— well, it says 2018. So I'm sure that it was early in 2018. It appears that several of the goals and objectives that are enumerated in the plan have been implemented, and that's good. Just maybe it just kind of fell by the wayside in terms of priorities. And, you know, who could really blame an organization, especially if you consider that we started this process at the beginning of probably one of the craziest years that we've seen in recent history of 2020. So May not have been very surprising.

And you had mentioned, and I think Chief Adams as well, that that plan is now being implemented and going forward.

Well, I would let the chief comment on that. I know that's our recommendation.

Chief, what are your thoughts on that? I think you might be on mute.

Yeah, he's—

yeah, as far as how far into the 2018 plan are we implemented?

Uh, sure, how's that going?

Uh, it's going good. I mean, we're just today, even in, in a budget meeting, we, we checked off a big box on that with some equipment that we're gonna be able to acquire in this next budget year and so forth. So we're well on our way. Some of our staffing issues and obviously COVID have been setbacks the last 2 years, but we feel like the momentum is definitely rolling in the right direction at this point.

Okay, good.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you.

So we reviewed investigations and there are some caseload data slides, or I'm sorry, caseload data tables that are contained within the report. But for purposes of today's briefing, I will just go over the key findings and recommendations. General Investigations uses sergeants as detectives. Best I can tell that this, this is a legacy issue that stems from the back in the days when the police and fire were a public safety department and sergeants were assigned as detectives. So we recommend— it's our recommendation in the next slide that over time and as staffing is available, that you transition those supervisor— those sergeants into supervisory positions. And, and, and transition those to detectives, just detective police officers. Also, we looked at the Neighborhood Preservation Unit and the Mental Health Unit, both performing what we would refer to as specific problem-oriented type policing. It's my understanding that I— that the Mental Health Unit was an offshoot of the Neighborhood Preservation Unit in the first place. At the time we did our assessment, there was one supervisor and one officer, and then I think there was potentially a part-time and maybe an intern civilian. So we recommend that the organization take a look at that and combine. I think one supervisor could probably manage that mission, could probably supervise that mission. So we would suggest that that they, they look at merging those 2 units. And then the Victim Assistance Program, at the time we interviewed, it was reporting to the Mental Health Unit. I think that's since changed. And let me just click over to the recommendations. So convert the extra sergeants to detectives through attrition or redeploy as caseload allows. Consider Combining the mission neighborhood preservation, that frees up a sergeant to reestablish the traffic unit, which was one of the patrol recommendations. And then the civilian or the victims advocate unit consists of 3 civilian full-time civilian positions. It's supervised typically by a sworn sergeant, either— I guess now it's the investigation sergeant. One of our recommendations was to realign the Victims Assistance Unit. The organ— or the, the chief's already done that. We support that. We would suggest in our recommendation that you consider in the long term converting one of those civilian advocates to a supervisory advocate position and have them report directly to the investigations lieutenant. But they have taken steps to to align the, the unit better than when we first started the process, and we support that. Okay, my partner Steve was the support services consultant. I'm going to walk through his slides. The support services division, which includes communications, records, property and evidence, as well as training, professional standards, and use of force. There are a lot of data slides or— there are a lot of data tables that are contained in the report. We're gonna hit just a couple of the highlights for the purposes of this briefing. And some of the final report, as I said, has some detailed measures and more in-depth statistical data that you can look at later at your leisure. So dispatch is probably aside from— and is the largest work unit in the support services. The key takeaway here is that dispatch at times is covering 4 priority channels with 3 dispatchers. Although not reflected on this slide, we looked at overtime and found it to be relatively high based on the current staffing levels. And I would just say that having difficulty filling dispatch positions probably is not unique in Utah County or across the state. It's like that everywhere. It's the same here and in the agency that I came from and that Steve came from. It's a common problem. Very high-stress, critical dispatch position. So, but something to keep an eye on. We feel that this is a high point that we wanted to emphasize based on our review of the professional standards. That's the Internal Affairs citizen complaint. It appears that the agency is doing a good job Of holding employees accountable, the department recently updated its website to include access to the complaint process. We want to commend them for that. That's a big deal. So use of force in the organization, use of force relatively low. However, at times there may be multiple applications of force in one incident. So the The numbers might look lower than in actuality, but overall, good job. And in recent history, there's only been one incident that resulted in litigation. And I'm sorry, I stuttered there because my second screen is going to sleep.

So—

Did you guys lose the feed?

No, we're good.

Okay, let's just— it's just my monitor then. Okay, great. Okay, so, uh, support services key findings and recommendations. Okay, I'm, I'm having some technical problems. My computer's going out here. Come on. There we go. So key findings, the communication center—

We don't have your screen, we just have your picture.

Uh-oh. All right, hold on, give me one second here. I apologize.

Gary, if you want, I've got it up. I can share it. What slide number had you paused on?

We're at the—

Use of force?

Support services findings and recommendations. Yeah, I don't know what's going on.

Apologize for that.

No, you're fine.

Okay, you should have it up. Do you, Mayor?

Yes, that looks good. Thank you.

Okay, so you're right, Gary, your key findings—

that should be—

it should be slide 33, right, Stu?

It's up.

Okay, so here's the support services key findings after a little hitch in the giddyup. One item to note here, so school resource sergeant is currently responsible for being the actual school resource officer at a high school. We recommend that that be taken over by a police officer so that the school resource officer— or I'm sorry, the school resource sergeant would then have primary responsibility for supervising the entire unit. Next slide, please. Are we there?

Yes.

Okay. The crime analyst, the department has no onsite crime analyst. We had, there were some challenges with regard to obtaining and working with the CAD data. And we strongly feel that the a well-positioned crime analyst in the organization would benefit the organization in terms of alleviating those data issues. Increasingly, we're in an evidence-based environment. Policing is moving more and more to data-driven policing, and so that would be very consistent with that finding. Next slide, please.

Change.

Okay.

Okay, so here are the, the balance of the support services key findings, and then we'll transition to recommendations which support the, uh, Those findings. Basically, try to fill all your vacant positions in dispatch. Add a school resource officer as the budget allows. Can really want to emphasize the on-site data analyst for for data support management analyst, and then there's some training slide training. recommendations. Next slide, please.

You're up.

Okay. And this is the balance of the support services. A lot of training, a lot of areas of opportunities for improvement in records management and training. And I think that is pretty much it. The next 2 slides are a suggested priority of the recommendations, and the total is— I think there are 30. And so, yeah, next slide, and then go to the last slide, discussion. And that's it.

Okay.

Well, apologize for the little disruption there towards the end. I don't know exactly what happened.

Sure. So Chief, just wanted to hear your comments on the items they brought up and then how you would address those.

Which one specifically?

All of them?

Sure.

Well, we've, uh, some of our in-progress implementations, some of them we're going to kind of with the strategic plan, uh, we're going to tweak the strategic plan. And, you know, one of the big challenges we have right now is, is with our youth and experience with, uh, the majority of our department is having the right pieces to fill in with all of those. But as far as it being a blueprint overall, We're thrilled with these recommendations.

We—

there are things that we kind of see presently and certainly in the future coming up that we need to address to, you know, as far as not just dealing with the department in 2021, but we need to be keeping in mind what's the department going to be like in 2025, 2030, and beyond any of us. So we're trying to really look at it with those, the long-term strategies and stuff that they provided us with.

Sure. One thing I noticed is, as we know that we have a young staff, it seemed like training was an area that we need to implement more of and beef up. What are your thoughts there?

Absolutely. That career development, that officer development. professional development is key now more than ever. And we've really, we've created a focus. We're actually in the process of creating a curriculum, if you will, for officers as they come in that somewhat mirrors the pay structure that we have. So that from the time they get here, they can look at, hey, these are the classes, courses, training certifications, and so forth that If I want to do different things in my career, this is what's going to be expected of me and my training and stuff, so that we're deliberately training towards a purpose versus just fulfilling training requirements in a miscellaneous, and then we're not wasting time and money on training that only meets the definition of training. It's not career development.

Sure. Okay.

Thank you, Debbie. Lorraine's got a question.

Yeah, one of the recommendations was to take an officer out of the mental health and neighborhood preservation and put them on traffic. My concern is that mental health is, you know, part of many of these calls, and I'd almost like to see more officers with mental health training. Do you have an opinion on that recommendation, or do we need traffic and more mental?

I think it's going to be a two— sorry, I'm plugging in. My battery was about ready to die. I forgot to plug it in before we started. So that's a twofold. They both need attention. Yes, we do feel we've got some good options that we're looking at with the mental health piece. All of our officers have a pretty substantial baseline training that they have. Legislature just mandated that we increase that even more, which we anticipate doing in addition to the training we've already been doing. And then there's a lot of opportunity we see bringing in more civilian support to mental health than officers themselves, as probably the best solution long-term to this, more, uh, bringing more resources that way. But what we've done so far with what we have has been fantastic as far as our, our recidivism, um, frequent flyers, if you will, as far as people needing to, uh, not getting things remedied has gone down significantly. We're tracking these people, we're in touch with them, and our officers now have better information about individuals before they go. to deal with a certain person that I think has really been beneficial in their, in their decision-making about what to do with people in a crisis.

And if I could just add one comment, and thank you for that, Chief. To clarify too, the recommendation is not to reduce the number of officers operating in the mental health, but to merge the missions of the 2 units. So So that you could free up a supervisor, a sergeant, to move into traffic.

Thank you for your comments, Chief. Appreciate it. Appreciate what you're doing. Anybody, anybody from the council have any questions or comments?

Mayor, this is Terry.

I have one comment. Just looking at the 3 guys sitting there, I'm glad I'm on your team. These look like 3 pretty tough guys sitting there with you, Chief, or with the 2 guys next to you.

So thanks for—

thanks for that.

We get to be on your team.

Yeah, there's actually 4 of us.

We've got one hidden off camera.

Okay. Well, he might be the scariest looking out of the 4.

Thanks, Chief.

All right, well, thank you, Gary. Let's go ahead and move on to Stuart then on the fire side.

Very good. I'll bring up my PowerPoint. So in reviewing fire and EMS, while you listen to our findings and recommendations, Overall, very pleased with the department, your personnel, their values, their commitment to customer service. And consider what I'm about to say as a best practices tune-up. Any organization can get, can get stronger and better. Having said that, the other capstone headline is you have an organization headquarters team that is stretched very thin. And as many of you know, you once had a public safety department. And when you look at both studies' recommendations on headquarters and support services personnel, what you did when you separated the two back to be independent agencies, some of that shared staffing at, at the support services level was stretched thinner because it was broken in half. It's no longer working fractional time for different things. So you're in this natural regrowth period of two independent agencies to better serve a stronger a growing, thriving community. So it's not a criticism, it just is over the decade you had one, you split to 2, and now we're finding some needs improvements in support, training, staffing, et cetera. And you'll see, I'll also specifically talk about location of the next fire station. But frame the fire and EMS conversation in this context. In the United States, there are no mandatory federal or state regulations directing the level of fire service staffing, response times, or outcome. In America, this is a local choice issue. Having said that, you thus have the level of fire services that you can afford that may not always be what a community wants. And part of what we do is doing a risk assessment and talk about outcomes and council policies, because if, if a policy taken to the extreme in a rural mountainous area would be the building of origin burns down but doesn't start a forest fire. That's an articulated outcome. If an urban OREM, a bedroom fire in a detached residence, hopefully we would save part of the residence, rescue people trapped, and the fire wouldn't spread to the adjoining home. That's the definition of an outcome. And once you talk through with your chief the desired outcomes, We back-calculate the people and the staffing to deliver that desired level of customer service. So designing fire and ambulance service isn't about response time. It's about the spacing of people across the geography to deliver timely customer service for different types of emergencies. Same thing in law enforcement. I have to have enough beat cops spread across the dirt to handle high-priority, life-threatening calls. So in fire services, remember this, there's 2 theories— theorems. One is the speed of the attack, and the speed is that single neighborhood-based fire crew to go handle and completely minimize modest events. The weight of the attack is if I spread my stations too far apart, I can't cluster crews together quickly enough to attack a really serious fire. multi-patient rescue, hazmat spill. In other words, the caboose gets there too long after the locomotives already encountered the problem. So we have this constructive tension between every neighborhood wanting something fairly quick, but if they're so far apart, they can't help each other when I need everyone to arrive. When you set fire service level goals, we talk about many things: the rapidity of growth in building fires, EMS survivability, When the brain is no longer being perfused either by breathing or lack of circulation. Every community likes to suppress outdoor fires before they spread to buildings and wildland areas. And said with affection, your goal is to keep small fires small. You could field only one fire crew and one fire station, but then you'd have frequent large catastrophic fires. You want to give people life-saving advanced paramedicine treatment. Some people will not survive at the time 911 is called. Other people will have their quality of life significantly enhanced by receiving timely paramedic care and getting to the right hospital in the right timeframe. We also suggest to our clients that a council policy goal try to provide that speed or equal adequate response to all similar risk and population neighborhoods and arm While you're diverse in a suburban city sense, you're really mostly housing, housing stock and businesses supporting housing stock. If you were a major metro downtown area, you would want to deliver a different weight of attack to higher-risk events and buildings and manufacturing properties than you would out in a suburban set of homes fronting a golf course with very large lots. You know, different densities, different types of risks. to be considered. We look at these main hazards in Orem, your building fires, vegetation, medical emergencies, hazardous materials, and technical rescue. We then look at impact severity factors. So we looked at, well, what if Orem, if you had critical facilities fail, if you required large firefighting water flows on major building fires, what are your population, your demographics, your national resources? So there's a whole risk assessment chapter in the study. And summarized by fire station zone, we grade risk types across the 5 categories from low to high, and EMS is high in every fire station area just because of the high quantity of calls. You go to EMS calls every hour of every day of the week of a year. You have different levels of fire exposure in a couple of the station areas. So Station 5, when you look at the street network, is lower zoning density. Fewer people in and around the northern station, so you have fewer calls for service. And then hazardous materials and technical rescues, either moderate or too low, depending on where you're at in the community. This is a pretty typical risk categorization assessment of a suburban American community west of the Mississippi. So you're right down the middle, normal in something like this. Let's talk about your minimum daily staffing plan post-separation as a public safety department. You staff 4 people per fire station, 2 on a fire truck, 2 on an ambulance. Every fire station has either an engine or a ladder truck engine called a quint. Every fire station has an ambulance crew. That's 4 people. However, when high-volume ambulance transportation events are occurring, what you really have is a 2-person crew, if at all, Because the 2-person crew could also be committed to the EMS event. Under best practices and safety standards, if you have a serious house fire, it's going to take 100% of the on-duty force of 17 personnel. But if half or a third of those personnel are running ambulance calls when the house fire breaks out, you're short-staffing. So another way to address this problem Is most American suburban communities that are of urban nature and tax base staff 3 person per fire truck. The heavy metropolitan areas staff 4 people per fire truck. So you're running a hybrid system of 2 plus 2 and hoping that enough firefighters are available if when a serious fire breaks out. It served you well for years. We're going to recommend later in the presentation adding another 2 people on duty that can do high-volume EMS during the daytime, but beef up your firefighting staffing at nighttime when most serious, if not deadly, fires occur in the United States. Let's look at service demands. A number of incidents by year— blue is EMS, fire, and other types, special service, hazmat, tech rescue— are relatively small. EMS is frankly fairly stable year over year. We're not showing you 2020 for COVID, where everyone's numbers were down pretty much across the board in the United States. Your number of incidents by stations, pretty proportional. You look at zoning and population density in 3 of the 4 fire station areas, and again, the northern station just doesn't have quite the people, and people per square mile drive emergency medical demand. More people, more EMS demand, and that's reflected in this bar graph. If you look at incidents by hour of the day, this is midnight on the left to midnight again on the right over 3 years. Even though most of us, you on the call, are sleeping after midnight, the fire department is still running ambulance calls 24/7, 365. And sometimes we'll have clients say, well, I'm in a recession, I need a budget cut. Why do I have firefighters on duty 24 hours a day? Because you still have calls before dawn. Don't have as many calls, not as many EMS events. So, so the difficulty for council and financing fire services is to have a fire station security blanket spread across the geography 24/7.

That's expensive.

And if you look at it on a cost-per-call basis, you'd only want to staff during the daytime. But then how do you tell somebody in the evening, you don't get a fast first responder if your house catches on fire at 2:00 AM? So there's that— there is that constructive tension, and I just discuss it with all my clients head-on. You've got a 24-hour-a-day demand, but the demand curve is very different. I'm going to come back to that on ambulance staffing in a minute. A few minutes. Next, we look at the rate in fire and EMS of simultaneous incidents. This is like Chief Elliott's unit hour utilization on, well, how many minutes per hour are consumed by police officers, and do you have enough police officers per hour to handle the 911 call volume? Not per day, not per day average, but at 11 on Monday, Do you have enough police officers on duty? Because you've got 4 or 5 calls running at once. Fire's the same way. Now, in Orem, with 4 staffed stations, you have 2 calls open at once 28% of the time. So lightning strikes, when one call hits, 28% of the time another call is going to occur within the time frame the first call was already running. The good news with 4 stations is You only have 3 calls going 4% of the time. But let's come back to 28% of the time midday, the high demand curve I showed you. You could have 2 to 3 fire stations all running EMS calls, and then what you have left for immediate fire response is one 4-person team on 2 units. And that's where this EMS can erode at certain hours of the day. Your capacity for firefighting and technical rescue. Do you have mutual aid with your partnering cities? Yes. Can the mutual aid get there in time? Sometimes. Sometimes your mutual aid partner is also busy at 3 in the afternoon. So the cavalry isn't always waiting for just your call. They're running their own calls. If you look at simultaneous by station area, it's a little higher in Station 1's area, but really your 3 populations clusters in Orem have about the same experience rate for, for 2 incidents occurring at once. Now, what this means for response time is Station 1 gets busy with an incident. Station 1 has another incident. Now Station 2 has to cross its district and maybe all of Station 1's district to get to the next call. So that means that second call's got a longer response time because somebody's coming. From a distance. Then if Station 3 or 5 break an incident, even as those other 2 are closing down and the units are available, now I have 2 units out of position, one of which has to get back to Station 3 or Station 5. And you'll see that happening in your travel time data when I get there in a moment. Let's talk about— this is the same heat map of crew load per hour. The engines are on the left, the 2 ladder quints are on the right, and I put the arrow there to say let's look at workload per hour on a 365-day basis. 3 PM in the afternoon is probably a busy point for Engine 32, a little less so for the other engine. The ladders are also a little less busy at that hour, about the the same. But remember, I only have 4 people on duty. So that's 2 people. And typically the engine goes on most serious EMS calls with the ambulance. So now if I shift to 3 in the afternoon on the ambulances, the ambulance crew is busy 11% of 3 to 4 PM averaged over the year. So if I add those 2 numbers together, my Station 1 crews are committed 19% of the time in the 3 o'clock hour. So back to saturation of crew availability. Stu, what's the upper limit? Well, the upper limit's 30%. If, if a fire crew is committed 30% of every hour, hour after hour, they're not getting decontaminated between calls. They're not fueling. They're not feeding. They're not getting a restroom break. Just the way the math works. So our upper threshold to add more units would be when you have units above 30% hour after hour for 6, 7, 8 hours running, and that happens in American communities. So you're not busy enough per hour to add units. You do have a slight simultaneous problem and a travel time geography problem. So let's look at response performance times. To date, ORM has not adopted city or department goals. I think part of that was just the public safety era. You didn't really talk about fire response and ambulance times and what goals should be. National published best practices are dispatching from 911, saying hello to getting the crew notified should take no longer than 90 seconds, 90% of the time. Crew turnout to hear the alarm, put on the proper mandated by OSHA protective clothing, and get wheels rolling should take no longer than 2 minutes, 90% of the time. So before wheels turn, 2 minutes and 30 seconds are off on an urgent clock. Travel time best practice recommendation is 4 minutes for a single unit and up to 8 minutes driving time if everybody has to come to the building fire. So if you add those together, that means total response time for a single unit to a 1-patient serious EMS event should be no more than 7 minutes and 30 seconds from 911 saying hello Orem Police, what's your problem? To upwards of 11:30, 12 minutes for every unit to get to one location on a serious building fire. So how does Orem stack up to national best practice goals for aggressive positive outcomes in building fires and life-threatening medical events? Your dispatch progress, as is on the police side, is slow. You know, 90% of your just fire and EMS events, not putting Mr. Smith back in bed, not going to a 5-gallon pail of spilled diesel fuel. These are fire and medical emergencies, red lights and sirens. Dispatch takes upwards of 2 minutes and 44 seconds to get the call out the door. The crew turnout times are not being monitored, trained, and politely enforced. Your 90th percentile crew turnout is 3:27. It's worse during sleeping hours and better during, obviously, high noontime. Some departments end up adopting And the chief and I have discussed this, a split standard for waking versus sleeping hours, but there's improvement there. But here's the issue for Orem that there is no easy fix for. Your 90th percentile travel time is 7 minutes and 44 seconds. You're knocking on the door of being double the 4-minute goal. And the cumulative damage of all of those numbers running long is the first unit arrival times are approaching 12 minutes to 90% of the fire and EMS emergencies. So now let's talk about how many calls per minute are answered. And okay, we're a little slow getting to 90% of the calls. How do we do on something less than 90%? So this bar chart shows with the black line there at 4 minutes, you are getting to calls in 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 4 minutes. You're getting to a little over half. But that long right side of the graph says you just have a lot of calls either too far from a fire station Or the closest fire station's busy and the second or third due fire station has to cover the call. And there's just enough of that happening with simultaneous traffic and road network design. You've got a lot of calls past the average. And this is why in America, especially on fire, EMS, and police, we like to say you can't look at average. Because average doesn't tell you how many calls are 30 seconds past the average. Or 5 or 10 minutes past the average. But this distribution curve starts to tell you where middle is and how much to the right side of middle. And then the design question for, for us and your chief is, what can I do about it? And we have one solution. Call to arrival. This is, this is everything, all 3 segments, 911, hello to on scene, 7 minutes and 30 seconds. Again, you're closer to 55-60%. Effectiveness versus 90, a lot of calls slower to the right. So let's look at geography and where's that happening on the dirt. This 2-color map shows the driving time from each fire station, assuming the crews in quarters. It's a very precise model that actually virtually drives the road network to real fire truck speeds. The green is what you cover without traffic congestion. The dark— I'll call it orange umber color depending on your monitor and your color vision— the dark color is the reduced reach during traffic congestion hours. So at peak morning and evening traffic times, Saturday morning everyone's shopping, going to Johnny and Susie's soccer field, more cars on the street, a little slower to get through the road network. So you have the 4-position stations. But their primary coverage areas barely touch each other. So one of the reasons for long travel time is if I've got a call between 32 and 31, someone's going to take 5 minutes to get there. And you'll see that it's in the report numbers. Now, if we look at what we call— the civilian world calls the first alarm. Oh, we had a first alarm fire last night, the newspaper says. Well, that's every firefighting unit and arm getting to one location. The goal there is 8 minutes driving time. Those 4 units obviously commonsensically collapse to the center, right? You can't get everybody to the far north of Orem in 8 minutes driving time. But if, but if the 3 on the end come into 32 in the middle, at least your more populated urban core does get effective first alarm coverage in 8 minutes driving time. If you look at, well, where are the hotspot of calls in the community? Where are the simultaneous calls coming from? Peak hour of the day. Here's a mapping of how population density drives EMS calls for service, largely in the more built-up areas of the community. And even if you don't have your zoning map memorized, if you just look at the road network up and around Station 35, that's larger parcel, less dense zoning. There's just not as many streets, not as many buildings, not as many people up there versus the more urban part of Orem between 32, 33, and 31. If you look at where structure fires occur over a 3-year period, more evenly dispersed and, and, and a little bit more in Station 32 or between 32 and 31's area. Some of that's age of housing stock, how well the housing's maintained, especially in a cold climate during prime winter months of heating, cooking, using other electrical devices. Now let's look at a different spacing formula, and this is the, the, the conundrum and/or In OREM for station spacing. The Insurance Service Office that grades agencies for fire underwriting insurance would like to see a fire station reach anywhere in 1.5 miles distance. 1.5 miles distance, not time. So in the old days, OREM, as it spaced out its stations at 1.5 miles, In theory, travel time should reach each other. There should even be some slight overlap, but we know from both the computer model and real-world travel time histories this doesn't happen. Happens for 2 reasons: somewhat traffic congestion, but also when you study these offline, you have a big primary arterial right-angle grid street network, but, but inside each rectangular box of a main thoroughfare. You have what we call more curvilinear and crazy quilt streets as the subdivisions and the old ag farms, as I understand it, early in Orem's day. As those streets were subdivided, they just kind of laid them out every which way based on private property owner preferences. So once that fire truck or ambulance drops off the main boulevard, I looked at some calls taking 7-8 minutes to get to from Station 32. But once I traced out the route, I said, oh, they can't get there in somewhat of a straight line. They have to go out and around into that subdivision and come back the long way. So you've got a much more convoluted road network to serve. You have some traffic congestion, you have some simultaneous calls, and all of that adds up to longer response times. Excuse me, I skipped over. So Station 4, Station 34, The parcel was located a long time ago in the southwest corner. The blue is the 1.5-mile only, not optimistic 4 minutes or conservative 4 minutes. The blue is the current Station 34 parcel barely covers across the highway. It really adds very few road miles of added coverage, and there's not as much population or calls for service there. Nor if I go back to the first alarm chart, even with Station 34 activated, urban middle of the city coverage doesn't improve at all because 34 is more than 8 minutes from the core of the city for driving time. Our recommendation is 34 is located basically at the dead end of the southwest corner, and that station siting ideally would come further north and be somewhere on the north central side. We've talked about some of those options. with the chief. We know it's always expensive to say, don't go with that parcel, find another one, but it's not the most efficient location to add coverage to other than that less populated immediate area. So deployment recommendations to work on decreasing dispatch and turnout times: have the council adopt complete outcome response time policies. And you say, well, Stu, why do I need policies? You said, I fund what I can afford. It is what it is. How do you answer the question when someone comes to the podium and says, you took too long to get here, or my house burned down, or my house burned down and took half the neighbors with it? Well, sir or ma'am, we got there within the performance goals we set and decided as a community we could afford. You didn't have abnormal customer service. You had the level of customer service meeting our goals. And we're sorry that tragedy befell you. Or if a developer wants to come in and build a new subdivision and you think you need a fire station or an extra fire crew on duty for increased population, how do you tell the applicant, we want something for fire services, and the applicant comes back to you and says, but you have no goals or standards. In absent a benchmark, why should it— why should I contribute to a fire truck or a fire station or a taxation area for staffing. Identify— I've already mentioned— a more central west side location for the future 34. And here's how you get to response time, on-duty headcount, and simultaneous calls. Your ambulances do run what are called intra-facility transfers. They move some patients from hospital to skilled nursing, doctor's office to skilled nursing. While it doesn't destroy your response times overall, there's not enough of that volume. At peak hour of the day, transfers take a little longer. You do have the simultaneous calls. So the chief and I looked at all of this data and said, you know, a good next step solution, if you added 2 firefighter paramedics per day, that's 24/7. If they staffed another ambulance during the daytime, they would take all of the scheduled transfers and all the simultaneous calls, leaving the other units more available for both closer-to-station EMS and for firefighting tech rescue activities. At night, when that demand curve I showed you slows down after dinner, close the extra ambulance. But put each of the crew members on 2 different pieces of firefighting equipment and beef up your firefighting tech rescue capacity overnight, should you also have a flurry of ambulance transport calls. So a little bit of a hybrid. Just don't start putting more people on single things to only help a single neighborhood. Increase the daily staffing with a mobile unit that can do 2 things, a daytime activity and a sleeping hours activity. Headquarters program review. Again, we found a highly qualified professional staff with a very strong work ethic, a community service ethic. They're attempting to deliver all the needed programs as mandated by state and federal safety laws for fire and EMS services. They're very knowledgeable, and some are subject matter experts and trainers. Interviewed every one of them, pleased with their depth of professional experience, your disaster preparedness, professional is top-notch, but they're all overworked and they're all severely lacking office support professional help. They do take pride in serving the community. So our findings overall are insufficient clerical and technical staffing and training, EMS training and oversight, career development succession planning needs to be done. Fire prevention is currently approaching or at capacity for the fire inspectors. And your community emergency management is the definition of a one-armed paper hanger, to, to, to be a little lighthearted about it. At some point, updating the emergency plan is going to take a person on a grant, a half-time person a few months a year, some office support, clerical management. You need to let the professionals do professional work. If they're writing, drafting, filing, and Xeroxing, They're not doing the professional work you want them to do. If they're doing scheduling and returning routine phone calls, they're not doing the highly paid professional work you expect them to do. Turnovers yielded a younger workforce. You need to increase training staff. I've talked about the heavy administrative workload on the sworn staff. I've talked about fire inspectors at near maximum. Also, and this is As important as customer service and workload, your fire EMS team is too dependent upon one person in headquarters, and we call that single-point failure. If any one of the few chief officers, the one or two office support professionals, takes long-term sick leave or injury leave, you've got a real gap to fill. And that's not a gap you can call it the temp agency and just get anybody to start picking up the phone. in the handling department business. We would also suggest long-term you adopt a durable equipment replacement plan and budgets. Most of your firefighting and paramedic equipment in and of itself is very expensive. Cardiac monitor defibrillators, breathing equipment for interior firefighting, fire trucks, ambulances. You typically budget on a pay-go basis, but those items have predictable life cycles and you should be setting funds aside every year To know that every other year I buy a monitor cardiac defibrillator unit, every 4 years I need to buy another ambulance or ambulance chassis, every 12 to 14 years I need to buy another half-million-dollar fire truck. And try to at least set some of those savings aside as an option than always saying, oh my gosh, I have to buy a fire truck this year, I can't buy a tree trimming truck for the streets department. And then you're, and then the council and city management is always caught in the box. Well, we only have so many dollars this year, but if you save for some of the long-term assets, that would smooth out those impact points in our opinion. For staffing recommendations, the department should hire one additional headquarters clerical support position, add one full-time fire training officer at the command staff level, eventually add a fire inspector. Add a half-time public educator and complete the emergency plan updates. Again, that could be grant part-time personnel. That's not the second full-time community disaster person. And adopt a replacement plan for your most expensive portable equipment and your fire trucks and ambulances. City-Gate's recommended next steps is, first of all, this is a workshop. Review the content findings, just absorb what you're hearing. Go back and read it in detail. Come back and adopt response time performance goals to drive future planning and siting of fire stations. And then we always suggest at this point in both projects, direct staff to return with a multiple-year prioritized improvement plan within 60 to 90 days. We know you're well into the budget cycle. And maybe as needed, you need to modify the upcoming budget eventually to implement the first phase. For both police, fire, and EMS. On the firefighting side, we set 3 priority columns. These are CityGate's recommendations from no cost to funding priority 1, 2, and 3. We would see as the top priority adding that ambulance, 2 people per day. Remember, on a firefighting 24-on, 24-off duty shift, putting 2 people on 24 hours a day, 365, is 6 Total employees. 3-duty crews, they rotate on/off. You need 6 employees to field 2 24/7. I would very soon add the headquarters office support position. Too many critical things flowing through one person in terms of recordkeeping, electronic records, supporting fire prevention and the other programs. And I would add a training officer before I did other things. That shoves into second and third priority a fire inspector, a public educator, and also identifying a future space for a dedicated emergency operations center instead of during disaster plan mode flipping open a conference room and hoping to make that work. With that, that's the fire and EMS briefing. Thank you very much for your attention.

Well, thank you. That was very complete and comprehensive and I think gives us a roadmap to go with for the future. I was going to say, Chief Sanderson, any comments or thoughts on this?

Yes, thanks, Mayor.

And what they brought forward.

No, I really appreciate the time I was able to spend with Stu in developing this plan. We've worked, we've worked since I started, I mean, with our command staff, and because this, this system was already underway when I was hired. And so I think there's been a number of these things that they're recommending that we've been scratching the surface on as we moved along the last 8 to 9 months.

And so now having this finalized plan presented, you know, we have our marching orders and we're going to do some good things to reduce our response times and beef up that staffing and And then hopefully just be able to turn a better service through, yeah, the community plan.

Okay. I, you know, I did take note of the facilities and equipment, having a master plan that we're working off of every year and going through, and then also getting a better community emergency preparedness place and group together. So, but thank you, Chief, appreciate it.

Thanks, Mayor.

Jamie, anything you wanted to bring up in regards to this presentation?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Just appreciate working with Citygate. One of the things that I have been encouraged about in this whole process is since we have even received preliminary, preliminary results and feedback from Citygate, both Chief Adams and Chief Sanderson have been quick to make adjustments within their respective departments to address these staffing concerns, to address some of the data issues as well. I'll just cite several examples. For example, We have a data analyst actually budgeted and funded within the police department, but we've had a hard time recruiting for a position that is going to meet the needs of the department. And so we have worked with our human resources staff, as well as Chief Adams, in beefing up that position in order to essentially meet the needs of the department as represented and recommended by Citygate. In addition, Stu Gray— Gary has spoken to the issue of EMS staffing, and Chief Sanderson and his team have already put together a series of staffing adjustments that can increase response and can appropriately provide support for both the fire and the EMS side of the organization. So even though you are seeing these presentations today for the first time, or at least in final form, I want to just represent and reassure you that both departments have been actively engaged in making changes even as these reports have been moving towards completion. So I think that's representative of both the mindset that Mark and Josh have in relation to the direction they want to take both departments. I will add, and maybe Stu can kind of speak to this, one of the challenges that we face as related to response times, and I think Stu focused on this, is with our existing fire stations, in order for us to right the ship in every way, and to meet specific federal, or at least recommended guidelines, that would require us to essentially pick up and relocate a number of our stations to appropriately position them where they need to be for 2021. Back in 1999, they may have been appropriately situated Now in 2021, they're in a diff— a little bit of a different situation. Obviously, we don't have the flexibility to do that, so we're going to have to continue to make improvements and make adjustments with the understanding that we may never be able to achieve the ideal. One, because the target is always moving, and two, because we have multi-million dollar facilities that are on foundations and can't be picked up and moved to a different part of the neighborhood without obviously reconstructing those facilities and decommissioning the old ones. So we have kind of an interesting dilemma with the fire department in terms of where our stations are. We can affect obviously where stations will be located in the future, and these are conversations we're already having with Vineyard, for example, to better maximize the location of a station on the west side of I-15. But some of this dynamic will— we won't be able to change unless we actually physically move a station. And in the short term, that's not necessarily on our radar.

And I think— not I think, I know, Mayor and Council, even if you move to, you'd probably have to add another 3. Your road network and geography, and even you get up into the hillside, what I'll call, you know, the eastern hillside neighborhoods, you just don't have an efficient-to-serve road design. And for a city of your size and your tax base, You just can't cut your travel time in half even by moving just 2 stations. I think what the Chief and I recommended by adding some surge capacity peak hours of the day to keep those northern and southern units in their districts more, right, ready for a second or third call, getting the west side stations better located, and then taking note of this study And we didn't do a long-term facility architecture lifecycle assessment, but if the 2 of the oldest stations, let's say, you know, in 15 years will be 50 years old— I'm making this up as I go, this is what other communities go through— they then say, you know, that station's in the wrong location, it's wood frame and stucco, the termites have all but taken it, the parcel is too small. Traffic engineering doesn't like the fire truck exiting on that street for safety reasons. Start a capital improvement project to say, by time we decide to sink money into Station XX, we won't scrape it and rebuild it. We're gonna move it a half a mile to a more efficient service parcel and a larger, safer parcel. So I see communities saying, our first-generation stations, we live with, the second generation of construction, we consider slight movements or enhancements.

And I guess, Mayor, the last thing that I would say, and I think this is something that would be confirmed by Gary and Stu, and that is, when we initially started down this path, my initial anxiety was that we were going to receive feedback that was above and beyond what we could accommodate in the short term. Or, for example, the needs in one area would be so great that we would not be able to step up to the challenge incrementally. But based on what they have shared, I think we can incrementally grow and make improvements to achieve both the recommendations on the police and the fire side. So, you know, neither one of the reports suggested, for example, you need to immediately build a brand new fire station and hire 15 new firefighters to staff that station, or you need to hire an additional 10 police officers today. I think what I heard from both of the reports was you need to continue to incrementally improve And over the course of a number of years, get better and meet up with the expectations as outlined in both of these reports, which for me is reassuring, knowing that I believe we have the capacity to do this. And we can incrementally grow into this— these changes in a way that is comfortable and in a way that is not going to require us to dramatically make adjustments in funding and even proposing, for example, tax increases in the short term to meet these objectives.

That's, that's a very fair restatement, and I'll put a pin on it like this. We did not find either agency dysfunctional, broken, or in need of immediate repair and rebuilding. And I mentioned that at the beginning of my segment, consider this a best practices tune-up. Most agencies need to continually approve over time. I, by the way, I didn't talk my whole bio. Besides being a retired fire chief, I've also been a city council member and a school board president in the middle of the Great Recession. So I've served my time on your side of the fence. And what we recommend our clients and what my city council did coming out of the recession Is those multi-year strategic funding plans help successive councils make integrated decisions. So you've got police and fire needs over, let's say, 3 fiscal years. Don't you— you have to remember those in concert with parks and rec or streets repair or the other operations you're running. So I think to the degree you have master plans driving at least 3 to 5 year needs. Then every time you balance an individual budget, you're not just going with the hot item du jour. You're going in concert with multiple master plans for your most extensive departments. And no, I totally agree with the city manager. Some of our recommendations are no cost. Many of the police technical ones are reshuffling positions. It's improving data accuracy. where possible, the recruitment headache aside. It's tuning up your complaint and investigation procedures for public transparency. Those are no-cost items. They're just best practice improvements on an already good system.

All right.

Well, thank you very much. This has been very comprehensive, and we'll look forward to receiving a copy of the reports and And viewing them in future years and setting up some master plans.

Mayor, if I may, what initiated these reports? First of all, they're excellent. I appreciate the proactivity of both the fire and the police chief and Jamie and other city managers. What, what initiated having these studies done?

Jamie, I'll let you answer that.

So back in, back in the latter part of I guess it would be 2019 conversations with both Chief Gurney and Chief Giles. We essentially talked about we have utility master plans and we have a firm direction and idea as to where our utility infrastructure and utility departments are heading. We need to engage in a similar process for our police and fire. And it's not just— I should say, it's not just utilities. We have a streets master plan. We have a parks master plan. We needed a public safety master plan. And we needed a good foundation. And that foundation was essentially an operations assessment. And also, we were fearful And some of the dialogue back in 2019 was, we don't have this, or we need that, or we have too much of this and more of that. And we wanted a third-party objective review to come in, like CitiGate, to come in and say, no, we've taken a look at organizations throughout the country. We're familiar with, for example, NFPA standards as relates to fire. and IACP standards as it relates to police. And we can tell you that nationwide, these are some of the best practices, and we can overlay those best practices in this— on City of Orem operations and help you develop a plan for the future. So that is really kind of what necessitated it, is a kind of an overall feeling that we are doing this and other We've done this with other parts of the organization, but we've never really done this with police and fire. And it was time, since we do spend approximately 50% of our general fund on police and fire, for us to get a good plan in motion as to where we're heading in the future.

Well, my hat's off to management.

Thank you very much.

All right. Well, we want to thank Gary and Stu and Dave and appreciate Citygate and all the work you've put in. Appreciate Chief Adams and Chief Sanderson for the help that they've done, and this gives us a good roadmap for the future.

So, Mayor, just by way of a reminder, we will make obviously these reports, and I think they were included in your agenda packet, but we will also load these reports on our website and they will be available all to review and see, consistent with all of our other master plans.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Let's go ahead and move on on our agenda then. We'll next go to our fiscal 2022 budget revenues and compensation. And our presenter is Brandon Nelson.

Thank you, Mayor. This will be our first presentation starting our budget process. Let me share my screen here real quick. Everybody see that?

Yes.

Uh-huh.

Okay. So what we'll be discussing is kind of a first off, kind of an outline of where we are today, right, as of right now, to just give a general idea of how things are. And then follow that up with looking forward to our fiscal '22 budget and what we kind of anticipate. Revenues are generally the first thing that we target. Obviously, that kind of tells us how much the expenditures that we have, and if we have available money to do various projects, or if we don't, and what kinds of things, changes maybe need to happen, either, either reevaluating what we do on the revenue side or what we do on the expenditure side. So, you know, the first thing I want to discuss then are How we are doing currently. As many of you may well be aware, our sales taxes are certainly our single largest revenue source and are doing really, really well through this fiscal year. You know, we thought we did really well through the end of fiscal '20 despite COVID, and we're even doing even better so far this year. We, you know, this shows you we were at 12.8%. We did just today get the sales tax numbers here in March. March wasn't quite as good as the previous months were, and so even with that, we're still 10.8% year-to-date above the prior year year-to-date. So sales taxes looking very good. Obviously, the budget numbers that you see over here, many of those revenues were impacted when we adjusted our fiscal '21 budget downward as we had approached, you know, preparing our budget due to COVID. And so some of that— the only one that we've really adjusted upwards is the sales tax line. Many of the others there, they haven't been changed despite the fact that, as you can see from the percentage collected so far this year are doing very well year to date, and we expect those to not only exceed those fiscal '21 budget numbers but to even rival what our actual fiscal '20 numbers were, which were all pretty well other than, you know, there were some stragglers, especially in the courts fees and fines area, which you can see at the very bottom of that So, Brandon?

Yes.

I am aware, in talking with Judge Parkin, that a lot of the trials and jury processes, etc., have been delayed due to COVID-19. So, I think that's part of the reason.

Yeah, and you have warrants. So, warrants, we, you know, the delay in issuing Do it— going out and doing warrants has had an impact as well. So there are various components there that are affecting that court fees numbers.

So one last question, do we know, is the amount of burials occurring at the cemetery up considerably over previous years?

It is. I I don't know how to quite answer why as to why, but it is. Let's see if I can. I don't know if I kept that up. No, I didn't. It's doing it's it's obviously doing better than budget, and we I'm not sure I'm trying to look. Yeah, we didn't actually even lower the cemetery fees. For COVID. So that number is what we normally would have expected to receive on a year-to-year basis, that 805. So it's obviously— and we're 835 year to date, so that tends to tell us that for whatever reason things are doing well. It may be the new, you know, the new area within the cemetery has prompted some people to purchase lots. burial lots, et cetera.

So—

Well, hopefully it's not the amount of people dying in Orem from COVID

Let's hope that that is the case, right?

Mayor, this is Chris Shirkey.

If I could answer that too.

Sure.

In our master plan that we did, we did look at population information and mortality rates and things like that. And as we have the baby boomers starting to approach this point in their lives, I think we're translating that to, or correlating that with, with that population, that, that is going to increase over this next several years.

Yeah, that would make sense.

Yeah, I pulled up our year-to-date revenue report. And, you know, historic, or last year, fiscal '20, we were at $568,000 at this, at this same point. So pretty, you know, pretty significant even comparative to prior years.

You know, on the sales tax, where the government has given stimulus checks to the populace a couple of times and where money has been fed into the businesses within the city I think a lot of that goes into spending by the populace, and I think that could help explain part of that reason.

I think that's a distinct possibility, and obviously the stimulus that's coming out right now, you know, plus the one back in December, late December, early January, those 2 things may not only have already, you know, kept sales taxes doing well, but The newest stimulus may also continue that to do that.

And you know, last year at this time we thought that our sales tax revenue might go down by 20%. So—

That is how much we changed our budget by, yes.

Yes.

So this chart, just trying to, you know, give everybody a reminder update of, you know, generally where do our major revenue sources come from, you know, in a visual arena. As you can see, sales taxes from major revenues isn't in total, it's just of the major revenue sources, you know, sales tax is a major part of that. And you can see the other components there as well. Just to give an update as to where do those sales— since sales taxes are such a big deal and of such great importance to the city from a budgeting perspective, where do those sales taxes come from? And you can see here that fiscal year '20, and it changes a little bit from year to year, but Not significantly. You can see that of the 23 plus million, you know, a quarter of it comes from general merchandise and groceries, you know, our Costcos, Targets, Macy's, etc., as well as, you know, the super increased amount of online sales tax that we continue to receive from various sources that also fall into that particular category. Touching on some of our other major revenue sources, our B&C road— you know, one area that I didn't mention on the other screen is that those sales tax— several of those revenues are only through 6 months. Even though we go year to date, many of those, such as sales tax, are actually only the July through December.

That's amazing.

Yeah, so you can see from the percent collected, you know, you're talking— so even B&C Roads, you're at 54%, and that happened— that does happen to be only a 6%— I mean, a 6-month actual year-to-date number. But, you know, transportation sales tax, again, that's a 6-month, so a 50% of the year number, and yet we're already at 63.5% of what our budget And again, that budget number, we, we dropped it because of COVID So, you know, we lowered our expectations there. You know, would that 63.5% be lower? Sure. But you can see to the far right, even when we compare that, the $1,206,000 year to date compared to where we were last year, again, you're doing really well in sales tax. And that, that far right column kind of gives you an idea comparative and fiscal '20 was what ended up being a pretty good year. Not the best, of course, but a pretty good year. As we touch on water and the others here, you can see that they're all doing pretty well. Obviously, recreation, we anticipated it being low. We expect that with the fitness center now open, that, that number, that percentage collected will improve. Will it improve to the $1,347,000? Probably not, but it will certainly improve here through the remainder of the fiscal year. Again, kind of of those major revenue sources, just kind of giving you a pictorial of where those revenues fall in relation to those Other major revenue sources, water and water reclamation being the bigger components of that. So now let's move on to touching on our upcoming budget and what we're looking at for that. You know, we're comparing our, our current fiscal '21 budget here with our upcoming budget here for fiscal '22. We've touched on sales taxes. You know, we— if, if we take our current sales taxes where we are right now, and we just use, and we only receive for the remaining 5 months of the fiscal year exactly what we received in fiscal '20, we end up just a little bit short of what we are budgeting for fiscal '22's 10-year budget. Now, obviously, there, you know, We tend to budget conservatively in our sales taxes, of course, and we don't know exactly what will happen. We've talked about the stimulus. You know, we talked— there are other areas where, well, maybe there's, you know, some things related to businesses that may impact sales taxes as well. So, so we have budgeted a little bit more than perhaps we maybe expect from our fiscal '21. But at the same time being a little bit on the conservative side of that. Other areas, you can see franchise taxes continue to just be very mediocre from year to year. Not much of an increase or a decrease from year to year. Our building permits, I want to touch on building permits. That 763 number is kind of what our base, if you'll recall, How we we budget for building permits? We don't budget necessarily what we think we're going to get, but we budget a base, and then anything that we get over that. Now the million four fourteen is what we lowered our building permits base, so so there is a bit of an increase there in building permits, and and we'll be continuing to monitor and look at what we what we want to. Budget in that category. Our licenses, which include both business licenses and the new landlord license— business licenses, again, we reduced that considerably due to COVID as we thought many of the businesses were going to be impacted. However, it has not turned out to necessarily be that case, and license— business licenses have been doing very well. As I guess more— many of the businesses we thought were going to be going have not, or, you know, a shift in what kinds of businesses there are. And so we've continued to go ahead and budget a healthy business license as well as the continuing continuation of landlord licensing as well.

So Brandon, one thing I was gonna say, I've noticed a lot of businesses being started up by entrepreneurs that were affected by COVID job market. And then I've seen a lot of businesses coming to Orem, restaurants, you know, other businesses. We've had a lot of interest from businesses outside the city that want to locate here.

So yeah, it's been very encouraging. You know, that's a bigger— sometimes that's a big key in helping us identify You know, what we might expect is, you know, obviously if licenses are going down, you might expect that there's going to be an impact there. So it's been a positive indicator.

Well, and, and the nice thing is we have a large big box store anchor store coming to Orem to our mall, which I don't hardly know of any mall in the country that has a new big box anchor store building a building at their mall, but we do with Dillard's coming in, and that will present a case for additional sales taxes.

You bet.

I mean, obviously that's what we hope and anticipate. And you can see the very bottom, court fees and fines. You know, we've increased our expectation here for fiscal '22 as they, you know, start moving into what are— how are they going to handle this backlog of cases and getting going, but realizing they're not 100% sure how they're going to take care of that. And so, so in talking with Jody over at the court, you know, we've kind of settled on this kind of a somewhat conservative, maybe, you know, area where we're going to hope that somehow they're able to figure that out and be able to push through that. But in the meantime, we're going to be a little conservative on that. Touching again on some of the other major revenue sources that we have, you know, we expect our road funds to continue to increase as people are going to be wanting to get out and out and about and doing things after this year of COVID The transportation sales tax revenue, obviously, we Because of sales taxes, transportation sales taxes are going to generally follow how well our regular sales tax does. And so we anticipate that doing much, obviously much better than the $1.9 million we budgeted, but even doing better than we might have budgeted otherwise. And then, you know, we've had many discussions obviously about our enterprise funds. Water revenues, you can see the reduction. That we anticipate in relation to the bonding that we are going through right now and the effect of reducing the tier rates and freezing the base rate and what impact that has on the— what we expect that to have on water revenues. Water reclamation revenues, some of those, for instance. Let's see here, I'm getting my notes. So, you know, water reclamation revenues have been impacted to some degree by an actual reduction in consumption charges. And so the $12,745,000, we expect here in our actual fiscal '21, you know, to be in the $12.5 million area. So that change in our— that freeze in our base rate for the new hybrid situation, you know, we expect that consumption will hopefully level off and be right around that same revenue amount. Stormwater, obviously you see the increase there. We are anticipating an increase of $0.20 per ESU for stormwater, and that's the impact you see there and the increase in stormwater revenues. Recreation revenues, obviously, with a new fitness center opening, we expect great things. And so revenues in that area are significantly higher. And then solid waste, I believe, and Brent maybe can speak to this, but I believe there's also a rate increase going to happen with our solid waste charges covering any increases in relation to our So, Brandon, one thing I wanted to bring up are B&C road revenues and our transportation sales tax revenue.

Those together equal $5.5 million, and the cost to maintain our roads within the City of Orem has been usually around $5 million. So we're fully funded for that, plus about 10%. And that's really important to have those revenues so that our roads are in good condition for commerce and people to drive around on. One of the cities to the north has been— has had a very tough time with their road funds, and many of their roads, you know, are having problems where the roads are not in good condition, the sidewalks are not in good condition. We're very lucky to be fully funded now, which we weren't for many years, but we are now.

Mayor, this is Jamie. Can I just maybe introduce a cloud into this whole discussion?

Sure.

Just a couple of things to consider as related to road revenues. Those B&C road revenues are essentially based on a certain charge per gallon that the city receives. In addition to that, transportation sales tax revenue is a sales tax based on the cost of gas. So, given where current gas prices are right now, there might be some flex in these numbers because obviously, as the cost of fuel increases, the potential increases that people are going to drive less. So we don't think that that is going to result in a catastrophic shift, but at the same time, you wonder about the sustainability of some of these numbers, especially, for example, as related to sales tax. And we've been talking about stimulus amounts and so on and so forth. Brandon and his team have been very cautious about trying to conservatively estimate some of these numbers because there is some elasticity in the economy and some of what might happen in the economy based on stimulus, based on gas prices, based on the cost of, for example, building materials, so on and so forth. All of those things we need to kind of take into consideration. Right now, the numbers look Very good and very strong, but I also think they are relatively conservative based on our understanding that some of what we're talking about may change in the future.

Sure, and Jamie, one thing I could bring up there as well is the legislature is very cognizant of road revenues, sales tax revenues for gas. And they are working on a new revenue model that is actually fee-based rather than sales tax-based, and it'll be interesting to see what they come up with.

Agreed.

As you hear about, you know, more Tesla sales and more, you know, GM and Ford and all those converting to electric by certain dates in the future, obviously something has to change.

Yep.

Are there—

before I turn, I'm going to be turning the time over to Carrie Rugg, our human resource manager, to talk about compensation, etc. But are there any questions or anything before we move away from the revenues that anybody would like to ask before we do that?

I have a question.

The money that we've got from the federal government, the CARES and the current revenues, is that being budgeted somewhere or is that just being on the expense side, not the revenue side?

Yeah, it won't be shown on the revenue side. It's already been received. In essence, we have it reserved in our fund balance. For the expenditures that we have identified and that we, you know, end up identifying to spend those funds on.

Okay, thank you.

You bet. And we have not obviously received any of the, you know, the recent stimulus money yet, so that has yet to be accounted for. Okay, I'll turn the time over to Carrie at this time.

Thanks, Brandon. Do you mind just keeping the slides up?

Most certainly will.

Okay, thanks. Okay, so we're going to talk about compensation and benefits and what we're projecting to request for this new budget year. As you'll recall, about a year ago we brought together— brought to you in a work session, our city policy on, on being competitive in the market, and also the fact that we want to be merit-based for all of our employees. We did move away from that for our sworn police officers and firefighters. We, if you recall, we implemented that hybrid step program for the public safety sworn officers. So as far as market competitiveness goes, I'm sure you're all aware that we are doing a third-party market study with NFP. We are hoping to get some preliminary data back probably mid-May.

Thanks, Brandon.

And so we're estimating about 1% of our full-time and part-time benefited payroll to be set aside for that market study. So that's about $330,000. In addition, we plan to fully fund the STEP program for public safety for next year, and that's $339,000. And then for the merit-based employees, that's everyone outside of the public safety hybrid STEP program, to fund a 3% increase average would be $1,111,000.

So, so, Carrie, maybe just to qualify that $330,000 number, Historically, we have allocated market adjustments on an across-the-board basis. It would not necessarily be our intent to do that this year, but rather to base that allocation on results of the NFP study. So there may be some positions who will warrant, for example, a 2.5% adjustment in their pay based on market conditions. Other positions may merit no increases based on market position. So I think it's important to note that that will not be uniformly applied across the entire organization, but rather will be set aside for targeted adjustments. Now, obviously, the Public Safety Step Program is different. If employees meet the qualifications, then they will receive the step, and that step, step is consistently noted on a schedule. And then finally, the merit piece for all employees participating in the merit program, so non-public safety employees, a 3% merit has been set aside And budgeted for each position in the organization that is non-public safety.

Thanks, Jamie. I appreciate the clarification. Yes, the whole point of a, of a market increase is to make sure that we're staying in the market, and that's why we're taking that 1% and, and actually targeting the positions that are out of market. So I appreciate the clarification. Hey, Brian, next slide. Or Brandon. Okay, so this shows our employee turnover. We'll have a few slides on this. We had so far this year, we have an average number of employees of 428 for this year. It's a little bit higher. That's due to the fact that we've had better success with retaining our police and firefighters. We did have an increase of 3 police officers this year, as well as ramping up for the new fitness center. So those are the main reasons why we have an increased number of employees for this year. Our turnover rate is just below 11%. We'll see in the next few slides what it is average in the nation. I think we'll be pleasantly surprised with our turnover, but right now we're rating at about just below 11% right now. Next slide. Okay, here this is in graphic form. This is our Orem City turnover rate for all employees compared to the Utah unemployment rate. And as you can see, in fiscal year '19, we did have a sharp increase. That was due to the fact that we had a very low unemployment rate here in the state, so it was very competitive. But as you can see, as the unemployment rate goes up, turnover rate should come down. So we're trending in the right direction. We've also had great success with our public safety hybrid step program, and that's been helping us keep our turnover rate lower this year. Then we broke it down to turnover by reason. As you can see, we had 11 retirements so far in this fiscal year, which is pretty big, and I'm sure that you're aware we've had some very large retirements, especially a lot of department heads, so that, that accounts to that retirement. We've had 13 employees go to other employment, 14 that have resigned, 4 that have been dismissed, and 4 that just stated other reasons for them leaving the city.

A question for you. Can you give us some of the reasons that the resignations occur?

Yes, absolutely. I think that's, that's a great question. Sometimes if employees are leaving and they're, they're asked why they're leaving, some will just put resignation. Most of the time they will put other employment if they're leaving for other employment. If it's for a medical reason or they are separating in lieu of termination, so they're Voluntarily separating in lieu of termination, that would be under resignation as well. So it's a mixture between a few things. A lot of times, though, it is a separation in lieu of termination.

Okay.

And we broke it down by department so that you can see which departments are having the largest turnover. Just remember that our larger departments will have higher numbers. but they are also a larger department, so that's something we'd expect to see. Public Works has had the most turnover by number. The fire and police sworn officers are both at 9. On the fire department side, that does seem a lot higher than what we've seen in previous years, but I looked at the reason why we had so much turnover in the fire department. And that's because we had 5 retirements, we had 2 resignations in lieu of termination, and we had 2 employees leave to go to departments that were closer to their home. So in this fiscal year, we haven't had any employees leave in the fire department due to pay. So that— I think that's great news for us. Any questions?

Yes.

All right, so I know that we're always interested in our key departments, so we broke this down a little bit more into our police sworn, fire sworn. We also wanted to look at development services, public works, and then we combined all the other departments together. We did have that higher number in the fire sworn, but again, that, that was due to a lot of retirements in the fire our department. And then Public Works is at 10%, which is actually— we're trending lower than we were last year. So that's good news. And in our police, I'm really excited at how low our trend is for our sworn officers in the police department too. And then on the— oh, sorry.

No, I was just gonna say that's great.

We're pretty excited about that. And again, I think that has a lot to do with the new Public Safety Hybrid program that was laid out by you all.

Yes.

So we appreciate that. And then the yellow bar at the bottom talks about from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that's the average percentage of turnover. So for this year, it's trending at 24%. And again, we're below 11%. So we're really happy to see that our turnover is much lower than it is state and locally. So we're happy about that. Okay, again, I'm sorry, these are a bunch of slides about turnover, but I know that's something that's really important to all of us. So it shows police and fire and then all of the departments, and then again our turnover rate. Our police turnover rate is almost half, trending half of what it was last year, in the last fiscal year, so we're really happy about that. And I think we'll also see the fire department turnover rate for, for this next next fiscal year will be significantly lower because we won't be having as many retirements. And this is in graphic form. You can see from fiscal year '11 to the current fiscal year as of March 15th, looks like we've had a sharp decline in turnover in the police like we talked about. Fire has had the increase because of the retirements, and all the other employees is trending downward as well. So for fiscal year '22, we're going to be talking about total compensation, where we are estimating that we'll see an 8% increase in our premiums for benefits. So that is a total cost of $374,000. Just so that you're aware, the biggest driving factor of that is medical insurance, and that, that's just the way our market is right now for medical insurance. Anything below 10% is a pretty good target for us, so I— we're hoping to be about 8%. There aren't any other increases. The best news to share with you is that URS just completed their finalized rates for the new fiscal year, and none of the rates went up, so we don't have to project any additional costs for that.

So Carrie, um, sometime I'd be interested to see a chart of what the health insurance increases are for each year for like the last 10 years.

Of course. Yeah, I can put that together.

Okay.

Okay. So there's a few other considerations that we want to look at. We've budgeted, um, The HR increases for the new fiscal year at $2,154,000. Some things that we want to take into consideration as we move forward is that we've got flexible and seasonal pay that may need to be adjusted. The market is really good right now, especially for custodians. I think with the rec center as well, I think it's just very competitive, so we might need to look at some making some adjustments to our flex. and seasonal ranges. And then there may be some unintended costs to the Public Safety Hybrid Step Program that we haven't anticipated. We don't think that that's something that we need to worry about, but we also want to keep that in mind. And then once the third-party compensation study comes back from NFP, we have given you an estimate, but until we get the study back, we won't know exactly what those costs will be. And then there will be some additional FTEs that will be part of the general fund expansion requests, so that's not included in any of these estimates. And then finally, as we're all aware, with the new family fitness center, we may need to add some additional full-time employees depending upon the needs in the fitness center, so that's another thing to be aware of. Anybody have any questions for me on any of this?

No, just appreciate the good work you're doing. Thank you.

Thanks, Mayor. Appreciate it.

And thank you, Brandon. Is that— That is it. Okay, thank you.

We will be back in 2 weeks at the next council meeting with some more.

All right, sounds good.

Thank you.

All right, let's move on to a discussion of the state legislative session and what has occurred, and Heather Schreiber, our city attorney, is our presenter.

Mayor, I have actually prepared a prerecorded video for the City Council on all of our— well, a lot of the bills that have a major impact on the city. So I will provide that to you after the meeting, but I do have kind of a quick overview and highlight of 3 bills that I think are really going to be impactful, and I will try to make that as quick as possible. I know we've got a lot going on. Okay, so on March 5th at about 11:59, the 2021 general session of the Utah State Legislature came to a close. And I know you all know it was a very, very unique year due to COVID restrictions. A lot of the public's access to the building and the facilities up at the state legislature were limited. A lot of the committee hearings and people who testified at those committee hearings did so via Zoom and other electronic means. And honestly, a lot of the lobbying efforts that were done this year were done via email and text message. Notwithstanding the unique circumstances, our legislature still requested 1,216 bills. They numbered 767 of those bills, and then they passed 502 of those bills. So, you know, I think each year we see our legislature proposing more and more laws and regulations, and it looks like COVID didn't So I remember, I remember when Becky Lockhart was the Speaker of the House and she was complaining about 400 bills being proposed that year. Yeah, yeah, you know, Mayor, it is, it, it is like drinking from a fire hose every single year when we go up there. And it's quite interesting because You know, there are a lot— there's a lot of work that's done in the interim sessions, especially this year. I mean, I'm trying to think. I think there were 4 special sessions this year, could have been 5. But yeah, the state legislature is very active, to say the least, and continues to be more active each year. So I'd like to highlight 3 important bills that passed this legislative session that directly impact the city. in the areas of transportation, general governance, and public safety. So the first bill that I'd like to speak to you about is HB 433. It's amendments related to infrastructure and funding, and this was Representative Schultz's bill. I'm sure you've all heard about it. It's a fantastic— it's a fantastic bill for the City of Orem. The legislature has allocated about $1.2 billion for transportation infrastructure projects. throughout the state, and both Orem 1600 North and Geneva Road expansion projects are going to receive a portion of this funding through the Transportation Investment Fund process.

And they will be fully funded through that process?

So, well, I mean, I can't speak to that directly. I can tell you that MAG is estimating $40 million to be dedicated allocated to the 1600 North, and $25 million for Geneva Road. I believe those are the estimates right now, so I haven't seen the final price tag for both of those proposed projects, but that's going to be a significant amount of money that we will be able to allocate to those 2 expansion projects. And just so you know, the city actually hired 2 professional lobbying firms to work on this bill, GTC Consulting and Paul Rogers and Associates. And I believe these firms will be presenting their efforts to the City Council at a later date. But I think looking at those numbers, the money that the city spent to engage those professional lobbyists was probably money well spent. So general governance— this is another bill that will positively impact the city of Orem. The legislature passed HB 128. And that is local accumulated fund balance amendments. This bill allows the city to increase its local accumulated fund balance, or its rainy day fund, from 25% to 35%. So this is just going to let Orem sock away even more money to deal with unforeseen issues that might arise. The last bill that I'd like to present to you tonight in this format is HB 162, Peace Officer Training Amendments. And this bill actually dovetails really well into the discussion that we had in CityGate regarding police training and the suggestions that were made for our police department. This bill requires the Orem Police Department officers to do 16 hours of training focused in these areas: mental health, crisis intervention responses, arrest control, and de-escalation techniques. So the standards for the training will be determined by our police department and approved by the state. And then our police department will have to report these additional hours in their annual audit that they, that they submit to the state. So public safety was a hot topic this year, as you know, and there, there are a lot of bills in the presentation addressing changes and new requirements, both reporting and training, that impact public safety. So they've got a little bit more on their plate come May 5th. So just a quick summary of some bills that, that did not pass or that failed. You can just look at them quickly. I did speak to you about a number of these and did reach out to you during the legislative session, and I thank you for the help that you, you gave to us during the session to try to help defeat some of these bills. The 2 that jump out to me, of course, are the 2 billboard bills that, that were defeated. Those, those would have, I think, changed some of the major corridors, the way they look in the city of Orem. And that was a team effort. And it was nice to see that those bills didn't pass. So again, this is just a small sampling of the bills that directly impact the city. And again, if you'd like more, I do have about a 20-minute video that I will, or Steven will send to you so you can watch it on your, your own time. And that's all I have for now, Mayor. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Heather. Appreciate your good work up there. That's not always easy.

Mayor, can I just, can I just add Heather's role up at the legislature has been invaluable to us as a community, but also to a broader Utah League of Cities and Towns effort. She has spent almost, you know, every day of that 45-day session she was engaged in some legislative matter, and I think she is worthy of just recognition and appreciation. for her efforts. Also appreciate Bryn and his efforts as related to the legislature. This was a difficult session, as Heather had— has identified, but they really did a fantastic job, and very appreciative of their work. And the success that we had doesn't just happen, it comes from the good work of others. So, you know, notably Heather, Bryn, and those that we hired to assist us. And Mayor, also want to extend appreciation to you and to our state legislative delegation, especially people like Senator Bramble and Representative Val Peterson, who are champions of our transportation efforts and who really helped us and brought home the money we need to build these projects. So special appreciation to you, Mayor. And to our state legislative delegation.

You bet. Thank you, Jamie. It's been a wonderful year when it comes down to transportation funding. So let's go ahead, we're running short on time. Let's move on to our agenda review. We have the Natural Resources Stewardship Committee annual report. Do we know who's presenting that tonight?

I think Quinn will be doing it.

Okay.

But I'm not for sure. I know he prepared, and maybe Sarah will probably help him too.

Okay, uh, then we'll go on to our personal appearances. We have approval of meeting minutes. We have a resolution, um, under the consent item for an interlocal cooperation agreement between Utah County and Orem City for the administration of the 2021 municipal elections. The document reference on that has been changed, and I just wanted to read a little bit of the new resolution for the council to approve or disapprove. It states, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Orem authorizing the execution of an interlocal agreement between the City of Orem and Utah County. Specifically, it states, now therefore be it resolved by the City Council of the City of Orem, Utah, as follows: the City Council hereby authorizes the mayor to execute the interlocal agreement between the city and Utah County, a copy of which is attached hereto as Exhibit A, and by references incorporated herein. This resolution shall take effect immediately upon passage. All other resolutions and policies in conflict herewith in whole or in part are hereby repealed. Is everybody okay with those 2 items on the consent items?

Yes.

Okay, hearing no nays, we'll go on to our scheduled items. The first one is a public hearing resolution. on CDBG projected use of funds for CARES Act funding and for a substantial amendment to the 2019-2020 Annual Action Plan. I don't know if Ken or— Ken or Joe are here.

Mayor, they're not on the call, but this is kind of—

they were doing the work before.

Yes, yeah, continue our march on this CDBG coronavirus money.

So 9.2 on scheduled items is a fence modification resolution. The applicant requests approval for a 6-foot Simtek fence between their commercial property and 2 residential properties. Jason is the presenter. Jason, anything you want to bring up?

We will review it in the council meeting, but it is simply the 2 property owners are willing to to allow the applicant, the Sun River Gardens, to keep a portion of their Simtek fence and then replace some chain link with a Simtek fence, and everybody's in agreement that that fence is sufficient between the 2 commercial— or the commercial property and the residential properties.

Okay.

Then after we go through our communication items, we adjourn to a meeting of the RDA. And on the RDA, we have a consent item, approval of meeting minutes of December 8th, 2020. Is everyone acceptable to that? Okay, then we have an RDA scheduled item, amendment to the participation agreement with University Shopping Center, L.C., and a resolution authorizing the extension of the collection of the tax. Increment for 2 years at the University Place Community Development Project due to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. Jamie is the presenter together with Heather. Any comments you 2 would like to make?

Mayor, this is simply a formalization of the discussion we had several weeks ago. Obviously, the legislature passed SB 6001 that allows us this opportunity to extend the duration or term of an RDA, not the amount of the RDA, the specific community development area for University Place. Woodbury Corporation has made this request. The resolution would formalize that action.

Okay.

All right. With that being said, Jamie, do you have anything you wish to bring up?

Mayor, can I jump in really quick on, on the Amendment to the participation agreement.

Yes, Heather.

I was just contacted by Woodbury Corporation and they are asking for a change to the signature block that's attached as an exhibit to the resolution. So there will be a modification to that before you sign it. But again, it's just a clarification as to which party is signing on behalf of which entity.

Okay. All right. Thank you, Jamie. Anything you'd like to bring up?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. A couple of things for your information. You may be familiar with some barricades that we have around the north part of our Public Safety Building. I believe I communicated to you already, but we actually had a fuel leak. We had a specific junction box that is associated with our emergency generator. We had a fuel line that disconnected, and we actually ended up dumping some diesel fuel into the ground. And so we have over-excavated that site, and we are in the process of putting things back together. We estimate that we have or will need to put pull between 600 and 1,000 tons of material out of that area, and we will take it and landfill it in a— obviously a specialized area of the landfill that will contain— that can take contaminated soils. One of the concerns that we have with this particular junction box is there is a fuel line attached to this junction box that extends to a common tank that is shared by both Public Safety and the City Center. Those lines in that— in the ground that connect to that tank are approximately 20-plus years old. And so we still have some potential work to do. We need to pressure test those lines to ensure that they can maintain and continue to serve the Public Safety Building. If they pass the pressure test, then we will hook up the connection once again at the junction box. If not, it may be necessary for us to dig up those lines from the junction box to the actual diesel tank. So that will require a further effort on our part out in the common area there and may require us to bury a new fuel line. in the, in the common area there. Obviously, we don't know exactly what precipitated the, the break in the junction box or with the fuel line. It could have been the earthquake we had last year. It could have been just the overall failure of the, the line over time. But we are— we believe we have that situation under control. But it is going to take us a while to put things back together, and I wanted to make you aware of what was taking place and why, for example, we continue to have barricades in that section of the city's city center campus. Brandon was talking just about sales taxes, and we have seen obviously growth in our sales tax. Just wanted to represent to you that there is some vulnerability or flexibility in those numbers. We actually did get our January 2021 sales tax numbers, and they are actually 2% lower than where we were in January 2020. So just wanting to reinforce that while we continue to see growth in sales tax, there is limited predictability as to how we're going to fare in the future. We think we're going to continue to, to positively grow, but that is not a guarantee. Also want to touch base with you on where we are in relation to Community Park and our tank project. As you know, we have continued to explore the idea of locating the water tank to the east of the original site that we proposed. We are actually looking at a couple of options. One option has the tank being built underneath the current Mountain View baseball field. Another proposal we're evaluating has the tank being constructed north of that baseball field. We also are hearing from at least one of the neighbors who is maybe stepping back and saying, hey, it might be a good idea if we actually go back To the original suggested location. She has now kind of come to the understanding that potentially, if we build a tank right behind their property, that means that there will never be anything built behind her property in perpetuity. So she's looking at that and has approached the city, or at least had a conversation asking the city to potentially revisit that question. At the same time, we are having— we've received communication from Mr. Farley, and he has represented to us that there might be some level of negotiation available in the purchase price of that property. So things continue to be relatively fluid in this discussion. We haven't landed on a specific solution as of yet. What I will represent to you, though, is that whatever we do in terms of relocating baseball fields or softball fields or whatnot, there could be a substantial cost associated with one of those options, specifically relocating fields. And so we are continuing to evaluate to see what is the best option, not just for the surrounding neighborhoods, but also from a cost perspective. You know, ideally we are looking to minimize the cost that we would incur outside of construction of the tank, and, and we are going to plan to bring some options back to you in a future meeting so that you know exactly from a cost perspective of what things are looking like and what the specific lay of the land is. In addition to the tank discussion at Community Park, there's also a well and a pump station associated with this project. We are becoming increasingly confident that it will not be necessary for us to purchase the home That we currently have earnest money down on to help us in the construction of the pump house and the well project. So that is an additional piece of this overall puzzle that we are, we believe, closer to resolving than maybe the location of the tank. And, and finally, just on another related water issue, we also are actually putting together preliminary steps to construct well number 11. This is a well that is considered necessary to help offset some of the demand that comes from the northeast section of the city, and one of the properties, or the primary property, that we are looking at right now is property that is just due east of the Wiggy Wash along 1600 North. You recall that we purchased that property a number of years ago when we reconfigured the 4th West intersection. That property is currently property that the city owns, and we think it could be A good use of that property from the perspective of the intensity of the use is obviously very limited. It serves a public purpose, but it's not a property that would increase traffic. It's not a property that would lead to additional density or obviously vertical growth, which I know is concerning to the neighbors. Chris and Neil in our water department are putting together kind of preliminary concepts about siting a tank on that property as well. So as we continue to have conversations about the future financing of all this capital infrastructure, we are continuing in trying to essentially build resolution in where some of these projects will be built. Also, you are obviously well aware that last week Governor Cox suggested and made the change, or the Utah County met qualifications to transition from the high transmission index to the moderate transmission index per COVID-19 requirements here in the state of Utah. That then puts us in a situation where, for example, we can loosen up some of the requirements that we have in relation to activities and events that we hold here within the city. For example, there are opportunities right now at CIRA and Hale Center Theater, for example, provided people wear masks, They can now seat people in all of the seats that they have available. This change from high to moderate also kind of begs the question as to when we as a suit in-person meetings, and whether you are comfortable in the short term making that transition from virtual or electronic meetings to now in-person meetings. Like we had pre-COVID. This is not something that we have to decide today, but obviously I want to make you aware that the potential exists for us to now again consider reconvening in person. Our next scheduled meeting is April 13th, which is actually 3 days after the legislature has passed a law that would potentially remove the mask mandate statewide, provided the state met specific criteria as related to COVID-19. Right now, we are trending in a good direction where those limitations or those expectations could be met, and that mask mandate could very well be lifted by April 10th. So I want to put that conversation out to you so that you have an opportunity to consider a return to in-person meetings as early as April 13th.

Jamie, one question I have with regards to that. If in fact we can sit together on the dais and they remove the requirement requirement for masks as a mask mandate, does that mean then that we would be sitting there without masks next to each other?

Okay, so that's, that's actually an excellent question. And a conversation I had with Heather yesterday, you obviously have been reading about the state's mask mandate and lifting of that mandate, but there are many private organizations who have already come out and said we are still going to require masks. So if you come into our facility, our store, our hospital, or whatever private business, we're still going to require you to wear a mask. As a subunit of the state, we don't necessarily feel like we can compel individuals to continue to wear masks. So as a city, we are inclined right now to recommend that individuals continue to wear a mask, but we don't believe that we have an opportunity after April 10th, provided that mask— all those mask requirements are lifted, for us to continue to enforce a mask requirement within the city.

Sure, and that just begs the question, and not right now but later, I would like to hear from each council member if they're comfortable sitting together on the dais without wearing masks.

So yeah, I just, I just want to be transparent from the perspective of saying, you know, you may get some calls and some comments in the future about, hey, you know, The nature of COVID is changing. Why aren't you— why aren't we changing? So I see several hands have been raised.

Sure, go ahead, Terry.

Oh, Mayor, just a suggestion.

With our new City Hall or Library Hall, that might be a solution as far as City Council meetings where we can spread out farther away from each other. I mean, that might be a compromise. We'd have a lot more space and people coming to the meetings would have more space as we're transitioning from one to the other.

Sure, good suggestion. Tom, you raised your hand.

Yeah, and to add to what Terry said, when he and I discussed it, not only that, we'd be bringing public into our new showplace and they'd get to see it and come to it. But I know that Utah Valley University is still continuing requiring masks, and they're a subset of the state, Jamie, and they're continuing that at least through July. Yeah, I mean, we are, we are mindful that there are a number of private organizations that, that are doing this. We actually weren't aware of public institutions, so hearing that actually is, is very helpful. We obviously understand that we are conducting the public's business. And so we want to be publicly accessible, yet we want to be safe at the same time. And frankly, we haven't heard yet what other public agencies are doing. Actually, UVU and your comment is the first that I've heard of a, of a public institution continuing with a mask requirement.

So I'd love to hear everybody's opinion later. I like Terry and Tom's opinion. I personally am not comfortable sitting on the dais next to each other without a mask, but we can all talk about that in the future.

And Mayor, just one last thing if I may. We had a fantastic weekend. I want to extend my thanks and appreciation to our Recreation Department and all of our staff who did just a fantastic job with the opening of the fitness center. To my knowledge, everything is humming along. Carl can obviously speak to that better than I can, but I'm just proud of our team and the way they welcomed the community back to our fitness center. I've spent now some time in there myself working out, and I was there last night at 6:30, and it was busy. And there were people obviously anxious to, to get passes and to get back into the swing of fitness and, and well-being. And so we're really encouraged and just appreciate your support, all of your support in, in coming and being a part of this. Obviously, this, this great opportunity to create obviously the next great legacy in the city of Orem and our fitness Center and our library hall. Carl, any, any report you want to give as to where we are currently? Yeah, just, just echo what you've got. We appreciate the support. We had an incredible team. We had an incredible partnership with Method and, and Big D. I just couldn't be prouder of the, the entire rec staff and the entire city staff because there isn't a, there isn't a department that I didn't ask a favor from. So just thanks, everybody. I've used your quote, Carl, several times about wet, dirty, and tired. Well, that's—

that came from Mom, but I'll—

I appreciate you using it. And Mayor, we have yet to load up your slide video on YouTube, but you can plan to see it here by the end of the week.

All right.

Well, that was a wonderful grand opening. I want to thank Carl for all that he did. I want to thank Char for all she did with the, with the library hall. Really have to give a lot of thanks to Cure Construction, Big D Construction, and Method Studio. Those 2 buildings are beautiful buildings, and they're not like other buildings without— in other parts of the county. So we're really lucky. Let's go ahead and, and close our meeting now, and we'll start back up at 6 o'clock for our City Council meeting. So we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Hey, Mayor?

Yes.

Where's that, where's that city gate from?

Uh, I cannot tell you that without Looking on their card, I believe outside of, uh, Sacramento area.

Oh, okay.

They did a pretty thorough job.

Yes.

I don't know if we go to meetings on the dais, none of us can eat while we're in the middle of the meeting.

Yeah, and other things too.

Yeah, other things too. All right, let's go ahead and begin our meeting. I'd like to read a notice of an all-electronic meeting. Pursuant to Mayor Richard F. Brent's proclamation dated February 26, 2021, the Orem City Council meeting on March 23, 2021 will be an all-electronic meeting. There will be no anchor location for the meeting. The city cannot ensure the recommended minimum of 6 feet of social distancing for meeting participants at the usual anchor location in the Orem City Council chambers. Therefore, holding the meeting at the City Council chambers would present a substantial risk to the health and safety of those who may be present at the meeting and may contribute to the spread of COVID-19. There will be no public access to the Orem City Council chambers. Those desiring to view or participate in the meeting must do so electronically. To view the meeting, please go to orem.org/meetings. To make a comment, please submit your comment through orem-org.com. Written comments will be accepted before and during the meeting. All written comments received will be entered into the record and forwarded to each City Council member for review. Written comments will also be read aloud during the live meeting when required by law or when time permits. As technology permits, the City Council may also accept oral comments. Once an item has been voted on, that item will be closed to additional comments. Thank you for your cooperation during these challenging times. We would now like to call the meeting to order and would like to have Brent Sumner give us our invocation and Bren Bybee give us the Pledge of Allegiance.

Our kind Eternal Heavenly Father, we're thankful for the opportunity we have to meet as City Council and staff and Members of our Orem community. We bless that what is talked about and what decisions are made tonight will benefit our community and make it even, even better place to live. And Father, please bless all those individuals in need of good health, that they'll be watched over and be blessed and regain their activity. And Father, we thank thee for your watchful eye, and we say these things in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen. Amen.

Amen.

Make sure—

can I be heard?

Yes.

Okay, please repeat the pledge of— please arise and repeat the Pledge of Allegiance with me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Brent. Thank you, Brent.

Thank you.

We will start out with a report from the Natural Resources Stewardship Committee. I'm not sure who's doing that.

That's, that's me, Darren Hawkins.

Okay.

Aaron, go right ahead.

Okay, so I can go ahead and share my screen, right?

Yes, please do.

Okay, great. And I'll move this into presentation mode. Oh, oops, I started in the mid-screen here. Okay, so this is the Orem Natural Resources Committee in 2020. We had Jeff Lamson assigned to us from the City Council, and we have me as chair. We have Quinn Meekum as vice chair. Matt Taylor is our long-range planner who's assigned with the committee. Sarah Bateman, a member of the committee. Paul Dunn, Hillary Hungerford, all members of the committee. And, and Jake Harding, who— staff that helps us out. We did have a switch in the middle of the year. where Hillary replaced Heidi Clark, who had to step down for health reasons, and Matt replaced Jenna Albers. So I get the unenviable task— no one wants this— of reviewing 2020. So let's make it quick. 2020 happened. Any questions?

Move on.

No, nobody wants to remember this, but we did our best. And so we will, we'll see if we can't actually do a little bit of review, but also look forward to 2021. So this is sort of how we see our role is to try to help sit at the intersection between the Orem city government, Orem residents and businesses, and community partnerships. And we worked on all 3 of these kinds of things. You know, I kind of made— I kind of divided our 2020 into a couple of different themes. So first of all, I would say 2020 was a year of learning. We, we spent some time learning about issues because taking actions was somewhat more difficult. So we learned about the city's plan for smart water meters. And in fact, when those— I'm a little bit unsure about this, but we've talked about when those begin to be installed, that we will promote their use on social media, and we would be— members of the committee would be some of the first to get them so that we can serve as testers of them and spread the word about them. But that was all, as I understand it, put on hold for a while for COVID. Farmland preservation. We visited the Wilkerson Farm and the Crandall Orchards, and we've talked with them about what we can do to help keep those agricultural spaces going in Orem, because we would like to remember some of Orem's heritage, and it's lovely to have garden spaces in the middle of our bustling, increasingly bustling metropolis. We visited the Provo River Delta Project, which is very impressive. We met with planners about the bike plan in Orem, and we'd love to see that move forward. And we also spent some time towards the end of the year meeting individually with each of you, and we really appreciated your time, and we loved getting to know you a little bit, and thank you so very much. For those of you who are more graphically inclined, we have this, you know, this is how we envision our relationship with the Orem city government, right? We've got smart water meters, city bike plan, employee Oh, I should mention the Employee Green Team. This was an initiative that we helped come up with the idea, and I believe Matt has helped assemble a set of employees inside the city who are interested in promoting sustainable use of our natural resources and would be occasionally chatting about how best to do that. There's also a brownfields plan where— that our committee will be participating in about assessing areas that can be sort of turned over and made more productive part of the city in terms of greenery. I guess I should pause and say, you know, if you have any comments along the way, I'd I'd be happy to hear them. Or I can just wait till the end. Maybe it's easier to wait till the end. I don't have a super long presentation here. 2020 is also a year of community building for us. As I just talked about, we reached out and with Matt were able to help create this Orem City Green Team, or, you know, not create it. Matt was the one who put it together under the direction of the staff and the leaders of Orem City, and we hope to be able to cross paths with them and work together on different initiatives. We sponsored an Earth Day youth art contest in the community. We've done that for a couple of years now. We always get lovely entries. We also did a lot of social media outreach. Especially after COVID hit, we had a running theme of Orem Outside, and we invited community members to submit their outdoor experiences with their families and friends, and we got a lot of participation actually. And maybe you noticed it on the social media feed from Orem City this past year where we had, I think weekly, we had an Orem Outside kind of post on Facebook and Instagram and other kinds of social media places. So again, right, this is how we kind of see ourselves as reaching out to Orem residents where— oh, this was our winner of the youth art contest, Save Our Oceans, a turtle swimming amid too much garbage. We also have, you know, we had this Orem Outside post, quite a few of them, and we're also reaching out with Orem residents to think about, um, thinking about possibly creating some kind of education station at the library that would be useful for Orem residents to inform themselves a little bit more about sustainable resource kinds of issues. This is something in the idea stage, as you can see. Um, and, uh, we'd say that 2020 was also a year of progress and discussion. Wasn't just learning and outreach, that there has been a lot of progress. And, and Mayor, we really appreciated your message in December of 2020 that highlighted the accomplishments that we've had in terms of natural resources. And I'm just highlighting a couple of things you said there: 30% reduction in water use per person per day over the last 20 years. In the same time period, a 64% reduction in air pollution emissions. More mass transit, and I understand that there are plans for more of that in Orem, and then Tier 3 gas, which is a significant opportunity. Hopefully most of you know what that is, but it's available at many gas stations, not all, where it is a significantly less polluting type of gas. We also worked— this is more on the discussion front, We talked with you folks a couple of times and with city staff about the Community Renewable Energy Act, HB 411. And we do appreciate your willingness to consider that, right? We talked about it and, and you folks initially approved it and then sort of had some more concerns with COVID and we've, we've been in further discussions with many of you. We appreciate your willingness to consider this commitment to net-zero energy. And, you know, it seems like our society as a whole is hopefully moving in that direction. We understand that you have concerns about HB 411 in particular with the opt-in system or the opt-out system. And you actually— I'm sorry, I think I misphrased that there. It's an opt-out system where you have to opt out of it or you're automatically enrolled. So I'm sorry, I misphrased that. And we hope we can continue those discussions and perhaps find a way forward towards net-zero energy use. And we think about this in terms of community partnerships. So we've— we were talking with other folks about this kind of energy discussion. We talked with other counties and cities that are moving forward on this. We've talked with student designers about our education station idea at the library. I've told you that we've talked to city farmers, the Wilkersons and the Crandalls, about farmland preservation. And we also talked with the community of governments that's interested in improving transportation on the North Shore. of Utah Lake. So what are our priorities in 2021? Well, it's going to be better because it can't be worse. We have a great idea we're really pushing forward on to recognize community business leaders in stewardship and natural resources stewardship things. We've been working hard on preparing that. We're going to continue to work on agricultural lands preservation, promoting wise water use on social media. We'd love to continue working with the city on the bike plan and brownfields issues. We'd like to keep pushing forward this library education station idea. We work with the city on outdoor recreation opportunities like a proposed playground at Timpanogos Park. We have an idea for a fall farm festival that would feature local produce, and we want to work with Orem City on the green team. Okay, so that's my presentation summary of what we've been up to and what we hope to work on. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to, to have those.

Any questions from the council? Darren, I did want to bring up one thing that you may or may not be aware of, but in the transportation bill, the legislature passed this just recently. In HB 433, there is a section in there for trails and bike paths where they're funding it, and they've set aside millions of dollars to pay for it. The requirement is, like on a trail, that there has to be a place of origin and a place of ending, so it has to go from one place to another. And the good thing about it is they're doing an 80/20% match, so the state will pay for 80% of the trail and then the city has to pay for 20%. So that's a pretty huge deal, and I'd recommend that you guys look up that bill and look into it and see if there are things that maybe that would apply for. here in Orem. Debbie, you have a question? You want to go ahead?

Well, more of a thank you. It's been my pleasure to take Jeff's place on this particular committee, and I appreciate that. I'm really impressed with the work they've done. Some very good experts. I consider a lot of them very experts in the field, and they have great ideas. So I appreciate their work, and I know that they're working on some water marketing things on how to conserve water with kind of a movie theme coming up. So there'd be some pretty fun marketing to help conserve water. But this is great work, great, great, great committee. I enjoy working with them.

Thank you.

Mayor, could I say something as well?

Sure.

I had the privilege of working with these folks, and I agree with Debbie. They're probably one of the hardest working committees you'll ever see. And I really appreciated their Facebook page.

As Darren mentioned, throughout COVID, they would place ideas and things to do on there.

And one of the things that I found great pleasure in, they put a post out and asked about what kinds of birds people are seeing outside.

And so basically it was a way of people to get outside.

This was, I believe, early spring. late spring, early summer.

And, and it was so fun to see the response from the people in Orem, the different varieties of birds that they were seeing around town. And I found myself outside and, and paying more attention to that. But also just so many great ideas of things that you can do outside.

And we all need to be outdoor more often.

But if you're ever looking for something to do with the kids or the grandkids, visit their Facebook page. They have some fun ideas there.

But thank you, Darren.

It's great to see you again.

Thank you, Jeff. Darren, one other question for you on the Wilkerson farm. So they have a benefactor who purchased the ground north of 2000 South and Orem, 14 acres, which is where they're at now. But the benefactor also went across the street and purchased 14 more acres to the south. I haven't seen that ground used for the public as far as crops or raising food or raising flowers or whatever. I'm wondering if you could check with them and see what their plans are for the 14 acres south of their current property across the street on 2000 South.

I would love to do that. Thank you for suggesting that, and thank you for suggesting HB 433. That is very exciting to me. I love trails. I will look into that. And, and thank you, Jeff. We loved working with you. We really did, and we miss you. And Debbie, it's, it's great having you.

All right, well, thank you for your presentation. Appreciate having you here. We'll now move on to personal appearances. This is— time is set aside for any personal appearances on topics that are not on the scheduled agenda. And we have 3 minutes for those who would like to make comments, and we will go ahead and open it up for 90 seconds for anyone who would like to place a comment or plan on speaking. So 90 seconds will start now.

And Mayor, I can read in while we're waiting. I can read in a couple comments.

That'd be great. Go ahead.

First one is from LaShelle Thompson. I have some concerns about the large developments proposed on 1600 West and 400 North. 16— I think what they meant is 1600 North and 400 West. 1600 North is already very narrow and crowded. As you go east to access I-15. I'm concerned that we are adding more residents to an area that isn't equipped to handle the current traffic needs. I request that the 1600 North access to I-15 be widened with more lanes than before we add more residents. I'm concerned about the increase of traffic in residential neighborhoods. I requested— I request parking lot access to these developments be off State Street or where 1600 North is business zoned, not in residential neighborhoods like 400 North or 16— or West 1600 North. I'm concerned about the proposed 6-story height of these developments so close to residential neighborhoods and by businesses that are single or 2-story structures. I request setbacks of 75 feet from residential homes and structure height lower as it approaches existing homes. Potentially, Mayor, that came in after our public comments ended last week. Obviously that decision now has been made.

Yes.

The next one is from Barbara Pulley. We moved to Orem in 1969. To put that into perspective, we moved here before they had a traffic signal light at the intersection of 1600 North and State Street. We lived on 1600 North this entire time. We have watched a quiet country road turn into an extremely busy city street. We built our home on property that was my grandfather— that my grandfather owned and farmed until his death, so it is meaningful to me and is the main reason why we've stayed in Orem. When we wanted to build our home, we were only able to do so if we put in the sidewalk, curb, gutter along our property, and it had to be done at our expense. Later on, the city put in the sidewalk, curb, and gutter all along 1600 North at the city's expense, our taxes, for all those who didn't have it. Then the street became so busy that the city had to come in on our frontage To widen the road, and they tore up my sidewalk without any consideration. That's not the end of the story. A second time they widened the road and again came onto our frontage. This time we were left without, without a pullover in front of our house. Our newspaper delivery person told us it was too dangerous for him to deliver the paper to us, and we would need to move our paper box. So after 50 years, we stopped taking the newspaper. And now we have the city figuring to allow a development that will frustrate— that will further frustrate the people who live in our area with even busier streets. There are certain times of the day that we can't get out of our driveway as it is. Sadly, it is one of the problematic issues we'll be dealing with. Orm City, we've put up with a lot over the years since we've been here, but this one is just asking too much. One additional mayor, Jim Condie. I want to thank the city planning folks for making this recommendation. I'm happy that the council passed the 75-foot setback. The residential rezone adds an additional setback to the height that will help preserve our privacy and somewhat of a neighborhood feel. The developer has rights to develop his property, and he purchased bottleneck property with no real access to State Street. Developed— development should be pushed towards State Street. He needs realistic plans for the property he purchased. Thank you.

All right, well, our time is up. Have you received any additional Comments, Steve?

No further comments, Mayor.

All right, then we'll go ahead and close the personal appearance portion of our meeting and move on to consent items. There are 2 consent items. 8.1 is the approval of the City Council meeting minutes of March 9th, 2021, and 8.2 is a resolution which is an interlocal cooperation agreement between Utah County And Orem City for the administration of the 2021 municipal elections. Would anyone care to move either one of those items to a scheduled item? All right, I move that we go ahead and accept the consent items as read. Is there a second to that motion?

Second.

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

Aye.

Tom?

Aye.

Debbie?

Aye.

Terry?

Aye.

Dave?

Aye.

Brent?

Brent, are you there? Are you muted?

Aye.

Okay, thank you. And as mayor, I vote aye as well. Our consent agenda passes. We'll move on to our Scheduled items, and the first one is a public hearing. The city will receive public comments on the Community Development Block Grant projected use of funds for the CARES Act CDBG-CV funding and consider approval of a resolution for substantial amendment to the 2019-2020 Annual Action Plan. Ken Ransom, our CDBG Commission chairperson, and Kenna Jo Matthews, our community services manager, are our presenters.

Hello, Mayor and Council. This is Ken Ransom. I'm happy to appear before you today on behalf of the CDBG Commission. And you can see our presentation in front of you there. If you can proceed, Kenny, to the next slide. So initially, City of Orem received an initial grant of over $411,000. The council has allocated that grant, and you can see a summary there of all the projects that have been funded by the council. Next slide. Thank you. And the city has received an additional CV grant of $287,000. And from that, $29,000 has already been allocated to Centro Hispano in a previous council meeting. So we have left to allocate $258,049.16. This is a reminder of the requirements for the use of the funding, the CDBG COVID funding. And the council previously has Given our commission direction on focusing on these types of projects that you see listed there. Next slide, please. Thank you. So our first recommended— our first recommendation, the police department is requesting $24,000 for victim services. This is a COVID funding request because we're seeing rising domestic violence rates in the city, and so we recommend that This request be funded at the requested amount. Next slide, please. The Orem Police Department is also requesting $5,000 for a mental health response team and homeless services program. The city is seeing higher homeless rates, and so we're recommending this be funded as well. In the Staff have— city staff have contacted a couple of Title I elementary schools to see what their needs are. And Sharon Park is requesting $1,650 for a bi-level water bottle filling station to mitigate COVID impacts. And we recommend that this request be funded. And Orem Junior High School is also requesting funding for a bi-level water bottle filling station. They're requesting $3,300, and we recommend this be funded as well. Community Action Services and Food Bank is requesting $30,000 for their mortgage assistance program. This is to help those who are directly impacted by COVID-19, and we recommend that this request be funded as well. So here's a summary of the recommendations from our commission. I want to thank my fellow commission members for their service on this commission and for their review and their concern for the community. And that if those requests are funded, there will remain to allocate $194,000 and some change for the— we will make additional recommendations in the future, in the near future, for this funding. So the next step is to adopt a resolution approving an amendment to the action plan, and I'll turn it back to you, Mayor and Council.

Okay, thank you. Any questions or comments? Okay, well, this is a public hearing, so we will open it up for anyone who wishes to make a public comment. We will take 90 seconds for that. to occur and wait to see if Steve receives any.

No comments yet, but we'll watch, Mayor.

Okay.

All right, Steve, have you received any comments?

No comments, Mayor.

All right, then we will go ahead and close the public comment portion of our public hearing and bring it back to the council. Any comments or questions from the council? All right, then I would like to make a motion that the City Council of Orem adopt the recommendations of the CDBG Advisory Commission and their recommendation of the use of the CARES Act funding and approve a resolution, resolution for substantial amendment to the 2019-2020 Annual Action Plan.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we'll start out, Jeff, with you on the vote. We'll start with you, Jeff.

Aye.

Okay, Tom?

Aye.

Debbie?

Aye.

Terry?

Aye.

Dave?

Aye.

Brent?

Aye.

And Mayor, I vote aye as well. So the resolution passes and we will move on. Thank you, Ken. Move on to—

Mayor and Council.

Scheduled item 9.2. This is a fence modification/resolution. The applicant requests approval for a 6-foot Simtek fence between their commercial property and 2 residential properties to the east of the Sun River Gardens located at 312 West 1200 North in the C-2 zone. Jason Bench is our presenter. Jason, is the applicant here?

You know, I just realized, Mayor, I forgot to send him the link, so I don't know that he is on.

All right, well, we'll move on. Go ahead.

So you see my screen? Yes. Yeah, so the applicant is requesting that The fence between— on the east side of the Sun River Gardens, you can see the red line on the screen. It is required, based on being adjacent to a commercial— a commercial zone being next to a residential zone— that a masonry wall be required, 7-foot. The applicant is requesting that that be modified based on the existing fence that's part of the existing fence that's there, which is the Simtek fence. You can see on the The right side of your screen, the existing Simtek in yellow. What they're wanting to do is continue that Simtek with the red— excuse me— the red portion. So the entire fence line would be the same material. Here's a shot from 12th North of the existing Simtek fence with the residential property there to the east. They're wanting to continue that style of fence. You can see how it abuts into the chain link. They'll take that chain link and replace it with the Simtek, so the same type of fence will then be the entire length. Both property owners have agreed that— that— and here's the letters that were in your packet. I'm not going to read those, but basically both property owners agree that the Simtek fence is sufficient for them as far as the separation between the nursery and their property. So we will recommend that the council grant the modification to instead of a 7-foot masonry, that a 6-foot Simtek fence be installed and maintained along that west property— or east property line, excuse me. Any questions?

I don't have any. Any from the council?

Mayor, I'm having a hard time finding my hand raised. Let me just ask if I may. Jason, my, my only concern, since the neighbors are in agreement, is that we don't set a precedent other properties. Could you comment on that?

So we have done this in the past. This is— we probably have one a year that somebody comes in and wants to make a modification. We had one last year, remember, about 4th North, when a property owner really, really liked their fence and didn't want it torn down. So it is built in the ordinance that allows an applicant to come to the council and make this request. So I can't say it sets a precedent, but it is in the ordinance and it does allow them to do that. So we We typically have one a year or so. I'm not going to say we have it on a regular basis, but there is an option built in.

Okay, any other comments or questions from the council? All right, I'd like to make a motion. I'd like to move that a 6-foot Simtek fence be allowed between the commercial property and the 2 residential properties. to the east of the Sun River Gardens located at 312 West, 1200 North in the C-2 zone be approved. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, let's go ahead and start. Brent, we'll start with you on voting. Are you in favor?

Aye.

Okay, Dave?

Aye.

Terry?

Aye.

Debbie?

Aye.

Tom?

Aye.

Jeff?

Aye.

Okay, and I as mayor— and I as mayor am in favor as well. So the fence modification resolution passes. Jamie, do you have any communication items at this time?

Do not, thank you, Mayor.

Okay, so I move that we then adjourn to a meeting of the Arm Redevelopment Agency. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, we now open our RDA meeting and would like to start with a consent item, which is the approval of the meeting minutes of the RDA meeting December 8th, 2020. Anyone wish to put that onto the scheduled item list? Okay, if not, I move that we go ahead and approve the RDA consent items. Is there a second?

Second.

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

Aye.

Dave?

Aye.

Terry?

Aye.

Debbie?

Aye.

Tom?

Aye.

Jeff?

Aye.

Okay, and as mayor, I vote aye as well. Our consent item agenda passes. We'll now move down to our RDA scheduled items, of which we have 2. The first one is a resolution, which is an amendment to the participation agreement with University Shopping Center, LLC, and our presenter is Jamie Davidson, our City Manager, and Heather Schreiber, our City Attorney. And is the applicant here?

Yes, Mr. Longson representing Woodbury Corporation or University Shops is also in attendance.

Okay, thank you. So go ahead, Jamie and Heather.

Thank you, Mayor, Council. As mentioned in our pre-meeting, this is just to return to formalize a discussion we had or consideration of adjusting the term of the University Place CDA. You recall last year, as a result of COVID-19, the legislature passed SB 6001, which would allow cities, municipalities with redevelopment agencies, specifically the redevelopment agency of Orem to extend the term of the current University Place CDA an additional 2 years to accommodate and account for delays that have resulted in construction and other operations associated with the CDA. By resolution, you are asked to consider and Approval of the resolution, which would then formalize the action. At that point, we would then, as a redevelopment agency, enter into a revised agreement with the Woodbury Corporation to memorialize the action that you are taking here tonight.

Okay, any questions or comments from the council? Okay, then I would like to—

This is Terry. I have—

I do have a comment. So just, just a reminder, I understand what's happening with the CDA and with retail, but part of the master plan when, when Woodbury showed this to the neighbors was— I mean, they've certainly gone ahead with the apartments that built throughout the complex, but they also talked about a tennis facility they're going to build.

So some of these things I'm not seeing.

So maybe they can give us an update on some of the other parts of the master plan that they promised to the community.

I can, I can touch on that briefly. So one of the first things that we did is we built the park, which we've hosted lots of community events and so forth in, and, and, and is open, you know, for the public to come and enjoy as well. So that's one of the facilities that we did. Also, obviously, we've built some commercial with building additional, additional retail. We've built a 100,000-square-foot Class A office building, parking decks, and, and also are under construction now on a new parking deck with a new office building. So more than just the residential, obviously, we've been doing the commercial portions as well.

well.

And as far as a tennis club, that was a proposal in the initial phases of looking at doing a tennis club. Obviously, in today's environment, that hasn't been warranted yet, as has not some of the other office buildings or residential buildings. And so when the market would warrant that, you know, that would be something that we, we would consider. But right now, That's not a feasible thing to build. So, as you know, this has been being done in phases, and we're continuing to advance those phases.

Thank you.

Okay, any other comments from the Council? All right, I'd like to make a motion that the Redevelopment Agency of Orem approve the University Place CDA amendment. Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Okay, let's go ahead and start with Dave.

Aye.

Okay, Terry.

Aye.

Debbie.

Aye.

Tom.

Aye.

Jeff.

Aye.

Brent.

Aye.

And I, as mayor, vote aye as well. Resolution passes. We'll now go to 14.2 of the RDA scheduled items. This is a resolution authorizing the extension of the collection of the tax increment for 2 years in the University Place Community Development Project area due to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. And again, our presenter is Jamie Davidson and Heather Schreiber.

Mayor, thank you. This is just a formalization of the— what's necessary to accompany the amended agreement that you just approved.

Okay, any comments or questions from the council? All right, I make a motion that the city— that the Redevelopment Agency of Orem pass a resolution authorizing the extension of the collection of the tax increment for 2 years in the University Place Community Development Project area due to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, let's start with Debbie.

Aye.

Terry.

Aye.

Dave. Aye.

Brent.

Aye.

Jeff.

Aye.

Tom?

Aye.

And I, as mayor, vote aye as well. The resolution passes. Seeing there's no other business before the Redevelopment Agency of Orem, I move for adjournment. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, we are formally adjourned and our meetings are