City Council · 2022-01-10

I'm trying to remote in, and then Lynette just contacted me and she's not going to be able to be here today. Um, let's start out with First meeting in 2023 with Chris Shirkey and Reed Weiss, the Underwater Reclamation Project.

We should probably point out that we ended last year and now we're kicking it off this year.

You guys just keep on going.

Yeah, it's a good sign.

We're going to talk about on the flip side of water conservation, in the event that you still have to flush your toilet, going to talk about water reclamation now. So that was kind of a joke.

Thanks for letting us know, Chris.

Yeah, just, I don't know if any of you have seen the news today, but there is an avalanche, significant issue that happened on the Pueblo River where the river has been blocked to some degree up at Bridal Veil Falls. There's water flowing through. Reed, do you have an update on that?

Yeah, Rick showed me a video that was sent to him right before I came here. Water is getting underneath it somewhat, but it's also able to get around and it's flowing down that frontage road that you've probably driven there toward below the highway. So it doesn't look like it's going to back up and cause lots of serious problems. The water's getting around, so we're fortunate. Fortunately, with That it hasn't backed up significantly. Yeah, KSL does have some nice pictures.

Yeah, you'll see that on the news tonight if you haven't seen it on Twitter feeds or whatever.

So 60% of our drinking water comes from Provo River, so you know where we're at.

So tonight we're going to be talking about our water reclamation facility, our capital facilities plan.

It's been on—

the study's been underway for the last 2 years. And I'd like to introduce a few people here. The lead is with our Water Resources Division, our division manager, of course. And then Giles Dempsey, our Water Reclamation Section Manager, will be presenting along with John Motta. And then Jenny Calderon is here as well.

So—

Wayne's here also. Oh, sorry.

And then Wayne—

what was your last name again? I'm sorry. Wayne Fawcett is here as well from Water Works. So again, they've been really good to work with. They designed our water reuse facility that will be under construction starting this month. That project, just to give you an update, came in at around $22 million. We've since been able to acquire about $13.5 million in grants, in part thanks to participation and help from the mayor and others with the city, with Bill Lee. with our Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Quality, the State of Utah, Utah County, and then a $3 million earmark with the federal government. So we're able to close that gap, call that the inflationary gap that's there. Now we'll be able to bid for a project based on our estimates that were provided a year ago. But again, the Water Works team provided that design for us. We've been working with them closely for the last 2 years. So with that, I'll turn the time over Over to John and Giles to make the presentation. During the presentation, if you have questions, feel free to just stop and we can answer any questions you might have. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present this.

As Chris indicated, we've been working on this for about 2 years now, which is fortunate. Last April, May, we got a letter from the state stating that Oregon needed to submit a discharge plan to the state by December 31st. It took 2 years to complete this. We were fortunate that we got onto— or that we were doing this and we got it completed.

We were able to submit it to the state.

It's part of a Clean Water Needs Survey the EPA has asked for, and they use it to look at different states and see what kind of funding states need from federal government. So this feeds right into their, um, into their programs. Again, it was required by the legislature to complete this. So again, we were fortunate we got jump-started, got this taken care of. Also, one of the grants that Chris indicated that we received, one of the requirements in that grant is that we do an asset condition study.

Here it is.

So we've already got that taken care of. So John's been working with us since the beginning on this. I'm going to let him present this.

Again, if you have questions as we go through it, please let us know.

Thank you, John.

So I'm John Manna with Water Works Engineers, water wastewater engineers.

If I'm diving too much into details and numbers that you do not care to hear today, or if I'm boring you, please let me know. I will always change, uh, so—

Is it the 4 key?

Yeah, click on it again.

Sorry, there we go. I got it, I got it.

So we have an agenda just to give you a little facility background in case you haven't seen it or you haven't been there lately. We'll give you a bit of process description, what's in that facility and why they have them constructed over the years, and what is, what are the criteria we use to evaluate the facility and whether, you know, it's, it's getting ready for the future. And then what are the regulations and the building codes that also the facilities similar to yours have to comply with. And then we'll tell you, give you the results of the condition assessment that Jack was mentioning and our proposed improvements. So as you know, the plant was built in 1957, so it's a 65-year-old plant and it's been expanded and upgraded over the years. Almost about every 27 years you've done a major project, in '84 and in 2010. It is serving your population and some, some other service area population, not just Orem City, 111,000 people with a built-out target population of 129,000 to 130,000 people. and it's estimated to happen in 2060. This study essentially takes you about 20 years in the future, but we took those build-out numbers into consideration when we did the planning. So the plant is essentially designed to treat wastewater coming from your— from the collection system. Most of those wastewater treatment plants are split into 2 major categories, one of them called liquid stream and then the solid stream. What comes in the sewer is a mix of water and sewer. We separate them and then we treat the water and then we treat the sludge or we treat the solids. The plant has multiple steps to get you from water that looks dirty and it's not healthy and it's not good for public exposure to water that you could use for irrigation and for possibly reclamation. That includes primary clarification and the big expenditure in this stream is the oxidation ditch, which is activated sludge process from a food perspective, you can see how much it takes. It's these 4 basins and these carousel basins. This is kind of where the money goes in these plants. It's a biological process and it's the most cost-effective that we see in those industries. And then you're using UV disinfection, which is one of the most advanced disinfection systems that's used in the industry. And then you currently can expand the plant to add filtration for water reclamation and to enhance the phosphorus removal that's required by the state. On the solids side, that's when you take the solids that settles in these basins and remove them to essentially smaller basins, smaller tanks, but those are intended to have temperature and time in them so that essentially, quote unquote, you cook the sludge so that it becomes— you degrade it and you decompose it so that it becomes adequate for public exposure or public use on land applications. You have a 2-step digester system, and that's for a reason. You want to produce Class A sludge, which has less regulatory attached to it or has less monitoring and less future legal implications. But you can do either Class B or Class A. We also use a dewatering belt press system, which essentially The sludge that comes out of the digester is about 20,000 to 30,000 milligrams per liter. If you try to truck that material off-site, it won't be doable. It would cause a lot of issues on the roads, a lot of nuisance, but also it would cost a lot of money. So this facility would remove the water up to— remove the water by about 5 times. Instead of hauling the full quantity, you would be hauling about a fifth of that quantity. And then you have some sludge holding tanks in case you want to stage the sludge.

Go ahead, Charles.

Other facilities that are important but they're not part of the treatment process itself is, you know, water system that supports all the equipment, the odor control units that you need in order to prevent any odor nuisance to the surrounding areas, noise mitigation, and then the electrical and the control systems to essentially power and control all the equipment you have down there. And what's critical about these systems, the control systems, unfortunately that's the nature of these systems. You gotta keep updating those systems, and at that plant some of them are already outdated and it's been hard to find replacement parts to keep them maintained.

Go ahead, Joe.

So how do we evaluate plants? We look at the water, how much water is coming into the plant, and how much salt is coming into the plant. So from a water perspective, we look at the fluctuation during the day, the seasonal fluctuation, and the annual fluctuation. Because each one of these have an impact on a different part of the plant. And what I want to point here is that back in 2010, the project design assumed a 13.5 MGD annual average day capacity of the plant, which is— this is the amount of water that the plant receives on a daily— on an annual basis divided by 365 days. And then there was an assumption for a peak hour of 21 MGD, 22 MGD. Based on the data we've analyzed over the last 5, 6 years from 2014 to today, that peaking factor actually went up, and then we expected for that once the plant goes to build out, instead of seeing 22 MGD, you're going to be seeing more like 32 million gallons a day. So it is not unreasonable for a plant of this size to have these spikes in flow, and this is essentially the highest, maybe 2 or 3 hours you're going to see in this plant over a year. But you have to plan for it because you don't want any spillage, you don't want anything that comes out of the channels.

Go ahead.

The other one are concentrations. So wastewater is not about water, it's mostly about the concentration that's in the water. It's about the organics, it's about the solids, and it's about the ammonia and the phosphorus. And these values change with the community and how it matures and ages. So we've seen these numbers essentially going up In 2010, there was an assumption that the BOD and the TSS were going to be 350. In your case, actually, we found in the last 5, 6 years that it actually came down a little bit. We normally expect these numbers to go higher because of water conservation. So the more you conserve water, the solids concentration goes up. So this is not very unusual in the area because of the amount of infiltration and inflow you have in your collection system. But we planned the facility for both, for a range, for the 260 all the way to the 350. You're covered whichever way the concentration changes for the future. Yes, we can go to that. Okay, that's the next. So then for the expensive facilities, for the activated sludge process and for the digesters, what matters isn't just water or the concentration, it's the combination of both. You want to know how much mass you're putting into these basins and how much they can treat on a daily basis or order to be able to meet the permits. And as you can see, your permit— your plant is designed for about 40,000 pounds per day of BOD and of TSS. And actually, the BOD is the organics and the TSS is the solids. So for now, we're about 2/3 of the way there, and depending on how the city develops and how you get there, you have enough basins in the ground to take you through buildouts. So that's the good news. The bad news is that there's not a mechanical system that supports these basins that have to be refurbished and improved and expanded. This is a short summary of where we apply each one of these factors. You don't have to go through it unless you're really interested how we design wastewater treatment plants. It kind of tells you the various parameters that we use for the various areas of the plant. So you have the plant, you have the facilities, but then what is it built for? It's built to essentially clean water and to follow certain regulations that are specific, that are required by this, by the federal government, state, and local—

I have a question.

Mayor, may I ask a question?

When we took a tour of the place, whatever it was, 3, 4, 5 months ago, we didn't hear that it was outdated. And that it's old and needs a lot of help.

Is this a—

did others hear that differently when we took the tour? So I'm getting a little confused on the tour. The people who were on the tour, who was with us there?

Were you, Reed?

Did I miss something when we took the tour? I didn't get a warning sign then that we had a—

I think we said we're going through a capital facilities process.

I grant you that, yes.

And there are areas— the areas that we took you to were primarily some of the newer areas.

You showed us the best.

Yeah. Good.

But this— the message that you're supposed to take from this is not that, oh no, we're in panic mode. The facility is operating well, but there are some significant improvements that need to be made because they are old.

If we said it right, isn't that?

Yes.

For some parts of it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't— we didn't necessarily say this is old, right? It was apparent, I believe, in some areas that, oh, this is old. But there are other areas that are newer that won't require significant investment, but other areas will. And will—

It's part of the normal maintenance. If I may use those words, is that fair?

I would say it goes beyond normal maintenance.

Okay.

There is some—

there are some upgrades that need to happen, which John will get to in more detail. But I don't think the message when you went on the tour was everything's great. That was not the intent of that.

I didn't hear all was well, but I didn't— thank you for letting me build a message somewhere in between.

We're not in panic mode.

Thank you.

But we are in— we need to, we need to look to the future and make some improvements soon in certain areas that you wouldn't have seen. Sure. And other areas you'll see. To cut to the chase, we've got a 20-year plan that we need to start significantly investing in.

And I realize a lot of things would break down in the city with a lot less impact than if this were correct. Right.

So I get that.

So thank you for learning. Forgive me for just being my—

I mean, perhaps I could add just parameters that—

yeah, perhaps it's fair to say different aspects of the treatment plant have Different amount of their useful life has been used up. Sounds like there's not really anything that's like imminently at like, you know, 90% of its useful life used up. But you know, there's areas that maybe have 30, 50, 60% of their useful life. And so we need to build that 20-year plan so we can spread out the costs over, over time and tackle it essentially one year, one step at a time.

Perfect.

Thank you for the clarification.

Okay, so as far as regulations that you have to comply with as far as a wastewater treatment plant, there are the— you're currently under a carbon or organics, TSS, and ammonia regulation. You have to comply with that and you're successfully doing it. And then there's future, and then there's a new phosphorus regulation that should go in effect in 2025. The plant is meeting it within— on an interim basis, but there's some improvements needed to be able to meet the 1 milligram per liter limit that's in place. And then there's some future changes that are expected. We don't know if they're going to happen or not, but the total nitrogen that the state is mentioning is TIN at 10. That would require some changes to the plant if that happens. On the solid side, you essentially have to meet Class A or Class B, and like I mentioned before, Class A will have fewer disposal restrictions, and then it will have fewer monitoring and reporting requirements. If you're disposing Class B, it's almost you have a chain of custody that you're gonna have to be able to trace that sludge to the producer and if there's anybody who is impacted by it, then you're liable for that. So that's why although Class A costs more money to produce, it is less liability for the future. The challenge with sludge disposal, and it's something that everybody's facing because it's an unknown in the future, there's less public reception to land application, which is the most cost-effective means of disposing of sludge. So that's a question that's in the future that would have to be addressed, and especially that there's always new chemicals that come up and it's essentially connected to the sludge that's been disposed of from wastewater treatment plants. And for example, the PFAS, if you're tracking that, that's a new chemical, it's almost everywhere and everybody's concerned about it, that it's part of the sludge produced in wastewater treatment plants. So the other items that is sent because of the plant aging, I mean, you can have an older structure that is very well maintained, which is actually the plant operation. The plant management are doing a great job maintaining your plant. You walk to the plant and it's very— all the equipment is very well maintained, all the buildings are, you know, looks clean and painted and they're very well kept. But that doesn't hide the problem that is you are in a seismic zone, very active seismic zone, and most of the plant structures do not meet the current seismic code. So that's, that's a decision that as a team we have to make, and we can have some recommendation on what, where we should apply it and where you can live without imposing this control. The other code that is essentially being an issue for treatment plants is what they call the NFPA 820. It's under the National Electric Code, and that's about safety that can prevent areas and treatment plants from fire and explosion in wastewater treatment.

plants.

So this code requires certain air changes in some environments that you have to produce in order to remove the potential of the hazards of causing explosions in wastewater treatment plants, and some of the areas of the plants that you have that the Oron plant has does not comply with these requirements. The other issues we found in the plant is there are some safety concerns in some areas. I'm not saying it's across the entire plant, but some equipment is really tight to get to and to maintain. Other problems is that there are some major facilities like pump stations that you need to operate and to have enough redundancy that are lacking redundancy. And really the reason they're lacking redundancy, for example, if I mentioned the primary effluent pump station, it has an old screw pump station that was built I think in 1957, and then there's a newer one. So they still use the capacity of the old pump station that is really hard to operate and when you operate it, it generates a lot of odors. So that's, that's one of those decisions you have to make. Do I still use the old technology, old pump station that is not easy to use, or do we expand the newer technology? So after we've considered all these items, we get to the condition assessment. The plant staff essentially has compiled a list of all the assets at the plant. It's about 880, 800, 880 assets. So we went through all those assets and we compared them to the expected useful life, the criticality of the asset. There is a piece of equipment that is old but it's not very critical to the process or to safety, that took a lower rating or ranking than a piece of equipment that is critical to the process. So we did criticality and we also did the condition. We checked if a piece of equipment looks like it has corrosion issues and it's old or you cannot find spare parts for it because it's outdated, then that took the higher priority risk. But when we put the spreadsheet and we compared the life expectancy on these assets today, that to the reality, essentially about half of this spreadsheet turned red. You get about 50% of the assets that are beyond their expected useful life, and the plant staff is doing a good job maintaining them and finding replacement parts, but at some point we get to a point where there's no more replacement parts. You cannot machine that piece of equipment anymore. So that's where you are in some of these, some of this equipment. The other big issue is the electrical equipment and the control panels. some of these panels are about 20 years old, 15 years old, so that they don't produce those microchips, they don't produce those smart boards anymore. So really you can't find any spare parts for them to replace. So those are some of the big items we found. And just to give it a high-level comparison, if you're going to build a treatment plant today that is 1,500 MGD that has all the features and all the processes that this treatment plant has, it would cost you about $400 million. And this is where you could say I got 50% of a $400 million plant that is operating beyond its expected useful life. We're not saying this is where you are today from a financial standpoint, but just as a reference point, as a comparison, that would give you kind of a gauge of where other facilities, other plants are. So the way we established the framework is we tried to balance risk with budget. You don't want to just go in and say, oh, nothing meets seismic code, so we're going to replace the entire plant. I don't think that would be something reasonable to do. But what we did is essentially the buildings that have occupancy where the operators have to go in and do maintenance, and essentially if the building is, is damaged by a seismic event, it would take the plant out of operation. Those are the buildings we said we have to comply with the seismic code in these facilities. The basins that are in the ground, they are actually very expensive basins, although they don't meet the seismic code, but you have so many numbers of them for each process. You have like 4 oxidation ditches, you have 4, 2 or 3 primaries, you have 4 purifiers. So if you lose one of them in a small seismic event, you can still function without that base. Now if there's a major seismic event and the entire plant is damaged, I think that event happens, then you get We have a lot of other problems to deal with than the wastewater treatment plant. So really it comes to your guidance and what's your risk profile, that this is how we approach this. Let's look at the critical piece, critical elements, let's look at the safety elements and apply the seismic code. Let's not apply it to other basins that do not have safety elements to them.

So you're not— that's not on a fault area though, is it, for the plants?

Actually, you're not too far.

4 miles from the west side of the island?

It is, yes.

It's also in a really high liquefaction area, which means when the ground starts to shake, it turns to liquid.

So, and then we, we understand that every, every municipality and every community, you have budget constraints and you're dealing with other facilities, you're dealing with other infrastructure and a lot of expenditures. So we understand that you don't want to come in and say, I'm just going to fix the reclamation plant. So phasing becomes very important. We prioritize the facilities that would need, you know, immediate attention. We made them part of Phase 1. Phase 2 are also critical elements, but they can wait another 5 to 10 years. And then Phase 3 are facilities that you'd say, I can do them or I don't have to do them depending on what happens with the community or whether the plant develops. Phase 4 is essentially contingent on whether the state enforce the total nitrogen limit that they're discussing currently. So this is how we bucketed them. So this is Phase 1, 2, 3, and 4. Unfortunately, Phase 1 is the longer list, but because it deals with the seismic code in some facilities, it deals with NFPA code on some facilities, and it also deals with meeting the phosphorus limits for the plan that is— that you have to comply with in about 2 years, year and a half. Phase 2 is also code compliance and safety compliance, and then Phase 4 is the total management. So that's how we put out each phase, and we've assigned 1 to 5 years. That's definitely something that can be discussed or it could be rephased, but this is the first cut of how would you specify, how would you divide the project for funding purposes.

Those are 5-year increments?

Those are 5-year increments, and this is— they're 5-year increments because we do 5-year increments in every master plan. They don't have to be 5, they could be 7 or 10, but bottom line, the Phase 1 facilities are what's critical for safety and compliance.

And if I might add, many of you might be— might recall that one of the reasons why we look at things in 5-year increments, because one of the next phases here would be looking at different sources of funding. One of the different sources of funding we'd want to begin to evaluate is impact fees. What, what amount could impact fees cover in terms of these identified projects.

And state code talks about 10-year planning windows as it relates to looking at applicable funds.

For the next 5 years, so it's like $10 million a year. Is that $12 million a year? That's $60 million.

Is that built into our budget? A sewer is an enterprise fund, is it not? We don't want to see rates go up dramatically.

Is this built in?

Can we do this without a major rate increase?

I mean, I think that's part of what would be the next phase of the assessment. Is to look at how we pay for it.

Okay.

Yes.

And what— and ultimately what's feasible, right? And how do we spread it across over time? What different sources of funds? What grants are available? What even financing options?

Okay.

And then bring all those types of funding sources into the conversation. Palatable, feasible.

Put it into perspective too.

If you look at the $170 million, you spread that across 75 years, for example, for 25,000 connections at 12 months, that's $7 a month. Yeah, for 75 years. Assuming you have the cash and funding processes, which is step 2 of this, and then 0% interest.

That's more interesting. So forth. Where we always have to start is identifying what are the projects and when, what's the priority.

And once we feel like that's an accurate and comprehensive place, we figure out, okay, now how do we take the next bites out of the elephant until we get it taken care of? But again, You know, our friendly consultant here started off the presentation saying we're talking about what's needed for through build-out, right? We're talking about more primarily over the next 20 years or so. So we're gonna have to be certainly strategic, you know, to figure it all out. But just like we have in the past, we've We just go through the process. Now we've got the full information, so now we figure out how we eat the full elephant.

It's important to keep in mind also that our facility treats not just the sewage from Orm City residents, it does 100% of Linden City and a percentage of Vineyards as well. They will also be responsible for their proportionate shares. Reeds, how much, how much is that for both of those?

About 20%.

Is it that high? 15 to 20 there. Also, if you look at what— so you could break this out by, well, what portion of this is attributed to structural age, or what's attributed to fire protection, or for seismic, or for fill in the blank, electronics. You know, your computer lasts, what, 5 years or 6 or 7? We have a lot of electrical components down here at the facility that have to be replaced probably on a 7-year, 10-year basis, not unlike our home computers. But also we have the overarching regulation of the US EPA and the Department of Environmental Quality through the Division of Water Quality through the state of Utah. What they're doing with the regulations and driving these regulations to be become so stringent is everyone else is in the same boat. So for example, Provo City, just for their phosphorus and nitrogen removal, they're gonna have to spend around $160 million for their upgrade.

Phase 1, $115 million.

$115 million for their phase 1. Central Valley is gonna look at about $400 to $500 million. Salt Lake City is over $800 million, almost a billion dollars. And we're looking at $160 million for probably a 20-year plan. But not all of this is attributed to nitrogen and phosphorus, whereas those other plants' numbers are strictly nitrogen and phosphorus, as far as I understand it. So, comparably speaking, these are huge numbers. And we understand that this is— it was a bit of a sticker shock when I first saw this back about 8 weeks ago. But it's a very detailed and proactive plan moving forward. It's a very responsible thing to do, and we're required by state law to do so.

I mean, quite honestly, we do have a great example in the recent water reuse project about how these things pan out. That was to the point it was in a past capital facilities plan. We started to go down the process of of costing it out. There was a point at which we had literally said, well, we can't do it, we don't have the money for it. Then we start to look at grant options. A good chunk of it will be paid for out of grants. Some of it is through the ongoing utility revenue that we have, and then some of it is associated with a little bit of debt service. So again, that's, that's what ultimately we'll have to figure out to see what, what is feasible when, but It's sort of an iterative, iterative dynamic process that'll happen over time.

So our next step moving forward, I believe, is to consult with financial consultants. We have Lewis Young Roberts in Birmingham. I know there are financial advisors at the city, or we can go out to RFP for this and then hire somebody to help us develop a plan moving forward. Perhaps it would be in bite-sized pieces over a 5-year period, so we'd have to come back and reevaluate. We did review this also with our Public Works Advisory Commission this morning, and they've given their unanimous endorsement for this project moving forward as well. We know that this is going to change. This is a snapshot in time. With all of our master plans, the master plans change, and we come back every 5 years and retool and reevaluate and refine and hone in on better numbers and values and so forth. But this is a good plan for us to move forward for the next 20 years, which we'll have to refine on a regular basis.

Chris, were there any others? Questions or concerns that were brought up by the Public Works Advisory Commission that would be interesting for Planning Council to be aware of?

We did talk a little bit more detail maybe about Class A, Class B biosolids. So our facility can treat 2 different grades of biosolids, Class A and B. Class A, you can actually market, you can sell that, meaning that's the biosolid product that you can put in a fertilizer-type form that can be land applied. We produce Class B biosolids right now. We land apply 100% of that. We save about $250,000 to $300,000 a year annually, or annually, to land apply all of that. We don't dispose of that. We'll try to be very environmentally conscious and use that and repurpose that back into the earth. So that was one component.

I would say the biggest, the biggest question that they had is one that has already been brought up. How are we going to pay for this? And I believe that they're anxiously awaiting being involved in helping to review some of the ideas that are, that are brought to us by the consultant that we ultimately hire. And we will be in close communication with the City Council representative on the PWAC, as well as the City Council on a whole, as we move forward and consider the, the best ways to ensure that this happens so that our facility can, can last well into the future.

Any other questions, comments, suggestions?

When will we, when will we come back together and look at this again?

With more pieces of the puzzle.

I guess what we ultimately need is what you've seen here, what's been given to you, you support the direction that we're going, that we need to invest in our wastewater treatment plant, and yes, let's move forward and figure out how we can make this happen. Essentially, adopting the plan. And if we need to do that in the general session and give an abbreviated presentation and ask for the city council to take action, uh, that's, that's probably a step that needs to happen. And then, or do you want— I think we would like to have it adopted and then we know we have marching orders to figure out a way to make it happen. With that, with the consultant to help us determine the nature of bonding and whatever other funding sources are available. So I think that's probably our preferred route, is to bring it to you, endorse it, and then hire the consultant to help us figure out how to pay for it.

And ultimately, I mean, just practically speaking, we always bring back anything Anything that would affect our utility rates or impact fee. That's always a public process.

But I don't see that there's a lot of choices.

Yeah, that's what we feel.

We hire a new consultant, they tell you something different. But, you know, I mean, I don't see it based on the information we've got.

The information we've got from our consultant As well as what we see other communities doing. They're all facing similar things and needing to make these investments in these very important facilities, right?

So it's—

So it's not like you just say, okay, well, we'd like to pass, right?

Yeah, we have thought it—

we have previously done the water, the stormwater, and another wastewater Plan. Those were the wastewater plan that we did previously, was specifically on the collection system, the pipes that bring this, the wastewater, to the facility. We've been reviewing the facility to see what are the needs to make sure that it's going to last well into the future, and that, that's the present— that's the presentation we're giving here. This is what needs to happen so that we can continue to provide this essential service to the community. Forum citizens as well as the state.

How, how long, Elijah, 20 years from now when you're done, how long does it last in the future after that?

Time for a 5-year plan.

Again, we would revisit this every 5 years. There are structures out there that will probably go another 30 years with no problem at all. There are other pieces out there that I lay awake at night wondering, is it going to make a tilt to Mm-hmm. So, Orem has done a very good job of funding the treatment plant, of doing the maintenance to that plant. Again, if you look at the slide that says we did— we looked at 800 and some odd assets, 50% of those are well past their lifespan. They're still running. That's because my staff has done a tremendous job doing the maintenance, making sure things are working like they're supposed to. City councils have done a great job of putting funding in place for some of these bigger upgrades. We did the last one in 2010. It was a big upgrade, okay? It put in new facilities. We still have facilities from 1957 that we're using. I have tanks in the ground that are 1957. I have MCCs that are 1983. MCC lifespan is about 20 years. They're past, and I know right now if one of those fails, I cannot get a replacement part for it. They are not available. So we do the best that we can, and we're doing a great job. That facility is in full compliance of every permit that we have. We are exceeding those numbers. Um, I have been here almost 5 and a half years.

We have a perfect record.

We have not violated that permit.

You talk about the seismic, you talk about liquefaction.

Yes.

How does this realistically affect that?

What we looked at and applied to that is our occupied buildings. We have those commercial buildings that people actually occupy. We would go in and either retrofit those or rebuild those to current seismic codes, which takes into account which seismic zone we're in, how much liquefaction would we expect. I was part of the, the work that was done up at Salt Lake City. We did 3 digesters up there. Those digesters have 96 piles under them that are almost 100 feet deep for these very things. This is the things that we look at when we do the engineering, and we take that into account. And these facilities were built in '57 and '83.

We didn't do that.

We don't have any piles.

The codes weren't in place to say you need to do this. They're in place now, and that's what we designed to. It's kind of the same thing you're doing with this building. You know you've got structural issues with this.

You know you've got seismic issues.

Best thing to do, rebuild it, build it to the new codes so that if there is an earthquake, the building will stand. It's the same thing with the facilities down at the Rec Plant. We would build it to the new codes that take into account seismic events, liquefaction. So we look at those things as we do the designs.

For COGO, for the bioreactor, the canoe bases. I think they spent about $7 million on earth— on ground improvements to make it suitable for the site.

But again, I would add, you know, we bring to you a fleet replacement plan each year, right? And we base it off of a lot of factors and we replace the ones that are most needed. We'll essentially go through a similar process here. What can we afford? What, what, what should we prioritize first? What, what do we feel like, you know, it's good to last another year? So again, I don't want— I mean, you will be a part of sort of that process to continue to refine how we move forward. How do we make this work financially?

And that's exactly what these plans are, is we go through, we identify everything. We looked at every asset we have.

It's now in a list.

Now we get to prioritize, and based on budgets and how we can do it, that's how we line up these projects.

I gave a number of presentations for 8 or 9 years before we decided to, you know, build a new city hall. So that's just kind of the way it goes.

You know, on a treatment plant, you can't bucket the facilities. You get the concrete basements. I'm a civil engineer by education. I became a water wastewater engineer. Concrete structures that are 50 years old don't scale. They crack, there's corrosion. You go fix them, they last. They may not meet the code, but if they're holding their old water, they're fine. Right, we've seen them, we use them everywhere. I want to even venture to say the Romans had them for 1,000 years. So we have concrete structures, those are— I don't think those should be something to worry about. The mechanical systems, that's like your car, is it going to last 50 years? It doesn't last 50 years. If you want to make it last 50 years, it's going to cost you a lot more money than buying a new one.

Yeah.

The electronics, no matter how much money you spend on it today to make it last, it's going to get outdated within 5 to 10 years. That's the nature of those, of those devices. So you think about it that way. And electrical, I think MCCs, I mean, like the motor control centers, they last. But I think you guys did a good job making them last beyond anything else that I've seen so far. So, and the building is not about safety. So that's, that's kind of how you want to bucket those 4 big items.

Based on this, is this basically the critical path? Is there any priorities? I mean, I know you don't in 5-year increments, but just as far as if you don't show up and say we want to spend less or we want to spend more, do you have those options, or is this just what you have to do based on your analysis?

We have options available to us. And then, like Brent said, we— the next step for us, once you, uh, like this plan, is we'll go through and we'll start to prioritize those. We know what we need in Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3. Um, can those shift around? Absolutely they can. Some things have got to get done. Electrical has got to get done. Without electrical facility, we can't move water. It stops. So electrical is a huge priority for me. It's got to get fixed. There are some things for regulations that we're going to have to do. There are some hydraulic issues that we have got to fix. As you can see from the one slide, that one right there, the red box. That number of 21.6, we've seen that flow. At that flow, I'm overtopping channels in the UV system. Um, as we start to increase flows, and again, if you look at that, you can see, um, 8.9 million gallons a day average flow. That's where we've been flowing. I looked at our flows for the past 2 weeks with all the rain. We're pushing above 10 right now. That peak hour flow is going to increase. If I go much above that 21, the UV system shuts down because the level is too high and it runs the risk of damaging all the UV bulbs in that. There's 216 bulbs in there and they're $175 a pop, so it's designed to shut down at high flows. We can't have that, so we have some hydraulic issues that must be fixed. because I'm seeing flows above— I'm seeing flows at that, and I'm concerned they're going to go above that. And again, if you look at the models, we've run the models and checked them, and when we hit 13.5 million gallons a day, we expect to see peak flows of 31 GD. So some of the hydraulic issues we have to fix— UV is one, we got some headworks issues that we need to fix. So yes, we have a prioritized schedule, and that will be part of the financial plan when we get to that point, is we will put that in and prioritize it— projects 1 through whatever. So that you, you can see that. If we can move a project around, great. If we can take a project that's in Phase 2 and it makes sense to do it in Phase 1 for saving money, we can look at things like that.

Okay, any other questions? Do we need to do anything at this point?

No, this is, this is for your information. We just wanted to make you aware that we've completed this plan, uh, allow you some time to digest it a little bit, bring it back to you for formal adoption in the near future, uh, and let you understand that Our intent is to get a consultant on board to help us understand what our options are.

All right.

Well, I appreciate you going through that presentation.

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

So this was—

this presentation was sent out to, I believe, each of you yesterday.

So, you know, you— The one that was sent out yesterday is the actual plan. It's about 270 pages long with all of the attachments.

So we can, we can resend this presentation.

You'll receive this within a day.

If you have any other follow-up questions or concerns or suggestions, we're always happy to take those into account.

Okay, sounds good.

I guess we'll go on to the second item on our agenda. We've got a discussion, proposed amendment to city code section 2-7-6, exception to bidding requirements. That's, uh, Brandon and Steve Rowe.

So, so I'll perhaps, uh, start it by giving some, some background information on, on this, and then Steve can, can speak to the finer points of the proposed post-purchasing ordinance amendment. If you recall, just briefly brought up in the past, that with the, with the significant inflation increases that we're all experiencing, as we've begun to try to go through essentially new bidding scenarios, what we found is that the, the people for different vendors and contractors, when they're projecting the cost into the future for like a multi-year contract under the current inflation conditions that is, is quite volatile, they tend to do a conservative estimate of what they think their costs are going to be well into the future. And then they come back and they want to give higher bid pricing. And so the purpose of this potential bidding exception for your consideration that we would bring to you at the next council meeting for adoption is essentially to, to have a, a very specific way where where if it's to the benefit of the city and allows us to manage smaller over-time increases rather than what we are seeing would be a very large increase if we went completely out to bid right now, then we'd like to be— we'd like to be able to essentially Again, when it's to the benefit of the city, extend an existing contract to manage, maintain, lessen, spread over time potential inflationary increases. So that's, that's some of the background of what we're kind of facing and what we're trying to deal with. Steve, do you want to speak to the finer points of the actual—

Well, I think you covered it. I, you know, just as a little bit of background, you know, normally government are required to let out contracts by competitive bidding process and allow, you know, various contractors to bid and get the best price and so forth. We do have already a number of exceptions to that requirement in our ordinance, and obviously the competitive bidding requirements is so that the public, the taxpayers, get the absolute best price. But I think what we've found is that, like Brent said, in certain circumstances this competitive bidding doesn't necessarily give us the best pricing we could possibly get because of people anticipating higher prices and building those into the bids that they give us. And whereas if it was more of a short-term option where we can extend this existing contract under this exception, we might actually get a lot better price for the public taxpayers.

So that's—

we we prepared this additional exception. It's really designed only to apply in unique circumstances that frankly probably very few of us have seen in our professional careers.

Is there a dollar limit?

No.

But there is, there is sort of a— not explicitly, not an explicit time limit, but I think the The implication would be, or the expectation would be, that these would be relatively short, short-term type extensions of the contract so that, you know, when conditions normalize, economic conditions normalize, then you can go back to that normal competitive bidding type process.

So this basically means we take all the risk on the upside, but if the price of lumber goes down, they benefit from that.

And no, I would say it's kind of the opposite of that. We're— we expect, and we would only apply this exception in situations where we expect to get better pricing over the short term than we would expect if we put it out to competitive bidding. Because, for example, if we have an existing contract, a contractor might be willing to give us a short-term extension under more favorable circumstances. than if we were to sort of redo the whole thing. So it does actually work very much in the city's advantage.

I mean, just to clarify, this is the way I understand it, is say you've got a contract for 5 years with somebody, and so that contract's— I mean, you're— the person you're working with knows what the issues are, they know where they're at. And so on that 5-year contract, if you're in a high inflationary time, you go out to a new person They're almost certainly going to bid that new 5-year contract to the sky just because they're basing it on the last 12 months experience, right? Whereas the existing contract, they're kind of in it with you, right? And they're, they're willing to extend their contract based on where current pricing's at, which is actually doing you a favor. Yeah, so that's—

yeah, that's exactly right.

Didn't we run into this not long ago with the rec center, or seemed like we got a little bit of a Because of the work that our contractor was doing at the rec center, we actually— there were some other things that needed to be done. And so we were, because of that, not necessarily relationship, but because of the work that they were doing, they were kind of already in the process of doing what needed to be done. So we were able to have them do that, and it saved the city money rather than putting it out for bid. And having multiple companies come in and bid, they were already there to take care of it. Yeah, so what we did on that project is Big D brought on early bids for the major trades before we had final plans, and they gave us preliminary pricing, and we were able to select those subcontractors up front.

And then when the plans were done, they—

their pricing was based on those upfront numbers. And so it did save significant time and money on that project. We're actually doing that at City Hall right now too.

The last 2 weeks before Christmas, we selected a structural, mechanical, and electrician for that job.

So same process.

So, I mean, Terry, I get anytime we talk about an exception, it's always cause for concern, naturally. So you're definitely asking to Right questions, bringing up the right concern. Just, I mean, it is very, a very unique situation that we find ourselves that, like Steve said, I've never seen either. But we have a, you know, one, one example where we've been looking at other cities go out to bid, and we're seeing very high bid proposals being submitted by by all of the carriers in the trade. And so then, you know, that's some cause for alarm. And then, as— I mean, in this particular example, they know already or are aware that we have, you know, different contracts coming to the end of our term. And we've actually had some of the competitors actually come to us and say, hey, under the current environment, if you can, you probably want to maintain your current pricing, your current contractual relationship. And I think it's just an acknowledgment of anytime something comes up for bid, the underwriters or the analysts, they're doing a risk assessment, right? And they're looking at high inflation over a small period of time. It's volatile, it's risky. So in order to make sure that our costs are covered into the future, we're going to give a conservative higher bid than we otherwise might have. And when, when the bidding market is more stable and steady, like it usually is, then, then each one who submits tends to sharpen their pencil more and be more aggressive on providing more competitive pricing. So, so again, I realize this is super unique. That's why I think Steve really tried to kind of narrowly tailor the specific circumstance that's being suggested here. But yes, it is— I can fully appreciate that it's, uh— What's your meeting for?

What are you looking for here?

So at this point, I just want to make sure that you're aware that I guess it's our proposal to bring this particular exception to our purchasing ordinance to you at the next council meeting. If— unless, unless there's any additional sort of questions or concerns that we can address or clarify or adjust.

It's just saying if we're in a situation where you've got high inflation or labor material shortages that are affecting bidding, take a step back.

And that's the way I heard it.

And your, your 2 jobs are to protect the city.

I trust you think this is helping to protect the city, so I'm fine with it coming up next City Council meeting.

Concerns, questions? Okay, sounds like a good move to me.

It just sounds like you give us a little more flexibility and opportunity to pivot if we need to or stay the course if we need to.

So yeah, I mean, the whole point of competitive bidding is to make sure you get the best deal, but The circumstance, kind of reverse about yourself.

It's on. Yeah.

Okay, any other questions on this?

All right, um, let's go ahead and— I'm gonna go ahead and take a break and have the food.

And then we'll come back and go through this agenda. It's pretty short tonight, so we got somebody that would like to give a blessing on the food.

Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful for the opportunity this evening to meet, and we pray this food will nourish and strengthen our bodies. We're grateful for the opportunity to serve The citizens of Orem, we pray, will be sensitive to represent them in the best way possible.

And we say this in thy Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

Okay, um, let's see, we really have a very light agenda.

So we have an invocation by, uh, Charlene, our librarian. And I pledge allegiance by Carrie RHR.

Who is that?

Who signed that?

Oh, Lene on the phone.

Okay.

Um, and then we've got some personal appearances, consent items. So any scheduled items we've got are public hearing on amending the agreement dated October 22nd. Relating the property at 380 East 240 North.

Maybe stick to building meals.

Which ones are we approving?

There's only one of them came out August. Yeah, so we're just approving August 2nd. So you might want to write that on there, Mayor. August 2nd, 2021.

Okay, good.

Yes, I didn't know how far back.

2021, we're that behind?

2022, Tom. Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Which one grew up August 2nd? But the December ones we talked about will be in the doc.

Okay, not quite ready. Okay, thank you.

Okay, and then, uh, there's 9.2 public hearing, 9.3 public hearing, and then Brent's got a few things and then we'll be done. So we might—

You can do it, Mayor.

We believe in you.

Will be with us tonight. That spirit of civility and good judgment will. be upon us, that we may have a good dialogue and a good experience. Father, we ask a blessing to be with those who serve the city, that they may be watched over and protected, particularly those who have responsibilities to be out in dangerous weather conditions and other dangerous situations. Father, we love thee and we're grateful for all those who serve, and we say these things in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

Will the audience please rise and repeat after me? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you to both of you for that. Next, we've got the time that we've had set aside for personal appearances. And we've got 2 people that have signed up for that. And so each of you will have 3 minutes. And first, we'll have Mike Christensen.

Well, some may think I don't know crap to properly talk about stuff, but I think sometimes I can do pretty well at faking it, at least. This Christmas season here again in 2022 is a reminder of the birth of our great Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. It does that through quite a bit of symbolism. Counselor McDonald, one of my old stake presidents, knows, and I guess that you all know, that this exalted man we're celebrating right now uses symbolism in many ways to depict his gospel principles. Certainly none of you would dispute the prominent role that symbolism serves, right? Since it's found in countless situations, both eternal and carnal, I'd like to address a concern that we Orem residents have. The other week we opened this Christmas season with your great lighting ceremony out here with these beautifully lit trees, and I can speak for at least one resident when I say that we want this tradition and look out front to continue indefinitely. As media czar, Whiffley posted on, on Facebook about why and where you had planned the new building to go, that gave a lot of us concern about the removal of a handful of these trees. Oh, but there will be just 5 less significant ones. And I understand that the disruption minimizing reason for wanting to build there, but it's actually not a completely disruption-free arrangement. Right now we have the beauty of that mini grove out on the prominent corner of State and Steiner Streets, with the business, the business end tucked behind instead of sticking out in front like a sore thumb. Of course, while we need government, we're opposed to big government. And the problem is that the new spot would interrupt the beauty flow with that symbol. This is not the look that we want our city to have. We fear this would turn our friendly look from Family City, USA into the stony look of Government City, USA. We implore you that with the 3 months still left before you, before you had planned to build, hopefully you can reschedule it to reconsider the option of rather than building there just to save from having to move out and back just to avoid a few years of temporary inconvenience, while in turn negatively affecting the look of our front corner for perhaps the next 5 or 7 decades, you would go ahead and accept a few years of temporary office shift in favor of rebuilding right here to preserve our beautiful Orem City Hall tree park at the Grand Intersection. Thanks for your time, and I hope you have a nice Christmas, Christmas and New Year, and I will return on January 10th to follow up. And then wish you a happy Friday the 13th. Can you give yourselves enough time to build a whole— the special election or whatever other public voice count in case the change would also cost more tax money? And will you please at least give somewhat substantive response right now?

Thank you. We, we don't really respond generally. But what I would encourage you to do is— usually it's Steve Downs.

Is Steve Downs here still?

Did you guys get my email to do the preview from—

If we could have somebody from the city, maybe Bren afterwards, but if you could talk to somebody from the city, we'll say Bren, they could kind of give you more information about everything that's gone into the decision.

So he hasn't given back yet. Also, I thought I had that timed right down.

Sorry, I went over.

Oh, you're fine. But that's how we usually handle that. If you'd like to talk with them, then they can kind of follow up with you and address your concerns in more detail.

I thought there would be more people here like there were in December, but whatever. Anyway, okay, yeah, I just hope that there's— you guys can kind of put a stop on the timing so that maybe it can be worked out more. But anyway, thanks for your time.

Okay, thank you. Next, we've got Brandon. Brandon, if you could state your full name.

Hi, my name is Brandon Young, and I'm an Orem resident of 38 years. Last year, we gave an individual $7,000 as a deposit to complete a concrete job at our home. This individual cashed the check later that day and promptly disappeared. We then had to endure a lengthy legal process to get our money back. This included a small claims court case here in the city of Orem, getting his contractor's license suspended, submitting evidence to Orem City, calls to the Attorney General of Utah, and our story was even featured on KSL. in a series which exposes criminals and fraudulent businesses in an attempt to warn others. A little over a month ago, KSL also published a story exposing an individual like the individual that took money from me. This story also featured an individual that took money from someone, only this wasn't $7,000 or even $50,000. This was $339,000 and $339,000. But what really caught my attention in this story was the criminal happened to be about David Young, the mayor of our city. Our mayor, your mayor, currently owes a little over $1 million as a part of a judgment in a money scandal in which him, a business registered in his name, and his son are caught square in the middle of. My question as a concerned citizen is this: how do we have a mayor that is even remotely connected to a case of this magnitude able to serve as our mayor, as a publicly elected official? When I asked the Orem City Government Facebook page about this issue, their response was the recent news about Mayor Young is regarding his personal/business life. And not his work as Orem's mayor. And then they referred me to this council meeting, which is why I'm here today. Mayor Young, please help restore the confidence of our citizens in you as our mayor and release a statement regarding this case. At least clear your name or step down as our mayor. It's a distraction to our city and instills distrust in our publicly elected officials. Thank you.

Thank you.

And I will just address one thing. If you would like a public statement, the KSL article that was written had 23 paragraphs slamming me. And then, but if you read the very end, you'll find the 3-paragraph statement that I put out. And I haven't been talking about this because it's currently in court. It's going through due process. It's currently at the Supreme Court of Alabama. And, and then I'll be happy to speak about it. But in the meantime, and if you'd like to speak about it more in person, I'd be happy to discuss it fully with you.

Thank you.

Okay, let's move on to the consent items. We've only got one thing on there, the approval of meeting minutes for August 2nd, 2002.

Move we accept those, Mr. Mayor.

2022.

Sorry.

Yeah, '22.

Sorry.

Move we accept August 2nd, 2022.

Second. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the minutes pass.

Um, I say aye too.

Oh, Debbie, where are you?

We hear you. Okay, now we'd like to move to a public hearing, item 9.1, amending the agreement dated—

I'm in St. George.

Okay, welcome. Moving on, item 9.1, a public hearing amending the agreement dated October 22, 1993, relating to the property located generally at 380 East 240 North to modify certain use and occupancy restrictions pertaining to the subject property. Jason will present that for us. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council.

Yes.

So, yeah.

Would you like him to come up, Jason? Okay.

So Jeremy Runya, representing the Housing Authority of Bexar County, is here with me. There are others as well that we can— you can ask questions if you have questions. So this agreement dated back to 1993 when the original project came forward with the city. As part of that agreement back in 1993, the city agreed to multiple things, including allowing a little higher density project. It was limited to 55 and older. The portion outside, or the— let me see if I can get my pointer real quick. You can see on the screen, this building up front was approved as an assisted living facility, and it's been operating as that for a while. And the owner of the current facility, who's here tonight, is now wanting to sell. But there is an agreement back in that agreement in 1993 that limited— that made Orem City a part of that agreement and had to approve any modifications to the agreement going forward. The Housing Authority of Utah County wants to come in and partner with the Seating Academy of Provo, which treats those young people at the ages— I don't know the total age— with autism and and other disabilities. And so what they're proposing to do is convert this area into 21 units that would be single units occupied by one individual and allow them to live in this facility and get some experience on how to live on their own and be a part of the community. The existing facility in the back will remain as is, and Mr. Uña has— will be renting them to the seniors that qualify and They're on their list and will eventually be all of those that are part of their facility. This is the picture that you can see from northeast as you look into the facility. It's— you drive by it typically all the time, you don't really notice what's going on there. So the proposal again is 36 units in the back, 55 and older. The unit up front will, will be 21 single units. So what's before you tonight is an amendment to the agreement to allow them to allow Scenic View students or graduates to come and live in that front portion and be a part of the community. And then the other portion in the back, the 36 units, will remain the same. But it does need City Council approval to amend the agreement. So a couple things in the agreement. One is to allow, like I say, Scenic View Academy graduates or equivalent program to live there, and/or if the county decides that they don't have enough students, they could rent it to a senior as well that qualifies in that facility as well. And so that agreement, number 20 in the agreement, will be updated to allow for that. And then there is a condition in there that it does— it is limited to one person per unit. There is a limited number of parking 30 parking stalls total, which Mr. Reno may get into. I'll show that briefly what his description of the parking currently is and how they're using it in the other facilities that they own. But 21 units for the assisted living will be converted to those single units, so total of 57 units. The other one is to modify 2, which allows the city to consent to the fact that they want to sell it to the Housing Authority of Utah County, and the ability for us to transfer that up. All the other obligations that are part of the agreement will still be applicable. So anything in 3 and 4 just outlines that the existing agreement will also be in play, other than the minor exceptions that we're, we're making. If you can see this well, but it kind of outlines, and maybe you want to explain the parking, but based on the usage that they have at other facilities and the fact that a lot of students at the Scenic View Academy either don't have cars or don't have driver's licenses. Collectively, they work together so that there shouldn't be, and most likely will not be, a parking issue, even with the 30 parking stalls. So the Planning Commission did review it and did make a recommendation that the council update the 1993 agreement with the modifications outlined. Be glad to address any Questions?

What was the vote like from the Planning Commission?

It was unanimous.

Thank you.

So Jason, I've got a question. So on the 21-unit building, what— how many units are there now? Is it 21 or—

I think it's 21.

Yeah.

And then, um, so the Utah County Authority, that's a county, so do you pay taxes?

Yeah, so the Housing Authority of Utah County is the entity that I represent. I'm their executive director. So we are a quasi-governmental entity. We are not a taxable entity.

Okay, so that's— we were getting taxes before, correct?

Property tax?

Yeah, property taxes.

And then on this, who regulates that they're following the number of people staying in the 21 units.

That would be— I mean, the city would be the one.

And then, I mean, because you can only have one, one occupant per room, right? And then you're, you're mentioning about parking. So where is the parking? I mean, I can see parking stalls, but—

So let me go to—

oops—

this picture. So you got a parking area right here, and there's a few stalls that you go around the cul-de-sac. There's some right there. There's a few parallel parking as well.

You know the total? 30. That's 30 total in the whole unit, correct?

Garages?

They do not. They do. And if you—

It's been handling all of that since 1995 when the property was built. So yeah, there was in the Planning Commission meeting, there was a resident who lives right across the the street who's never had any challenges with parking or the property in any capacity. In fact, he sends his children over there to assist the seniors and welcomes this. Matt Harding was his name. And those— that was part of your packet as well.

Well, and I think the concern is with parking is, you know, with the amount of apartments that we have in Orem, we are definitely under parked. So that's a—

So these are lower-income seniors, the majority, and you can speak to that better than I can.

I mean, it's just that the, the reason, you know, that we're definitely about parking is because we've heard it.

Understood.

And we've seen it, we lived through it. So I understand this might be the same way, but if it ever gets out of hand—

So this is limited to 55 and older in that back portion, and they're on the Utah Housing Authority list, which means they're lower income. Typically lower income families maybe have one car, so they're not going to be the multiple car, you know, 3 or 4 cars type of thing. It's going to be more of a limited number based on who's renting those and the fact that the cost of upkeep on cars.

How big are the units that aren't in the 21 units?

Understanding they're 2-bedroom.

No, so the The 21 units are in the main building. The remaining, the remaining 36 units are 1-bedroom.

They are 1-bedroom.

Okay, they are 1-bedroom, and there are 6 buildings that contain those 36 units, and they all, you know, go around the cul-de-sac. The Housing Authority of Utah County owns 220 units of its own that we property manage. We also have waiting lists for seniors 55 and older. We have properties in Springville, Provo— excuse me, not in Provo— Payson and other areas where we housed senior people. The parking statement right there are 3 properties that are seniors 55 and older, and I gave you a property count of 3 different times that we went by and did counts of the parking stalls and how many of them were occupied. Basically, between those 3 properties, 47% were occupied with a vehicle. This is the same population that will be in this property here that we're talking about at Canyon Breeze. All we want to do as the housing authority is change the 21 units and allow for autism individuals to live there. They generally don't have vehicles. We will also property manage this, so my staff of 22 will be encumbered with any sort of problem or challenge, that'll roll through not only because we are the owner, but because we property manage it. So we have a vested interest in the parking concern that you have. So we've been around since 1975 and managing our own senior projects similar to this one. This is nothing new for us.

I mean, let's say something happens and everybody in the 36 units has a car. So Do we have a contingency plan on— is there a way to get more parking, or—

So as the housing authority, we have waiting lists. We have over 1,500 individuals on our waiting list at any one time. So we have the ability to recommend where people should consider to live. So we could direct people— we can't tell them where to live, but we can encourage them, hey, there's an opening over at this location, this location. So we could implement implement something along those lines, but we can never tell people where to live. So that would be one aspect. Secondly, we could look at some other options at other properties that we have and try to migrate residents that have more vehicles. But again, we've, we've not incurred this in over 50 years of operation, the concern you speak of. The 21 units that will be occupied by individuals with autism— Scenic View Academy has been operating for 20 years in Provo City. They operate a 60-unit campus, 60 units of campus where they live on-site for 2 years or more. They can speak to their parking that they encourage, that they see there. In our mind, the whole reason why we're asking for this is that the— to bring autism and the senior populations together to increase the quality of life. We believe that parking demands and every other demand on the property will be very similar, if not identical, to what it already has been and what it currently is. So—

Yeah, I mean, my question is just, what if we have 36 units and everybody has a car?

They generally don't. These are the—

What I mean is, is there a way to—

The other restriction to live on this property is people have— they cannot make any more than 60% AMI. So that is a significant— they're very affordable individuals that live there. If you make more than 60% AMI of the area, you cannot live there. You do not qualify to live there. And so you asked, hey, who manages this? There's another entity that has a recorded restriction on property other than Orem City, and that's Utah Housing Corporation. That's the entity that provided the financing to build this property back when Orem City recorded it. So they too have a vested interest in this. They audit that property and the files on an annual basis. So they are going to make sure that the property is upkept and maintained appropriately. And they look at complaints as part of their audits.

So Jason, can you show me the aerial view again of the northeast? Okay, so 4th East, is there any red line so they can park there?

They could park here, yes.

Yep.

So that, that would be the overflow, which—

Which doesn't— yeah, it isn't by any residents. That's part of their property frontage.

And do we know how many can be parked there, you know, by chance?

I don't. I mean, to my knowledge that I've driven by there hundreds of times, I don't recall more than maybe 1 or 2 cars ever parked there. So I don't know that there's— but they could probably park.

I mean, that could be the—

that's probably 6 or 7 cars they could park along there.

Okay, thank you.

So just to help us understand a little bit better, this— so this is currently owned by the operator?

Correct, Paul Sorensen.

Okay, who's here in the audience.

And then he's Proposing selling it?

Correct.

He wants to retire. And I encourage that. I think he's done a swell job at the property.

So, so then as far as exactly how it was set up initially, or when you were managing it, in terms of the numbers, was this— well, just define what the tenants were in here. I know it's 55 and older, but was it assisted living or was it?

Yes.

So the 21 units that are contained in that main building. That's where the assisted living primarily took place. And Paul could speak to more of the operations over the last 20 years. But basically, that's where the assisted living is. They're studio units, they're under 300 square feet per unit. They're not big spaces. It's a, it's a combined area with one bathroom. There's no kitchen in there.

So there was no parking demand from that part of it, right? Except for visitors, maybe?

Correct.

Correct, correct. So we're proposing, we're saying, hey city, can you release the age restriction on those 21 units? And we want to propose that Scenic View Academy have exclusive rights to just those 21 units and bring their graduated students or near graduation in there to become more independent living. And most of them don't have driver's licenses, and if they do, it's very few. So therein lies the similar dynamic with a senior population, affordable under 60% AMI, and the autistic community in terms of access to vehicles and driver's licenses. So again, we will property manage this. My staff and I do not want to have the challenges that Commissioner Spencer is speaking to. And so we've done extensive analyses over the last 6 months as it pertains to our senior population. So, we approach this with a similar concern that we have. When you drive by this property, we don't want you to know that anything is different other than the name.

So, I'm just trying to understand. So, essentially, the assisted living is going to be replaced by people with autism that will be staying there, right?

Correct.

And that should be the same demand as far as cars?

Yes.

And so, that parking dynamic of the 3 properties that I have, one in Springville, right, and 2 in American Fork.

But then moving over to the separate part, stay the same, that population, same restrictions. You're saying is nothing's really changing as far as the number of cars in the property, right?

Right.

Okay.

That's what I was trying to get to.

My apologies. Yes, nothing will change other than the restrictions. But the parking demand, you drive by, you shouldn't see any more cars in the parking lot. The overflow out there is a huge concern For us, I show that we'll need 70% of those stalls to operate as it has been operating.

Okay. And then the entity that's purchasing this is a county entity, and that's why it's a— there's no tax.

So we're looking at doing an LLC through our legal counsel to set it up as a standalone entity, that the major member of that, or the managing member, would be the housing authority. So I don't know that I necessarily understand the taxing dynamic, but the property received— or the property tax last year was about $16,000, $18,000, something in there. So Orem City's piece of that is what, $1,500? So the economic impact is $1,500 to your budget, but what's the benefit that we're providing for 12 months? I would dare say that that benefit that we as the housing authority would provide for this with this autistic community will well surpass the $1,500 in tax base.

Okay.

Do we have any other questions?

And I think too, if you look at the view, I mean, I think you could probably change the parking if that, you know, it looks like there's quite a bit of room that you could maybe add some parking stalls if it had to. Right, yeah. I mean, you could park, so I don't think that should be an issue. I think you can adjust maybe the parking Or put lines somewhere that would—

we will go in there and rehab the 21 units and put some kitchenettes in there so they're more functional. And part of that analysis will also include redesigning to the best configuration possible the parking there. So at a minimum, you'll— we won't have any less than 30, but I expect there to be a few more stalls.

Yeah, and I applaud you for doing that for the, for the autistic. I think that's an excellent use of space, and I think that's— you should be commended for doing that.

So, well, you should really hear from Scenic View Academy. I think you'd be more impressed with their ability to express who they are and what they do.

No, I think that's good. You could— this little community here could all fit together, and I think it's great. So thank you.

Jeff, you had a question?

Um, so it's my understanding that all of the autistic adults that will be living there will all be graduates from Scenic View Academy.

Is that Is that right? And that will be overseen.

And so I'll allow— it's not my meeting by any means, but whomever from Scenic View can speak to that better. But the housing authority will exclusively set aside these 21 units for Scenic Academy. Whomever they decide to put in there is, is who will go in there. We will just have a 12-month lease as the landlord and the property management, but Scenic View Academy will manage the individuals who go there.

So thank you.

Ryan Miller, Program Director at Scenic View Academy, worked there 15 years. And so it would be graduates, but also those in the last phase of our program that have passed through our skills phase, shown that they can live independently on our campus, and, and then work on applying those skills off in an off-campus setting.

Yeah.

Do you have other, um, do you have other places that you're having your graduates go to live to be the next step, or?

Yeah, yeah. So we have, in fact, yeah, Janae Hakes that's here, um, has— is an Orem City resident, has been, um, a mom of one of our graduates who's also here, um, and, and can even speak to that. Um, but yeah, we've been doing this for Yeah, many years. We have a lot of different locations that are, that are mainly just for our graduates or those that are in the last phase, but not something that we've been managing offsite. We are, we have been working with Provo City and they're building a 74-unit complex. It's on 85 North and 100 East in Orem, and 30 of those units will be something that we'll be managing.

And is it, and is this a 4-year graduates to come here and live. Would this be a transitory to going completely independent, or how does that work?

So the Provo one will be completely for our graduates to stay. And then this one will be kind of a hybrid, I guess. Some will be staying and others will be kind of maybe coming for a year. And then once they're even more independent, they may choose a place that's closer to their place of work at that point.

Any other questions?

Mayor Terry?

Well, I just, I just need to do a little full disclosure here. So I was one of the original trustees of Scenic View, and it's an incredible facility. I'm no longer a trustee, so there's no conflict with me voting. But this is an unbelievable place, and I wish all of you could be a fly on the wall and go to the Christmas party. I don't know if it's changed from when I was there. It's been a while ago since I was there, but one of the residents made fudge. If he's still around, he might not be able to be allowed to graduate because he makes such good fudge. They might just keep him there for like 20 years or something, but But no, just a great facility, and the people that work there are very passionate and caring. And so I applaud you for what Scenic View has done for a number of years now. And but I wanted to mention that in case that came out. It doesn't matter, I'm no longer on the board. But anyway, but thanks for what you're doing.

Thanks.

So, Mayor, I've got another comment. So on the— on your staff that's there full-time, how many is that going to be through the day and night?

Okay, so from the ownership and property management, we will have a property manager, and then we have a maintenance. And so depending on the level of maintenance, that individual won't— the maintenance person will not be dedicated outside of whatever the current need is. But the property manager, we will have our own office from property management. Scenic View Academy will also have their own separate office for their staff. So it'll basically be double-staffed, one from a property management perspective, one from a client services perspective.

I mean, just my concern is sometimes we get wanderers that wander off. So how do you attempt to help those people not wander off? Oh, help them? Because I think you call the police or whatever, and it's so that, you know, the police force might be on another call and they have to come. So how do you remedy that?

We have—

2.3 miles away is our campus, and there we have 24/7 coverage year-round. And so if there isn't someone that's on site, you know, 2 o'clock in the morning or something, we would have someone that could respond. We also have a Crisis response group that's on call and ready to jump in for—

So there's not gonna be somebody there?

There'll be, there'll be people there quite a bit of the time during like peak needs and peak kind of teaching opportunity times.

But not like 1 o'clock in the morning?

That's not the plan right now. We, we don't see any of the students that would be reaching that skill level needing that kind of like 24/7 support.

occurs, then maybe you have to change pace and adjust, I guess, because—

Yeah, we— yeah, this is, this is, uh, something that reflects our whole program, and we're nationally recognized, and we take, uh, you know, a lot, a lot of care, um, for our students. And, and if there's something that is any kind of pattern, we'd be addressing it, we'd be all over it.

That just provides concern because They do wander, wander, you know, we want to make sure they're safe, but that we don't pull all the police officers off, you know, the streets. And yeah, okay, thank you.

Also, from a property management perspective, we also have an on-call 24/7 individual, so if there is a challenge, we could also be responsive if that's necessary outside of what Scenic View would provide.

I will make a comment that the, the little patch of ground right here is a really good place for a campaign sign.

So yeah.

Nice.

Any other questions? Okay, we'd like to open this up for a public hearing if there's anyone who'd like to speak here from public on this topic. Okay, we'll close the public hearing.

And okay, I'll make that motion, Mayor.

Good.

I'd like to make the motion that we amend the agreement dated October 22, 1993, relating to the property located generally at 380 East 240 North to modify certain use and occupancy restrictions pertaining to the subject property.

And I'll second that motion.

Can we just jump in?

Can you add your motion, if you would, to authorize the mayor to actually execute the amendment, the amendment to the agreement?

Make a motion to—

pardon me, do that again.

Sorry, just maybe add to your motion that you authorize the mayor to sign the actual agreement.

Okay.

Okay, amendment.

Do you want me to do the whole motion again? And then, no, if you just say, in addition to that, authorize the mayor to sign the agreement.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Yes.

Aye.

That's right, Jim. Yeah, Jeff's the only one that remembers. Is Debbie still here?

This is Debbie. Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

the resolution passes. Thank you.

Thank you for the consideration.

Okay, next we'll move on to item 9.2. It's the public hearing amending Section 2.1.1 of the General Plan and the General Plan map of the City of Orem by amending the land use designation from mixed-use district to community and regional commercial along State Street. Jason will tell us about that.

Thank you, Mayor. This is simply a cleanup to match our general plan with the zoning that was approved by the council back in January, February of last year. So it's simply just taking— I'll just do a comparison. On the left, you can see the blue, the mixed use, which was part of the districts. We're taking it back to the original configuration prior to those districts, which are C-2, a regional commercial Commercial and community commercial, which match the zoning either C-2 or C-3. So it's simply just modifying our general plan map to match the current zoning that's in place.

This is what we've already agreed to, Jason.

The zoning's already been done.

Red on the right is what we've agreed to.

Yes, thank you.

Yep.

So this simply just takes it back to match the zoning that we had prior. Any questions?

Do we have any questions? on that.

Okay, well, yes, Terry.

So, not, not a question, Jason, but just a couple of comments. When I was looking at this, it's been almost a year ago that there was a change in the State Street Master Plan. And the plan, which is now part of the cleanup that Jason's talking about, stopped the high-density apartments. Which was the master plan on State Street, which would have added over 20,000 people living on an already congested street. So with the election last year, we then had enough votes because of the new people on the— that were elected and those that supported this to change the State Street master plan. And David Spencer alluded to this a little while ago that already over 45% rentals. The high-density apartment residents also have rights, and you were also talking about that as far as parking goes. And, and that was a concern we've heard from people that live in high-density apartments is that they don't have enough parking. So that's also something that they, they have rights as citizens to be able to have the right amount of parking. So I just bring this up, Mayor, because we're celebrating— this is almost a year celebrating celebration from when you were elected and, and Lynnae and Dave Spencer reelected to stop— oh, and Tom, sorry. And Tom, yes. He's so far down the end there. I can't— but—

What am I, a potted plant?

But, but this— Jeff and I are already hanging out. But anyway, I think this is a great day, even though we're You know, this was next month. I think this happened in February, but thank you for your direction, Mayor, and for all those who changed what was going on with the high-density apartments. And, you know, there's— I was up last summer at Swiss Days in Midway, and they have a sign, don't Oremize Wasatch County. That hurts. That really hurts. time resident of Orem. So, you know, I just celebrate what's happened this last year and the change with the master plan. So we are doing a better job of trying to protect neighborhoods and homeowners, and also be respectful of those that are in apartments so they have enough parking.

Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you, Terry. Do we have any other comments?

McDonald's right across the street.

Okay, well, we'll open this up for a public hearing if there's anyone who would like to make a comment.

Hey, I'm Karen Adamson. I didn't plan on making a comment, but I would suggest that you vote for this. When we found out what was going on with the State Street Master Plan. That Midtown 360 building sounded really cool the first time that we saw it when they were putting it up in the mall and everybody was walking by, and my husband and I were like, ooh, hey, let's buy something there and live there. Boy, am I glad we didn't do that. And I work out at a gym that's right across from that building now. It is chaos. I know some people who have lived in that building, and if you don't work, the typical typical schedule of an 8 to 5, those people have to get up in the middle of their sleep time to go move their car to an improved parking spot during the business hours of the day for other people, or their car gets towed while they sleep because there's not enough parking. So doing what the State Street Master Plan was gonna do and add all those 20,000 people would just make the city a terrible place to live. My brother moved away from Orem, and now he calls Orem the armpit of Utah because of how busy it is, how crazy State Street is. His children hate to come here and visit because of how crazy it is right now. And with that kind of population addition, I would move in a heartbeat. So I grew up here in Orem. I don't want to move, but with that happening, I would leave, and I know a lot of people would too. Our property values would drop. And so I really recommend that we stick with the one you're proposing. Go back to what we used to have before the State Street Master Plan, and don't let anything stop us from staying there. We don't ever want to do the high-density housing here on State Street.

Thanks.

Is there anyone else?

I've been—

Dave Spencer, I want to make a comment.

You want to close them?

Oh, well, unless we've got people still in public meeting.

I don't know if this is the correct board to address this, but I feel that if the 850 bus line were allowed to go along Orem Boulevard instead of through State Street and was expedited through various Means that could address the parking issue at Midtown.

It—

because it is a pain to get to your bus and then you see, oh, I still need to cross the street and it's State Street, and then there goes my bus.

What was the bus line?

850.

850.

Yes.

That is all.

Thank you.

Your name, sir?

Brady.

Brady Hanks. Hanks.

Hanks.

Do we have any other comments? Okay, we'll close the public comments. And so—

I have a comment to go along with Terry Peterson. I heard from some people just on New Year's Eve that certain people are making comments that if you're not growing, you're dying. And I'm thinking, if that's the mindset that the people of Orem want— I don't think that's what they want. That's why they elected us last year to take high density off of State Street. And those that think that if you're not growing, you're dying, maybe you need to move.

I don't know.

So thank you.

Are you ready for a motion, Mr. Mayor?

Any other comments?

I move that we amend Section 2.1.1 of the General Plan and General Map— Plan Map of the City of Orem by amending the land use designation from Mixed Use District to Community and Regional Commercial along State Street.

Second.

Aye.

Yes.

Yes.

Aye.

Yes.

Debbie?

I say yes.

Yes. Okay, thank you.

That amendment passes. Okay, last we'll move to, um, Bren, and item number 11 is just City Manager information items, if you could.

Thanks, thanks, Mayor.

Just a few very quick items. Just one, you would have received an email from Tess about the ULCT-hosted Local Officials Day up at the state legislature on January 18th. So if you're interested in attending that, we can get you registered. Just, just let us know. Of course, state legislative session starts on the 17th. You'll be seeing an email from me introducing you to kind of the team that will be working on issues of interest to the city, and I just like to invite you to let, let us know if there's a particular subject or bill that you want us to follow up on or look into or whatever. We're happy to, to be responsive to that. Next time, just a quick reminder. Just a quick update on our, on our City Hall construction.

It—

we continue to kind of— well, in cooperation with Method Studio and our excellent staff, Ryan Clark and Lane Gray, and our internal development review committee staff, we continue to refine and add detail to the overall design. And we're still staying within the means with our means and our budget to, to continue moving down the road with the City Hall. Well, the full construction drawings. At our next council meeting on the 24th, we'll bring some, some VR goggles for you to experience and see particular points within the building design in 3D. in a 3D way. And so we'll give you time to take a look at that. Layton Construction is already nailing down a few of the subs, the mechanical, electrical, and structural subs, to again help make sure that we're getting our costs nailed down and firm. So we continue to make good progress there. And we'll, we'll have kind of our next time of, I guess, having the official firm numbers on the— actually on the 17th of January. So we'll continue to keep you up to speed on how that progresses as we go along. Last thing is, we have some treats, and they're for Councilmember Terry Peterson to celebrate his birthday, so please join us to to wish him happy birthday.

That's all I have in here.

Thank you, Brent.

So, Brent, I've got a question on the city center, please. So we had discussions about the city council chambers and the 4-foot height increase. So is there any way that we can look at, you know, going down 4 4 feet instead of raising the height of the building. Can we get Mathis to look at that and just see what that cost is?

So if you remember, the challenge was the main floor. We need to get the height for the City Council chambers, right? So we're not adjusting the roof height. The roof height is 48 feet. It would allow a parapet wall to be 4 feet above the roof height, so you'd be 52 feet to the top of the parapet.

So the building's just going to be 48, and then you'll have the superficial stuff on the top?

Correct. Yeah. So it's, it's more of a safety fall hazard to keep people from— if you had a shorter parapet, if we didn't have a parapet at all, okay, you fall right off, you know, if you're up there working on the roof. So it's okay. And it also screens some of the roof equipment as well, like your HVAC units that'll all be roof-mounted.

Because I mean, I had heard that something was coming forward that would change that all through State Street with 4 feet No. Okay, no, I don't think that's— it's a no-go for me.

No, we'll be bringing it forward in February to the council. It'll go to Planning Commission first, but it'll be an adjustment allowing a civic use or city use to have the 4-foot parapet above the 48 feet.

Okay, and then I have a question for Steve Earl. The, the I in the yes, where did that come from? Because The Congress of the United States says aye, and, and they're the government of the United States. So what? So why, why we have to say yes?

I don't know. I was asking myself the same question.

Okay, so I'll just keep saying aye then.

Thank you.

We can say whatever we want to say, positive or negative, yes or no.

There was some official reason why it got changed.

I wondered if you'd heard something.

No, we didn't. Somebody, somebody told us.

Okay.

There you go.

That's the official.

So, but anyway, there was some official—

I think yes sounds stupid, but you can say whatever you want. I like aye.

How about a motion to adjourn, Mr. Mayor?

How about aye? Okay, would someone like to make a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Second.

Aye.

Yes.

Aye.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Well, Dave, Spencer can move too.

Hey, Mike, I wanted your Pocahontas thing.