City Council · 2022-01-11

Sam Kelly's presenting because he's— well, he'll mention, but he was on a cruise and his wife got COVID, so he's presenting on the Palisades.

I know.

So, Mayor, just Sam Kelly, city engineer. That's who's presenting remotely tonight.

Okay.

All right, I think we're ready to go. Uh, I'd like to welcome everyone here today, and, uh, our first topic of discussion is, uh, Sam Kelly on Zoom. He's going to go over the policy traffic study. Hi.

Can you guys all hear me well enough?

Yep.

Yes.

Okay.

I will maximize and start— oh, that's not the one I wanted.

See, where's the other one at? No. Hold on a sec here. I had the other PowerPoint up and running. Where did it go?

There it is. Okay, now I got it.

You see it kind of shake a little bit.

Can you guys see my presentation or no?

No, no, no.

Perfect.

Seeing you, Sam.

Here we go.

Share screen.

Desktop. There we go. Does that work now?

Yep.

There you go.

Okay. So what I'm here to discuss with you is the traffic calming project that we did with our 2021 roadway project up on Palisades Drive. Right here, there's— here's just the current picture of what some of the traffic calming looks like that's currently on Palisades Drive. A little bit of history here for Palisades Drive. This was probably 20-plus years ago. Some residents along the corridor had voiced some concern about speeding in that area. I was looking up to find out what the official records were. I didn't see any resolutions or anything like that, but there's probably some meeting minutes that, that discuss what was to happen in there. But long story short, speed bumps were installed there. There were 9 of them installed. And residents up in that area helped pay for some of those speed bumps. Those speed bumps had been in place for 20-plus years, I had said before. Then Palisades Drive was scheduled for an overlay. We fast forward now to the present for 2020. So with that being said, knowing that the speed bumps on Palisades Drive were very sensitive, a lot of residents liked them, a few of them hadn't, this is what I had This is what I knew, I guess, prior to all this process that happened this fall. But because of that, we scheduled an open house in January of 2020. And I do have a— here are some of the flyers that we sent out. We sent out over 100 of them. This is a map of the area that we used to select the addresses to have this open house. Again, here is a list of all the folks that were invited to that open house meeting that was held at the City Center, and here's a list of those who had attended. Now I do know that Tom was there, and it doesn't look like Tom had actually signed this attendance sheet, but that's kind of where we got to, to the point to where we needed to install traffic calming. Which is what we have here. Now, with all that being said, pretty much all the folks out were there, and I would have to say the bottom 4 lived in that area. The top 3 are current members of our Transportation Advisory Commission, so they attended this meeting understanding that there was going to be a lot of controversy if we were to overlay that road and not put back those speed bumps, so they wanted to be there. to ask questions, to answer questions, and to see what the process was going to be like. So with that being said, also at this meeting we showed the plans that we had in place for Palisades Drive. This is an example of what we had planned to install on Palisades Drive. This next slide kind of shows you kind of a zoomed-in portion of what we had on some poster boards there at that meeting. As you can see here, it shows where that bulb-out is, the choker that is installed right in front of the speed table, as well as it also gives some dimensions for what we had planned on for striping in that area. With 10 feet being the width of the lane, a 5-foot bike lane, and a 7.5-foot shoulder. Now Palisades Drive in our transportation master plan, also in our bike and pedestrian master plan, was identified to have bike lanes in it. And that's why these lanes were shown on this plan, because when that plan was adopted, we were to put bike lanes in there once we did an asphalt overlay. This is the current picture of what those look like. Now the reason why we went to speed tables, raised crosswalks versus speed bumps, we wanted to kind of take advantage or kind of— There were 2 components to these speed tables. One, there was already a concern for traffic calming. That concern had been addressed and speed bumps were installed. So we felt, we felt like we needed to put something back that would be similar to that, that would give us the same result, and that result would be reduced speeds. Secondly, because this street— this is a good example of that, where this is a street where there isn't a lot of pedestrian access necessarily to cross the street. There were a lot of ADA ramps in there, but they weren't necessarily current, being that they didn't have the truncated domes, or as UDOT is starting to do as well, they're starting to move towards more of a directional-type ADA ramp. So with the thought being that we can go ahead and one, improve pedestrian access as well as pedestrian safety, and take care of traffic calming, that's why we came up with the solution to put in these raised crosswalks as well as these choker islands. Now, the islands I think seem to be the most critical component to this, or at least it seems to be the most controversial component. The reason for these islands there is because, like I had mentioned before, these are raised crosswalks. In order for those to be crosswalks in ADA accessible. As you can see here, I don't know if you guys can see my mouse, but you slope down at a 2%, you get to the curb and gutter, and then you have to come back across the road at that same percentage up to the certain height, which in this case those speed tables are 5 inches tall. And then you go across the travel lanes, and then when you get to the other side of the road, the same thing happens. They ramp down They get to where the ADA ramp is and then they ramp up to the sidewalk. Now, understanding too that there's some drainage issues and some other components, that's why we didn't try to have these crosswalks go straight over to the sidewalk. If we were to go ahead and have this monolithic pour of concrete go across the road, we would have had to have done a lot of— a lot more—

Drainage.

Storm drain improvements, more piping and more catch basins, because then these raised crosswalks would have acted like dams and they would have held water. So that's why we had to ramp these down. So that's why that there's a crosswalk. Now the bulb-out does one of two things. First, it allows for pedestrian safety. Now, as someone comes to cross the street, whether it's a child, an adult, or what have you, they can actually move out, possibly past a parked car, so they can see if there's any traffic coming. With that being said, the pedestrian can look to see if there's any vehicles, and then the vehicles likewise should be able to see someone crossing there in the roadway. Second thing is now it makes that crosswalk a lot shorter. Now instead of having to cross essentially, you know, 32 feet of asphalt because you would go— once you step on out into the roadway, there's a chance for a car to be in that shoulder. Now you would— you go ahead and you reduce that down to those 2 travel lanes, which in this case would be about 24 feet, 26 feet. So you've reduced that distance. It won't take as long to cross. You've increased pedestrian safety. And then the final thing, probably the most important thing, is that these curb islands, these chokers, these bulb-outs are set in place to make sure that cars are traveling in a safe traffic pattern. What we don't want, and I'm sure we've all been guilty of it, where we've gone through a parking lot, we've seen speed bumps, and what we try and do is we try and put one side of the car where the speed bump isn't and the other part of the car to go ahead and drive over the speed bump. We usually have a tendency to keep a higher rate of speed and then we can get to where we need to faster. Well, if we're trying to slow down cars and we're trying to keep this area safe, the best thing to do would be to put in these curb returns or, excuse me, these bulb-outs, these chokers, because then it keeps cars in the travel lane. They're not driving over to the shoulder to go ahead and avoid this speed table. And then we're trying to keep speeds down. I also have some pictures of where we've put in some of these other islands throughout the city. And they're in there for the same purpose. One, for pedestrian safety. And 2, to keep cars out in the travel lanes. This is the Hawk crosswalk. The pedestrian crosswalk across from Cascade Elementary. This is a more recent one that we just built down by Mighty Light. It's on 400 North and roughly about 1300 West. That's a different view looking at it. And these are some other islands that we've built on 5th East and about 9th South. And some of the concerns I understand and Going through the emails from all of the residents in the area, they're concerned about vehicles hitting them. They're concerned about snowplows hitting them, which is all a very valid concern. But I do want to point out, when you look at these dimensions, here between the center of the road and then the edge of that choker island bulb-out, you have roughly 15 feet. There really is no reason why a car should be swerving over that far. And if you notice as well, you have a shoulder area there that's, as again I had mentioned, approximately 7 feet. Well, these islands don't protrude any further out into the travel lane than a parked car. So understanding that there is some concern about these being hazardous, I really don't see where that's going to be up be a problem. And likewise too, when this project was being developed and we were discussing these design components, if this would have been a concern to Public Works about plows hitting them, about being dangerous and things like that, those items would have been brought up and we would have gone through a different sort of analysis and likely designed to incorporate traffic calming on this roadway. So with that being said, do you have any other questions or concerns? I feel like I've addressed most of the issues. And understanding too, one of the common complaints too was that these curve islands, these chokers, are hideous. And I understand that they're red. I mean, there is— I mean, we could possibly paint them white, but the reality is, is we wanted them red. We wanted them to be seen, and we wanted folks to slow down and travel safely in this area. We do have some speed data. It's not very complete, but so far what it seems to show is that Generally, speeds between these speed tables is a little lower than what it was prior to this project happening, and we had speed bumps. The speeds were actually slower over those bumps, and then I think creatures of habit, when we feel like we've slowed down a little bit too much, we end up speeding up to To make up time, and in that case, that's what was happening with those speed bumps. But with these tables, that doesn't seem to be the case because the speeds over the tables is actually 1 to 2 miles an hour higher than it is with those speed bumps. So therefore, we don't see the higher speeds between these speed tables. So My recommendation would be to keep these, this traffic calming in place. If you, if the council desires to have the bulb-outs removed, then I would say that all of it needs to go out, because if without those bulb-outs, then you're going to have cars deliberately going over to the sides of the road, swerving out of the lane, which in my mind is actually a little bit more unsafe because cars should, should stay in travel lanes unless they're pulling over to park. They shouldn't be swerving over and they shouldn't be going through the shoulder, which— and I know there has been a comment about cyclists and, and people on, on bikes being out in the middle of the lane, but the, the reality is— with striping. We want to put in bike lanes in this roadway, and when that happens, we likely would go ahead, instead of being as aggressive as a 10-foot lane, we could go with an 11-foot lane and then a 4-foot bike lane. And just as a frame of reference, the lanes on Center Street in Orem are at 11 feet. 12 feet is what is on I-15. 10 is pretty aggressive, but the whole purpose of that too is for people to drive slow. We want to make it feel like it's narrow. We don't want it to be comfortable, and we want people to drive slower. And if the islands were removed, speeds will go up. And then if the tables are removed, speeds will drastically go up, at least Probably, I would guess, in the 80th percentile or the 85th percentile, you would be going from probably 30 miles an hour up to closer to 38, if I had to guess, or 40.

So—

Mr. Anthony, we have some questions.

Yeah, do you have any questions?

So Tom has a question for you.

Let me, if I can, I'm going to give a little backdrop.

For those of you who don't know, I live on Palisades Drive. And the speed between Center Street and 800 North, there are no stop signs, so it makes— it did make for a pretty fast trip through there before I lived on Palisades.

And I know that the city wanted a smoother lift for emergency vehicles than the harsh bumps, if you've ever driven over the bumps that were there prior. There was a meeting in 2020, as you point out, and I was there, and forgive me for not signing in, and I I realized that most of my neighbors ignored their postcard that we found, but many people do when they get those things, and understood that.

When the resurfacing began, I talked to several people who said, we are going to put back in some kind of speed bumps or something. And I said, yes, yes, yes.

And those were the only people I heard from.

I will tell you the rest of the story here in a bit.

Jared, who's here—

Jared, could you raise your hand?

Just no bow required.

Just Jared was a neighbor. Jared Blosser.

Jared Blosser.

I'm sorry.

your last name. Jared was the primary donor to put the speed bumps in back in 2000, along with some other citizens gave some donations, but Jared was the gorilla in the room to make that happen. And his understanding at that time was the city guaranteed that they would keep speed bumps in because he paid for those to go. So I thought I was a hero as the speed bumps were going in, or these tables were going in. And then I heard the other side of the equation, who are equally as well represented today. I need to disclose that Bruce gave me Christmas treats, so I have had a slight bribe. Bruce came by my home at Christmas time. David, right?

Yeah.

And Mike, other neighbors who have conflicting viewpoints to the one previously shared, the benefit of these. So I know there are opinions, opinions both ways on this, and So when the speed— when they just finished resurfacing, Sam, I don't think you did detailed speed studies then, but gut feel meant the speeds went up dramatically because the speed bumps were all gone. And then back came in these concrete crosswalks and lifts. What did you call them again before the chokers are in?

What are they called, Sam?

The speed tables, the raised crosswalks?

Or just a speed bump.

I was using that term.

And Sam, I also know that Bruce and others contacted an awful lot of citizens and gave you some, maybe not statistically valid, but a lot of information.

Could you refer—

could you reference that, Sam, for us?

Yeah, I mean, I've— Bruce and I have exchanged quite, quite a few emails as well as phone calls. And yes, he did reach out, and I apologize for not mentioning that previously. But yeah, I think there were— I don't know the exact number, if it's in the 40s or 60s But yeah, he did reach out. Bruce took it upon himself with some other helps of some neighbors, and they put out a poll. They polled— I think they asked 4 questions, you know, speeds. Do you want the speed tables? Do you want the bull bouts? And things like that. And from their little— their grassroots polling, you know, a lot of folks said no, we, we don't mind having those, those speed tables, but, but we, but we really don't want those chokers. I mean, a lot of them, you know, were— they, they were dangerous and they were hideous. It seemed like those, those were the 2 biggest comments. And, and like I said, that's where I've kind of pointed out some facts that I really don't see where there's really much, much danger as far as the hideousness. Yeah, there, there we could do something about paint. But then I've also communicated where I feel like those, those are definitely something that, that is needed if, if, if this is what the council would like to do as far as keeping this, this traffic calming in place.

I know normally this course we don't normally have input from citizens, but if you choose to, maybe one from each side sharing what their thoughts are.

Yeah, I think it'd be great.

So you have Jared, and then I don't know which one would be your spokesman among the group.

So if you're willing to give me 2 or 3 minutes, right?

Yeah, why don't we try to take under 3 minutes if you can. If you need more time, just ask. All right, uh, shall I go first? Yeah, go ahead and stand up. Yeah, you go up front if you want.

We can see you maybe better.

Thank you. Um, I appreciate this, uh, opportunity. Thanks.

And as Tom pointed out, I was one of the original participants in installation of the original speed bumps, for good reason. Just if I don't mind, and Sam, I'd like to thank you. I know we've talked in the past too recently, but let me just recount a couple of things if I can for the group, just make sure we understand. Around 2000, as Tom pointed out, we have no, no stop. We have an entire mile length of road with no stoppage. And at the time, I had done my own personal study. I rigged up a laser measuring device and I was measuring speeds and counts of traffic, as well as Wally Bester, 2 doors down, was a police volunteer. He had a calibrated radar. We were seeing typical speeds at the time, 20 years ago, around 35 miles an hour. We saw them occasionally as high as 70 miles an hour. And at that time too, the city gratefully was going through a policy, kind of a policy discussion of how to manage the city's growth and maintain livability. The city chose to install bumps on Carterville Road and Skyline, and they wanted to do it on Palisades as well. But in our conversations with them, Richard Manning at the time, I think, in Sam's position at that time, indicated that the funds just weren't there, but if the funds could be brought forward, the city would be happy to install the bumps. So I engaged the discussion with the group along Palisades Drive as residents, and we gathered the funds that were necessary for those 9 bumps, and we put them in. So that's kind of the background in order to control the speeds, which was the critical issue, not so much the volume of traffic but the speeds. And I think Sam's guess is probably accurate that we'd see those speeds return if we remove them. So, at the time, the city pledged that they would maintain them and guarantee— you used the word guarantee, I'll say pledge. I would like to invite the city to consider maybe the pledge to be a strong one, and I invite you to continue that, because if we don't, we'll lose the residential character of that neighborhood. And I think that's the key thing. I think the folks in Arthur's Court— and the other surrounding neighborhoods would probably not enjoy their neighborhood as much as we do if Palisades were not what it is? And I'd just like to encourage us to remember that point, that we give and take to each other to maintain the collective. And so let's all join together in this. The bumper islands, I call them, they are kind of unusual, but whether they're hideous or not, they're effective, and we'll get used to them. And in that sense, I think it's a useful useful structure to maintain, to maintain the traffic calming and to preserve the livability of that district. All right, so I thank you for that. I think that'll wrap up my comments. Are there any questions for me?

Thank you for your donation 20 years ago.

How much was that cost?

Yeah, the total cost was the city charged us $1,500 per bump, so the total cost for the 9 islands was Uh, what was that, $12,000, $15,000?

Yeah, $15,000 in that ballpark.

Whatever it was, you can add better than I can right now.

I'm getting older.

But yeah, so we ponied up the funds along— myself, I have to admit, I did participate in that. Other residents along Callese Drive also chipped in, and the city took those funds and installed it.

Amazing.

We're grateful for it, and we're grateful for the rebuild, actually.

I want to say that thanks to the city and thanks to Sam for his care.

Thank you.

Very nice way.

Thank you. All right, thank you. Hello, um, appreciate a couple of minutes, uh, today.

My name is Bruce Cameron. I live on Bella Vista Drive, which is just on the north end of Palisades, and I can't leave my neighborhood without traveling on Palisades Drive. And when I came home from work one day and saw these new big cement blocks that were being installed on Palisades Drive, I got somewhat concerned, went into the city talked to them briefly about it, and I started wondering, you know, am I the only person that sees some danger here when these things get covered in snow? And when you've got bikers trying to avoid those choker islands and go to the middle of the road, and skateboarders. I actually had an incident where coming in off of Center Street, Norum, I had a skateboarder and his friend that pulled right in front of me because they had to go around one of these choker islands. And so, you know, I wondered, am I the only one that has some worries about this? So I started talking to some neighbors, and I found out that there were— can I remove my mask?

Sure.

Yeah, thank you.

Started talking to neighbors and found out there were a considerable number that had the same opinion as I did. But Sam Kelly in the city kept telling me that everybody wants these speed tables and these choker islands are acceptable based on engineering and so forth. And I told him that the neighbors— that we have 20 neighbors in Bella Vista, we have 35 neighbors in Arthur's Court, and And there's approximately 135 neighbors on Palisade and the adjacent streets that attach to Palisade. So approximately 180 neighbors. And Sam told me that unless I could get opinions from Palisade Drive, they weren't really going to pay much attention to us. And so I formed a committee. I've got members of the committee from Palisades Drive, Bella Vista, Bretton Woods, and Arthur's Court. And Mike Harrison, who's sitting back here, was on the committee. He helped distribute flyers to 135 neighbors on Palisades Drive and adjacent. Okay, and so we asked the neighbors, do you like these new speed bumps? Do you, do you like these choker islands? What are your opinions? We got over 100 emails from neighbors, the vast majority against these things. Okay, and I would love to have all of you read these emails. Because it gives you a very good feel for what these neighbors really feel, what they really believe. And I, I did a complete question.

Do they not want a speed bump at all?

Are they not concerned about the speed anymore?

Okay, so there, there are some neighbors that are still concerned about the speed, and you can, you can read their emails, and I did a I can send all of the City Council the survey results. We did— one of my committee members did a complete spreadsheet that showed everybody's vote, everybody's opinion about all of this, right? And that's more than 100 neighbors. And to answer your question, yes, people are still somewhat concerned about speed. And reading through the emails, a little— more than half thought that they would like to keep the speed bumps, but more than 90%, 80-90% of them, of 100 neighbors, said they don't want these dangerous choker islands in there. They're ugly, they're dangerous, and we feel alike, you know, to have Nearly $200,000, and I got a GRAMA request from the city, and I've got the report here.

And the—

if I read the numbers correctly, there was almost $200,000, $196,000 spent on these speed bumps, the crosswalks, and so forth for one neighborhood in Orem. And I don't know how that got budgeted, but in any case, it's definitely way more than what Jared mentioned, $15,000 to put in speed bumps. And so just one last comment, and that would be that the original postcard that Sam showed you here was mailed out, and I think the city kind of has a requirement that they need to notice everybody. when something like this is going on. So they sent out this little postcard right here, and if you'll read, it's very fine print. It doesn't say one word about speed bumps or Tilker Islands. All it says is that they're doing road work. And so the evidence that very few neighbors knew about this is that only 4 people showed up to the open house. Okay, and when we went around and did the flyers, we had, we had a vast majority of the people respond. So we had 180 neighbors and we had over 100 email responses. Okay, it's, it's a very important issue, and we hope that the City Council will look at every angle of this. We would like to leave the speed bumps in because we have at least about half of the neighbors that would like to keep it— the speeds down. We would like the choker islands removed, and the concept that people are going to sneak around to the edge to justify these big cement blocks that are even more dangerous doesn't make sense to us.

And, and so I was just gonna say we're gonna have to end there. Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Bruce. Thanks for your time.

Hey, Sam?

Yeah, thank you for your time. So can you give us the picture of the speed bump with the That one?

Yes, right there.

So my question is, if we take the chokers out, can we put the white poles still there on both sides, maybe so the bikers can get through? Would that be a nuisance?

No, the challenge is— and we can do that, it just depends on How are we going to— because we need to put a bike lane on there. So if I'm going to direct those bikes into there—

Those straight out of the bike lane, right?

Excuse me?

Those white posts would straddle the bike lane and you solve the problem.

Right, but if I'm going— if I'm going to now— if I'm going to take the bike lane between those 2 white posts, that means I got to go ahead and route those around both upstream and downstream a little ways and probably take away some parking. And I'm fine with that, just as long as everyone's clear that that's likely what, what would happen, because I can't— someone's traveling on a bike, whatever speed, I can't just stop them and have them go 90 degrees and go in. There is going to have to be a transition through that. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I think that's just me thinking, you know, they don't look very nice.

They do serve a purpose, but with the white poles, can that alleviate—

can that replace those cement things and everybody's somewhat happy?

Yeah, yeah, we— yeah, that's, that's fine.

So, Sam, do we— have we had any pedestrian incidents crossing that street? Or do you have crossings? What was the purpose for the bulb-outs? But I mean, before, prior to that, did you have issues with pedestrians crossing the street?

Have I had issues with pedestrians crossing that street?

No, I have not. So I have a question for Chief Adams. So Chief, give us your opinion as far as what the police would say, speed bumps versus not speed bumps versus the cement, because they see issues with And we're trying to move traffic and we're trying to— so if you have an opinion on— Well, I have an opinion. I mean, Sam's the scientist, but for me, whatever is the safest and most effective at slowing people down is the right answer. The number one solution is for people to be responsible, but we have that issue on every street in the world. So yeah. Whatever, whatever makes the biggest impact on traffic safety is what our opinion is. But the speed bumps would slow the traffic, not the choker. The choker seems to be a problem as far as the issue, right?

Or you can put one post.

I mean, I, you know, if the citizens don't want it, but if it can serve the same purpose and make it easy and the posts are there, take it out and put the post.

And when you say citizens, you mean some citizens?

Aren't the posts, I mean, just to help identify the islands, the snow, whatever, so you don't hit them?

Yeah, there's reflectors on there, I think, saying where they are.

I mean, if the islands were gone, why would you need the posts?

We don't want the same thing for the bike lane.

The road too is cramped, so the speed table is highest at the center.

So people could go around to try to get over that, hit half the pump. So if you put a pole, maybe you just put one closer to like we talked about, I think—

would that be okay, or you want the choke?

Uh, frankly, me and my immediate neighbors prefer the chokers. Okay. Because, um, we have a very wide street, uh, for good or bad reasons, both Creekwood and Apple Ridge subdivision, which I'm in, between 400 and 500 North, we have a covenant that limits parking on the curb for residents' use. Guest use, yes, but our own covenants want to keep this street clear for the character of the neighborhood, the cleanliness of the neighborhood, and safety of the neighborhood. If we pull those bumpers out and we open up that fast flow with dropping the tire into the curb to try and skirt them—

We would have those poles.

Okay, but I'm just saying I appreciate what you're saying there. That might work. But maybe we just need to start parking our cars out on the street.

This would definitely be a transition of the poles, so you wouldn't be able to park there.

Well, I get your point there. My point is, if the poles and the bumper are out of the road, we might just have to start parking our cars so that they can't be in the way. Cheating them for a bump.

So that's just the character it is right now.

Get used to it.

So let me ask you, you're finding successfully—

excuse me, sorry. So let me ask a question about the council, uh, since this is the first meeting we've had. As far as this is, this is slated for 30 minutes, so we're almost 40. Do we keep discussing this or do we Where do we go from here? And what is the goal of where we want to get this conversation? I'm guessing Sam wants support from us because he's hearing from 2 different groups of neighbors doing different things, right?

But you're right, for most of the council, they've heard it for the first time. So I think, uh, you know, let's think about it.

Let's talk. Let's, let's see the results that Sam got.

I mean, Bruce talked about them.

They basically saved us a potential outside You know, opinion poll, because Bruce and his people did that. Sam could collect that, send it out, we could discuss this again.

And I think Bruce, did you have something to say real quick? Yeah, because of time limits, I would really recommend that, that we be able to send the city council and mayor the results of our surveys, um, the complete spreadsheet and survey Plus the emails.

That way you can see what the majority—

what majority we got, and you can read the details of what, what the neighbors think. That would be— I think that would be great. My one focus about that is if we're— if we're— if essentially we're saying, you know, we want to gather the input from the neighbors so we know what the majority wants, which sounds like you've got But I don't know if it's complete. If there's, you know, 180 people, and so I don't know if we really need to have a more extensive, you know, survey where we know for a fact that we've got the overall input from everyone. I'd like to second that as well because some of my neighbors were a little unable— unwilling to answer this question. They didn't really know Bruce or what he was really after. What was the Yeah, so some didn't respond, right? So I think to make a good decision, we just need all the data, and, and, you know, it's a very low margin of error. And then from that, and as a council, we have to decide, okay, what does that mean? Uh, I mean, let's say we get data that says that the majority of the neighbors are against it. Is that enough to move forward? Uh, or, I mean, because this is a really unusual situation as far as There's so few of these in the city, and a good question, why does he spend $20,000 in this particular spot? Anyway, go ahead. Mayor, if I could clarify, the amount of money spent according to an email I have from Sam Kelly was $101,000. Okay, depends on what you pull out of that estimate. So Mr. Keller may have included the ADA ramps, which had to be replaced regardless. I would encourage each of you to drive it and go out and see it for yourselves. If you would like to do some more public outreach, we can. We, we have a public relations firm that we could have go out third party and go door to door and check in with people if you'd like to do that. And then we could come back to you with that information as well. And the way I would structure it is I would like to essentially have both sides be able to give their message to the people, have the people surveyed, and then depending on how that goes, I mean, To me, if there's a clear majority that don't want this, then we can go into discussion. Okay, what are our other options? But if there's a majority that do want it, then we don't have to worry about it. So I mean, any other ideas on that? So I, I, I think that sounds good.

I have a kind of, as we move this forward, I guess a simple engineering question, Sam.

If those poles are there For snowplows, could they have a threaded end that they could be twisted into a fitting in the winter months and then taken out during the summer months?

How would that be?

Yeah, I mean, right now those are somewhat of a— they're like a— those types of delineators that are set there can actually be hit They're actually just mounted into the top of that concrete. So we set those poles there. If so, say the scenario is that they want to have these here. Chances are a car can still hit them. It's not going to do a lot of damage to a car. Then it's just a matter of time for when Public Works could respond and go out and put in a new one. It's not going to be the next day, likely. It's going to take some time. And like I said, I think, and I understand, I mean, we can go through this whole process, we can poll everyone, but the reality is that if these are removed, speeds go up, the complaints we have now will probably go up tenfold. Because right now speeds are actually quite calm. They're actually traveling close to the posted speed limit. So I mean, Understanding that this is a collector-type road, it connects 8th North to Center Street. But you do want to maintain some sort of a residential feel. I mean, this is what it's intended to do, and if we want to put those little signs there, that's fine. I personally think that if we have those there, they're probably going to get hit, and they're going to be getting hit a lot. And right now, that concrete curb is what's going to protect them, and it's going to One, be a lot less maintenance for us, and 2, you're not going to have to worry about having to have police officers up there sitting there trying to catch people speeding or catch people swerving in and out of traffic. And to Ryan's point, if you go up there and drive it— I've driven this numerous times, both in a pickup and in a car, and both times— because there are a few sections of this roadway where there aren't any curb islands there next to the speed tables. And I would have to say with a really high probability, 90%, most of the folks don't stay straight in their lane. They actually swerve out and around. They want to keep their speed. They want to travel 30, 35, and they just cruise along. So I mean, yes, these are kind of a temporary type solution, but I think it might end up to be more of an issue in the long run. But, but we can do whatever.

Any other comments? Yeah, I mean, uh, I've lived in this neighborhood for 35 years, and truth of the matter is I've avoided Palisade Drive for those 35 years, and I turn out of my neighborhood and travel on 10th East. So if you take a poll of all the people that live on 10th East, 100% would say put speed bumps on our street And drive the traffic to Palisades.

So I guess my feeling is we've done a lot of work and effort to make 1% of the streets in the city compliant for a certain route, and we've got 99% of the streets without all this stuff. And I just think it's silly when you've got 7 of those speed bumps between Center Street and 400 North on one street in your entire city.

I mean, there's no school district, there's none of that. I get it for those, but in this situation, I, I just think it's been short-sighted.

Yeah, thank you.

Um, and it seems like the pivot point issue is those islands or whatever.

I mean, jokers. And that's what is causing most of the grief. And so, so, so that's an issue. I mean, it seems like a simpler solution if, if, if the majority of the neighbors wanted something done. It seems like if they want the joke grounds gone and you just want to have 2 duck bumps, then you still get some of the benefit without all the benefit, but at least you get something. And, and I, and I do respect that. I mean, this is kind of like an HOA situation, but I think the majority of the neighbors should be able to determine what their neighborhood looks and feels like, and this is something that changes it. So that's where I think you go back to getting accurate data and doing something. Okay, any other thoughts on that? Okay, well, so that'll be the next step. So it'll be really trying to get accurate data. I'll try to speed it up.

Yep, McKenna Matthews, our Community Services Manager, here with me. We've had this presentation for some of you, but as we have had kind of a changeover with some of our council. We want to make sure that Councilwoman Larray and Mayor Young, you're up to speed on what we have had our discussion with our council back in December.

What's that?

You can check out Utah Fit Premise Act. Essentially is state law that gives counties and cities governments the authority to help enforce the inside of rental properties when Landlords are unwilling to fix plumbing, to fix electric, to fix some of these, these things. So the city already has authority for code enforcement if somebody's not taking care of their property, if there's abandoned vehicles in the backyard, those types of things, to require those to be moved based on our nuisance ordinances that we already have in place. When it comes to the inside of the home, we don't naturally have that, but we're given through the Utah Fit Premises Act some ability to enforce those things when it isn't happening. Aaron McKnight has been our city attorney that's kind of on this. This is generally done by county governments. The Utah County government— Utah County doesn't want to do it, and they've— there's, there's a variety of reasons there, but in our conversation with staff, their county commission isn't prone to step into this arena, citing generally property rights of owners. And so With that being said, this is essentially what the Utah Fit Premises Act says. It's intended to protect tenants by requiring landlords to maintain common areas of the residential unit in a sanitary and safe condition. So this is, if you were in an apartment complex, the clubhouse, the hallways, things that nobody really maintains. Maintains electric systems, plumbing, heating, hot and cold water, maintains any air conditioning systems in an operable condition if they have one. other appliances, things like that. The main area that we get complaints on and that Utah County gets complaints on is people that are without plumbing, without heating, and those types of issues, electrical issues. It allows cities to adopt ordinances that are consistent with this code to utilize their administrative remedies, which we have as an administrative law judge process. So somebody comes and they have an issue with the code enforcement. they have abandoned vehicles, for example, in their backyard that we need to get out of there because it's just— it's taking away from the character of the neighborhood, then we can put them through an administrative law judge process and essentially order them to, to get those removed. We have the ability through the Utah Fit Premises Act to do the same thing for these issues. Again, specifically, the thing that we're most concerned about is making sure our residents have working plumbing, working heating, During winter and in all months. That's the basics of it. This is just an example. This was sent by Utah County of an apartment complex where they were trying to fix the plumbing above because there's plumbing issues. It wasn't, it wasn't being resolved. You see that on the, on your right, that's, that's urine that's dropping from the property above into the into a bowl, being caught by those neighbors. It has been in this condition for a long time. The landlord wasn't moving very quickly on it or wanting to. The neighbors below were being disturbed. This is one example. Ken has been in the housing world for 30 years, 25 years.

Age me.

Sorry, since she was a toddler. She was born living in a home. She's always been in one.

But these—

this isn't just a one-off random. I mean, this, this happens where where tenants are living without toilets that function, without heating. We have another situation in Orem where we've had tenants that have been without working heating for months, and the landlord's response is, well, I'll just give you a space heater. And they, they call the county, the county doesn't touch it. They call the city, we refer them to the county, the county refers them to us. We want to have an ordinance where we can Essentially require them to, to resolve this issue. Let me just kind of jump in anytime, you know that.

The—

so, so why would the city get involved? In our aging neighborhoods, more and more single-family homes are being converted to rentals. They're being purchased by investors and being rented. But yeah, especially in kind of our older single-family.

Some neighborhoods.

In a housing shortage like we're in, and we've had these conversations with people, they feel like, I can, I can try to make an issue of this or potentially have no place to live. Those are my— I don't have somewhere else to go. I can't just easily get into the next place. So we feel like people are making those choices right now. And often the ones that are subject to these conditions are generally kind of the most vulnerable part of our population. And then we believe that rentals being kept— and I keep saying rentals because the Utah Fit Premises Act specifically relates to rentals— we believe it has a significant—

Is there a mold stipulation? Because I've had many of my nieces and nephews have mold problems in there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Their sanitary conditions is one of them.

Mold is a huge issue.

Yeah, it's huge.

That's what I hear the most.

Especially when it's being caused by something outside of their control. Councilmember Pedersen actually brought this up when we did our presentation last time. There were some pictures of some mold kind of around a window, right? And Terry's was, well, that looks like my first apartment, get some bleach and just clean it. I mean, there's some things that don't have to get us involved, but when the mold's coming from a leak above them that's not being taken care of, that's when it gets out of the control of—

I just had several of my nieces and nephews who had—

There's different types of mold too, right?

Yeah.

I mean, some mold is toxic, others aren't.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So, sorry to interrupt.

Yeah, no, it's a great question. And yes, that, that happens too. So we believe that the strength of our neighborhoods, safe and livable neighborhoods, which is one of our council areas of focus, this is, this is a big piece of that, especially in a neighborhood. I'll speak of mine, which is Sharon, where you're seeing significantly— when a home goes for sale, it's a 50/50 shot that it's going to be owner-occupied when that's done. Right, because investors are investing in these because there's such a high demand for rental properties. And so we believe this helps us protect our neighborhoods and keep them safe and livable moving forward. So what we have been wanting— what we are wanting to do and proposing is to adopt an ordinance that allows us to treat these violations the same way we do our other nuisance and code violations. Couple things: we won't— this isn't going to be a proactive effort. We won't We don't have the staff nor the desire to go door to door asking and trying to find these, but when somebody calls us, we want to be able to do something. We have found in our code enforcement efforts that when we just provide the warning to the landlord, essentially that first notice, we get almost 70% compliance. Most people resolve the issue at that time, right? So they've got an abandoned vehicle, we notice then that that has to be removed. 70% of the time they're gonna take care of it without us having to do anything more. But when they aren't, we wanna utilize our administrative law judge process, which decriminalizes these things, doesn't put them in a place where it's gonna go on the record or anything like that. We bring them in front of an administrative law judge, process we've been using for years, and they make the order through a civil process to, again, expedite it, one, but also not try to criminalize everything.

We're not trying to do that either.

In our previous meeting, we've received kind of the council nod, but we wanted to bring this before you so that you are aware of what we would be bringing forward, which would be a formal ordinance at some point. We have met with multiple landlords and property managers in the city. We met with the director of the Utah Apartment Association, which is essentially the head lobbyist for apartment owners. He actually was one of the ones that crafted the Utah Fit Premise Act. And told us that they have our full support too, because to a good landlord, the worst PR is a bad landlord. They want those ones to come to play the game the right way as well, because it hurts their image. So that's our presentation. Is there anything you'd add, Ken?

No, you're fine. I was just gonna say that I don't— you know, one of the ways we investigate complaints for outdoor things, for nuisance things, is we go and investigate. And that's kind of our goal here is we would just, you know, we would go and investigate. We can tell when someone's being a hoarder or renter's being a hoarder or renter's not maintaining their property versus what a landlord is doing with the property and not maintaining it. And so I know that there was some concern around that last time as, well, are they just bad tenants? Well, there are a lot of bad tenants, but there are a lot of bad landlords as well. And it's just making that determination and helping these people. I've seen horrendous things out there in my housing life in the last 20 years. Really, really bad things. Things that children should never have to live in just to have a roof over their head. It's, it's horrendous. You leave these houses wanting to cry. You don't want to leave those children there. And those landlords are just not maintaining their properties, and those people are forced to live there because that's all they can afford.

As far as questions, Um, yeah, I can totally understand where you're coming from as far as there's certain things, you know.

Yep.

So it kind of comes down to the details, right?

Yep.

Because you wouldn't want it to be overreaching, you wouldn't want to be intrusive.

Yep.

You want to be something, something that the tenants want to—

Yep.

Um, because there is an area where Different rentals are all different prices. Yeah. And a lot of times the landlord's essentially taking mine— well, I'm going to rent this for 2/3 the market because I'm not going to take care of this stuff. Yeah. And so to the extent that, you know, he comes in, they fix all these things, landlord— I guess the landlord gets assessed, right?

Yes, correct.

Correct.

The landlord turns around and says, okay, well, now I'll raise your rent.

Yeah, 30%, because we're built to a higher standard. So yeah, so that's, that's the only— I don't know how you deal with that. Well, it comes—

you actually make a great point at the beginning, and that is the tenant would have to be the one to initiate this, saying, I want this fixed, I can't live in these conditions. Yeah, so that they're the ones recognizing that, hey, there could be some, you know, additional costs that come with this. But yeah, so that's a good, that's a good distinction.

And I think these are more life health safety things more so than, you know, the carpet is dirty or ugly or something like that. It really comes down to, I don't have heat, or I don't have water, I don't have a running toilet. I think that's where we're looking at.

And Paul Smith, who's the executive director of the Utah Apartment Association, what he told us was, you have our full support if you stick to the Utah Fit Premises Act, which is very limited in what we can do, because he and all landlords have a fear of government overreach of, hey, I, I personally, you know, whatever inspector shows up says, I personally don't like this, therefore I'm going to write this one up. We have, we have limitations. The code would spell those out very clearly. Um, and then, uh, again, our hope always is we send a simple warning, they take care of the problem, we move on.

Would there be a process where the tenant needs to contact the landlord?

I think that would be what we would do.

So the Utah Legal Services, there's a process that a tenant can go through to, you know, make things happen. And I think we would send them through that process or encourage that process.

And we can spell that out.

That's a good thing.

Yeah. Because if somebody just, yeah, it has a gripe with their landlord and landlord suddenly gets a warning of something, an issue they didn't even know was going on. So that's a good point, right? So with your support, that's what we'd like to do is bring an ordinance. We would spell these things out. We'll show you those details. We also are limited in our capacity too, right? We, we have had— we've started to run a very successful code enforcement program, which has a lot of resources that come with that. And so we're not— we don't have the capacity to really go after these very trivial type issues because We have limited time with our administrative law judge in the sense, in the sense that if they appeal that, it goes to a district court, which means we have to bring legal representation. And we don't want to bring on any more of those than we have to. But we do want to protect especially these aging neighborhoods that are most vulnerable and impact this community in a big way.

So. When you did the presentation before, I asked some questions. You kind of told some war stories, which got me so—

Yeah.

But my concern would be kind of the mayor saying, if I'm in a basement apartment and I don't have air conditioning, well, I'd probably pay less than the guys in the Ashton Apartments that have valet garbage pickups.

Yep, yep, yep.

Um, but maybe that's all I can afford, so I—

Yep.

So, um, I might be willing to deal with that, but that's not what we're talking about. I understand that's what we're talking about, because if we start doing things like that to that basement apartment where that's for an affordable apartment for somebody, we're going to get them kicked out because the landlord's going to say, see you later. Yes, I hope that we need to be really careful with those guidelines. So correct, correct.

Yeah, and we don't want them getting thrown out either. So that's—

And I think we would, I think we would have that conversation. That'd be an internal process with the tenant of, hey, we want to help you, but we just want to make sure that you're you are comfortable with what the process is gonna look like, 'cause they may say, yeah, you know what, I don't wanna go down that road. Now, if we see that there's little kids that are living in these conditions, at some point it may not be the decision of, you know, some, right? That we have to report something because we saw something. Police officers, for example, and I know school teachers have no choice when they see certain things to report certain things, but that's not, you know, an air conditioning unit that's not working.

So it's a good distinction.

Okay, that's all we got.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. The next thing, last thing on this agenda thing. You got review mayor's protocol?

Yes, so every 6 months.

You appointed— you appointed—

I thought I was on for a year.

Um, you appointed a new pro tem. Normally we've done this in November, December, obviously, but since you're here, we want to wait that you have that opportunity. So you just need to let me know who you would like. Um, they will fill in for you whenever you're unable to be conducting the meeting over here in person or online. Okay, and we have rotated it, haven't we? Yeah, he's got a schedule of who's now— since 2010, people write into it. So, so that's just up to you. If you would let me know, then we can put down consent for next week. next meeting. Sorry, I didn't put that down.

Okay, sounds good. I mean, what other groups should we bring on?

If you'll just give me that list, then we'll just— we can do it that way too.

None of us are dying to do it, Mayor.

You won't offend any of us. When was the last time—

they just recently conducted a meeting, but before that, someone's been gone like a whole 6 months and never did a job. Never have to.

I'll try and make sure they got slated.

I will collect the ribbon cuttings.

Yeah, all right. Next, we got the end review for the upcoming interview. Okay, sounds good. Let's do that. Let's break it off. Now we have someone off referral. Okay. Do we have a volunteer for a prayer?

Our dearest Father in heaven, we're so grateful for this opportunity that we have to be involved in this process and meet together today. We're grateful for the blessings that we enjoy by being in this great city and living at this time. We ask you, Father, for a blessing of this panel and this food, that it may nourish and strengthen our bodies and Give us the day that we need and help us in serving thee. Grateful for our many blessings and pray for thy continued guidance and spirit in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

The nice thing is you can't—

okay.

You know, let's do the pineapples. Thank you.

I was wanting to ask.

Yeah, so I think Heather might have actually sent the link to everybody, let you know we have this hearing. So what it was, it was on our motion to dismiss in part, and it just kind of explained what that means. As you know, Wright Development Group filed a lawsuit against the city. They basically had 2 contentions in their complaint. One was they were asking the court for a ruling that their application was vested prior to the moratorium. The second part of it is they asked the court to declare the moratorium invalid.

So 2 points.

So we basically filed a motion to dismiss the first part of that, which was their allegation or complaint that their application was complete and vested. And essentially, it was based on what non-lawyers would sometimes refer to as technicality. Essentially, what that means is our argument was that when staff made a determination and told them that their application would not be complete until they had a neighborhood meeting, they obviously disagreed with that point. But our argument was, is that if they didn't like that, they should have appealed that decision to our Board of Adjustment. the local appeal authority before going to district court. And there's some state law that basically says they have to exhaust their administrative remedies before they can raise that claim in the district court. So that's what we argued. We had the hearing before the judge. The judge gave it a lot of attention, quite honestly, very long hearing, much longer than you would normally expect for something like this. So he really gave careful consideration and ultimately ruled in our favor on that one. So what that means is he basically said, hey, because you didn't exhaust your local remedies on that point, on whether your application was complete and vested, I don't have jurisdiction to hear it. I'm not going to hear it.

It's dismissed.

So it's a nice win for us in this lawsuit. It's, if you will, sort of a win the battle, but obviously not the war just yet.

Can they still take it up the way they should have done it? No, it's supposed to be—

it's too late, too late for them to go to the Board of Justice.

Okay, thank you. This is all public. Yes. Yeah, I think we're on tape, right?

Yeah, yeah, this is all public. So, um, uh, obviously the, the second part of their lawsuit is, is still alive and we're still working through that, uh, let that go through the normal course. But, uh, again, uh, a nice win for us on that.

Can I remind you, did you guys argue it or did our Snow Christiansen or outside legal counselor.

I was told that it was your idea.

Well, I know I told you that. No, I actually did come up with the idea.

And then obviously, we worked with some Christians.

Congratulations on your graduation.

Thank you.

Great job. Awesome.

No, I'm actually—

what's next on that? So now what's the future?

So yeah, just to kind of update you on what's going on now. So, uh, we're required to provide the court with the record of the proceedings. What that basically involves is preparing a transcript. Part of it is preparing the transcript of the actual city council meeting, obviously the ordinance that was signed as part of that, maybe some other documents, and those will be submitted to the court. You know, they— I'm not sure, we're not sure if they are going to want to do some discovery or not. Theoretically, there could be maybe a motion for summary judgment.

at some point, you know, just based on the record.

So the ball is kind of in their court, really.

Um, after we get the transcript and the record back to the court, and we'll just see how they decide to proceed.

Do you have the same judge, or will you have to start over with someone?

No, same judge.

Who's the judge?

Uh, he actually has a background in land use, interestingly enough. Extremely engaged in the oral argument, very well prepared.

No, just for that item, just on the moratorium item.

So they'll—

so we'll prepare a transcript of when that, you know, agenda item was opened, and it'll, you know, be the city council discussion, the neighbors' comments. You know, the conversations with attorneys and everybody else who spoke on it.

Yeah, everybody's—

what's the timetable?

You're looking at a month, 2 months, uh, before we have the record in?

I would guess probably a couple weeks. You know, then it'll just, like I said, it'll just really be in their court how fast they want to move it.

You know, the next move will really be theirs.

Is there any worry that the power comes back on and there's some sort of—

No.

Okay.

That's a great job.

Yeah, we're happy.

I'm very excited about that.

Where was that held?

So the hearing was held virtually.

So, uh, the judge is in the 4th District Court in Provo, but, uh, yeah, they held the hearing virtually.

And you said it went longer than you thought.

How long did it go?

It was about almost 2 hours.

Good for Snow Christmas and Martin Luther King.

I mean, honestly, something like that, you, you wouldn't be surprised for one less than an hour.

45 minutes. At the time, was the judge studying the materials?

Yeah, he was, he was very engaged. He asked a lot of questions.

And he had studied the material before coming.

And then he spent a lot of time making his ruling, actually, you know, making a lot of findings and explaining his reasoning and that sort of thing, which is— you don't usually get that, quite honestly. So nice.

You normally know the what, not the how or the end of it, right?

Sometimes, yeah.

Can you say what it came down to? They didn't appeal it?

Yeah, yeah, basically just exactly what we argued. You know, he basically followed our argument, so he agreed with us.

It's so awesome when you're right.

Yeah, it's nice.

I just have one issue I want to bring up regarding the ordinance amendment, the change.

You can leave it if you want.

Yeah, um, just really quickly, as I was preparing tonight and making notes, um, our office was asked to prepare a resolution essentially substituting the mayor in place of the city manager of the individual who makes appointments to the Advisory Council to the Planning Commission. I was just running through the ordinances and state law, and I just want to make the council aware that I think there's potentially an inconsistency or an issue that we might want to look at. State law outlines the manager's powers and duties to include Appointment subject to the provisions of the act and municipal ordinance with the advice and consent of the council, um, the removal, suspension, and appointment of departments, offices, agencies, and all appointed officers of boards and commissions. So arguably that state law could be read to say that's a duty that the state legislature has specifically granted to the city manager. And then I was reading through our ordinances, Section 2-3-8 defines the powers and duties of the Mayor. And subsection 6 there says to make appointments to council advisory boards and commissions as provided by city ordinances. So, um, you know, I know the council wants to move forward with that particular ordinance amendment tonight. Um, I'd like to ask for some time to at least look at it a little bit further.

Thank you.

But I—

that's—

it's up to the council. I just, I just wanted to make you all aware of both of those statutory provisions in the city ordinance provision to kind of outline those different duties. And unfortunately, the state statute is written really horribly and is very old. We still operate under a law from 1977, and so nobody ever cares about updating it to make it consistent with current law or anything like that. I just wanted to collect comments on whether anyone knows about that before we get to that one.

Could we pass it and readjust it?

Um, I guess if you wanted to pass it and not make it— not publish it and make it effective. Until we can look at it further, you know, I mean, that's out of the ordinary course.

Yeah, we can fix it or change it, or we have a new one, you know, we pass this one tonight, right?

Um, yeah, if you pass— I mean, you can pass the ordinance tonight, you know, and then we can look at it later if you like. Okay, thanks. Yeah, that's, that's great. Um, and you know, and I would just like to, um, thank the mayor and other members of city council as we worked through, uh, the preparation of these ordinances and these resolutions over the last few days. A lot of people have weighed in and have helped. And I feel like everybody has really pitched in to try to put together some documents for your consideration tonight. So, Mayor, I just wanted to put that on the record. Thank you.

We're working on a pretty tight timeline.

Yeah, yeah.

And you know what? You got it done. Oh, you know what? But I will say, um, Renee did find a couple of typos. in the appointment to the Office of Legislative Counsel. So when we're on the record, I'll just go ahead and announce those changes on the record. And then when you make the motion to approve it, we'll just approve it as stated on the record and as amended. And then before we have the mayor sign them, we'll make sure that those titles are corrected.

Okay, that'd be great. That brings up something else that Renee— as far as the Planning Commission side, Yeah, yeah.

So on the compensation part, the 215, you know, it— we submitted is commission members may be compensated for reasonable expenses incurred by official responsibilities if approved by the mayor. But we're kind of wondering, since the city manager is the one who— I'm not quite sure the right way to say it— but administers the Right, maybe we could put the city manager in there and have him, uh, um, in conjunction with the mayor or whatever the legal use is on that. Yeah, um, the easiest thing to do, I guess, would be to, um, strike B from Exhibit A because that actually was something already approved by the city manager. Um, you know, let me just clarify that That subsection is not going to be changed by the ordinance. Are they currently reimbursed for stuff?

I, I don't think so.

If they have to travel, it's all like—

Yeah, so, so it would be at the conference or travel.

Okay, okay. I was like, but other than that, okay.

I was like, I've never had to pay for anything ever. So the question would be if the mayor wants And the other thing is in the actual first place, I don't know what that is called, not Exhibit A. Yeah, but that second line where it says that City Council will make decisions regarding reimbursement for funding mission member expenses, that should probably be strictly right.

And hopefully we just keep it like a non-issue because Any other questions, concerns, anything anyone wants to go through in preparation for tonight?

I asked the question at retreat about how we were going to pay for this, and I don't know if that's— this is the gentleman at the Office of Legislative Counsel. I don't know if it's something we've got to work out later or Um, Jamie, and I know you didn't have much time to look at it.

Um, obviously we're just going to go into the existing operating budget, see if there's, uh, monies necessary. So that's how I see it. One other thing, and we can talk about this later, this is something I'd like to have a conversation with the council about. It's just these— all these committees that we have in the city, and some of you chair committees or work on it.

I don't think any of us chair.

We're members.

Okay, so what would I like to do about a council conversation at some point soon about what those committees are, what they do? And then we've got different things that we're working on. As far as additional committees that we could come up with, I'd like to see what we currently got, what we're proposing that we might add, and then bring that all together and figure out what's necessary. And then from there, have you guys, uh, each be involved with those different committees because I think conversation is going to happen. So right now, as of today, we're still in the same committee we had last year because we aren't meeting? That's right. Right now you just stay right where you're at, but I would like sometime in the next few weeks Kind of get that organized and cleared up.

So does Linnéa go to Brent's, or are you gonna wait and see?

Oh, that's a good question. I think I have a list of Mayor Brent's assignments a few years ago.

Well, it's on our webpage too, so if she just took over Brent's, it would be a really quick start.

I just can't surpass Brent, but I'll try.

If you'd like, Mayor, I have 2021 assignments. Okay, and then you just do a search in the place for the name. Right, okay, no, that's fine, but I would like to do it in the context of that's just temporary and we have a conversation about this and figure it out. Maybe stay the same, maybe rearrange it. I think it should stay the same.

Someday I'd like to be on rec too.

Yeah, someday I'd like to be on rec. I would have loved to be in the gym. You could come be on arts council because you've got that fantastic side.

And we could either, we could either like have you make your case of the one you want to be on and then we vote on it, or we could do paper, rock, scissors.

Interesting.

Yes. From where, you know? Yeah, yeah.

To speak.

Hey, how you doing? Now it starts.

So we're ready.

Put something here. Oh, I'm good.

Test, test, test.

Test, test, test.

We're testing our YouTube sound.

We'd like to call this meeting to order and welcome you tonight. First item on the agenda. Is for the invocation. Carol Walker, could you help us with that?

Heavenly Father, we humbly bow before thee this day, and we're grateful to be in this City Council meeting. We're grateful to live in this beautiful community. We're so appreciative of all those that are willing to serve, those— the mayor and the City Council— and the many hours that they give to us. As citizens, we're thankful for all those that serve Orem, whatever capacity that might be. We ask that thou would be with us tonight and at different times when we have issues to discuss, that we might have civility, that we will all be listening, be willing to listen to each other's points of view and be open-minded. We're again grateful for this great place we have to live. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you. The next item is the Pledge of Allegiance. Is Peter Christiansen here?

Please rise, please rise. Repeat the Pledge of Allegiance with me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Dave Spencer has a comment he'd like to make.

So, just want to let you know that George Siepel— if anybody knew George Siepel, he passed away on Sunday. And he— I think he worked for the city for 28 years in the Public Works. So, um, it's definitely sad to see him go, but he did very great, a lot of good work for the city and also as a friend. So thank you.

Thank you, Dave. I think that moves us to the personal appearances. For those of you that signed up, I'll call your name, and if you want to come up and, and say what you'd like to say. And just keep it under 3 minutes is all we ask. First on the list is Bladen Lautensack.

Mayor and new council members, congratulations. It's great to see some new faces up here. I'm going to be brief but to the point. I moved from Burbank, California. I know, Lynette, you're familiar with that area, some 30 years ago, to live in a conservative community and in a city that I think is probably one of the best places to be living in the country right now. Burbank is, at one time, was probably as conservative as But it's changed. And, uh, obviously I've vacated like a lot of other Californians have done, um, because of everything going on there. I think, um, I, I want to state, I think the election results speak for themselves. Um, I think, um, the community as a whole, um, for quite some time has kind of wanted to go in a different direction. And, um, there are many of us who've not been happy with some of the decisions that have been made. I'm excited about having Mary Yun, uh, at the helm, and I think that, uh, this council, uh, hopefully will speak for, for, um, the very reason that, that some of you were elected. Um, the community definitely needs to go in a different direction. It's becoming more progressive, and there are many of us that are not happy with the direction it's going, and we're concerned about the compute— our, our businesses, especially on State Street. There's been a lot of discussion about what's going to be done there. I hope that this council will do the right thing. I'm just going to be blunt. We do not want any kind of high-density housing. We don't want low-income housing in this city. We don't want it. And no more, no more apartment buildings. Okay, I think our population now is what, close to 100,000? Is that right? My hat's off to our law enforcement and the great job that they're doing. But we continue to go in that direction, we're going to create a burden that, that is going to be very difficult for them to handle. So I felt I needed to make my voice as just one of the citizens. I'll just say I'm a major college official. I know making the right decision isn't always easy to do, and it's not always the most popular thing, but the right thing to do is to get it right. And I think we've got full confidence as a community. Again, I think the election results speak for themselves that we, we definitely need to go in a different direction. So congratulations to you. We're behind you.

Thank you, Blyden.

Uh, next up, Ken Mesmer.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to share just a few thoughts today. I've been a resident of Orem for over 25 years now. And it's interesting, just this last week I met with a group of young people and getting acquainted, the question was asked, if you had your choice to live any place in the world, where would you live? And some of them named these exotic islands and Europe, and it came to me And I frankly could think of no place other than Orem. So I appreciate all those who have gone before and made this such a wonderful place to live. I appreciate those who have served unselfishly in the past. They're owed a debt of gratitude, even though we cannot be in agreement on every issue. Because ultimately, our elected officials who represent the majority of citizens— the point is reached when it is felt a change The direction is needed. It is the citizens who, through their vote, decide. I appreciate those who have stepped forward and offered to wear themselves out to do the very best, carry out the will of the citizens, do what is best for the community. They will be faced with a number of difficult decisions. I appreciate Dave Young and other council members who have accepted this responsibility. Those who are employed by the city should be encouraged to share input with the elected officials and then should seek to carry out the decisions of the council. Our elected officials should be able to seek independent legal and professional counsel and advice if and when they feel the need. Thank you again for your service. It's greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Next we've got Fred Axel. I got that right.

Good evening, my name is Fred Axelgaard. I'm a resident of Forum. I'm from the Carbon County Axelgaards.

That helps.

Congratulations again, Mayor, and to the new council members. My wife and I have been residents here in Orem for about 10 years. We— I do hail from the state of Utah. I had the opportunity many years ago to work for Senator Jake Garn of Utah back in the incipient stages of the Central Utah Project, and I have a great respect for public service and those who who take on the burden of trying to make good and wise decisions. I have 3 points in mind I'd like to speak about. I am a resident of Palisades Drive, and it seems every time I wake up there's something new added to those beautiful little landmarks plucked into the middle of Palisades Drive there. It would have been a lot easier, smarter, less expensive if we would have put a stop sign in right at the corner where Councilman McDonnell lives and one down on 4th North would have saved a lot of time, a lot of money, and could have benefited from input from the people actually living there. And that's kind of a theme for me tonight, if you mind my saying so. I appreciate that democracy is often interpreted as what happens in elections that take place every 2 to 4 years. Actually, there are I guess at least 729 days out of a 2-year period that aren't election days where democracy also is at work. And that's where it's important to take independent input, as was just alluded to, wise input. And so I'd like to express concern about the proposal to eliminate an independent planning commission. I think planning for this community is going to be a extremely important for the next— for the foreseeable future. As much as we'd like Orem to stay just the way Orem is, it isn't going to. Change is inevitable, and that kind of planning requires wise and independent input. There is on the back of every piece of currency something says E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one. Out of many perspectives, one direction. If you reduce that to one, out of one, I would say, comes none. That isn't democracy. So I would encourage you to retain the independence of the Planning Commission. The second concern I have is over the proposal to establish the city— the legal— I'm misremembering the name of the new proposal. I'm not sure what the city attorney isn't doing or hasn't done well that requires this step, but I would suggest that search for that position you're suggesting needs to be an open search, not one that's already been decided. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next we've got Margaret Black.

I think my presentation is 3 minutes and 10 seconds, so I hope you'll go with the 10 seconds. Mayor and Council, my name is Margaret Black. I'm speaking tonight because of my great concern About the resolution and the ordinance that are on the agenda. As a former city council member, I am surprised and shocked to see a resolution intended to blur the lines in our council-manager form of government by establishing an office of legislative counsel to the mayor and city council and appointing a director not vetted by any formal process. It is highly unusual, in fact, not done. in our form of government. It can cause unhealthy dissonance and mistrust between the administrative city manager and legislative city council branches. A culture of mistrust and fear is established where city employees do not feel secure in their lines of administrative authority. We already have a city attorney whose duties are to be the attorney for the entire city. Including the mayor and city council. Why do we need to pay money for another attorney? The cost for hiring that attorney is purported to be revenue neutral, but there is no neutral with city revenue. What is required to pay that employee will need to be taken from somewhere else. Speaking of the decision to hire a certain director, this was decided by the mayor and 3 other council members. members without consulting the other 3 council members. The person selected does not have experience in city government. Common city government practice is to hire using an appointed committee that interviews several qualified applicants. None of that was done here, and it smacks of cronyism. Talk about non-transparency. Do you really want to be seen As non-transparent by the city's citizens of Orem. Now to discuss the proposed ordinance to change the law of who appoints Planning Commission members from the city manager— from taking it from the city manager with advice and consent of the city council to the city mayor, with the attendant privilege of dismissing current City Planning Commission members. There's good reason why the Planning Commission is the only commission that is not appointed by the mayor and city council, even though they still give their advice and consent. This allows a nonpolitical distance for the planning commissioner members to evaluate applications on their planning merits, free from political pressure. It also allows for the participation of people with different views without the pressure of groupthink. As currently set up, the commission is composed of is composed of members selected from all different areas of the city, so there is no concentration in one area. If the mayor and council are concerned that the recommendations of the Planning Commission may go against their own desires, remember that the council always makes the final decisions. When I was a council member, there were many times when we did not follow all the recommendations of the Planning Commission, but it was very valuable to have their viewpoints. To sum up, instead of promoting a culture of mistrust and fear, let's promote a culture of confidence between the city administration and the legislative body. Instead of seeking additional power, work on using the power you have been given to the best of your ability.

Thank you.

Last sentence. This can be done by working together, being transparent, not leaving some out of discussions and being willing to study all sides of an issue. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we've got Quinn Meekum.

Hi, Mayor and City Council. We're so grateful for your service. I just know that each of you cares a great deal about the direction of our city. I share some of the concerns that have been expressed earlier in public comment about the resolutions on the council agenda this evening. I wanted to make sure that I explained my concerns before any vote on those, those resolutions. First, the proposed creation of the Office of Legislative Counsel, as I read it, overlaps significantly with existing responsibilities responsibilities of the city's legal counsel, and I want to make sure that that's an office that has the full support of the city attorney. It's advertised in the resolution as revenue neutral, but it's not clear where the money will be taken from to fund that office. I think that the source of funding needs to be very transparent so that we understand exactly what we are giving up to fund this office. Prior to appointing a director, could you also let us know if there was an open search when the position was advertised? And who was on the committee that made the recommendation to appoint Mr. Riddle. I know that Mr. Riddle's professional background is in a different area of expertise than this, and that he's deeply invested in Lehigh politics, both of which make me wonder how he would compare to other candidates. Given the proposal to pay a new legislative legal counsel more than $10,000 a month in areas that are already covered by the city attorney, I'm concerned this is a significant waste of taxpayer money. The basic standards of professionalism are not being followed in making the appointment, and another part of the city budget will suffer. Second, I'm very concerned about stripping the Planning Commission of its political independence. I believe it's extremely important that our citizen commissions retain their political independence. The resolution on the table tonight will give the mayor explicit control over all appointments to the Planning Commission, as well as the ability to remove anyone from the Planning Commission at will. This is a clear violation of widely accepted best practices in the creation and function of citizen commissions. We really need to ensure that we have a good variety of perspectives on all of our citizen commissions in order to get the best possible input into city decisions. This resolution creates a real risk to the mayor and the council. The Planning Commission will become an echo chamber for the mayor and council and can create a political environment where members of the commission may not feel comfortable sharing their perspectives openly. One of the strengths of the American political system is our system of checks and balances. Removing one of the sources of independent citizen input and concentrating power in the hands of the mayor on week one of a new city administration is a really bad precedent that I believe is likely to harm the quality of our city governance. I urge members of the City Council to vote against the Office of Legislative Counsel and corresponding appointment of a director until there's much more transparency about the need for that office, the budgetary implications, and also ensure there's an open search for that director. I very strongly urge members of the City Council to vote against the resolution that strips the Planning Commission of its political independence, removes one of our important checks and balances, and moves more power directly into the hands of the mayor. Thanks in advance for being responsive to those concerns.

Thank you.

Next we've got Fred Johnson, I believe.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council members, City Manager. I, my, from my perspective as a, as a Norm businessman, I've resided in this city for 63 years, 51 of them as being a businessman on State Street in Norm. And I believe I've had the opportunity to participate in City Council meetings I attend city council gatherings quite often and share input and receive input. And I've been concerned quite heavily the last 8 or 10 years with the direction that the city has gone. I've seen incidents where the direction has been overly influenced by mayor, if you will. actual meetings on hand. I, I'm very concerned about that direction. I'm concerned about, uh, the direction of some of the comments that were made previous to me. Uh, I'm not going to speak on behalf of the mayor or the city council. I'm speaking on behalf of the business district and some of this— a lot of the citizens in the city. I've been privy to conversations and social gatherings from different entities in this city, law enforcement, if you will, firefighting, if you will. And I've heard some comments that it's a management issue, there's a power issue. I think, frankly, to have a legislative committee, more minds, more eyes on the matter, are far better than having one person having so much power and authority to do this. This is not directly to be an attack on any particular individual. It's the methodology. I think if you're talking about clarity and transparency, this is certainly a reversal and attempt to try to accomplish some of those things, something that we haven't been the beneficiaries of for quite some time. I respectfully would like to propose that you strongly consider this legislative counsel. And that's pretty much what I have to say.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next, we have Elisa Brow.

For the last I guess, 25 years of our lives. I was born in China, raised in Brazil. Those countries have corrupt governments. And we were— I was so grateful. Finally, I was able to go to BYU, come, come to Orem, and just thought it was just a wonderful place to raise our family. And after my husband retired rather early, we just still like to come. For the last 8 to 10 years, we were considering moving because we did not like the direction this country, the city was going. And Margaret mentioned something about, and I'm going to quote this article that came out today on the Herald that made my blood boil because it says here, Jamie Davidson, the current city manager, said he felt like the newly elected officials don't have trust in him. You're right. For 8 to 10 years, I personally, my neighbors, members of my My ward, my stake, my family lost trust in Orem city management. And somebody said just now, Lehi— we can just talk about some lawyer from Lehi. So is Mr. Davidson from Lehi, correct? So let's not go there. The thing is, the majority of Orem citizens have lost in city trust in city management. Therefore, we feel, why not have— give to these elected officials the tool that they need to properly represent us? We didn't vote for him or anybody else to say— we voted for you so you can properly represent what we elected for.

We don't have a full full-time city council.

It makes sense for the city council to have an advocate, wherever he may live, that can properly do the research, that can give this city council independent, well-informed decisions for them to base on. And I, for one, as well as everybody I've talked to, we can hold you guys to properly represent us.

Thank you.

And we pray that you will do so. Thank you.

Thank you.

Last on our list, we've got Murray Lowe.

Honorable New Mayor Young and council members, I'm thrilled today to see people who I believe represent the way I feel about Orem. for years, I felt that the way Orem has been governed and the desires of citizens have not been aligned, and I believe the election provided an overwhelming mandate for dramatically different approach. City, city leadership and administration have not been responsive to our needs, and so there's real work to start doing things dramatically different starting today. And that encompasses the need for City Council to have independent research and legal advice. I'm, I'm all in favor of what's been proposed and discussed today, just for the simple fact that we need change in the power structure here. As a new council, I believe you should not hesitate to take dramatic and bold action required to change the way we, we as citizens experience Orem here locally. especially the way we experience our government. At the heart of this, Orem needs a foundational shift from a high-growth mindset to renewal mindset, and I'll explain the difference. High growth occurred in Orem until about 2010, when over 95% of Orem's land was developed. That left 2 choices: focus on renewal or focus upwards with high-density growth. The city probably chose high-density growth because it was simpler and it was They were used to that. But the problem is that requires additional infrastructure and administrative growth, and it's been the approach for the last decade. As an aside, I think the State Street Master Plan only makes sense in a high-growth mindset. If you talk about renewals, it doesn't make any sense. You should start— scratch it and start over again, I believe. But renewal is a mindset that requires the city to say, we're mature. We're not like Eagle Mountain. We're not like Eagle Mountain. So we need to renew our neighborhoods, our infrastructure, State Street. We need to renew our attractiveness to businesses along our major corridors, and Orem can learn from other cities that have gone down this road. Renewal is different. It requires a change in thinking from doing more things to doing them in a much better way. And so Renew Orem is a new way of thinking about our city. It's a different kind of growth that requires greater creativity and ingenuity. So in closing, I hope you'll not just accept the status quo of how the city's managed today, much of which I believe has been built on a high-growth mindset. We need to change both in mindset and in tactics, and I and many others here in this room are ready to help.

Thank you.

are 200% confident that you're up to this task. That's why you're representing us here today at this critical juncture. We voted for you to do critical work and an important task, and now it's time to get to work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Murray.

Thank you.

We appreciate your comments, and we appreciate you coming out. and letting us know what you think. That's what we want to know. As far as— we have a couple of consent items and then we'll move forward. We just need to approve the meeting minutes of the December 14th council meeting.

You normally do all those at once, the consent items.

Okay.

Or we can just do it.

And then we've got an appointment to boards and commissions, beautification committee.

Mr. Mayor, I move that we approve the consent items as indicated.

Second.

Should we vote?

Yep.

Start down the end.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you. Consent items pass. The next scheduled items we've got are what some of you have been talking about. The first one is an ordinance. And this ordinance is to amend portions of Section 2.15-4, or 2-15-4, 2-15-6, and 2-15-7. 10 of the Orem City Code pertaining to the appointment, removal, and compensation of Planning Commission members. As far as this, this ordinance that we're proposing to modify, essentially with the Planning Commission, as was stated up to now, during the last while, several years, The city manager has basically been involved in putting together that planning commission. And what we believe, and what we talked about as a council and discussed in great detail, is we believe the planning commission is part of the legislative body of the government. So here in Orem's government, we've got an administrative side, an executive side, which the city manager oversees. And then we've got the City Council and the Planning Commission, which we believe belong on the legislative side. And so all we're doing with this ordinance is bringing the Planning Commission to the legislative side, to where the legislative side will select that group, and rather than having a person be able to pick that group, we would— that would have to be voted on and selected by the entire City Council and the mayor. They'd have to have a majority. We have any questions about that?

Just a comment, if I may, Mayor.

Sure.

I think that the discussion— that the City Council has always approved these members. The question is who tees them up, and I think most of us on the City Council have been pretty active on who should serve on various commissions, including the Planning Commission. So we've always had that. oversight, and I'm happy with the oversight the way it is, as some have spoken about. I realize there's some speaking in other directions.

So, okay, thank you.

I think in either case we have to be actively involved, Mr. Mayor.

Right. Thank you.

Comment, Mayor, is, uh, I did hear some people say that that's going to be an appointment by the mayor, and that will not be an appointment by them. It'll be appointment by majority vote, I would assume. So that's correct. So it's not like the mayor's is going to handpick who's on the Planning Commission. It will be majority of the council.

It has to find his advice and consent of the mayor and city council. So it's not just a mayor pick. Jeff.

I appreciate the comments— excuse me— the comments that have been made tonight, and I think it's important to remember— oh, I need training wheels on my chair here.

Fall out.

It's important to remember that you know Orem is made up of a lot of different people with a lot of different backgrounds and a lot of different opinions. And so I you know I think it's going to be important important moving forward that we ensure that we listen you know to all of the segments. sectors of the public, and that we're willing to, you know, take into consideration differing opinions, people that might look at things differently than we do, as part of that consideration, so that we have a well-represented commission. So, that would be my hope moving forward.

Okay, thank you.

So my experience with the Planning Commission is I look at what they've— whether they deny something or whether they approve it, and I kind of like to look at the why, because I don't always see the same things. And so I, I make my own decisions, but I like to look at their input and try to get it. And if I, if I need to, I go back and, and read what they've said. And so I like the independence of it.

I like that there's a wide selection.

Certainly people serve for 3 years, some serve for 6, and— but we don't have to. I like having people from different walks of life. I like, I like different parts of the city. So I like the independence. Like I said many times, I don't do what they recommend, but I do like that they advise me, and I also like to look at it as a different perspective. So I'm comfortable with the way it is.

Thank you, Debbie.

So I'd like to make a comment on the Planning Commission. I think in the past year, I think the Planning Commission has been quite rude to the citizens of Orem. And, you know, to call them statistically insignificant is wrong. So, so I think if Even in as it sits today, the City Council and the mayor can ask people to step down as it is today, correct, Jamie? So nothing's changing other than the City Council and the mayor is going to appoint the, the people on the Planning Commission.

Thank you. Thank you.

Any other comments?

Thank you.

Yes, I'd like to echo some of the same things that have already been said. I believe that it's very important that our Planning Commission consists of people who are qualified, who understand, you know, basic issues of land use and, and are able to vote based on those qualifications on issues. I feel that it's very important, Mayor, that we do— I concur with David Spencer that we have Planning Commission members who are respectful to the citizens, and who recognize that they are at times acting in a legislative capacity, and as the City Council does, and in that legislative capacity they are representative of the citizens. So I can assure you that with this resolution there will be a good representation, but there will also be qualified individuals who understand the direction that the City Council and the City Manager want, and the City staff are trying to take Orem City.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have any other comments, any other input?

Okay, Mayor, I think, you know, maybe Jamie or Bren can talk about how do citizens apply for commissions and how do they get involved.

So the city does have a webpage within orem.org for committee that notes the specific members of committees and specific committees that are party to the city. At the same time, there's an application form that is also online there, and individuals are encouraged to fill out the application form and to apply for positions. In addition, the city regularly seeks by way of its electronic and paper newsletter applications or individuals inviting them to serve as members of committees and commissions, and they are referred to the specific link on the city website to fill out the applications. Once those applications are submitted, then they are placed in consideration for committee assignments. This is everything from Transportation Commission to Beautification Commission, to the Planning Commission, the Board of Adjustment, Public Safety, Public Works, Parks and Recreation Commission. All of those committee and commission assignments are staffed by way of citizen volunteers.

And Jamie, all the other commissions or committees are appointed by you and approved, correct?

Those, those citizen committees Are— and I'll, I'll refer to our city attorney to give just a clarification because she can specifically reference the city code that states how those individuals are appointed.

So the advisory— let's, let's make sure I'm getting this right. The powers and duties of the mayor— let's see, sorry, hold on one sec. Appointments to advisory boards and commissions. Does that answer your question, Councilman Spencer? So those are, those are done by the mayor. There are 3 boards that currently the city manager appoints, and that is the Planning Commission, the Board of Adjustment, and then the Building Code Board. Those are the 3 that are currently appointed by the city manager. appointed by the city manager. All other citizen advisory council boards are currently appointed by the mayor, of course, all of that with the advice and consent of the city council.

Thank you, Heather.

Okay, thank you. Any other comments? Okay, I, you know, as we discussed, The goal of this change is something that we campaigned on, which is to align the citizens and the mayor and city council and city management. And we feel like the Planning Commission is on the legislative side of the equation, and they also represent the people of Orem. And so we want to get as much representation back to the people of Orem that we can. Unless anyone's got anything else, we can Make a motion to vote.

Mayor, I'd like to just place on the record the amendments that were discussed by the City Council. Okay, to the ordinance. Okay, first, the title of the ordinance will be an ordinance by the Orem City Council amending portions of Section 2-15-4 and 2-15-6 of the Orem City Code pertaining to the appointment, removal, and compensation of planning Commission members. The first whereas will remove the last clause, and to make decisions regarding reimbursement for Planning Commission members' expenses. So the first whereas will read, whereas the City Council desires to grant the mayor authority to appoint and remove members of the Planning Commission with the advice and consent of the City Council. Then I'd like to move on to The therefore section in paragraph 2, it should read, the City Council hereby amends portions of Section 2-15-4 and 2-15-6. The rest of that paragraph will remain unchanged. Looking at Exhibit A, the proposal is to remove the portion of the exhibit that Refers to Section 2-15-10, entitled Compensation.

Okay, thank you, Heather. Like to make a motion that we vote on this ordinance.

Okay. When you make it, David, help. Why don't you make it? Okay.

He borrowed my glasses.

We'll let Dave make the motion.

I'd like to make a motion that the City Council amend portions of Section 2-15-4, 2-15-6, and 2-15-10 of the Orange City Code pertaining to the appointment, removal, and compensation of the Planning Commission members.

And we're not doing—

as amended, amended, yes, by Heather. Yes.

Do we have a second?

I'll second that.

Okay, let's have a vote.

Aye.

Nay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Nay.

Aye.

Okay, thank you. It passes with 5 to 2. All right, next on the agenda— I brought your glasses back. I forgot mine. Next on the agenda, we've got to establish a resolution to establish the Office of Legislative Counsel and appoint a director to the mayor and city council. As far as this issue, we've heard a fair amount about this. And what we are proposing in this ordinance is that the mayor and the city council have their own legal representation. Now, you might ask, why would you need your own legal representation? But we believe that we are the legislative body of Orem, and we represent the citizens, and we put your interests first, and we're here to represent you. And if you don't like what we could do, you can vote us out, or if you like what we do, you can vote us in. But we're here to represent you. That's the whole point. And, and as such, The way we're currently structured is we have several excellent city attorneys, one of which you just heard from, that do a great job, and I have the highest respect for them. And we as a mayor and city council will continue to use those attorneys. I mean, they're the city attorneys, and, and we want to work with them. But we also— there comes times when we want our own representation. If there's— because if there's a difference of opinion, if there's a question of legal, if there's just different things we need different opinions on, we want to be able to have legal representation that we can go to and get someone who is, who is representing us. So, it's a little bit of a tricky thing because we have this, we have, we have the city, but we want our own representation. And it goes back to, you know, the executive branch, as we discussed, versus the legislative branch. And that's how it's set up in America. I mean, if you go to the federal level, you've got an executive branch and a legislative branch. They're separate. They don't agree on everything. They hash things out and work through things. It's the same at the, at the state level. We have a, we have the governor, we have the legislature. And they both have different powers. But hopefully between that mix, they all come together. And so acting as your legislative branch, we want to make sure we've got all the information that we need to make the best decisions. And that's why we, we feel that we need our own legal counsel. Like I said, ultimately, everything that we're doing going forward is going to try to bring the alignment that we talked about in the election. We really— and I'll say it over and over, but I want to see an alignment between the people, the mayor, city council, and the city management. And I think that we can make that happen. And I think this is just one step to help make that happen more effectively. And it's as simple as— I mean, if you think about it, for anyone who thinks that this is something we shouldn't be doing, I respect your opinion. But in business, if I have someone that I've got a disagreement with, I would never expect that I would go— I would just never expect that that person I have a disagreement with would not be allowed to have legal— their own legal counsel. I mean, I would— if I had legal counsel, I would expect they would have legal counsel. It's just the way the system works. And it's the way that, you know, and you talked about full transparency and, and openness. Well, this helps that process. So as far as different things that this legal counsel would help us with— now again, like I said, we'll rely on the city legal counsel as well, just like the mayor and city council always have. But this particular legal counsel would help advise us on lawsuits. If we're in a lawsuit, they would help advise us. They would help advise us on lobbying issues. We want to have— with Orem City, we want to have a completely united lobbying effort. And so we don't want to go to the legislature and have them say, who's in charge of Orem? Is it the executive side or is it the legislative side? Because we don't see who's in charge, and as such, we don't really respect what you have to say. And so we want to make sure that we've got a united front to go to the legislature. And I believe this, this will help us on the lobbying side.

I've got—

yes, any legal issues directly affecting the legislative body? One that we haven't really talked about is we talked about how to pay for this person— this isn't in the ordinance— but when we looked at how to pay for this person, my suggestion was that whatever this person costs— and it will be revenue neutral because it will be taken from other funds in the city— but whatever this person costs, I'd like to see this person's work with the city manager help save at least double whatever that department's being paid. And I think that's Very doable. So it would actually be a net positive to the city. We would have this person attend city meetings where we want to be represented, and we all are part-time, and we would want this full-time person to be able to attend those city meetings and give us feedback. We would use that person to research important issues. We don't know what those issues might be, but I know that we meet here every 2 weeks. And we try and figure out the, the best way to do the best things for the city. And we can use that research arm. And essentially, there, there's a number of things I could go on and on, but essentially we just need this extra person to help us on the legislative side and make sure that the legislative side is able to represent you the best way possible. I'll open it up for discussion.

Mayor, so when I look out here, you're my boss. There's a lot of bosses out here tonight too. But I don't want to screw it up. Because there's, there's also 100,000 people in the city that expect that we're doing what's, what's best for them. And so, you know, after this meeting, I don't know if it'll be tonight or tomorrow, there are some people that I will call in the city, say, what do you think? How'd we do? And there are people here that can reach out, I think, to all of us and let us know what they think and how we did. To me, I'm not that smart to be making decisions for the whole city. The more, the more input I have, the better. I also, I'll go home and ask my wife a question, and we might not agree, but I very much value her opinion. To me, this is what it feels like with having legal counsel that represents the city council and the mayor, is that's one more opinion. We have some major issues coming up. We've got people talk tonight about the master plan. People— we've got litigation issues coming up in the city. I mean, there's, there's a lot of things, and boy, I don't mind at all one more set of ears, one more expert with their opinion, as I— as we value all of your opinions. So to me, I'm very supportive of someone— their job is strictly representing the City Council and the mayor. And like the mayor says, we have attorneys currently in the city, and I see that as a good marriage. You know, we'll all try to work together and do what's best for the city. So I do support support separate legal counsel.

Thank you.

I do, I do understand the merits, and the— I like that we can have our own counsel. My really big concern is that we've not had an open search for this lawyer. I do not know this gentleman. We have not gone through the normal process when we hire a city employee, which is opening up a 5-day window where qualified people And so for me, it's, it's appointing someone I've never met, never known, never— don't even know his credentials. The idea is fine, have an independent counsel adding an extra set of eyes. I, I can see the merit, but I'd like to actually be part of the process. I'd like to be part of an interview process where we get half a dozen candidates and then we pick who we like. If this gentleman's the best, right, great, we'll hire him. But if he's not, or there's someone we like better, we'll hire them.

Thank more you.

experience or more comfortable.

That's—

so that's my big hesitation with this. It's not that we may not need it as an independent voice. It's not doing the, the work behind to get the best possible employee or director.

Thank you, Terry.

All right, one, one more comment. I, and I hear— I appreciate what you're saying, Debbie, about, you know, putting that out to bid. The problem now is we've got pressing matters in the city. If we put things out to bid, we've got a moratorium that ends February 9th. I mean, there's some things that we have to be on top of right now, and that's, that's— we don't have the luxury of spending a couple of months.

Can I ask what the timetable would be if we were on a— as quick as we could do it? Are we talking a 2-week turnaround?

No, I don't know how long we're talking here, but the rest— but The moratorium ends in less than a month. So I'm just saying, I think this is unusual times, the moratorium.

But my question is, why this gentleman? What makes him this— why?

He comes, he comes with a strong resume. I smiled what I read. That's not the resume I read. But what I read in the paper is not what resume he has.

Does he have a strong—

and comes with strong endorsement from other people that have used him, which That always is valuable to me.

I'm really not comfortable hiring someone I've never met, not looked at his credentials, and barely found out about over the weekend. So I guess I'm just going to agree to disagree. I, I'm okay if we hire a person, but I'd still like to go through, and I think we could do it quickly. Maybe I'm wrong. Jamie, do you think it could be done in a couple weeks?

No, I don't. I don't think we have that.

Well, let's find out what the law requires. Is it 5 days to be open?

Yeah, the minimum The city requires is 5 days. I will, I will represent though that a recruitment process is generally a lengthy process. It's also one that requires generally incumbents to transition from one job to another. So I don't necessarily think, unless an individual, for example, doesn't have employment at this time, I think we are looking probably at a, at a minimum of 21 to 30 days. day process.

Okay, well, I'd sort of rather wait and get it right.

Get rid of the bureaucracy and just get it done.

Jeff?

Did you say you were a referee? I like the way you referee. So yeah, this is a complicated situation. You know, we have several people that are here this evening that are business owners, some of which have spoken. And, you know, I'm a former business owner, and I can't imagine hiring someone that I've not looked at a resume. I've not seen Mr. Riddle's resume. I've not read one. I haven't seen any credentials. I haven't seen any kind of of reference material. And so for me, I have a hard time saying, yeah, I can get behind this person when I don't know anything about them. And to you who own businesses, if you were in this situation, I would ask you, would you hire someone sight unseen?

Or would—

Alyssa, you would?

Yes. Okay.

And, and, and I haven't had that opportunity to talk to any trusted sources. So, so I'm in a difficult situation, okay? Because my heart is saying, I don't know anything about this guy. But then on the other side, you know, we have— And I have no problem with having more opinions, more eyes. If there's anyone in this world that needs all the help that he can get in making legal decisions, I'm probably that guy. So I'd be grateful for the extra help. But I'm concerned about the way that this came up, you know, the way that this happened so quickly without even a whisper of any kind of background or information about who this person is that we're hiring. He very well could be the greatest attorney in the world with the greatest insight into the things that we're facing. But personally, I find myself in the middle of a conundrum here. And so I, you know, I know that the way that the resolution reads is that it's a temporary, let's try it out and see, see how this works. But I, you know, I have a little bit of a—

I'm sorry.

a concern about hiring someone that I don't know anything about yet. On the other hand, in good faith and in wanting to build that team of unity of those 3 entities that you spoke about, Mayor, I, you know, that's kind of where I'm at is I'm concerned about how that happened. And I wish that we had time to vet this, this person that's going to be in an important position for the city of Orem to make sure that we have the best opportunity there.

Thank you, Jeff. We'll go to 2 other councilmen.

If—

I mean, it would only take 5 minutes.

You push the red button.

Your button's not— your button's not working. Sorry, you're gonna have to raise it. You're gonna have to raise your hand. Let me say one thing, and then I'll let you go since your button's not working. As far as I do have, I just, I've got a resume here. That's got some information on Mr. Riddle. I'm happy to run through if we have the time. I mean, I could probably read this in 5 minutes. But anyway, in the meantime, we can come back to this and go through those. But for now, Lenee.

Yeah, so my comments are, first of all, I I think a lot of people in this room understand the pressure that we're under right now for this pending and looming moratorium. And frankly, I'm grateful at this time for Mayor Young for being proactive and looking forward and understanding the time crunch that we're in for finding an individual to help out with this. This is a 6-month contract. This is an appointment for 6 months. that we will evaluate at the end of that 6-month period. But it is— this is a 6-month period that is very critical in the history, or the future I should say, of Orem. I also want to just say that I, I have consulted many times with our city attorneys and received wonderful information. They're a wealth of knowledge. I have highest regard and respect for our city attorneys. Will still continue to do so, especially on this topic also. But I also am going to say that I appreciate a different perspective, a fresh perspective, another opinion. Um, in today's world, we have many differing opinions, and the wise person gathers all of those and picks, um, the best, especially when there are so many unknowns. And that's what I hope to do in this case, and I hope to have this count and this resource available to us as a city council that we can draw on besides our city attorneys, which we will definitely be drawing on, and our city staff. So I guess that's kind of where I am on this. I appreciate an additional legal perspective, and I feel that this— these are times of pressure and, and just we need to move forward, and I appreciate the mayor being proactive in doing this.

Thank you, Elaine.

Terry, would you like to go?

My last comment, I hopefully promise. Anyway, my other concern is when we talk about the moratorium, and we've heard some from some business owners that are on State Street, we can't screw this up. We've got to get it right when this moratorium comes off. We got to get it right as far as what can be allowed and not be allowed on State Street. So why in the world would we not bring another set of eyes in to say, here's everything you need to be aware of, here's what you need to do to get this right? And so working with our current attorneys and bringing in another man who's got a long resume, I'm just echoing what I said earlier, but it's— In the ideal world, we should have had the time. It would have been nice to have time to study and, you know, interview. But we don't have the time, and we've— and it's got— February 9th is really soon, folks. So anyway, that's, that's the urgency that we feel. And, and like we've heard, if we got it wrong, we terminate them, you know. But, but, uh, uh, anyway, that's, that's all I have.

Um, I want to say something. We just got a win, a summary judgment today, did we not, on the moratorium?

On a motion to dismiss part of the—

And it was my understanding that the next part of this legal will be several months down the road. Is that a fair representation, that we have to do discovery, send them stuff? So there's not going to be in 2 weeks— to bring someone on in 2 weeks is not that imminent. It's going to be a few months. And so we've, we've got the judgment today in our favor for the moratorium, correct? And so if we wait till a month or 2 to get the right person—

Yeah, just, just a clarification, the court has not ruled on the efficacy of the moratorium. It was a more technical legal, legal issue that was resolved by the court today.

And did you not represent that it would be several months before the ruling on that?

We do have to complete the discovery process. And, you know, it's with, with the courts being what they are right now, I mean, honestly, Your guess is as good as mine as to when this is going to be resolved. We do anticipate perhaps dispositive motions that would prompt the court to rule on the moratorium issue, but it's going to take some time.

So my point is, we do have a little bit of time. I'm not saying a lot. If we could find someone in a, in a few weeks, even a month, we would still be able to bring on a second set of eyes. And still deal with this moratorium, which is what I'm getting is the pressure why we need this person. I'm trying to show that we can get a person, but do it right.

But I think it's on— it's not necessarily on the lawsuit of the moratorium, it's on the moratorium expiring and our having to have zoning in place on State Street before the moratorium expires.

So having that consultation available also, but we just did that and people People will be seeing a brand new State Street Master Plan that will be rolling out, I believe, on the 20th of January to the public. So I guess I don't see the need. We've done a lot of work. If it takes a few weeks to get the right person, I'd rather get the right person, because otherwise, why am I going to value this opinion of someone I've never met? He doesn't have this— the background that I was told was more in multi-level marketing and business, which has value, but that doesn't necessarily necessarily mean they understand all of the legal. And if you're just wanting someone who has a legal opinion, I could ask anyone.

Okay, Debbie, I think that means we need to look at his resume. I understand that, you know, we've been told that he's an MLM marketing person, all kinds of good things about MLM. But he's not an MLM marketing person. As far as— here's a, here's a brief summary of his resume, his other resume. I don't think everyone wants to wade through it. The short version is, is Mr. Jesse Riddle has practiced law for 34 years. His clients have included both large and small businesses. He has represented DirecTV, RadioShack, Eckerd Drugs, AutoZone, Capital One Bank, American Express, and Comcast. He's also represented AMRG, which is American Medical Resource Group, a Utah company and leading provider of air medical services management and experience in the western United States and Puerto Rico. For approximately 4 of his 34 years, he advised with various companies in the direct sales industry. That's where we turned him into an MLM attorney. Uh, in addition, Mr. Riddle has worked closely with Utah's delegation in Washington, D.C. He was instrumental in advancing legislation and various bills in the U.S. Congress. He has worked closely with Senator Hatch and Senator Bennett and with members of the House of Representatives from Utah to advance legislation protecting small businesses in Utah. He has experience negotiating and mediating claims and suits. He develops litigation tactics and strategies. He has brought or defended cases in various courts throughout the United States He has filed appeals with United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd, 5th, 7th, and 10th Circuits and the United States Supreme Court. He has assisted disadvantaged small businesses in completing applications to qualify the business— to qualify the business to seek work from the United States government. He is most familiar with the requirements of assisting service-related disabled American veterans These are servicemen and women who were injured or wounded in the service. He has been a frequent lecturer at numerous legal events and conventions. Courts have recognized his expertise in various matters. Mr. Riddle is licensed to practice law in Utah, Texas, Colorado, Oregon, and Hawaii. Jesse and his wife Lisa started the Children's Support Foundation to help at-risk children advance their educational pursuits. Working in the outside— they're working in and outside their foundation. They have continued to support at-risk children. So that should give the group a better idea of who Mr. Riddle is rather than an MLM attorney. Hang on one second. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

My turn, I guess. So, um, I definitely want to let Heather Schreiber and Steve Roll know that we support them 100%. And we appreciate their advice and the information, and writing up the moratorium was, was an awesome job. I think this new appointment or this new office, I just think it's gonna— we need to hit the ground running as a new council, and I think we need checks and balances so we can ask Heather and Steve And then we can also get a second opinion. So 2 eyes are better than— or 4, 6 eyes are better than 2, whatever, 4. But, but I think that the second opinion— and Mr. Riddle will be a contracted employee, so he will be— after 6 months or 5 and a half months, we will look at it and see if he's doing his job or not. If not, we will discontinue that.

process.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, I want to express to this audience gratitude for a mayor who moves fast, who is truly interested in the alignment between citizens, the council, and city employees. I think that's admirable. He works in collaboration with those of us— we recently had some meetings And I think he truly tries to bring out the best in all the City Council. And so I applaud you for that, Mr. Young— Mayor Young, excuse me. I'm also, I'm also grateful for the short-term nature of this assignment, because as many have pointed out, we truly haven't vetted this against other candidates. And so it is short-term, and I, and I truly believe the right administrative person can save us money. That'll be on him to prove that, right, and for us to use him in such a way. I am somewhat concerned about the transparency of this issue. But I'm not going to filibuster. It's pretty clear that there are 4 votes to pass this. So I'm not going to filibuster that. I am concerned about the lack of an open search. And that, that has happened. And we've talked about that. And I'm also concerned that if this doesn't save us money, then we've robbed from the people that I really, really want to support. And that's the police and fire. And so that's as much of a political or campaign type stump that I'll make. So, Mr. Mayor, I think you should move on with a vote of this. I think it's pretty apparent that you won't have my vote, but I'm not going to filibuster for an hour so you don't get the vote done. So I applaud your efforts to move forward.

Thank you. Any other comments? Any other lights?

You want to make the motion?

Mayor, there will be amendments to this resolution as well as as we've discussed with the City Council. I'll run through those quickly. The title of the resolution will be a resolution to establish the Office of Legislative Counsel and appoint a director. The last whereas clause will read, whereas the City Council has selected Jesse L. Riddle to serve as the director of the Office of Legislative Counsel. And in the signature block, we'll make sure we get a last T on Linnea Millett's name.

Can I, can I make one other, or ask one other question or suggestion to make sure that the lines are not blurred between the two, the two entities, so that Orem City's legal department is well defined and And this new role is also well-defined so that we don't have a blurring of authority and job description.

Okay.

As far as where we're at on that, we expect that they will work together, but that the— Jesse Riddle or this office will essentially advise and represent us if we get into a difficulty. But there will be all kinds of things that the city manager's office, mayor's office, and the mayor's office will— they'll work together. And then they'll also— Mr. Hill will represent us independently.

Mayor, just if I may, just to note, the prescribed duties of the director are listed in paragraph 3 of the resolution that was noticed out to the public. So if people would like to review those duties, that's where they are located.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

I'll make the motion, Mayor. But okay, I make a motion for a resolution to establish the Office of Legislative Counsel and appoint a director to the mayor and city council.

I'll second that.

As amended on the record.

With the amendment on record.

Second.

Should we go right there?

We'll start down here.

Okay. Aye.

Nay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Nay.

Aye.

Thank you.

The resolution passes 5 to 2.

Appreciate that.

All right. As far as moving on, we've got communication items. Jamie, would you like to go through those?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of things for the council's information this evening. Just want to remark that the Blue Line Design Group has been awarded the bid for architectural services for Hillcrest Park. And so we will begin here in earnest in the next few weeks in the design and evaluation of and developing conceptual designs for Hillcrest Park, which we anticipate we're going to turn dirt on in the summer of 2022 here. In addition, we continue work on the water tank project at 4th West. We actually have been working with the property owner, Mr. Farley, and today we reached an agreement with him that would allow us to have him abandon the irrig— the irrigation line that he uses for flood irrigating his property, which in fact will save the city some resources and not requiring us to relocate that irrigation line. So that's very positive. In addition to that, we are running into some challenges with COVID-19 testing at Timpanogos Hospital. you've probably seen a series of emails back and forth. I've been in communication with both the emergency room director at Timpanogos Hospital as well as the hospital administrator. What we have is we have a private entity that has contracted with Timpanogos Hospital to use that facility for COVID-19 testing. However, there are a number of additional locations locations here in Utah County that have recently closed, and those who were previously providing access to property for testing have in fact not renewed their agreement with Test Utah. And so what we have is we have a surge in the COVID-19 virus requiring additional testing, and we have actually a decrease in the number of testing locations. So tomorrow morning, I'll have an opportunity to get with the hospital administrator and talk about this particular situation because it is causing congestion and inconvenience along 800 West, even 1200 North. There are times when cars are lined up over half a mile waiting for testing. Testing is no longer first come, first serve, it's by appointment. So that should help to some degree, but we are going to try and look for some alternative locations whereby we can conduct this testing and pull some of the traffic— or not some of the traffic, but pull all the traffic away from this particular location. In addition, in the first week that we have been together and working together, I know there are a number of initiatives or efforts that you have asked staff to get underway or to begin. I just wanted to report that the, the city and staff are moving forward with everything for an architectural RFP for the city center, to contacting the city's previous branding consultant to look at some suggested adjustments to the city's branding program, to some amendments to the economic development program that the city has, as well as even looking at the landscaping in and around the city center to determine the, the health and viability of the outdoor landscaping. And finally, just a note about the conversations we've been having about State Street. Obviously, during your retreat this last Saturday, you made some specific recommendations and decisions relative to State Street. I know Jason Earl, our planning manager, as well as Steve Earl— or Jason Bench, excuse me— and Steve Earl, our deputy city attorney, have been actively working to revise those ordinances. And I believe that you shall, if not already, receive some proposed amendments to those ordinances. And there is a public meeting that is scheduled to accept additional feedback. That is per city ordinance. ordinance. In order for us to change ordinances within the city, a neighborhood meeting is required. But when you have a, a quote-unquote neighborhood like the State Street corridor, pretty much encompasses the entire community. So we actually are going to send out invitations and mailers to the entire community advising them of these upcoming State Street meetings and the scheduled meetings The scheduled meeting with the Planning Commission as well as the City Council in the future to make those changes tied to the State Street Master Plan. So I just wanted to let you know that those items are underway. And finally, we just want to wish Councilmember Terry Peterson a happy birthday. We understand that it's his birthday coming up this week. And Mayor and Council, you're invited to join Councilmember Peterson for a treat after the meeting. So thank you.

Thank you, Jamie.

Can I make my favorite motion?

Sure, to adjourn.

Thank you.

So moved.

Second.

Second.

He gets to move.

We're adjourned.

All in favor?

All in favor?