City Council · 2022-02-08

Great.

Have you guys gotten a lot of snow in Utah?

Has it been— Not really, but it's been really cold. Whatever. All right, okay, well, anyone else? Uh, color even? All right, are we ready to go? Okay, sir, let's start. Uh, welcome to the work session. We're going to start out with, uh, Kathy Lewis. Am I up?

You're up.

Okay, good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Um, we are excited from our Economic Development Department to give you an update on our Economic Development Strategic Plan. We have with us Thomas P. Miller and Associates.

They're a consulting firm that the city hired through an RFP process and an interview process over the summer of 2021, and they will be giving us an update today.

They're partway through their research phase, and They're moving in now to what's called their strategic meeting phase to gather—

continue gathering information for update.

Just to give you a little background, the original Economic Development Strategic Plan was created in 2014. And anywhere from every 7 to 10 years, it's recommended that a new strategic plan be created to kind of give direction to the Economic Development Department going forward. forward. Now, I know we might have a little bit of a delay. It looks like the other 2 team members aren't quite on our call here.

They just came on.

Brett just came on. We're waiting for another member of our team from Thomas P. Miller and Associates. We were— just for your information, we were scheduled to be 3rd on the agenda, and we were moved to 1st, and we're just not quite sure if another one of our presenters was ready.

So, um, we have joining us Brett, um, Weiler from Thomas P.

Miller and Associates.

Brett, do you know if Lindsay is ready to present?

We've been moved up to first.

I just sent her a note.

Um, she was planning on being here early. Um, we have stepped away for a moment, but I just sent her a note, so hopefully she'll be here. Worst case scenario, we can start without her. Her presentation is actually back end of our presentation.

Okay, that's great. So I'll turn the time now over to Brett Weiler, and he's the Director of the Economic Development Strategic Plan Update.

He works for Thomas P. Miller and Associates.

Okay, thanks, Kathy. First of all, we're excited to be here with, with you folks, and we're really appreciative of the opportunity to give you a status update.

Sorry, Lindsay's having trouble getting into the Zoom link.

I'm going to make sure— Connor, can you send her the appropriate link? Thank you. And then I'll get my presentation up on the screen here. Bear with me. We were, as Kathy mentioned, expecting to go on a little bit later, but that's okay.

That's part of what we do is being flexible, right, Brett?

That's right.

Can you see my screen?

Yep.

Yes.

Okay. Sorry for the clunky start here. I assure you we will get this going here. Okay. Still see my screen? All right. So again, we're excited to be here. We've been looking forward to this opportunity to give you a status update. You know, first, I would be remiss if I didn't mention what a pleasure it's been to work with Kathy and her, her, her staff and her team members at the city. They've been professional in every aspect, responsive, accessible, knowledgeable, you name it. been a, it's been a great experience thus far. So I'm going to walk through some introductory comments here, and then we'll get into the meat and potato of the presentation.

As Kathy mentioned, I'm Brett Weiler.

I am the Director of Economic Development with Thomas P. Miller and Associates, otherwise known as TPMA. TPMA is a consulting firm based in Indianapolis, Indiana. It's a 30-year-old firm. You'll see some of the key focus areas here on the screen. We're located in Indianapolis, but one of the unique attributes I think we bring to the project here is that we're, we're a fully remote team, and we have employees all over the country, and we've worked all over the country. And I think with that, we're able to see what works and what doesn't work, not only in our own personal lives living in the communities that we live in, but in our everyday work. And so I think that gives us great perspective because we've seen what works in a variety of different communities with a variety of different characteristics. Today we're going to go over a couple things with you folks. We're going to review very briefly the RFP that the city created back in May of last year. We're going to talk a little bit about our proposal and our methodology, and then we're going to get into some key findings thus far in the process. We'll go over some quantitative findings, and then we'll also talk about some of our early qualitative findings, and we'll explain kind of how we've developed those up to this point. We will then give you a recap of our first stakeholder engagement session that we held last week with a set of stakeholders across the city and across the region. And then arguably the most important part here today is we're going to hopefully leave some time for questions and answers for you folks. So, as I mentioned, the city issued an RFP in May of 2021. you know, soliciting proposals from qualified firms to update their city economic development strategic plan. I think it's important to recognize and to note that the city was very successful at implementing their 2014 plan. And in our early investigation of the opportunity, that we found that very attractive and encouraging because the city has a track record of successfully implementing a plan. And so we were hoping and fortunate enough to get the opportunity to do the update here in 2021 and 2022. And again, I, you know, I just want to reiterate how easy it's been to work with the staff and how much we've appreciated their support and collaboration through this process. You'll see on the screen here a pretty simple outline of the scope of service and the methodology that we outlined. as part of our proposal and kind of what we're working through right here, uh, or currently working through right now. Um, you know, we conducted a project launch meeting with what we would call the steering committee, and it was just members of city staff, the Economic Development Department, the Planning Department, some other folks, um, mostly logistical in nature. Uh, from there we went into the discovery phase, which, um, we'll get into a little bit later here, but involved quite a bit of document review, reviewing past plans and pertinent documents. We were fortunate to come visit.

We conducted a site visit.

Connor and I were able to come out and spend some time with Kathy and her team in September. We'll be planning another one here shortly that we'll cover later. And then we've done some significant and some detailed quantitative data analysis. And all of that discovery phase informs our SWOT analysis. And our SWOT analysis, I'm sure you're familiar with the term, is informed by the discovery phase, but it's also informed by the stakeholder engagement that we have done and will continue to do with residents and leaders and business leaders and key stakeholders in Orem in the coming weeks and coming months. As I mentioned, we had our first session last week, preliminary stakeholder session. I would characterize it as temperature taking, trying to understand, you know, the right questions to ask. And prepare for more intensive stakeholder sessions here later in February, which we'll outline. So that's where we're at right now, getting ready to launch our next focus groups and then ultimately put together a final plan that we will present it to you folks down the line here. With that, I want to kick it over to my colleague Connor. Actually, I'm sorry, I forgot to do introductions. So, Connor, you want to just go ahead and introduce yourself real quick? We'll give Lindsay a chance to introduce herself, and then you can get into the data.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, nice to meet you all. My name is Connor Waddell. I am a project associate here at TPMA. My focus on this particular project has been mostly data-related. So after Lindsay introduces herself, I'll walk you through some of our preliminary quantitative findings. Lindsay?

Thanks, Connor. My name is Lindsay Blues. I'm a senior project consultant with Thomas P. Miller and Associates, and my primary work on this project is in stakeholder engagement.

Awesome.

So like Brett said, my plan here is just to walk you all through some of the key findings of our initial data poll. What you see on this slide is just a pretty high-level overview of the initial analysis that we've done, so I'll touch on each of these pretty briefly now, then I'll come back to them in the coming slides. As I'm sure will come as no surprise, Orem is a rapidly growing population. We'll look at some of that growth here, as well as projections, and some of the slides to come. Much of the population within Orem is highly educated, and the fact that the population has high educational attainment will be important for us to consider as we start to think about industry and business attraction in the recommendations that we plan to build out. Most common occupations within the city are service-related and low-income occupations. which makes sense considering the prominence of the retail industry within the city. However, it is important to call out the fact that the largest and fastest growing single industry within the city is the colleges and universities industry, which makes sense considering Utah Valley University in particular's prominence in the city. Lastly, here before we move on, I will touch on some housing-related data. The median home value within Orem is expected to reach $468,000 by 2026. I will circle back to this particular data point in a later slide, but before I move on, I will also call out that there is limited land available for residential development within Orem, and we'll continue to think about that as we move forward. In the next slide, I've got some population demographic and income data laid out, as well as some labor market information. In 2020, the population of Orem was around 90,000. That comes from the 2020 census, so that is the most up-to-date figure that we have. In the next slide, I'll talk about some of the history of the population growth in the city, but first, before we move on, I think it is also important to call out the 1.5% unemployment rate within Orem. This is very low. At the end of 2021, this figure for Utah County was at 1.5%. It is the same level for the Orem-Provo MSA. And then lastly here, the median household income is around $70,000. At the national level, that median is around $64,000, so we do see slightly higher earnings within the city of Orem. In the next slide, We will take a look at some population-related data. As the graph here shows, Orem does have a rapidly growing population, especially in the last 20 years. So the population's increased by about 10,000 people, or around 11%, between 2010 and 2020. If the growth continues as it has recently, that figure is projected to surpass 109,000 by 2026. I think it is important to note here that this 109,000 figure is certainly not, not a goal. This projection comes from a third-party company that modelizes the data using historical and national trends. In the next slide, then, I've taken a look at the median housing sale price within the city. If you'll remember in the first slide, I had called out the fact that the median home value within Orem was projected to reach $468,000 by 2026. In the graph below, you'll see that, uh, in December of 2021, that figure had reached $467,500. Um, so what this tells us is just that the increase in home values within Orem is far outpacing the model projections. Um, in 2021 alone— in 2021, excuse me, alone, we saw an increase of about 25% of the median home value within Orem, which is a lot. However, it isn't, um, uncommon, especially within the last year. This has been a national trend. We've seen the housing market explode in the last year, and although the growth within Orem has been substantial, um, that's something we've seen in a lot of different communities throughout the country. Last couple of slides here, I have pulled some industry and occupation-related data. In this slide, we have laid out the top industries by total jobs. Um, unsurprising that colleges and universities, um, are the top industries within Orem. Again, this is, I'm sure, due in large part to Utah Valley University's prominence within the community. There are about 8,500 people who are employed within these top 2 college and university industries. Um, behind them though, we can see there are a lot of service-related, retail-related industries that top this chart as well. Restaurant industries, warehouse clubs, direct selling establishments, and the like. Also important, I think, to note here that there are a couple of tech-related industries that are topping the charts. You can see custom computer programming services employ just over 2,000 within the city, and internet publishing and broadcasting and web search portals employ about 1,400.

May I ask a question before you leave that slide?

Yes, sir.

Between the first 6,048 and the second 2,647?

Sure. So those— it separates out the state and private colleges and universities. So the first figure is public universities, and the second are private universities.

Okay. So UB University is what you would add?

I guess.

Thank you.

Yes, sir. If we're good to move on, then I will touch lastly on some occupation-related data. This data just gives us a snapshot of some worker-related data within the city. We can see that the top occupation within the city is post-secondary teachers, which aligns with what we saw on the last slide. There are about 2,700 that work in this occupation within the city. Interestingly, about 7 of the top 10 occupations Are service retail-related industries. I think it is important to call out the fact that these industries all earn less than $35,000 annually. The fact that such a large part of the population falls below the average income level or the average earning level is going to be important for us to consider moving forward. Also important, I think, to call out again the presence of some of these tech-related industries. You can see software developers at the top of the chart. So with that, then I will kick it back over to Brett to walk you all through some qualitative data.

Thanks, Connor.

So wanna review some qualitative findings, and I just want to point out on the front end here that these are still preliminary in nature. We will continue to kind of refine these and build these out, revise these Through increased resident and stakeholder engagement sessions, including hopefully some feedback from you folks today. But the qualitative information findings you're going to see here in a moment were informed a couple different ways. I mentioned earlier site visits. I was out there during the interview process and had a chance to spend some time in the community. Connor and I came back out in the fall, spent a few days out there, so site visits. Are part of these findings. We conducted interviews with city staff members to get their unique perspective and other representatives across the community. And then, as I mentioned earlier, we conducted a significant document review, and you'll see here the list of document reviews that we've looked at. We looked at regional plans and strategies, and then everything all the way down to neighborhood-specific plans to try to, to get the full picture of where Orem's been, where it is today, and where it aspires to go in the future. So first, I want to focus on what we see are strengths thus far in our process. And I think first and most notably is the quality of life that residents have in the city of Orem.

It's a healthy community.

The data tells us that, but you know, the eyeball test tells us that as well.

When you visit, you know, you have active people, you have active lifestyles.

It's very apparent that it's a healthy community. In part likely because of the just spectacular outdoor recreational assets in the city and in the region. A very impressive public park system, access to assets such as Utah Lake, Mount Timpanogos— I know I'm still not saying that correctly, even though I've been trying for 6 months— Cascade Mountains, you know, other state parks in the region. Just an outdoor rec enthusiast's Paradise, right? And then you have indoor recreational assets as well. We were very impressed with the Orem Fitness Center. And then if you're looking for a mental workout, the Orem Public Library is first class as well. And then just the access to the health systems. You have multiple health systems available to you in the city, in the region. Not many communities can say that, and you've got multiple ones. So certainly an advantage and contributes to that overall quality of life, that healthy community. Second, the strategic location of Orem. You know, Utah Valley is in the center of the state and Orem is in the center of the Utah County, so we think it's an epicenter for the state and for the region. There's, you know, solid transportation access. You know, we heard that a lot in our stakeholder sessions. It's really a corridor for people coming in and out. We also have strong industrial infrastructure and assets. The Orem Tech Center is a gem, and we think there's a lot of potential to continue to leverage that asset to attract businesses. The Geneva Road industrial corridor. What we saw is a lot of, you know, family-owned private businesses that we think continued can be a focus in the future. And city-owned utilities is another advantage and infrastructure advantage we see. And I neglected to mention, you know, I-15 and the 2 freight lines that run through Orem as well. Third, you know, retail assets.

It's—

you still take in a huge share of retail sales compared to the rest of the region. You know, we've heard it's the retail center of Utah County. Prominent and nationally recognized brands are present in the, in the, in the community. And then University Place is really a best-in-class 21st century mall development right there on State and University. And then fourth, what we see is strong economic development leadership. Can't say enough about the team in City Hall. They're as experienced and skilled and as sophisticated as any team that we've encountered in our work. The state of Utah is one of the most competitive states in the country when it comes to economic development for a variety of reasons. I mentioned earlier, they've successfully— the city has successfully implemented recommendations from previous plans. And maybe in particular, we're really encouraged by the Orem Business Alliance. We see that as a proactive step from the city to engage the business community in a very purposeful way. Some weaknesses.

Every community has weaknesses.

You know, these findings and observations are intended to be constructive in nature. Um, the data already told us that there are housing challenges. Housing prices are, are rapidly increasing and potentially pricing people out of the market. And then the lack of developable land. I think the previous study said that there was only 8% of land still available for development, only 3% which was zoned residential. So those numbers may have been Smaller today. We think there's a lack of of a clearly defined downtown, and a couple things that we heard in the stakeholder sessions. You know, I think one individual said, "You know, where is the heart of Orem? Where is the soul of Orem? Where is that center city in Orem?" And we agree. We know State Street is an important artery. But there are characteristics across State Street that show there's been some disinvestment and a need for some renovations, some updates, some new investment on State Street. Would not characterize the center of the city especially as a walkable community. In some of the neighborhoods, I'm sure there's some walkability, but, you know, along those main corridors, we don't see it as a walkable community or easily accessible community. It's a car-heavy and a car-reliant community. With that comes traffic congestion. So again, we understand State Street as a main artery, but with that comes traffic. And interestingly, I think there's a perception that there's a lack of locally owned small businesses in the community. Does perception match reality? We're not sure yet. I think we'll learn more in the stakeholder sessions, but there is a perception that there's only chains or national brands and a lack of locally owned small businesses.

And then we think that we could—

Orem could benefit from a solidified long-term vision, specifically a more targeted strategy for business retention, expansion, and attraction. We think it would benefit the city and the community to better understand the industrial assets, commercial assets in place, and to devise a strategy to leverage those assets to grow the business community, to bring in or to cultivate complementary businesses to service or work with some of the existing businesses that you have. We know there's some underutilized commercial and retail spaces, most notably Canyon Park Technology Center comes to mind. And we know that there's a handful of pretty large empty retail spaces across the city. And then lastly, we're encouraged by the regional collaboration that we've seen, specifically most recently in the stakeholder session. But typically, we can always— we always think that can be enhanced, and we think there could be better coordination with the state economic development apparatus and some of the regional partners. that are present in Utah County. So with that, I'm going to kick it over to my colleague Lindsay to discuss our previous stakeholder session.

Thanks, Brett. Good afternoon, Council. I just want to give you a brief overview of our preliminary stakeholder session. So what we wanted to do with this session was to really kind of just get a baseline and see if the general perceptions were lining up with some of the data that we'd gathered and just kind of get a baseline for what we should be prepared for when we come for onsite and more expanded engagements later this month. So, we held our preliminary engagement on January 27th, and you can see it is a very small stakeholder engagement with just 12 participants, but we tried to make sure that it was pretty well made up of a cross-section of different types of stakeholders. So we had economic development organizations, we had representatives from education and healthcare, and then we had representation from both small and large businesses, trying to really tap into those stakeholders that have a really good understanding of the economy and business environment within Orem. So What we did was we went through basically the same data presentation that we did with you just now to review that with the stakeholders, and then we asked them some pretty targeted questions about what they thought was important to include within the strategic plan, what kind of significant challenges exist for businesses in the community, what solutions that they envision to meet those challenges, and then what their vision is for OREM overall. So those were just kind of the baseline of what we started out with to try and get that context for our upcoming larger stakeholder sessions. So just to give you a recap of kind of what we heard in those sessions— Brett, if you'll go to the next slide— Within the vision, we heard that our stakeholders wanted to see a management of growth and smart growth within OREM. So just a really intentional way of managing that growth moving forward. There was a lot of discussion about respecting the past of Orem and its history, but also being open and embracing those future possibilities. You all have a lot of opportunity and some great assets to build upon, so we want to make sure that your economic development strategy reflects that. We talked a lot about transportation And what kind of innovative or dynamic models could be used for that infrastructure to connect communities together. And then also the vision of that family-friendly, healthy, vibrant, and accessible community, which I think we all want for our communities. Brett?

Thank you.

So the next thing we talked about was challenges. I know when we talk about challenges, a lot of times we can deep dive into all sorts of different different things. But for this, we tried to pick out just kind of those 4 main pieces. And so one of them that I thought was really interesting was that a lot of the businesses weren't always sure what city services were offered to the business community. So that was one of the challenges that was raised. Another is that lack of developable, developable land that we talked about earlier. Again, with the affordable housing in Orem and that concern for Orem's workforce when it comes to housing. And then a lack of that clearly defined city center that goes back to what we had noticed ourselves, and our stakeholders brought out, you know, that there's no convention center and there's no flagship hotel. And so those are potential opportunities as well. So for priorities, again, talking about Orem's history in the past and just making sure that we're preserving the things that we love about Orem, but also embracing those kind of new and innovative solutions that can both preserve history and kind of accentuate it. So then one of the things that we really want to try to do moving forward, and we're hoping to do more with the upcoming stakeholder sessions, the expanded stakeholder sessions, is really taking a look at benchmark cities, understanding best practices in cities that are similar to Orem. You're never going to find a city that's just like Orem, but we're going to look at those kind of demographics and, and geographical, you know, aspects that can help us benchmark cities next to Orem and see how, how we're doing in different ways. Then communication and education about growth and development. So I think this is a lot of reflection from our economic development organizations and also our large and small businesses, you know, really wanting to see that communication and education regarding growth and what development could and could and should look like as we move this economic strategic plan forward. And then the other priority that these stakeholders had was accountability and transparency and follow-through. They really want to see a plan not just sit on a shelf but be acted upon, and Orem again has a great track record of making sure that their plans are being followed through. So really excited about that. And then solutions, and I always love the solutions section. And so, and that's another thing, when we get ready to come to Orem later this month, we're going to be really solution-focused. I'll talk more about that in a minute. So solutions, they really were talking a lot about engagement. They talked about forums for community discussions and multimedia communication strategies and strategies to really engage the residents and engage the businesses. And then also that focus on State Street and the appropriate retail and commercial growth that fits best for Orem. And then in barriers, inability to tell that consistent and clear story. We want to make sure that when we talk about Orem that we are as consistent and have a clear vision of what Orem is and the story that we want to tell. We talked a little bit about scheduling and accessibility challenges related to the city's meetings and discussions. So on the last slide, we talked about that engagement with the community and residents and businesses, and one of the barriers to that was just scheduling. So at least one stakeholder I know pointed out, you know, are there evening sessions that I can come to? What other opportunities do I have if I can't make it to a meeting? With everyone's busy lives, we want to make sure that we are finding some accessibility for everyone to have a voice in the city's governance moving forward. And then uncertainty about how to manage growth. So they said that their vision was that they wanted to have smart growth and manage growth, but they're uncertain about how to do that. That's kind of a barrier too. And then lack of financial incentives to facilitate redevelopment and renovation. We're seeing that a lot. Across the country, honestly, but here in Orem, from developers looking at the cost to redevelop a piece of land versus building fresh, but with a lack of, of developable land, that creates a barrier. And then also for things like facade improvements for existing businesses, things like that, just that lack of financial incentive, lack of resources to be able to do those things. So for our upcoming stakeholder engagement, we're really excited about it. First of all, when we finished up our preliminary stakeholder session, I was encouraged because 95% of them thought we were headed in the right direction with the development of the EDSP, and 100% of them said that they would volunteer for future participation. So we're hoping that they also decide to come to our onsite workshops. Those are scheduled for February 23rd and 24th. For those, we are going to have expanded outreach for our stakeholders, again, with that kind of cross-section of different types of stakeholders, those that have, you know, are really plugged into the economic environment of Orem. And we're really centering this around solutions and looking to build consensus. So with this one, we really want to look at those challenges and then bring some examples in. I talked about those benchmark cities and examples of best practices. We're going to bring those in when we come at the end of the month. We're going to talk about strategic direction and that— those priorities of where we want to head, maybe some example strategies or some sample strategies to really kind of workshop with everyone to see You know, where they think we should go, what's missing, what can be improved on, you know, potential sample strategies, and then to really kind of workshop out what resources are available and what partners might be able to come to the table to really help that implementation be able to move forward.

Brett?

Yeah, I'm gonna take the presentation down and, um, open to any questions that you may have.

I don't think we can overstate how important your feedback and your questions are to assisting us and to continue to develop a quality plan for, for you and the folks of Orem. Have you pulled our sales tax leakage report yet from the state? I know in the past we've been deficient in hotels and gas stations.

Has that been looked at yet?

Connor, do you want to address that?

I can. Yeah, so we have started to undertake a retail gap analysis and understand what that will look like for this particular plan. There have been changes in the available data. So due to regulation changes, we don't have access to the same type of tax data that the previous reports had access to, so that is going to modify a little bit the type of analysis that we can give you all, but we are trying to pull together the data that is available for us and how we can use that most effectively in a report.

Thank you.

Yep. You mentioned that There's not enough financial support for redevelopment. How do other cities pay for and provide that type of financial support?

Yeah, that's a, that's a good question.

And I guess a couple initial thoughts.

There is a significant amount of federal funding out there right now. So the first things that we would look at are potential federal financing tools and also better understand the tools offered through your state economic development agency. But we're seeing communities use tax increment financing. Some are using tax abatement. Some are using special assessment districts. And so, certainly not suggesting one or the other. one over the other at this point in time, but I think our plan is to take a look at that full suite of tools and try to understand what's the best fit for your market. As you may guess, not all of those are extremely popular, but we expect you to empower Kathy with special secrets that will enable us to get lots of money without employing any of those. Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's, um, and again, that's why I made the point, you know, we're not suggesting one at this time. We would look at the available tools and, and probably discuss those at the focus groups to understand what the appetite is for leaders in the community. And then sometimes it's just trying to think of ways to unlock that local private wealth as well.

Lindsay, this is Jamie.

Lindsay, can you speak to the— we've talked about involving members of the City Council, as well as the Planning Commission in these stakeholder discussions. Can you please speak to that?

Yes, absolutely. So we think that it's really critical to have you participate in the stakeholder sessions. We need to have your feedback and the feedback of the Planning Commission. You know, those are just really critical perspectives for us as we're developing the plan. So as we're setting the up, we want to make sure that we kind of split you all up a little bit into the different sessions. I'd love to see representation at all of the sessions from both City Council and Planning Commission if we're able to arrange that. So would really love to have you there and to be able to meet you all in person, of course, and to be able to, to really talk to you about what you want to see for your community.

How would you run one of those meetings? I don't understand what this workshop is. What's the agenda?

Sure, so the agenda is going to be— part of it's going to be to go over more data that has been collected, some best practices. We're going to go through some examples of best practices and some example strategies that can be developed based off of the information that we've gathered thus far, and then we're going to probably see split up into groups and really kind of workshop with some targeted questions and discuss at tables, you know, the best ways to, you know, tackle those solutions. And we'll see the final agenda come together here pretty quickly. But essentially, it's mostly a conversation and a workshop of you know, what can be improved and what we're missing, and just to make sure that we're all on the right track and try and build that consensus.

So do you—

is this going to be OREM data specific then? You're bringing OREM data and putting it into models you've seen used elsewhere?

So we'll be looking at the OREM data, and we're going to be looking at benchmark cities and other best practices around the country. Brett, I don't know if you can speak to that anymore.

Yeah, I would just say that the data that we'll present will be similar to what we've presented to you folks today, and it's really just to spark conversation and I guess validate some of the strategies and solutions that we will present and solicit feedback from the folks in the groups to kind of tell us if we're on the right track or the wrong track. I just have a couple questions. I was curious on the, on the financial data. It talked about that our median income was about $70,000, which was higher than average, but then in fact we had an excessive number of service workers that were lower income than normal. You know how to reconcile those together?

Sure, so the occupation data that I presented is data that relates— represents information about the people who work within Orem and not necessarily the people who live within Orem. What we're starting to find as we dive deeper into the data is that those 2 populations aren't necessarily the same, so we may have, I guess, different pictures that are painted in looking at the people who work within Orem as well as those who live within Orem, so that I think is why we noticed a difference there.

Okay, Mayor, if I could add in a lot of dual-income families, so the husband and wife both have a retail job, then I'll get up to that $70,000. Okay, but we were still quite a bit higher than the average median income, right? Right, well, if you think of across the entire country and you bring in some of the border areas, yeah, like South and things like that, where maybe it's a one parent home, you're meeting that a little lower in those areas. Okay, yeah, thanks. One other, uh, just comment, and this will obviously go to the entire group when we talk about this in the future, but if you were to wave a magic wand and say what would be the most beneficial thing that you can come back with, it would be State Street where it is right now and State Street 5 years from now, 10 years from now, and having a transformation of State Street as far as retail service office businesses and what that would look like. Because we're in the middle of that right now. We're coming off of a previous master plan. We're looking to a new plan for the future. Um, but anyway, as far as that vision, and then there's what Tom was saying, what you're talking about as far as the funding piece of that puzzle. And it seems like there are a lot of different options as far as funding that can be done. University Place is an example. There was some significant funding that went into that in the form of tax credits to make that happen. State Street, it would be interesting to see State Street. There's some future there, but that's a big part of what we're trying to figure out. I had kind of just to piggyback on his question because we are kind of a commuter Occupational community, you know a lot of people work out at Point Mountain, a lot of people in my neighborhood. So your income, though they're not really retail jobs, how do you account? How do you show that distinction, or do you in your income median income for Orem residents?

Or does it matter that a lot of them are leaving and working outside of Orem but live in We have pulled—

Sure. So we have, and we have pulled commuter-related data into our report. What I presented today was just a very brief overview of a lot of the data that we've pulled. So in our report, we'll have included, I guess, a much more comprehensive look at the industry occupation and financial characteristics of the city. But we have looked at some of that commuter information so that we can get a clearer idea as to who lives within Orem, who works within Orem, who's commuting outside of the city limits, who's commuting in, so that we can understand how the economic strategies that we're proposing are best fit for the city.

Thank you. We have any other questions? I think we're good to move on. We appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time, and thank you, Brett and Connor and Lindsay, for this presentation.

And please let us know if you have any further questions.

I'm happy to answer them for you and to relay information from the TPMA team to you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, next on the agenda is, uh, parking enforcement. Close enough. Close, Mayor. But okay, what is it? I'll wave my magic wand. Perisquiva. Oh, well, that one's very close. I mean, I've heard a lot worse than that, so I'll give you credit for that. Uh, let's do this one. All right, Mayor, I haven't had the pleasure to meet you or Councilmember Millett. Is that right? Okay. Previously, the former council and mayor, we started— this is a while in the making— a code enforcement team that's civilian, and they're going to be talking about their update later. Part of that piece of the pie was to create a parking enforcement team, and that was to handle issues that were on the streets, right? Your code enforcement is going to handle your neighborhood homes, your issues that are actually on the property. So this is looking at parking citations, abandoned vehicles. That's kind of what our parking enforcement team— So I'm going to give you a little update on that, and we can talk about the Kind of what it looks like today. It's comprised of 2 flex employees. They work combined 56 hours a week. They've been operational since the middle of September. And then we'll kind of look at some slides and statistics of so far since they've been up and running.

This kind of just—

I pulled this from our last meeting when we instituted it back in September, but I just wanted the mayor and the new council member to see kind of what the program's goals are. You know, we're looking at focusing on our safe and livable neighborhoods. All right, we're addressing department needs due to the transition I talked about, the growth that we're seeing with students in high-density housing and the limited parking that's available. drives them into neighborhoods, and so it helps address that issue. Decreases residents' complaints about parking violations in neighborhoods because we're now taking a proactive approach in those neighborhoods. The biggest thing I think that this is helping is freeing up our patrol officers to handle priority calls. They're not bogged down in these— on these non-priority calls, even though it is a priority call to that citizen. that calls it in. Our officers, what we train them to do, can handle those priority calls. Big thing is that we eliminated— excuse me— paper. So we're now with a digital software with the team. And then obviously our hope was to generate enough revenue to fund the program, which I'll talk about actually on part 2, a different presentation, but we'll get there. So far since September, the parking enforcement team's issued over 500 warnings for parking violations. They've issued 766 parking citations. I have a question. Is a warning like you get that the first time you go out and it's not fixed within a certain time or moved? So it's at the officer's discretion, but yes, generally if it's a first-time offense, we're going to try to issue a warning. If we're going back again, the vehicle's still not in compliance, maybe moved it over into another street, but it's still in a neighborhood permit area, right? At that point, we would issue a citation. All right, the program's goal was to educate first. We did a lot, a huge social media blitz on our police department website, different things as far as that. We worked with code enforcement, developmental services to get it out in the residential parking permit program areas. So we really tried to educate, issue those warnings when feasible, but sometimes a warning isn't just gonna bring about change. We've had— does that answer your question?

Yes, it does.

Okay. 296 abandoned vehicle cases have been reported since September. Out of those 296, they've either been moved Or 90 have been towed. So that's by the officer, you know, marking it, giving them 3 days notice to move their vehicle. We come back, still not moved, so we will initiate a tow. These are kind of a— this is kind of a graph that shows what kind of the main parking violations that we're seeing in the city. The big one is parking on the street without valid registration or suspended registration. As you can see there, you got abandoned vehicles, and those are citations. Any questions on those as far as what we're actually— what the citations are for? If someone's on vacation, they leave their car in front of the home for 72 hours, they can be ticketed of some sort? Yeah, they can be. I would, I would suggest most of the time when we go into a neighborhood and we run the registration and we see it's parked out in front of somebody's house, that's the situation where we're going to be giving a warning on, right? And we have a lot of citizens that go on vacation. They'll do— we'll do vacation checks, we'll drive by, things like that. I mean, there's always going to be those situations where, you know, going out of town, parking on the street.

These ones are primarily—

these are junk vehicles that people have brought into the city. They're dumping in our city and we're getting rid of them. What about a family meeting up at a house for a trip? So there's 2 or 3 cars that are parked there. They're not going to be left there for a week because you're out of town. You have to park somewhere. They're not going to the driveway. Well, I mean, I guess it— so I mean, if it's 72 hours and it's a— I mean, as you can see, we've had 19 of those. Parking on the street more than 72 hours. I think in those situations we just need to maybe do a better job of educating on our part as police department. Hey, if you are going out of town and you're going to be parking on the street, let us know so we can kind of watch that. We can do that. And the great thing about this program is, is if someone were to receive a ticket in, let's say, that situation, they would come into the police department, tell us about the situation, and we would just dismiss it. We have lots of those, you know, where it might be situational, and obviously we're not in the business of hammering our citizens for parking fines, but at the same time, we know, you know, those situations arise. So my question to you is, are you reactive? People are calling, or are you proactive driving, or both? So I'll show you, can give you that right here on the slide here. So these are our proactive cases. All right, so these are the ones where our officers are actually driving into the neighborhoods. It's broken down into week timeframes where we're being proactive. And these are the reactive cases where citizens are calling. So you can see the numbers versus proactive, you know, and reactive. It's, you know, I would say 10%. Halloween, a big parking problem. That's probably during the same time we had our social media. Yeah, um, I'm not sure why it was so high right out of the gate, to be honest with you. Um, most likely that's probably what it was— people parking, parties, different things. Um, and so we, we responded. Um, if I had to break that down, I had that, but I believe I don't have those numbers broken down into the actual citations. I can get them for you on the specific, but my guess is they were neighborhood parking permits. So somebody in a neighborhood parking was having a big party and the neighborhood— the neighbors didn't like that, and so they called it in, and that's why we took action on that. Yeah, as far as like going uptown, you know, over the years we meet up at the house. We're going to Lake Powell for a week, 3 or 4 cars parked there. Yeah, like it'd be extremely annoying to have to go deal with the parking ticket on something like that. Yeah, and I could see that. And that, again, I think that would be, you know, a situational thing. And the chances of— I mean, 100,000, just shy of 100,000 residents, right? I mean, for the chances of us to— unless the neighbor called it in, I wouldn't see that, you know, that That would be something that we would specifically go in and target that area. Yeah. Um, but it's more like lettering. Obvious. Yeah, yeah, yep. So we're targeting our neighborhood parking areas, our, our streets that are actually causing us the problems is where we're doing a lot of the proactive enforcement. Okay, I don't think we're going to find a situation where we enforce that 72 hours. We don't— we're not like marking tires. We're not doing that. And yeah, I agree with you, don't make a part, but we do have to do process piece. But on the back end, they can let us know, yeah, this is a situation, circumstances. Yeah. So the reactive makes more sense. Yeah. I guess it's probably gonna be the person that, hey, I don't know who this vehicle is, it's just been sitting there for, you know, yeah, a week or so. Yeah, the 72 hours one, if you're looking at there, those are going to be tied to your abandoned vehicles. cases. So those are where the ones where we're going to cite on the abandoned vehicles. Is that like trailers parked on the road? Yes, trailers, boats, all those different things. And what's the rules with that? 72 hours. The state code is actually 48 hours, but our city code is 72. We give them an extra day. And that's basically upon notification, we notify them and we'll basically either leave a flyer on the windshield or we'll mark it with on the glass with— it's a pink paint that's removable. You should wash it off. So it's supposed to be on the property?

What's that?

Travel trailer or boat supposed to be parked on their property? It can be parked on the street, but that only refers to 72 hours. Now there— now if you get into trailer, different sizes of trailers, there's other city codes that, you know, based on the length of the trailer, different things that wouldn't allow it ever on street. Parking. And in those situations, we would respond, issue a warning, talk to them, educate, things like that. So here is a map of all the citations that we've issued. So If you can kind of see here, um, does anybody have— want to look at a specific— just kind of put this together on Google Maps if anybody wanted to look at their neighborhood or look to see where all the kind of the main— They're fairly evenly distributed. They are. You can kind of look down here where our Suncrest— or not Suncrest, Springwater— Springwater is. We've got, you know, quite a bit down there. Now granted, these are from September until I think it was January 17th that I pulled these numbers. Um, obviously down by the colleges, you know, you, you've got a target area. Um, you know, over here in Hillcrest— sorry, Hillcrest— you got quite a few over here as well. But I would say, you know, if you look kind of here, main city center area, pretty far and few between. Orum South, Also, if you look up kind of Northridge area, um, Aspen area, there's, there's not a lot up there, you know. So we can go over here. This is my old neighborhood. Let's see what it is. So you got parking left side to curb on this one, 1890 North, 320 West. Um, and I believe that was a reactive case because I'm familiar with that one.

Anybody—

is anybody interested in looking at the— any specific violations maps as far as that goes? I will share this with you as well, or Steven will, so you can look at this map and kind of get a better feel for it on your own time if you're, you know, deciding you don't want to play Angry Birds or whatever your game is. You can pull up this map and look at it. So All right, so just again, the goal of our team of the parking enforcement is to remove abandoned vehicles from the roadway, educate the public on state laws and city ordinances regarding parking, and to enforce with civil citation in situations where it is necessary to better the community in which we reside. So that is the team's vision and goal. So that's kind of my parking enforcement team update.

Thank you.

Any questions on that? Is there, is there more of a focus then on areas where you have more congestive parking issues and all that? Yeah, I would say probably closer to our high-density housings, our resident, our neighborhood parking permit areas, you know, it's going to be areas where we're going to patrol, be a little more proactive, you know, and then a lot of the other ones are going to be your reactive cases throughout. you know, your main neighborhoods, um, of all of them. And then your handicap stalls, things like that, you know, those are going to be reactive as well. It just seems like you get the best citizen involvement in the areas where there's a congested problem, you know, as opposed to just a random street where there's like one car parked the wrong way and there's no other traffic on it. I mean, just from a common sense standpoint, right? Yep, I agree. And I think, I think we can kind of, you know, just based on the map that we're looking at, um, you know, obviously as we pulled this up, if you zoom in around the college, the high-density housing areas, um, you know, down in this area here, down over here, that's going to be your main, your main issues. Right up here, as you zoom in, you know, you've got some cases up here. Um, but as you get closer, they're few and far between, right? And this is over a 5-month span. Yeah, 4 months. I've got one I might send to you, Josh. I have gotten— I get these regularly as far as people who are upset about this, and some of them, I mean, according to their version of the facts, seem pretty bizarre. Others, for the moment— Well, there's due process. Right. So yeah, same as any other citation. We don't know— he's out of luck. They have the right to appeal it. Yeah, the ones like that are the most— they seem the most bizarre.

I get some too.

The one thing that I would stress, we have to be careful, is we're not going to just attack specific neighborhoods. It can't be that. That's not what it's for. It's for the citywide. I mean, there's parking issues everywhere in the city. And yeah, one of the things we are finding though is some of the areas where we are anticipating more problems, there's actually— we're getting good compliance. It's working.

Yeah.

You know, we've been down there and in some of those areas where, you know, back in the fall we were having a lot of problems, right now virtually non-existent because people are recognizing, yeah, we're not going to pretend this isn't an issue any longer.

Yeah.

And so it is succeeding in those what were what we probably would have called our hot spots last fall are actually cooling off. Yeah, that's why I can see a real benefit when you have, I think, different cul-de-sacs where people can't even park on the street because there's— it was a tarmac, right?

Yeah.

And in an area like that, this would be like a godsend. And then in other areas, it seems like it would be more, I guess, you know, annoying. Yeah, and I would just add to the— what Chief Adams said is that another piece to this is that education portion where we're meeting with UVU, we're meeting with Access Apartments, we're meeting with all these other entities to where we're resolving the issue not just on the enforcement and our parking, but we're looking at other ways to where we can, you know, benefit those, those neighborhoods. Any other questions on the parking enforcement update? All right, so the next— my next little portion Leave that right here. Okay, it's a parking fine schedule proposal, and we'll kind of talk about this. So as a city council, by resolution, you have the— we have— you have the ability to change our, you know, with a resolution, change the fine schedule on parking fees. And we'll kind of talk— I'll kind of talk about a few of the reasonings, and then we can kind of go through there, take it one step at a time. But currently, the City of Orem has one of the lowest parking fine schedules in the state of Utah. One of the goals of this is to increase revenue, which we're hoping to help offset the cost to fund the program of the enforcement team. All right, we talked about 56 hours a week of employment, vehicles. maintenance, software, all these things that cost the city money. And the hope is, is by raising a few of these fines, we're just raising them just enough to where, okay, now we're not passing that burden on to other budget. That money can be used elsewhere from the general fund, or however the— Brandon could talk more about that. Anyway, so the biggest issue that we're kind of looking at this is for— we were wanting to place a higher emphasis on safety concern violations. We had a situation where an individual— we had a fire EMS paramedic, they were trying to go into a cul-de-sac, and we had a car that was parked angled parking into a cul-de-sac. The EMS paramedic and rescue could not get into the cul-de-sac safely. Now they're having to back up, make 3, 4-point turns in these apparatuses to where now we're causing the citizens, the neighbors of that residence in that neighborhood, a child out playing, a car getting backed up to, backed into, all these things. Well, the citizen came out, we made contact with them, we're writing a citation, and the citizen says, well, how much is it? We said it's $25.

The citizen says, oh, I'll leave my car there, that's fine, I'll pay the $25.

You know, that's the response. So that was kind of the— when I heard that, that was kind of my driving force to where we need to start looking at raising our fine schedule on some of these safety violations. I thought the idea was we're gonna put big bumpers on the fire engines and just move us out of the way. I mean, that is option 2. Well, I mean, there's truth in every, every gesture. We've been charging as a police department when traffic ticket— or sorry, parking tickets were instituted in 2002. We've been charging the same fine amount since that time. And then obviously in doing it, we're going to be clarifying our city code language on the fine schedule and late fees. So this is the proposed increase. If you can see, the proposal is to go— currently we charge $100 for ADA handicap. The proposed increase would go to $150. These are your safety ones that have been identified. Fire lane fire hydrant would go from $50 to $25.

Right.

Within 30 feet of stop sign, $50 to $25. Obstructing traffic, $50 to $25. Angled parking, which I talked about, $50 to $25. and then raise all other violations to $40 from $25. If you look at a comparison, Provo is currently charging at their lowest for any parking ticket is $55 up to $150 for ADA. Sandy is $40 up to $340 for an ADA. American Fork's $50 to $150. Springville, $45 to $200. Draper, $55 to $200. The state recommended fine schedule says anywhere from $50 to $340. So we're basically half of what the state recommends for all parking violations, and we're $190 shy of what they recommend for ADA. And that's with our, with our proposed increase. Any questions on that so far?

No.

I just had one.

You indicated you needed the code updated under specific sections that you guys have identified. Um, yeah, and that, that'll just be as, um, as our language. Um, one of the things— and I'll get to that, I will answer your question. So if we just do kind of our historical figures from fiscal year '20 to '21, We had 89 out of the 920 citations for ADA violations, fine amount of $100. All others were fined at $25. So we're looking at an increase in revenue of about $5,000 for ADA. And then we're looking at for all other violations out of that 920 would increase about $6,000 in revenue. So based on that fiscal year, we would see— we would have saw an increase of about $11,000. So, so far this fiscal year, so July till January 19th, we've issued 1,367 tickets. Alright, so with 6 months left in the year, the same pace, we're going to be about 2,200 parking citations. So if we're basing off of the same formula, you know, we're looking at adding an additional $20,000 Making our rough estimate and future estimate revenue at $88,000. Our the highest revenue we've ever received in parking was in 2016. I believe it was $40,000. Other than that, we're right around $20,000 to $22,000 a year in our parking citations prior to the parking enforcement team being instituted. So one of the things this is kind of what we were talking about that we what we would want to change the. the language on the city code, and this is kind of the other piece of that pie. And meeting with Chief Adams, we'd like to change the language on how our citations are kind of doled out, right? So currently the fine schedules doubles the price after 14 days and then doubles the price again after 30 days for an unpaid parking citation. So in the proposed resolution, you know, we'd include a fine change, remove the doubling of fine amounts, and then we would just include a 25% late fee if it was paid after 14 days. You know, we just feel that this is more reasonable, um, you know, and it's not excessive to the citizens if they don't come in and pay their citation on fine, or after 30 days if we send it to collections. We're not sending a $100 ticket amount, we're sending a $30 to $120 based on the fine. So those are kind of the— Can I ask you a question? The main part of it, percentage of those are Go to the 14 days or the 30 days before they're paid? So based on— I can tell you right now, based on September from parking, we have about 68 to 75%, I think is what the number was last I checked. It was 68% have paid within the 14 days. The other percentages haven't paid at all. And so at some point, usually if they don't pay within the 14 days, it's going to go to the 30 days. What we'll do is on the back end, after 14 days, we send a reminder letter. Hey, your, your citation is now, now at this amount because you haven't paid. Please pay by this date or it'll go to this and then could potentially go to collections. So we'll send 2 letters on the back end as well, notifying the resident to pay the citation or whoever. I don't know if you're gonna address this in a different slide, but the change in how we deal with late fees is also necessary for us to How do you do— what options do people have to pay? Can they pay online? So that is one thing with our new software that we will, we will probably be rolling out in the next month, month or 2 months. Currently, we don't have that ability. It's always on the citation. It basically says you can pay by check or check or Yes, check or credit card. Thank you. Um, in, uh, at the police department, that's how we accept. And then does the ticket say you have to wait, don't call for 2 or 3 days? Nope, nope, there's no, no processing fees like on the, on the standard. And that's usually kind of language that you would— They tell you this won't be recorded for a couple days and then you forget about it because instead of just like wait for Correct.

And just one of the things to—

one of the things our records departments do, they're the ones that handle this back end. If someone comes in to pay their— I would say 90% of our citations, if people come in and pay them, we're waiving any late fees. We waive the late fees to begin with, the doubling. We just charge them the original amount. We're not in it to collect money. We're in it to educate, but at the same time, you know, there is— you got to be held to your, to your actions. Now, in certain situations, we might just waive the whole, whole fine, right? And that's what's great about the way the code is written as far as a hearing officer and being able to appeal those. And that language is all on the citation as well, the appeal process. Do you have to ask for that to be waived, or is that offered? I would say depends the situation. I can't say speak for exactly what they do. I don't think it's something that we're gonna just offer, hey, you brought this in, we're gonna waive this, thanks so much for coming in. But if it's something that they bring up a situation, you know, hard troubles, you know, in their lives, whatever, that's something we can work with. So We're gonna have to wrap this up pretty quick. Anyways, this is just the, uh, um, fee for infractions that just talks about the city code and the ordinances. Um, that's basically my presentation. What, what questions do you have? What's your thoughts on these, this, uh, the fine schedule? What's your timeline? Well, the implement— the hope, the hope would be implementation would be fiscal year. Obviously, you know, we're going to want to do it, you know, as soon as possible, just so we can kind of work on those backend things. But the hope would be fiscal year is kind of what— just to make it ease of transition. So anything else? Okay, that's all I got. So thank you.

Thank you.

Alrighty, um, that's the Earl. He's outside.

Thank you.

All right, is everybody ready to go talk about Utah Lake Authority? So I previously sent you a draft of a resolution that's kind of a follow-up to our conversation last City Council work session in response to House Bill 232, which creates the Utah Lake Authority. In all honesty, I didn't really know what your thoughts and feelings were about this bill, so what I drafted was sort of how I felt about this and give you the opportunity to say you agree or disagree with it, and, and hopefully at the end give you a few options to choose from in terms of what you might want to say in the resolution. So hopefully you've had a chance to look that over. I won't— I don't really have much of a presentation other than just say, you have any questions, tell me what you think. We can modify this in any way that you want to, or not do it at all if that's what you want. There's part of this that's apple pie and baseball field. I want to see the lake preserved, I want it to be clean and green, I want it to have nicer surroundings around it. Then there's the part, and I'm sure we've all seen the Don't Pay Keuka Lake, you know, rally. I don't want to give any support to a $6.5 billion fundraising to build islands in the middle. Like, what if that's going to happen? I mean, that happens. It can happen, but without my tacit or explicit approval. So I was a little confused what I'm saying in your— what's it called— in your draft resolution. I'm all for, hey, yeah, we're in favor of keeping it clean and green and she needs to do that. But I don't want them to think we're giving approval to go spend a lot of taxpayers' money to build something. Yeah. So can you tell me what your resolution says? Yeah, so, so basically, you know, I think that the whereas provisions, the recitals, probably, you know, are general enough they could apply to anything. So the real meat is in Section 2, and that's where I've kind of broken out the options for you. So the first part of 2 is basically saying, you know, we don't like the idea of private development on the lake, and we request that the Utah Lake Authority's authority be limited to promoting projects that would improve the quality of the lake. The apple pie. The apple pie, yeah, exactly. You could just leave it at that. That's the first option, not say any more than that. Or as I've indicated here as optional language, you could go further and say, we ask that any part of HB 232 that enables or promotes private development on the lake be stricken from the bill. There— because there are a lot of provisions in that bill that are designed to enable private development, right? So that's, that's your option, whether you want to go that far and be that forthcoming with your position. Next option is 2A. Basically, you, you could state your opposition to private development on the lake but leave out any mention of striking provisions from the bill. So we just say we're opposed to, you know, private development But not object, you know, to those provisions that would enable it in HB 232. 2B is essentially the language from the— what's that commission called?

Natural Resources.

Natural Resources, yeah, our Natural Resources Commission. They basically suggested this language, or that this was their feeling. They said that deep caution should be exercised with respect to any residential or commercial development. in the lake area. Obviously, that's not outright opposition to it, you know, just promoting caution. It's a little bit, you know, less strong, if you will. So those are essentially the options. You may think of other options, other ways you might want to— And I spoke first, I have no idea how the membership of the council is going to behave. Isn't the HB 232 you mentioned, Jamie, was they wanted this committee and it's going to be outside people that aren't in Uinta County? So to me, I I think you make a statement. So that's, that's what 3 is. So I think one of the, I think one of the things that we have been encouraged about as we end the bill, that the bill that is on the public website is not necessarily the bill that will— we understand that there's some sort of protected copy or some sort of additional copy that The plan, the bill sponsor has been talking about, and that bill sponsor, that language includes a majority of local representation. So now we're in a situation where we like the idea that there is going to be a majority, 50%, 50% plus 1, local representation on board. So we like that idea. We like the baseball and apple pie idea of cleaning up the lake. What we kind of struggle with is this idea of development. And you as a council want to say, no, we don't want any development at all, or language of the Natural Resource Stewardship Committee that says, rather than none, we think you should exercise deep caution about how to proceed with any sort of development. I mean, development, meaning, are you talking about like A bridge can probably be counted as development? It could be, yeah. You know, that, that could be considered potentially public, a public development, not necessarily private development, because it could be like a road, right, or a highway or whatever. That could be a state project. Yeah, it could also potentially be a private development that's connecting private development, you know, could be paid for, maybe there's tolls, you know, that kind of thing that they use to fund it. So that could go a couple different ways. Many years ago, the conversation about a bridge across the lake was a private developer who was suggesting it. So that would have been potentially some sort of toll product rather than part of the state highway system. So yes, it could potentially limit private development, i.e., a bridge, but I think in this current kind of situation, we're not talking about a bridge, we're talking more about development from the perspective of islands. And that was 2,000 homes. I don't know the specifics. Much more than 2,000 homes unless you're packing it. Well, the last person I met said it was 200,000 units. Oh, there's 200,000 units. Yeah. Only your firm could afford to develop that. My feeling about this is I need more information. I'm seeing Kevin Stratton's involvement, I'm seeing Brady Brammer's involvement, I'm seeing a lot of people's involvement that I respect. I want to hear— I'm hearing all these different voices that we're going to put 200,000 lights on, you know, 200,000 units, we're going to put islands, we're going to clean up the lake, we're going to— I'm not— I don't want to sign anything. I need to know, I need to know more about what this means. You know, signing it, I don't want that to be misinterpreted when I sign it. Can I say, I don't think we've studied it as much as all those other people you're mentioning. Yeah. And again, I'm happy with an apple pie thing. I'd love to see the lake beautified, but I hate to say anything about anything else. Is that what you're saying? I agree. So you, I mean, potentially Terry's point, you could strike any provision, speak to it, just stick to the amplify. Is that— would you be comfortable with that? I just don't want to commit to anything. I mean, I, I love the lake. I grew up like you did, Tom, hunting and shooting down the lake. Um, but I'm not— I don't want to say I'm against— I'm not sure I'm against.

I need to know more.

Yeah, I don't know what I'm against. I know what I'm for, amplify, right? Yeah, yeah, but, but I don't want to sign something that could be misinterpreted. That meant that I was against this because I signed that. Yeah, that's the trick though, right? Because what's forcing this conversation is the $6 billion development. That's what's forcing our conversation. We wouldn't be having this conversation if that didn't come up. If we were just talking about some little development off the side of, you know, a boat launch or something, that's a whole different ballgame than what we're talking about. So this is more than a snowshacket.

Or even the bridge.

I mean, how do we know? Is that good?

Is that bad? Is that good?

Is that bad?

Well, then, but if we go on the development path, then it can be interpreted however they want to interpret it, right? You mean if HB 232 goes forward and it allows, you know, the, the ULA board to, you know, exercise authority to promote economic development, then yeah, you don't know what ultimately that's going to lead to. It could It could be something huge, it could be something relatively small. So I mean, that's the question. It opens the door. Are we okay opening the door? That's the question. How do we constrain it down to something? Like I said, we wouldn't be having this conversation except that it's something huge on the table. I was just going to say, um, that's, that's one of the concerns I think with the Natural Resource Stewardship Committee was they I think they would like to see some of the best scientific processes brought into the decision-making as well, instead of it being motivated by development funding. What's going to be the best thing to reach? How are we going to have the applied scenario where it is a cleaner lake that is enjoyed by everyone?

Thank you.

Without actual science being applied to the process and making sure that we're making good decisions based on facts, data, and science. And how is this going to affect future generations of people who live around the lake versus— there's an opportunity to develop that situation. So the argument for not I mean, if you're not defining development in there, whatever it is, at some point in the future, once you open the door, it's hard to stop, right? So that goes for the Natural Resource Commission. Their version was pretty focused on let's do this responsibly, let's do it right, what's your take on that? Yeah, I mean, you know, again, they're, they're position with respect to private development is just that deep caution should be exercised. So, well, I think too, the other thing we haven't talked about is this bill creates an authority. So it creates a governing board above and beyond what we currently have now. Councilmember Landson participates in a Utah Lake Commission, which really doesn't have hardly any teeth. The authority would create Organization with teeth. Yeah, so there's that kind of dynamic, right? I mean, they've got authority to bond, for example, you know, to fund improvements to the lake, you know. And again, that— I interpret that at least as being funding improvements that would enable private development, you know, whether that's, you know, the dredging or whether that's building, you know, causeways to get to the islands, you know, whatever it may be. So they're putting those mechanisms in place To, you know, allow that kind of development. I mean, obviously there's other portions of this bill that are related to cleanup and improving water quality and all those kinds of things. And again, I think that's the kind of thing that most everybody would support. Well, it wasn't our key focus on this authority and whether or not we're for this authority, whether this is where this authority takes us. We looked at that because we've got this authority and it's The next step is— I guess if I may, one of the things that over the last couple of weeks we have been encouraged by is this idea and suggestion that the board will have greater representation at the Utah County level than— so if, for example, the authority was created, there would be a majority of the voice represented Utah counties as compared to other jurisdictions— the governor, the Speaker of the House, Utah Department of Public Health, so on and so forth. However, we don't, we don't have anything concrete to Terry's point to say, yeah, this is, this is what is going to happen. We have the initial draft of the bill. The initial draft of the bill, we understand— well, in Matt's presentation the other day, we started listing, I think, all the different folks that have a hand in it. It's like, this is— my head spins. Yeah, there's this, this government agency, this government agency. But I do think this resolution is just making a statement at this time because— what do we have, any more dates in the session? March 4th. March 4th. We have one more formal. So really, this is just saying, please be cautious. I like the idea of being concerned. and, um, and saying that we want this to be done well scientifically, you know, with recreation. I, I don't think this binds us. This is just, this is just setting this up to the state legislature to say, please be careful, this is our concerns. At least that's how I view it. I don't view it as we can't change our mind later on, or we can't look at something. I just think it's a moment in time to say, please, please do this correctly. Well, similar to what we did with Red Mill Falls. I mean, this is a, this is This is a treasure. We don't want to see it pillaged. We want to keep it clean, natural, and beautiful. So, so the question is, if we do that, is that— what does that do to this commission that they want to create? And the real question is, are we in favor of this commission or not?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, it's a matter of opinion.

You know, if you ask me, I'm Personally, I'm concerned about anything that promotes or enables private development on the lake. I would—

I want—

I mean, personally, I want to see the lake kept in its natural state. You know, I'm all for development around the lake, that's great, but I think it should be kept as a, you know, for the scenic appeal that it has, for the recreation, you know, the trails, you know, the fishing, the boating, you know, whatever it is. That's what I think Utah Lake should be. To me, it's not a place that we should change by private development. That's, that's my personal opinion, and, you know, you may not agree with that. But this commission is the path to private development? The Utah Lake Authority is a path to that private development. So go back to that question. So, so that's why one of the options was, well, if, if the sponsors of the bill or the supporters of the bill really don't intend private development on the lake, it's really designed for the apple pie stuff, Well, then let's take out the stuff that enables the private development, right? So that's one option. I don't think the supporters of the bill would agree to that because I think that is one of their objectives, to enable this private development.

So again, it's just a matter of, you know, how strong a position—

how do you feel and what position do you want to take with respect to the lake? Could the resolution basically just say As a council, this is what we feel, and as this moves forward, we would ask that you do this, this, this, and this to protect, you know, the beauty of the lake, all of those things. Not necessarily saying one way or another that we support this or we support that. Basically, it's our resolution. We want to see The problem with that— and you certainly can say that— the problem with that is, again, supporters of private development will say, well, the beauty of the lake will only be enhanced by this private development. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So to make that statement, nobody's going to be offended by that, but at the same time, nobody's going to be influenced by it either. Do I think your caution is wise? I just think— sorry, go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. I just think when you create a regulatory body, they will regulate. If they have the ability to tax, they will tax. In the history of our country, we never created an agency that threw their hands up and said, we have nothing to do. They always increase their power, increase in their scope, and they increase, uh, in their funding through taxation, right? And so the real issue is, are you going to create an agency that has the ability to do all this. Yeah, to Jesse's point, I mean, the Utah Lake Authority, once constituted, would reasonably say, well, the legislature gave us this power to zone land and issue bonds to fund improvements on the lake, so I guess that's what they want us to do. So we're going to do it. So to Jesse's point, I do agree with Jesse. I want to just maybe share a little bit of a contrary view. If, for example, and we're dealing in a whole bunch of if scenarios here, so if the legislature believes— members of legislature believe they have the votes. Do we want to be in a position where we can positively influence the outcomes? I.e., do we want to be on the side of an authority that we have greater control and opportunity to influence? And so we, we essentially advocate for it. We say, yeah, we're comfortable with the creation of this authority. Or do you want to come out in direct opposition? They have votes, then we're recognized as somebody who fought against it. Are we going to have a voice in the future?

Yeah, that's the balancing act.

It's a bad scenario. And I have seen with Mr., um, Brady Brammer that there was a survey about a $2 per month, um, I believe it was a surcharge that he had put out there that would help fund this, that they would become a fee that would be part of your sewer base fee. And I don't know if that was also a concern related to— that would be the funding mechanism, would be a sewer base fee increase. One of the potential funding mechanisms, yeah. I mean, the others, you know, they've also obviously built into HB 232 the ability to collect sales tax revenues. So, you know, that sort of implies that they expect to have sales taxes within the lake. You know, from development in there. So as a potential source of funding as well. But this idea of a toilet tax is not unique to the Utah Lake Authority. This is— the Utah Department of Environmental Quality have actually floated this as well to say, look, as a state agency, because you discharge, City of Orem, into Utah Lake and all the other municipalities surrounding Utah Lake, that we are going to assess this toilet tax. On you so that we can help pay for the remediation. So yeah, it's— I think this discussion is, yeah, we all agree the lake needs to be cleaned up. How do we pay for it? That's the real question. Well, take it from mainland Port Authority that we're doing millions of dollars. But I, but I think that question, that's the concern, is in creating the utility Are you creating another inland port authority? And you saw, but you saw what happened with Salt Lake City when they pushed against it. How involved now is Salt Lake City in influencing the future? None. But is there anything that says that, let's say we just go along and say what we want, now they're doing what they want to want, what they want, so we've got influence? Right, that's the thing. Yeah, right. I mean, I think we just vote either, either we're okay with it, I mean, we agree with it in concept and that's why we vote for it, or we don't agree with it in concept and that's why we vote against it. Well, going to the committee, we don't think we have much of a voice in it one way or the other, so do we just stir the pot by having a voice, by creating it? Is it good that we think the legislature will listen to our resolution, but at least we told them what we think. I don't think they care. Care is too strong a word. I don't know if they will move to it. Is the resolution firmly in there or not? I saw the last version. The last version I've seen, and Jamie, maybe you've seen something else, they, they're basically— they sort of express support for the local representation element of the bill. I can't remember their language with regard to the private development. I think it's, you know, something to the effect that they, you know, are exercising or asking for caution, you know, that kind of a thing, and make sure it's responsible. And that's, you know, that kind of language. My last back and forth with Isaac Paxton, Deputy Mayor, this morning, he said they're, they're becoming less and less excited about what they're hearing about the bill. Again, what we only have is the introduced copy, but some things have happened or are in the process of happening. What he's hearing is not necessarily something that's incredibly encouraging. So when I talked to him last week, last Thursday, he was like, we all need to get on board. This morning was a little bit of a different— Now I'm cautiously looking Yeah, yeah. What if we support a Utah County-based measure majority? I think that's important to us. And the recreation point, maybe leave— if there's a deep caution in, or not even adjust the developmental part. I don't know, I'm just wondering if there's a way to show we like this portion because we're going to work as a nation, you're going to do it at all. But I don't know. So we want a clean lake, we want a nice environmentally wonderful place, um, we don't want the lake authority because we're worried that it's going to create this entity that has taxation properties. But if you're going to do it, please make sure we have a majority of representation in that board. I mean, how do you— I think, I think you need more than majority. If one person goes sideways, whatever, you actually need like 65%. Given the, given the public interest in this bill, I don't think this issue is going to be decided by the 22nd of February, which is your next council meeting. So I think potentially there's an opportunity there to essentially table this discussion for time tonight and say we're going to revisit it on the 22nd to see if the landscape has moved a little bit or which way the landscape has moved. And then at that point, make determination as to whether or not you want to provide support or opposition to resolutions. I'm okay with that. You think us doing that makes this move one way or the other? I mean, if we, if we do come out against it, I think this— would that help us get to that point? By the next year, you know, individually write our local representatives and tell them, you know. I don't necessarily think one entity alone is going to move the needle. I think if there were a group of 5 or 6 of our county cities that were united in opposition or support, I think that Yeah, you know, and Jamie's a lot more familiar with the political landscape on this than I am, but, you know, maybe that no first city is the one that wants to step out, you know, onto the ledge and directly opposing this kind of thing. The first one through the wall always gets plugged. Right. So, but on the other hand, if nobody does it, then it's sort of You know, they've talked about it and there's not unanimity there either. There are some pretty strong voices focused on preservation of the lake and then there are other voices focused on, well, if we can be a big part of governance of this authority moving forward, then it's probably worth our while to get behind the vote. So you have environment and governance and they don't always agree. And I don't think there's any need to, even if you don't want private development on the lake, I don't think you have to outright come out in opposition to HB 232. I mean, you can do these options, but, you know, removing the elements that enable the private development on the lake, or just coming out and say we're opposing to, you know, opposing any private development, uh, you know, asking for more local representation, that kind of a thing. Those are things you could do without coming flat out opposing the bill. So one other option, you know, like Jamie was kind of intimating, I think, is in the next week or two we could try and reach out to other communities and see if we could build a consensus. If you want to go this direction, maybe, you know, I hear a couple of you saying maybe you might be okay with private development, but if the majority of you are opposed to that, we could reach out to other cities and see if they also would, you know, sort of support that so we can kind of all come out together. And potentially, if that's where everybody ends up. Do you think that would be in time for whenever this is going to end? Let's say it's going to end pretty quick. Boy, I don't know. Well, I can tell you that Mayor Julie Fulmer from Vineyard has been asking me and Mayor Carolyn Lumberg from Lyndon our opinions, and she's been up on Hill lobbying for me after this. I've been raising her representation fees and things like that, so she's already I mean, she's already up there. I think Vineyard and Lyndon would probably be easy ones to add because they're already, they're already working on this. Yeah, you know, you know, a week or so ago we met with the other city attorneys from Utah County and we talked about this a little bit, and they were all very interested in seeing what we were going to do. So, you know, and I kind of expressed to them my feelings on this, and, and they, like I said, they were very interested in and seeing the final product of what we came up with. So, you know, maybe that there would be interest on the part of other cities to join us in a similar type of resolution, and that will probably be the most effective strategy. Yeah, I mean, we could, uh, you know, we could start doing that tomorrow, you know, contacting these other cities and see how they felt. We have to have a majority. Can't you— if 51%. It doesn't work, right? I mean, not, not the diss on Utopia or whatever, but it was 51% was Midvale, Layton, and West Valley, and you can't have that. No, right, right. That's probably— so it needs to be at least a 60-40 or 70-30 or whatever it is, so we have some teeth. If not, it's— we're gonna get bulldozed. What Dave's talking about, we won't pass something 30 or 60/40. We'll be one small player in this big development, and we basically have no seat at the table. You know, we get to sit at the table, but we will not control. But if we can get Utah County to be on board, then, then we're talking. Yeah, then we're talking. There's a decent chance we can get more cities than we can get the county commission. I mean, yeah, I think— I mean, they're going to raise it. They're going to have a $2 or rate, you know, tax rates for this. No, no, no, no, don't, don't start screwing with our taxes. That goes back to this commission in the first place. So I mean, for me personally, I would like to see the commission not happen. You'd like to see the whole ULA not happen, Utah Lake Authority not happen? Yeah, just keep it the way things are with Utah Lake Commission. What Jesse was saying, once you create something, now it's got that before. Now we've got a neighbor that's got— So right now you're talking about hitting a pause, at least on anything that's right now, right? That's what we're deciding because we're running out of time. But, um, so the question is, if we pause it and we go 2 weeks, then it's too late to do anything, or if there's enough support We come out to say, hey, you're going to— like, the region created this sanctuary. That's where we're at. We try and gather consensus from other cities. Well, there's a legislative town hall on Thursday. Yeah, I saw that postcard. There were 5 of our legislators here in the forum, possibly more. I really think that most of the other cities are actually asking. I think so. Nobody's going there. I would think so. I'll look forward to doing something sooner than later.

I, I kind of feel like, you know, maybe a lot of other cities would feel the same but are afraid to say it.

You know, so if we could hit the ground running and say, okay, we can go out from the different cities. And if they are interested, then you can always call a special city council meeting, whatever you want to do. That— they have choices to do that. Which is the most fastest approach? I think we should get broadcast first. We need to see where our— who our playing partners are and if they want to play. So then we come out and we make a statement we're opposed to it and, uh, watch everybody else find Say thanks, or they can leave again like usually. So I mean, if we pause it, we have to facilitate the other cities and see who's doing that.

Yeah, no, we don't—

we don't have—

we don't have—

I don't have a concern contacting all the other cities, asking the question. getting with Steve and sending out what we were proposing and allowing others to see it. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. The only risk is then obviously the word gets out that Orem is trying to kill this bill. No, we'll just put Provo's name on it.

No, I'm just saying, I mean, that, that goes to the concern you expressed.

I mean, I agree, that's the risk. I think it's a percentage thing. If you have the If you have the bandwidth and you have the support, then it might be a 60/40 or whatever, and then you might be okay. But I also think too that Bill Sponsor has been— I mean, this is the second year that this legislation has been in front of the legislature. I think he's been open to listening, and if he has 4 or 5 communities approaching together and say, we have these concerns, I don't know how he's going to respond. Yeah, yes, maybe he'll say, hey, I've already negotiated as far as I can negotiate. And if he has, then he's come back and reports to you that that's exactly what's happened. So Highland Pleasant Grove. Okay, so do we want to repeat this on our ticket today, right? So do we want to vote on that tonight in that meeting, or do you want to table it? Table unless we can do our homework. We almost need to do a special meeting potentially like next week because we're gonna be out of time. Right now they just sent it to committee, so it's not even— it's sitting in committee right now, so it might not even come out of Potentially, yeah. So I still think we need to review diligence. I think we pause it for sure, as Tom said. You like that idea? Sure. So we have to be on it. So just to make sure I understand your direction, you want us to start contacting other cities basically in an effort to kill the the bill. Or is that right? That's what I heard you say, Mayor. Or have a certain representation thing. We're still— it's a new taxing authority that is like becoming a thing on our leg that has all kinds of power. I, I don't think— I don't think Representative Brandenburg is going to be interested in killing the bill. Well, I'm not saying he would be interested in killing the bill. I'm So 2 options. One would be to contact the other cities about killing the bill entirely. The other would be modifying it to give us greater representation, taking out the provisions that enable private development, maybe other things that you want. Yeah, all those kind of things. So what you're killing the bill is Okay, I don't know if you want to take a hill to go find a friendly compromise. I don't know. I think we had a percentage that we were 60% or whatever. The bill that's passed should be about 60%, but it is. I mean, that's the point. It is. I guess I would just represent— I think we set our sights too high. I don't think we can get there. I think what we should do is That's just— but I just think, yeah, 5 or 6 or 7 cities in our county have the same question about, say, we don't want this in our county. Well, they haven't, but we have to talk to them. Mayor Heather has. Well, I just— I, I think that the direction you want to go is great. I think you should investigate. You should ask other cities what they're interested in, try to get a consensus. My one concern is that if this bill dies in this session, what's next session? Is it going to be an authority where Utah County doesn't have a place at the table? That would, that would be my only thought of caution. You know, do you want to sit at the table or do you not want to sit at the table?

And I, I don't know how Representative Representative Brammer will fill it all out. I think what you're doing is judicious.

I think it's wise to reach out. I just, I just want to give that extra word of caution. So can we take a position instead of doing a resolution, like a negative position towards this bill? Do negative, neutral, or positive, right? So would that be enough of a message, initial message?

Well, how would you, how would you express that position, but not by resolution?

that. We take a negative position, as does the, as does the Utah League of Cities and Towns. They say, hey, we're, we're pro, con, or we're just watching. Yeah, I mean, I guess another way we could do this is work through the Utah League of Cities and Towns and ask them, I don't know, Jamie, to oppose this for these reasons, and they could essentially represent our interests that way, right? But I think that part of the advantage, I mean, potentially of doing a resolution, is it's something you that you can circulate, that other people can see what your reasons are, what your position is, why, right. And so, you know, it potentially gives you greater publicity, maybe it energizes other cities to kind of do the same thing, or the public even contact their representatives and express how they feel, whereas if you just take a position, I don't think any of that kind of stuff happens. So, well, I think the other thing is too, we need to point out for sure where those other cities and towns are at. We're making assumptions. They're likely to be full-blown in favor of this because of what it could do for them development-wise. I mean, we don't know. And so I think, you know, a good first step would be to just reach out and say, hey, what are you feeling? Where are you at on this? But I think you can come up with a resolution Yeah, the struggle is when you call other cities and ask them what their position is, it's like Jamie said, there, you know, there's a lot of different individuals, you know, different city councils. I mean, it's hard to get one definite position, you know. So that's the struggle. So you said you have a meeting with other mayors on Thursday, is that right? Yeah, this Thursday. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I could get something to you to To potentially do that, then.

I mean, I don't, you know, I think we've got the basic outline here unless you see major deviations you want from this, but, you know, we can make a few minor modifications to kind of stay with what you've indicated here tonight. Yeah, so we're pretty good with that. All right, let's do that and just try and get back as quickly as we can. All right, thank you. We've got, uh, yeah, we're not going to do a presentation, just kind of Talk quickly. Okay.

Hi, well, most of you know me.

I'm Kenna Matthews. I'm the Community Services Manager here at the City of Orem, and I get to manage this great team of people behind me to do neighborhood preservation and code enforcement in our community. So many of you know we moved code enforcement out of the police department back in July, and we moved it into Community Services under the City Manager's Department. And we originally had 2 code enforcement officers, civilian. Now we have 3. So I'd like to introduce Jeff Turner. He was in our water department and he bailed from water and came over to us. We're very happy about that. This is Gary Ledoux. You've met him before, most of you. He was with our original team. We have Richard Earl. He's new to our team as well. And then Brady Andreassen is our police officer assigned to our team. So he makes sure that we stay safe in our duties. So the goal of neighborhood— neighborhood improvement team is to keep a community standard in our community. We try to do it in a compassionate way, but in a forceful way. And so we work on proactive and reactive cases in our community, throughout the community, on non-criminal nuisances. So that could be junk yards. bad landscaping, parking on landscape, occupancy issues, apartment issues, things like that. We go out, we warn people, we cite people, and then we have an administrative law judge process. It's a civil process, so most of these do not go criminal, they go civil. So if someone is not doing what they're supposed to do, they can't go in front of a criminal— excuse me, a civil judge. And they can force them to do what they need to do. So that's what we're doing. We've had fairly good success in the last 6 months. We've resolved about over 250 cases, have come into compliance in that time frame, and we've looked at almost over 500 cases. We still have some that have either weren't— they were already compliant, you know, someone was just complaining how we made sure they were compliant. compliant. We do have occupancy and apartment cases take a little bit longer, usually the 30-day fix. Apartments and occupancy can take up to a year depending on the situation. So I appreciate all the work these guys are doing in the community. I think we're starting to get notes from people, emails and things that we are doing a good job. So I think we must be.

So if you have any questions, you can reach out to me.

And we would love if you have people complaining to you, please have them call 311 or 229-2000 or orem.org/help. Report that to us and then we can go out and make those determinations. We're also working with a lot of homeless camps, been cleaning up a lot of homeless camps lately as well. So any questions?

They've done a great job.

We have an Airbnb that's probably in my neighborhood. So they've been out, they know all about it. Thank you for the great work. All right, we're just here to serve and make Warren better. So if you have any problems or issues, let me know, or one of these guys. So thank you. Retreat, we'll talk about that code, about the cardboard. Yeah, that is city code. So I don't think we need to look at that. It's just something— this is a code somebody parking an unregistered vehicle in their driveway. On their own property. On your own property. In the carport. We need to move it. To me, that's an American person. So yeah, and we're enforcing the code that, again, city council— now we can change, but my property, I can park where I want in my carport. That's wrong. So we need to look at that. Yeah.

Anybody?

Somebody's trying to bring up to another conversation.

I mean, that's—

I think that's overreaching, way overreaching. I think at some point we can have a conversation just about what's our, you know, if there's any that are traveling excessively. That sounds like one. Yeah, I understand parking on the grass, but you're parking in your driveway.

Yes.

So anyway, that'd be something Okay, he's got something with the car. That's fine. We've got, uh, that's true. I'll be really brief. There's 3 reasons that you change a code: is to clarify it, is to have it come into compliance with state law, or to define the duties of the governing body. And so the changes in this document are addressing those 3 issues. So for example, uh, there was a provision in this code that provided that a person didn't attend 25% of the Planning Commission meetings, they were automatically taken off the Planning Commission. But the problem is maybe no one knew about that. And so you had a person that was attending meetings and voting without the City Council even knowing that that person is no longer qualified. So we've taken that out, and we basically said the city council could decide when somebody is not qualified by removing them instead. And we encourage people to attend their meetings, but we're taking the automatic sections out and giving that authority back to the council so that they can make a decision as to why somebody is missing 25%. I mean, they have cancer or medical issues.

Do we have that in our other committees?

They're in attendance. Yeah, so the only issue with that is you have people in a committee that are voting on an important issue and they really have no authority to vote because they've been removed by the code. So it'd be better for the governing body to know about that and decide when a person's removed instead of being And I think this actually— our boards and commissions, when we looked at those, these are the kind of advisory boards. This would be consistent. I think now we added maybe. Yeah. The second automatic removal was the issue you talked about. It's just not a matter of removal. And now, like you say, someone doesn't qualify, they're not aware of it, we're not aware of it until a vote. So yeah, making sure that we're not That's right. So it actually— it would be brought to the City Council's attention that a person on the Planning Commission has missed approximately 25%, and then the City Council can decide after interviewing the person, like Renee said, is it a health issue or is it just too bogged down at work? And the City Council decide whether they should stay on or whether you should remove them, but it's not automatic. someone, do we not talk about that? Do we tell them that? Like, if someone is new? I don't think so. You just kind of tell them to come. Jason's just saying yes. Yeah, I have meetings with all of them, possibly. No, what I'm saying, what I'm saying is, is they should be aware of it when they're first put on, right? Like, There is a— I don't think that's something that they would know. Is that all commissions? Are we talking about planning?

No, it's on the care commission.

I was just told we've been selected, show up at the city council meeting. But care was only like a couple times, right? So if you missed the meeting, then you were— oh no, during March and April we met. That's true, that's true. May I address that? I've asked you, girl, for talking policies and procedures for the planning commission. He found an older copy, and so we intend to update that so that the Planning Commission will know about these rules. The second automatic removal— automatic removal in the code is a person had been out of the city for more than 60 consecutive days or had moved. We've now taken that out and put it on the onus on the Planning Commission member to give a notice if they've actually officially moved out of the city. Again, they're still on the commission, they've officially moved out. Now the city council can decide when to remove them and when to replace them. So there's no allegation that somebody voted on an issue and their vote really wasn't added. You have a question?

No.

So, so those are the 2 technical issues. We really— I mean, this is self-explanatory, the other changes. Do you have any other questions about them? All right, last item on the regular agenda. Here, this is just a reminder. I've reached out to you several times about a follow-up to our retreat, to your retreat. We would very much appreciate it if you could kind of identify what your top priorities are for this current calendar year so that we can— or fiscal year— so we can incorporate them into, uh, our operating budget, our annual budget. We're in the process now initiating those conversations and want to make sure that where we are directing resources, both financial and human, that we are mindful of where your priorities are. So just as a reminder, this last year you as a council set the following 5 priorities as your areas of focus. Can I send this out again? Safe and livable neighborhoods, thriving, thriving and balanced business environment, dependable infrastructure, community-focused government, skilled and talented workforce. Those are the ones from last year, right? Correct. So that it's on the top of our email, would you resend it? Absolutely.

And I like it.

You want the things underneath each of those? I like, I like that we had an opportunity. So we can, we can continue down this path if that's the majority of your opinion, and then we can continue to develop executables that are right in. Why don't you send it out, have everybody confirm back if that's what they want, or if they want something else. We'll do that. I want to move cars, let's say. That's all. In that apartment, in an apartment, and then yeah, on my carport. Our dear Father in heaven, we're grateful to actually have to be together tonight and to discuss these important issues for our community. We ask you at this time for that continued blessing and for a special blessing at this time on this food that we're about to eat. Strengthen us and help us to use that strength in serving you. We're grateful for that.

Amen.

Amen.

So we as staff have been working on increasing transparency, and we've met a number of times to have this discussion, and we want to show you where we are heading. With this topic in this particular effort, so I invited Pete here just to give me an update on work as you've been doing. Okay, awesome. So yeah, this is the transparency portal, and this is kind of our first stab at it. So we went around and gathered all the resources that we thought that we could think of to provide citizens a nice one-stop shop for all things transparency. So if they just come to orem.org/transparency, they'll see all these different things. Right here at the top, we've got the records request. So anything that they would like to grandma request, it's just right there, easy to access. And then here are all the different resources that we've compiled. So these 2 here, the projects being built and the applications being considered, is a look into our development services program where it tracks the applications that come in or the building permits that have been issued. We have all the city's budgets and financial documents right here, just a quick link. This Utah Transparency site, this is where you can see the money that the city has paid out to various vendors or, you know, different contracts, and that also shows employee compensation at that site. We have a quick link to our city code, so anybody can check it from there. We have our election results and financial disclosures that just links to the stuff that Jody does. The studies and surveys, these are things that we've done over the years as far as reports. Surveys to the citizens on various topics. Those have all been compiled. This is a brand new thing that we've done with the voting records. I want to show this to you, get your thoughts on it. So each of those areas have a searchable thing, like certain dates, or like, how will they know how to find what they're looking for? Well, you can go into each one because each one does kind of have its own little— like, so if you go into this one from the state, you can search whatever it is you're looking for. Others are not quite, quite that same way because it's just like a list of documents. For instance, like the studies and reports, it's just a list. The development services one, just so you know, we're modifying the interface on that. It was, it was built as kind of an internal system, but we're trying to make it more out— better interface to that, to the citizens. So that one's still being developed. You were going to show the voting Yeah, so this is the City Council recap. And so basically, this is a thing to look at each meeting and how the issues that were on there, what you talked about in the work session, what you did in the regular session. And it's just a nice quick graphical way of seeing, you know, was an item approved, denied, or continued. So we have kind of the high-level recap, what you did as a group, and then we've got the individual votes for each item that was on the agenda. So And so this is from the January 11th, we just had the 2 things. Okay. And then we did the same thing for January 25th meeting. So you can see, same sort of deal, but just gives people a quick look at how things went. And then we're also going to post this on social media the day after council meetings so that people see that. We have to also with our YouTube link, Councilmember Miller brought it up, we have to—

we've now heightened the link.

So when you go to the video, Open the notes, it'll have each item and a hyperlink directly to that discussion. So that will be— So we'll skip the ad here, but down here you can see how everything has been timestamped. So whatever you're interested in, you just click on that. So then it goes straight to the item. So then And everything from the, uh, each of those little breaks. So we'll do that for each meeting going forward. Um, city communications, if people want to get the newsletter, follow us on social media, they can do it there. The resolutions and ordinances I think we're still building this page out. That one's being built out too. We're gonna go back 5 years on all the residents' resolutions and ordinances that have been adopted by the city council. And then the agendas and minutes, that's always been available, but we just added it here to the transparency portal. So anything that is missing that you'd like to see built out further? So on the meetings tab, when you go government meetings, like, are the videos still accessible? On this page, the meeting page. You used to have the little video camera over on the right. Does that mean like— Down here, like here?

Yeah.

So if they want to join today, it's that one? Yeah, right here. Right here. Yeah. Any further direction for us on this? I mean, it's doing exactly what we want as far as transparency, making it easily accessible to people. I think it looks great. Yeah, um, the only— I don't know if it's too big of a mess or an easy way to do it, but where you've got each individual voting, you know, it would be nice to have like a Oh, like across all time? Well, not forever, but I would do it like on an annual basis where you would have the voting records over the course of that year. So somebody could click on it and they could easily just kind of do a grid search. I guess I don't know if it would be much of a hassle. Yeah, we did talk about that a little bit. Jesse brought it up. The fear with kind of the— I'm just gonna call it a scorecard, if you will.

Yeah.

Because it doesn't kind of tell— it'll say, you know, each, each elected official, how many yeas, how many nays, how many abstains. But one, we don't want to make it look like— our thought was we don't want to make it look like, hey, who voted yes the most times? Because it doesn't tell the full story of— there may be a good reason why they didn't vote no. So we opted for each meeting, each issue, how did they vote on that issue. Because they may say, you know, Mayor Young— like we looked at so far, right? Mayor Young 10-0, another council member, you know, 6-4. And it could look like, well, that one just says no a lot, but there may be so much more to the story. How do you show— and I'll just use like a past example— the vote on the bond for the rec center and the library hall? You know, I heard a lot of people say, oh, I wish they would have separated those. said that as a council member, how would you say I voted against it because I think they should be separated? So we don't have that kind of a narrative. You did have to watch the video, and we do link to that, you know, go watch that item and see, see why.

But we don't want to—

that's what we, what we're fearful of is we don't want to editorialize on your behalf, right, you know. And so we'd rather them go watch you from your mouth, how you said it. But I recognize that's an additional step. I don't know how you do it, but yeah. Yeah. I think you do it by making accessibility as easy as possible. Like, you have to mark, right? This is how disciplines, you know, just mark when they're voting. It's easy to access. Yeah, we can do an additional mark on the vote, but the discussion's not allowed to happen before the vote started. This is going to be a button on the main When you go to org.org, there'll be a button to hit. Yeah, when we're ready to go full. Yeah, exactly. And we plan to do a big marketing push too for this too. I mean, honestly, we're going to go as far as utilizing our ability to access the billboards at University Place, let them know that the city council is launching this transparency initiative, emails, social media, all that stuff. meetings, and then you wanted to put the planning commission videos, and you got that up in a day. That was just fantastic. I think you should market that guy up because I think it's something the citizens will love. Yeah, that, you know, Warren's doing everything they can to be fully transparent with all the information. I think people love it. That other student's gonna be calling me.

That's right, a little hand template.

I want to think about it more, but I'll see if there's something that you can look at simply to give you a general idea of how people are voting over time. That is one thing, without going back and watching each one. It's good if you want to do that, and that's what you want on an ongoing basis. But if some citizen just says, I want to get a general idea of what my council people are voting for, nice if there was something that was more longer term. So Yeah, I think if we can find a way to add the context to it, then that could work really well. Essentially, just be tight, come up with a title for each loader, or not be on the side, anyway. Yeah, anyway, give us some thought. Okay, okay, that'd be my main suggestion. But other than that, I think this is gonna be awesome.

Okay, excellent.

Yeah, so right now it's not published anywhere. You just have to go directly to orm.org/transparency and you can find it. We haven't put it into the menu, we haven't added a button or anything because we're not quite ready to go public with it, but you could find it if you'd like to look at it. And I can even— so when are you ready to go with it? Um, I think then the last thing is just fixing the development services, right? And then adding some of the ordinances and resolutions. And if it's taking too long, we can launch and have coming soon on those pages or something like that. Yeah, but we're close. Yeah. All right, continuing on. As far as this goes through the upcoming city council agenda, uh, I've got consent items, which are approval of minutes. We got appointments, board commissions, transportation advisory commission, city impact commission, area advisory commission. I know George very well. I know George, yeah.

And he would be Great.

I don't know, these are reappointments. I imagine that he is not supposed to be better. Yeah, I think just George made a water. So you guys are all good with George? How about CJ? Anybody have any comments or concerns? Who's over transportation?

Sam Kelly.

And which one of us are— do you know any of this? I don't. Oh, he's a new appointee. He works in logistics with UPS, so transportation is obviously of interest to him, highly, his work and as well as his education background. Yeah, I agree. All right, and then we've got, uh, we've got a motion. Uh, this is part of the consignments. Mayor, City Council, Director of the State Council relating to the school district split study. Can we take that out? I would like to. You just need— you just— he said any, any, any. Yeah, I didn't know if he's familiar with that. So when you present it, I'll ask that we Move that out for separate discussion. Okay, so you want me to leave it? You can take it out now, but we can just take it out now. That'd be fine.

I think it's a bigger item than approving minutes and these others.

I mean, it's a big budget item. Okay, you want to move it to just a discussion? So, I'm sorry, Jody's just gonna— I would prefer to be going to consent and Tom officially, right?

And then we just move it to the bottom.

8.5. The top, the first one. Oh, are you saying it goes to the top of the state? Yes. So it's 8.0. And then beyond that, we've got a public hearing ordinance, uh, we've got 2 of those, Jason. We've got our Utah Lake Authorities will just table that. Are you guys going to table that or are you going to continue it to the 22nd? Let's continue it. Yes, we're going to continue it, but we might even, if we get enough feedback, we may have a special town meeting. Sure, we can continue to— yeah, just continue it. If you need to re-notice it, we'll re-notice it for a special meeting. It's fine. We just want you to say 8 more. That's it. Okay, gotcha. Thank you. Heather, do we have to put where we continue it to the next council meeting? If you want to continue it to the next council meeting, or you can just continue it without dates. Okay, then the last thing I'm going to be suggesting to talk about— okay, so going back to, uh, 8.1.8.2, Jason, like the last week Jason, remind me this business. It was part of— it's not standalone business that was— it was like a beauty thing that wanted to have this to their spa. Oh, that's right. This is C3. Yeah, so it's already allowed on C2. So the other C3s were Smithson, is that right?

Right.

We haven't got anything new to C2. For the higher— the rezonages, that's right. Okay, all right, anything else? Where can we create any additional school rezonages? Yes, okay, I'll try to make it quick. Um, I've given you the handout For Summerfest, I want to draw your attention to a new carnival vendor. We're very excited about this instead of the one we've had in the past that's been a little sketchy. Silver State Amusements is our new carnival partner. What? Do you know where they're at? Um, Steve, where are they out of? California? Oh yeah, they are. Yeah, they're out of, I think, Fresno area. So where was the other one at? The nice thing about this is they're going to have unlimited ride bracelets, and then you don't get on the ride, don't get frustrated, you don't get to spend it. You can spend it on food and games at the end of the night. So I think that's really going to be a nice addition. I did mention that the prices are not going to be as low as they were for other carnival providers. So it's going to be an increased price. And I'm sure there'll be some citizens, but when you pay your employees, you have to sort of—

Bucket ticket?

No, it's more than— well, I can't remember if it's a bucket ticket, but the rides are going to be— either it's going to be more tickets or more dollars per ticket. I can't remember. Our theme is Worm United. I think that's a really nice theme based on, you know, the divisive— and so, but please put this in your calendar. I would encourage you to come to as many of these as you can. Summerfest. I'm also a natural resource person. They weighed in on this lake, so we have that. They're also going to have some orange stewardship awards. This is usually awarded to businesses that have improved. RC Willys won it before, and people have like gone in and improved, like getting rid of the LED lighting. They also are going to have a free swap, which is Sharing We All Prosper. which is kind of a swap meet without charge in conjunction with Orange City Cleanup. And then they're going to be doing a social media post every week in conjunction with PEAT, and I think you just saw the first one that just came out today. It's nice graphics. My last one is Arts Council. Check out Orange Stories. This is something we've been doing for 7 years. Windsor Elementary will be— Orange Stories is where the kids draw person in our community. They draw the face or whatever, and then they talk about why this person is important. This Thursday, there's going to be a serenade sing-in with Utah Valley Skyline Chorus. If you want a cheap date, come up Thursday at 7. It's going to be a sing-along, families of all ages. The programming: Summerfest entertainment, the summer concert series, and then utility box art. Is Nate still here? Okay, um, basically we've got a website where people can submit their art, and these are where we wrap utility boxes. They're working with Utopia as well as Rocky Mountain Power to gain access to their boxes, and so we collect this and beautify it and fill these boxes. So any questions, comments? I'm done.

Thank you.

Anything else?

I'll just do a shout out to Hannah. I sat in on the neighborhood commission. Anyway, she did a great job. That's just the people who are really interested in revitalizing our district. Pete, Pete, I invited him to Zoom room.

We'd like to call this meeting to order and welcome everyone tonight. We'd like to start out with an opening prayer by Mike Preston. Our kind Heavenly Father, we're grateful We're grateful to have this opportunity to assemble here today at this city council meeting. We're grateful to have the opportunity to be heard as citizens and to focus on the needs and, and the business of this city. We ask thee that thy spirit will abide with all of us. And that the opinions that are spoken will be measured and listened to with confidence and with, and with understanding. We ask thee that thou will bless the council members and the mayor, that they always remember that they are here to to provide the service for these— for the citizenry of this city. And we ask thee that the citizens be grateful for their service. And we pray for the Spirit to be with us in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Thank you, Mike.

Now we'd like to ask Denny Preston to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Thank you, Denny. Now we'd like to allow some time for personal appearances. And essentially, each of you have up to 3 minutes to say what you'd like to say. And we encourage you to to keep it under 3 minutes or you'll drop through the floor. But if you can keep it less, that's good too. Okay, to define this, time has been set aside for the public to express their ideas, concerns, and comments on items not scheduled as public hearings on the agenda. Those wishing to speak are encouraged to show respect for those who serve the city. Comments should focus on issues concerning the city. Those wishing to speak should have signed in before the beginning of the meeting. And please limit your comments to 3 minutes. So the first person on the list is Bladen Lautensack.

Mayor and Council, it's nice to be back.

I'm here for a couple reasons tonight.

First of all, um, I—

it was appropriate for me.

I'm—

I needed to have felt I needed to offer an apology, a public apology to, uh, Councilwoman Debbie Luray. Um, I approached her after our—

your very first meeting after the meeting in a very less than friendly way and was making some points, and it was just out of line. It was not— it was wrong.

And so I just felt I needed to stand publicly and apologize to you and tell you I'm sorry.

I accept your apology.

Thank you very much.

And that being said, I'd just like to— I'm watching the clock, Mayor— just share a couple of my thoughts and Debbie, I would have, I would have done this 2 weeks ago except I've been sick and I wasn't even sure I was going to be here, but I felt, um, this was an important part of me being here tonight was to face you face to face and, and let those—

because there were others that were here when I think I was kind of vocal.

So I'm, I'm kind of— it's the referee in me. I'm kind of learning, uh, where to draw the line. So. Um, that being said, um, let me just say this. Look, heaven knows I'm not perfect, um, and I've been paying attention over the last few weeks, few days, and one thing that's concerned me is there's been a lot of things that have been said, um, over the last few days about our new mayor and our city council in a negative way. Um, and I just want to assert that I know that our mayor and council, they're not perfect either. But this I do know. I do know that our mayor, Dave Young, is a man of integrity, as are the other council members.

And I think we need to remember that.

A concern I've had is— boy, the time goes fast— this issue of transparency has been raised. And, you know, we We voted, we wanted a change, we've seen a change. And this issue that concerning our mayor, city council members have not been fully transparent, that's just bull.

That's just not true.

And I, especially knowing Mayor Young, that's not how he works. Maybe things in the past have been handled differently with our city management, but we voted for change. And our new mayor is delivering, and our council on, on their promises. And so let me, let me just say this— don't cut me off— all this nonsense that's been being said as of late about the majority, that there's been a lot of issues with regard to the city planning, the master plan. I'm sorry. Give me 10 seconds. That, that the more— those who voted did not represent the majority in the city. My feeling is this: it's our civic responsibility to get out and vote, and if we want to have a say, that's where we do it, through voting. So if there are other people didn't vote and, and they're not in agreement with what's going on, they just need to be silent and quit their whining. And I just want to say, our new mayor Council members are keeping the word.

We appreciate what you're doing.

Mr. Mayor, we have your back. Next we've got Aaron Davidson. Good evening, Mayor and council members. I just want to make a few comments on the motions going to be discussed about dividing the school district the, the possibility of doing that. First off, I, I kind of disagree with it because of the cost, mainly the administrative costs. The Alpine School District, if you look at their salaries, the business manager makes $329,000, the superintendent makes $319,000, and there's several of them that make in the 6-digit with the first digit being a 2. That being said, I do agree with splitting the district because I believe that— well, back to the first not agreeing. If they were virtuous administrators, I think fewer administrators over something like that would be best, but I don't believe that the Alpine School District is full of virtuous leaders. Last year they locked— they started locking the parents out, and the parents should be the main stakeholders in the district, and they locked the parents out. We called the police because they were in violation of the OPMA code, and I'm sure you guys know about, about the OPMA code. They were locked out, and the parents had the gall to knock on the door to notify the school board that they were being locked out, and there was 2 parents that were charged with disorderly conduct and disrupting a meeting for knocking on the doors.

I'm one of them.

Okay, so I've been fighting the school district in the city of American Fork for a year now, trying to get those charges dismissed. I've gotten one dismissed and I've got a motion to dismiss hearing tomorrow. So I'm doing it pro se, so I'm not having to be burdened with the lawyer expenses. But so I do agree with what you're thinking of doing and breaking that off, and I would hope that you would include the city of Linden with it. rather than just Orem. I think Orem and Linden have very common ideals. So I do agree with the, the motion that you guys are trying to do and separate yourself from the Alpine School District, if you can keep virtuous leaders as the board and district officers in the school district.

Thank you.

Mike Preston. Hello, Aaron, council members. It's good to be with you again. I just want to mention too, you know, I'm on the same subject as Aaron, and I just want to mention we raised our kids all in Orem, and they all went to Orem City Schools. All of them graduated from Mountain View High School. And, uh, I just want to back up Aaron, what he said. We, we attended that meeting also where the parents were locked out. And, uh, you know, it's an obvious, a clear violation of the law what they did. And in order— in instead of being able to apply the law against them, they flipped it and, and made a couple of parents the villains, made all the parents the villains, but they especially, Aaron and one other, where they had to fight the city of Alpine, city of American Fork. So we were completely astonished at the behavior of the school board for doing that. And, and we don't believe it was, you know, it wasn't good behavior because parents have the legal right to attend those meetings. There were no laws broken at that time by, by any of the parents, and yet they were charged. We believe that the Alpine School Board has definitely become way too powerful of an entity, and we'd like to see that changed. Because frankly, they receive government assistance, government money, and which coerces them into doing things that the parents would disagree with.

On most—

in most cases, they're subsidized.

It is very—

it's by definition that parents should have the right to gain understanding and place restrictions if necessary on the curriculum and how the children are controlled and are enforced in the classroom. It's definitely time to make a change. And one last thing, we know Provo has their own school board, and we believe if Provo can do it, I think Orem can do it. And I do agree that it should maybe include Linden as well. It might make it a little bit bigger than what we would like, but it might be easier to manage if it were. Anyway, thank you for listening. Appreciate your time. Cecilia Plummer.

Good evening.

Um, I have been a resident of Orem for the last 25 years, and I'm originally from South America. Tonight I have come to just give my opinion on this school district possibility. I understand that it might be more of a study. I do agree with the previous gentleman as far as having our own school district and maybe including Linden and possibly Pleasant Grove too. My sons were raised in this school district. There are many things that, you know, very good things that, that I was able to witness. I'm very thankful for the opportunity to live in this city, but at the same time, there is always room for improvement. And at this time, I think there is room for major improvement. We need more accountability from the boards and the teachers and the principals and the methodologies. When my children were at Northridge, And I'm sure you recall this, there were at least twice or 3 times between elementary school, middle school, and even more during high school where the math methodologies were changed. You know, there was one book for 2 years, the next year was a new book. It was a complete chaos. And I think by Orem having their own school district, we're big enough and we have great support I myself was a volunteer for many years at Northridge, Oak Canyon, and Timpanogos High School. I was always very thankful for the teachers and for our community, community support. Another factor that I would like to mention is that, as you all know, the big chunk on our property taxes is to fund the school district. And if you look at the amount of business businesses that we have and the homes, um, pretty much at this moment. And it doesn't surprise me that Alpine School District— I mean, I shouldn't say surprised. I mean, I was very saddened to hear what I just heard, that they were, um, kicked out, the parents were kicked out or locked in, in that room. Um, but unfortunately, um, and I hate to say this, but, you know, money is— I mean, money, we need money, but at the same time, money can corrupt people. And at this moment, I feel that Orem being such a huge support of the financial part of the school district, we're going to have some opposition. It's so sad to say, but at the same time, we're all strong enough, and I'm so proud to be a resident of Orem because I feel that we still have those values. We care about our children. We have— we still want our children to go to school in a safe manner and not have very confusing messages, which unfortunately we are living right at this moment. So I would appreciate if the motion or the vote— my recommendation is to do a study. If their study is not needed, which I don't know if, if, if that's the case, but I would recommend for us to have our own school district. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next on the list, I can't quite make out this name. It looks like Kevin Davis.

Is that right?

And then, Kevin, if you could state your address and your phone number so we could get them on the record.

Midvale, 801-903-7898.

I'm here today to offer my assistance to the city at this time.

23 states currently are experiencing residential and commercial outmigration.

The majority of these people and businesses from these states are migrating primarily to 10 states.

Utah is one of them.

And when the economic boom in the state subsides, migration to the state won't, won't, because these 23 states will still be in chaos.

And so what will happen is when the city has more people than jobs available, and the tax base will reflect this, uh, the city will have to hire more people in order to maintain the current city services, and you can't increase taxes or cut services or capital improvements, is because you'll create a revenue shortfall cycle.

What I do is I provide a physical management philosophy that when incorporated into the long-range strategic planning of the local government, will will enable the administration to avoid fiscal uncertainty.

I did a preliminary analysis on your adopted budget from last year, and you can add an extra $3 million to your fund balance that's maintained yearly.

And this is all done without increasing taxes, borrowing, drawing down on your fund balance, cutting services, capital improvements, requirements and employee benefits.

I have some documentation to pass out, but they said you got to give it to the—

give it to the clerk, so I'll go ahead and do that. The cost of this would be, for the whole service, would be $4,900, which is below the minimum needed to go through an RFP process.

So thank you for your time, and I hope to hear from you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next, I've got John Barrick. Mayor and City Council, we're grateful for your time and for your service.

I also would like to speak on the Alpine School District issue that you're discussing today. I am in favor of doing an exploratory study.

I think it is necessary.

I am a proponent of public schools. I am a product of public schools.

I send my children to public schools by choice, not by necessity.

School districts do matter, though. Property taxes matter, and property taxes fund school districts.

Our largest expenditure for those residents of Utah County is school district taxes.

In many locations, the primary driver A large driver of both property values and property taxes is school district funding. I visited some friends in North Carolina a few years ago, and literally across the street was a different school district, even though it was part of the same town, and the property taxes were half, and the values of the homes decreased significantly because public education does matter, and public choice in education matters.

The Alpine School District is too large.

And it treats parents like they don't matter.

Salaries are dependent on school district size.

As the school district gets larger—

and the Alpine School District is the largest in the state of Utah and largest that I've ever been a part of—

salaries go up, as was mentioned earlier today.

Northridge Elementary is also where my children go. The change in education has significantly declined from my 25 I've raised my 4-year-old to my 8-year-old in 6—

a matter of 16 years, the value of education has gone down significantly. Not because of the teachers.

Teachers matter, and our teachers are trying, but the administration of the school district handcuffs them and does not allow them to do the things that they should do or that they've done in the past.

Last year, all the specialties, which was what Northridge Elementary was known for— and Debbie Larray's children, I think, went there.

She can, she can testify that The specialty programs were what drove Northridge Elementary. Well, all the specialty programs were pulled from Northridge Elementary and they were replaced with 5 special needs classes. Now there's nothing wrong with special needs classes, but when you have high school-aged children that have special needs, it is, it is dangerous and it is scary for younger children to be around them because of the environment is not conducive to learning. We've experienced that with 5 new special needs classes being added to our, to our elementary school because our population enrollment is declining. Now, grammar requests.

Alpine School District has denied grammar requests or made asks of more than $10,000 to certain individuals, as publicized, to get the information requested about school district policies over the last year. Now, how much, how much money, how much Orem resident tax money is going to Alpine School District?

How much of that money is coming back to Orem's children?

Do we get a proportional percent? Those are things that should be explored and should be discussed. Thank you for looking into this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hassan?

Hayson?

Hassan?

He's Irish.

Okay.

Yeah, my wife says I'm Irish, I'm a Texan, and I'm a Hassan. Makes me the hardiest, headest man on the planet.

Could—

do I pass?

Can I pass this out? Okay, there's one for each counselor.

Okay, compared to what I'm gonna say, what I have to say, pretty mundane. Uh, I just need to ask the city council for one thing.

Right now, you want to play softball, you have to get up a team, have the entire team ready before you can sign up for softball. Now, y'all gonna find this hard to believe, but none of my peers seem to want to to play softball.

They say they're too old.

And so what I would like the city to have is the—

is a Maverick or a Ghost or an open team.

All you need is a coach. I'll volunteer to be the coach.

And so when somebody calls and says, I want to play softball, but my company doesn't sponsor We have a ghost team you can sign up with. The guy you're gonna have to work with is kind of crazy, but we'll put you in touch with him.

And when you get enough players, y'all would coordinate signing up the team. I would like to see this initiated day before yesterday, and I would also Yeah, I would like to initiate it and I'd like it to be prominent on the city's Parks and Recreation website.

That's all.

I'm only 71.

That's all I can remember. Any questions?

Didn't I see— wasn't that kind of mundane compared to all this other stuff?

So, Well, I have a question.

We all do something about this, please.

We're paying for sugar and whipped cream.

Mr. Hassan, we do have our recreation director, and I'd be happy to pass this along to him. He's the one who's responsible for all of our league play and all of our recreation programs in the city. I'll make sure that he or a member of his staff reaches out to you.

That's why I gave you this handout.

Thank you all very much.

I appreciate your time.

And I—

there's still 32 seconds left.

Thank you. Next we've got Sissy Rasmussen.

Hi, I'm Sissy Rasmussen. I've lived in Orem for almost 20 years, and my kids currently attend Orem High, Lake Ridge Junior High, and they've attended Hillcrest Elementary until now it is Centennial Elementary. I did email this, some of this message to you yesterday, but I hope you will do me the favor of not tuning me out and listening to some of So some of the further thoughts that I have on this topic of schools and the school district. I'm opposed to any city-initiated action to try to split or create a new school district in Orem. Orem City Council and the mayor used to meet regularly with ASD in a public meeting, and I attended nearly every one of those meetings for 2 years until COVID. groups, those meetings haven't yet resumed, but I do hear that one is planned for next week. That's fantastic news, and I hope that everybody who's interested in the school district issue will attend that. It's February 16th at noon, and I'm assuming it's here. It's crucial that you start to collaborate with our school district again. Over the past year, and I bet a lot of people don't know this, ASD has had 4 long public study sessions about splitting the district responsibly, with discussions about finances, student achievement, building needs, boundaries, etc., and your council needs this information. A couple of years ago, I attended a meeting between Orem City and ASD on what an Orem School District would look like. It was an excellent presentation by Assistant Superintendent Rob Smith, and I'm sure he would repeat it again for you, for everyone. What was really clear there at the meeting is that any split of Orem by itself, or even with neighboring Vineyard, would require a substantial increase of property taxes just to maintain the services, let alone meet the needs of aging buildings and a declining student population. In the past year, however, Alpine School District has come up with great options for a potential future split, options that are advantageous to all the schools and the students in our valley. I'm sure you want the best for our residents. I do too. And maybe you think that district split is a way of helping all of us. I disagree with that. But I encourage you to be part of this conversation. Give the input to the people who are elected to work on school issues, the people who have been hired to be experts at school finances. School issues are not under the jurisdiction of the City Council. We have 2 elected school board members, Sarah Hacken and Ada Wilson, who are regularly in our schools and in our school meetings. They know our students, our teachers, our community's needs, and both of them should be part of any conversation even approaching splitting the district. I'm also part of 2 school community councils, and you're all invited to come to those at any time. I think you would find them fantastic. I think you would see the realities of our school. I have one sentence left. You're in a great position of responsibility, and I always hope that you will seek out good information and be very careful in making major decisions and to collaborate with all of the teams who are part of every decision. So please listen to our school board and our school district and be part of their careful, responsible plans for our students. Thank you.

Next, we've got Quinn Meekum. Hi, Mayor and Council. I just have 2 brief comments tonight. The first has to do with the Utah Lake resolution that is on the agenda for for the— this evening. I understand that it may be tabled and brought before you at a different meeting. But I just want to speak in favor of that resolution and commend Steve Earle, who helped to draft it. Some of the things that, that resolution says that I think are really important for us as Orem residents are the need for us to be very active in planning for the future of the lake. I encourage you to be insistent upon having some local control over the future of the lake and not letting the future of the lake be solely decided by the legislature. I invite you to always try to protect the ecological integrity of the lake. make it a very pleasant place to recreate and to oppose any plans for residential and commercial development specifically on that lake. I hope that you will collaborate with other communities in sending that message to the state legislature, but please recognize this is an urgent matter, and I encourage you to pass that resolution as soon as possible and no later than the next council meeting because issues related to the lake are being considered at the legislature at this time. My second comment has to do with the study with respect to the school district, and I'm very sympathetic to concerns about local control, and I believe that, that having local influence in our schools is important. I also encourage you, as you generate that report and study, to be very open and clear about the financial implications of any split. And I ask that you don't approve anything that would result in a large tax increase for residents of Orem, and especially ask you to focus on our commitment to ensuring that we will never lower the standards of our education for our children. We will never lower the level of resources that our children receive as a result of any decisions we make with respect to the school district.

Thank you.

Next, Mike Carpenter. Mayor and City Council, I want to applaud you for taking on this endeavor. It's long past due, long past due. Having been somebody who went through Alpine School District, put my kids through Alpine School District, they have been consistently great. One thing annually declining. So I want you to take into account, no matter what, that there are intangible costs about staying, and that is the future of our children. And the quality of our, our city and the world around us for undereducating children. They have spent countless hours focusing on gender and CRT and diversity, nothing that a school should be chartered to do. They are there for the 3 Rs, and they're failing, and they have been failing for decades. So I just beg that you take that into account as well as you, as you thoughtfully move forward in this endeavor. I think Orem has always been the cash cow for this school district, and we've, we've never really got anything out of it in comparison to what we put into it. So thank you for my time. for your time, and I appreciate all that you're doing.

Thank you.

Last person on the agenda is Kathy Ambrose.

Thank you.

I think I've had conversations with Most all y'all.

Sorry if I've missed a few of you newbies. My— actually, my thoughts all over the place. I'm gonna try to focus. I don't know what it is, but I really am drawn to a cause. And I have done my duty as a PTA president and a school community council. And there are a lot of ideas being floated out there by people who are not in touch with what happens in the classroom.

Thank you.

at the schools.

I know I'm talking on State Street, but you can't teach the 3 R's to a hungry kid. He needs to have a full belly to learn anything. So I would like to dispute that. Mountain View and Orem and most of the junior highs and elementary schools have food pantries because there are food insecure kids and kids who are homeless. They need to have a full belly before they can Approach the three arts, and that's the reality of where we live. About the state street master plan, as I have followed that from the beginning, I participated. I interviewed heads of each city department. I toured around the city. I talked to people from different neighborhoods to feel what their needs and opinions are, and it saddens me that that's all being. All the money, all the research, all the goals to help stop displacement of our long-term renters who will be priced out of the city because there's no growth. I have more to say, but I won't because my time is up.

All right, thank you everyone for your comments. We've got 3 consent items. We've got the approval of the city— of the meeting minutes from last council meeting. We've got appointments to boards and commissions. We've got CJ Meekum, who is being appointed to the Transportation Advisory Committee. And we've got George Vanderwater, who has a reappointment to the Heritage Advisory Commission. And then we've got a motion for the mayor and city council to direct the legislative counsel relating to the school district split study to review proposals that may be submitted to the city, select among the proposals the person or entity to perform the study, and present to the city a finalized agreement to be executed by the city. Mr. Mayor, could I request that item 7.2 3 be moved out of the consent item so we can discuss it individually? Yes, we can do that.

Thank you.

Then if that's the case, I move to approve the other 2 consent items, Mr. Mayor.

Okay.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you. The consent items pass, and we'll move on to the scheduled items. So the first— now the new scheduled item is what I— would you like me to read it again? No, I'm good.

Good.

Okay, so we're going to discuss the selection of a group to do the school split study. May I make a comment there, Mr. Mayor? Sure. Clearly, from the applause here, most people are great I would vote in favor of that. But the calls I've received over the last week have, have been from other people who are not voiced here today. And I'm aware that Alpine School District has done several studies, and I'm concerned about the budget estimate. And granted, it was a back of a napkin kind of estimate that our city manager sent to us. And I'm wondering if instead of a full-fledged commission to study, we could pay somebody something less to study what Alpine has already done. and therefore have less of an impact on our budget before we move forward. Is that a possibility, Jamie? And, and Mr. Riddle, I don't know how that would go. If I may, I think that's a question— an answer to a question I don't necessarily have right now. The, the state statute requires a study to be completed as part of a split evaluation. Whether or not it could be be a study of a study. Yeah, it's something we'd have to research. So I guess my question is really budgetary. We've made— this, this council has approved new budgetary items a couple meetings ago. We're looking at a pretty significant budgetary item here that hasn't been budgeted.

I'm sure we can find it, but it's not in our budget.

So before we approve the full amount of your estimate, I would like to see what we can glean from the studies that have already been done, a study of a study, to use your words, Jamie, and see what we can do.

It just seems—

I understand the concerns I hear from people here today. I've also heard others, and my guess is any big item like this would go to a vote of the people, at least in the past that was the proposal.

Could you opine on that?

Yeah, there's— and our city attorney can add to it, but there's 3 ways to Essentially initiate a study or a split. First one is a citizen-initiated by way of a petition, a signature gathering effort. The school district then has the option of making a decision and, and moving forward with the split. And then of course you as a city council have an opportunity to do just that. There are different requirements based on what path is followed. So based on the path that we are talking about tonight, a study is required. Whether it's a study of the study remains to be seen. And then there is actually a vote that takes place, and based on how that study is initiated or how that effort is initiated, it may just involve individual registered voters within the specific community that is looking to split, or it actually may require a vote of the entire school district, including those who would be in splittees, yeah, so to speak. So, you know, what we're talking about tonight is a study to evaluate from an Orem city, city of Orem perspective. With potential other cities that has been mentioned. Yeah, and potential other cities that would be mentioned, that would be included. Mr. Mayor, I'll end, but my concern is budgetary, both of how much it would cost to do the study, and then how much, at least reportedly, Jordan area went up in taxes when they split because they were— they had 2 of everything. And granted, some have pointed out the expense of, of a big head versus 2 little heads may be different. That would all be part of the study, but this study is not inexpensive. And so I'm just wondering if we can put some budgetary constraints on it. And that's something maybe you could come back to us with in time. And obviously the number I provided you was, I think, with confidence, a number not to exceed $70,000 based on when, for example, the last study was completed by the consultant that, uh, I reached out to and talked with. It was about $50,000, and that was back in 2004. So I'm assuming that there will be obviously an increase in cost based on time, but also since 2014 the law has been tweaked, and so there may be some changes as to what is expected and required in a 2022 study as compared to a 2014 study.

I don't think any of us want to sacrifice the quality of education.

And I think we could be— I think we're in harmony on that, no matter which side of this we're on. So that's my only concern, is putting a limit on the budget. You can get back to us on the report, Mr. Mayor. That's the only reason I wanted to break it out separately. Okay, thank you, Tom. As far as, um, I mean, we could vote— we, we definitely have an interest in looking at the cost of splitting the count, splitting the school district. Uh, I mean, that's, that's why it's, it's on the agenda. But if we were to do a study to figure out what Alpine School District said, and then after that we did another study, we would wind up costing more than what we're doing.

Unless we are allowed to rely on a study of a study.

Say, Terry.

Just a couple of comments. We had a retreat as a city council, and if I recall, it was 7-0 to support Before we knew the cost. We still don't know the cost. Yeah, but, but, but what we're asking on this consent item, which you wanted to now move, Tom, to discussion, which is great, is, is that we are hiring legislative counsel. The mayor and the city council is directing the legislative counsel to do the research and to study different options for a feasibility study. And so, I, for one, I'm not willing to say I am willing to jeopardize my children's future and their education over an extra whatever the feasibility study is. I think it's so important to us as citizens of Orem. Right now, we watch our money go north and northwest. We see Westlake High School, which is beautiful. We see Sky Ridge, which is like a junior college. incredible, uh, shrines being built with our tax money outside of Orem. And so for us to be worried about a feasibility study, I think we— it's responsible that we should support a feasibility study and let, um, the legislative counsel do his research, come up with, uh, who would do the best job for that. I do have a little background in, in this. I was— sir, I served on the Alpine School District Board of Education for 6 years. And so I sat in a lot of meetings. And I also am a graduate of the Alpine School District, so I understand the district. But the problem— it's not their fault, but I believe it's over 85 schools. In fact, they're not sure. I was at a meeting one time, they were saying, I don't know, is it 90? Is it 85? I mean, it's a lot. And, you know, 81,000, 82,000, 83,000 kids, 16 cities. It's one of the biggest districts in the United States. It's one of the top 40-something in the United States. So it's not their fault that we have babies and people grow and come here, but we need to do what's best for us as citizens of Orem. And, and what's best for the future of our children. And, and the comments about things that we don't like being taught It certainly makes more sense if we have more local control. And, and I have to smile about the cost since we don't even know the cost. You know, that's why we want to do a study. Let's find out the cost. But it seems like there's other places that seem to do okay.

Provo.

Provo seems to do just fine. They have their own school district. Uh, Nebo, next to Provo, has their own school district. Drive up the canyon, Wasatch County has their own school district. So anyway, I think we ought to find— let's find the research out. This is not saying split, this is saying let's do a feasibility study. So I strongly support let's do the study.

Thank you, Terry.

Dave Spencer.

Yeah, so I'm in favor of a feasibility study, and the reason why is It'll tell us exactly what the cost is going to be.

If it's going to cost the citizens X amount of dollars on their taxes, they need to know and they will vote on it.

So we're not splitting the school district immediately.

A feasibility study is feasibility study.

It tells exactly what's going on, what's it going to cost, what are you going to do, and then the citizens of Orem can make a decision. So I think that's the best avenue to do that. And, you know, I was in favor of feasibility study when they were closing Hillcrest.

They're closing all the schools in Norman.

That's why we're saying Alpine School District, stop, stop. Do not start closing schools because then you're building mega, mega schools of elementaries and the kids are getting lost.

Talk about depression and anxiety.

That's where it's coming from because kids are getting lost. So I'm in favor of it and I think we need to move forward. Thank you. Thank you.

Lynne.

Yeah, I just like to say, I agree that this is something that we should explore, that we should look at, that we need to have the right information, accurate information in front of us to make a good decision. And, you know, I appreciate Terry's experience. He's, he's been there in the district office and has seen that. And I also want to say I'm bringing to the table 20 years of volunteer work in our schools. I've been the PTA in the I don't know if Cecilia remembers, but her last year I served with her on the Timpanogos School Community Council. That was my first year. So, or maybe my second year. But anyway, I just feel like our motives here are what's best for our children. I really believe that the best way to find that out is to just look at the options. Let's, let's pull everything together and come up with the, with the information that we need to strengthen our schools. schools and to lift our children.

That's our goal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Not to belabor the point, but I think the feasibility study will give us the opportunity to really get into the nuts and bolts of what we're looking at, and I think that's the data and the information that we want. I too have received phone calls and emails and people stopping me on the street and expressing great concern of, you know, have we considered the expense of what this is, you know, what this is going to cost? And I had a young schoolteacher who called me on the phone and was distraught because of some of the things that she's been hearing at school that Orem's, you know, this is a definite thing that this is going to happen and that we're going to be leaving Alpine School District. And she was concerned about her benefits and what that would mean to her as a young schoolteacher starting her career and, and how that would affect her family. And so, you know, again, we all have and want to find the best interests, best interests of our children. And so I think, you know, the feasibility study will give us that opportunity. And I look forward to learning from what Alpine School District has learned as well, that information and, and what we can do to, to continue on a path of education that's going to be best for our children. And, and not only that, but our teachers who, you know, work so hard every day and do so much for our children to make sure that they're not lost in that process as well, that they're able to maintain and, and hopefully even make a better living than what they currently are. So thank you. Does anybody else have anything? I've, I've got something, but go ahead. I'm ready to make the motion for it. I just want the discussion before. Okay, I'll, I'll just say what I'm gonna say before you make a motion. Um, obviously we've thought about this quite a bit and What we're talking about right now, as everybody has said, is to do a study, and there's a number of compelling reasons why to split. Otherwise, we wouldn't even do a study. But just a few of them: we've got— we would have more local control if we had our own school district. There's all kinds of studies that show the smaller districts equal better student performance. Our property tax dollars that have been going out would be staying more in Orem. We would likely have smaller class sizes. We would go from 7 school board members— we would go to 7 school board members from the current 2 that we have that would be making decisions for them. There's even— teachers could potentially be paid more in this structure. We don't know that. We haven't run the numbers, but there's evidence to say that that has happened. in the past. And then just, just really the local control. There's been a lot of controversy in the schools over the last few years. And if we are Family City USA and we want to represent those values, we want local control of our schools. So those are all the compelling reasons why we would even consider this. We don't know if the numbers work. There's evidence that they would, based on what we contribute and what what is used. And so in my mind, it's definitely worth doing the study so we've got better data to work with.

Mr. Mayor, it's Heather over here. In response to Councilmember McDonald's question, I do have a reference to a Utah state code that I think might be helpful to the council, and it's Utah Code 53G-3-302, which addresses proposals initiated by a city to create a school district. And subsection 1B says the determination of all matters relating to the scope, adequacy, and other aspects of a feasibility study authorized under this section is within the exclusive discretion of the city's legislative body. So I think that's pretty clear that the City Council defines the scope of the feasibility study.

Okay, if that's helpful.

Thank you, that's very helpful. Mr. Mayor, may I make one comment also? The City Council can vote to go forward with the feasibility study. You can also do an interlocal agreement with other cities who would be interested. They could do their feasibility study, or could they could be jointly done. So to address the issues of people that would like to get Linden or others, that's a fee—

that's, that's possible.

I think you take the first move, and then if they're interested, I'm sure they'll get ahold of you. Okay, thank you, Jesse. Somebody want to make a motion, or somebody got a comment?

I can make a motion. I move that the mayor and city council direct legislative counsel Relating to the school district split study, to review proposals that may be submitted to the city, select among the proposals the person or entity to perform the study, and present to the city a finalized agreement to be executed by the city.

I'll second that.

I'll third it.

Can we have a vote?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you. The motion passes. Next, we've got a public hearing ordinance. We've got Jason Bench that would— will present this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the City Council. Tonight we have a couple items. The first one is an item that's— applicant is ourselves, the Development Services Department, suggesting or requesting that the City Council amend the PD-21 ordinance that would require any new development. You can see on the— let me just get my cursor here— this area. This location right here that you can see there, this is the tracks line. You can see the FrontRunner station is located here, the pedestrian bridge, Geneva Road, University Parkway, just to orient where we're located. It's called the Parkway Crossing PD zone. Right now there's a couple different standards in there, but they're less than 1 per bed. How it's calculated. We're proposing that we change that to one stall per bed, so that right now we're kind of help solve the issue that we're having with some student housing projects that now it's a 1-to-1 ratio instead of less than 1-to-1. The idea or the intent of this zoning when it was developed was that students would walk, students would take the bus, Frontrunner, things like that. It hasn't worked out necessarily that way, although some students do walk, they use the bridge. It's very popular. We felt appropriate that we do a 1-to-1 ratio. So our request is that the council approve this. The Planning Commission did recommend approval on this, so we're here tonight to get your vote. So glad to address any other questions. Do we have any questions? Oh, Tom.

Just clarify, Jason, I get my mic on.

Just clarify, an occupancy unit Is a bed. Is a bed. The way that it was calculated, because some— if it's less than 130 square feet, the room itself, based on building code, that really only allows one bed, right? So anything over than that, then typically we're going to require that to be counted as 2 beds. But the way student housing works is basically it's one bed, right? That's occupancy unit equals bed is what that is. So if it's a 400-square-foot and they put 3 beds in it, is that an occupancy unit or is that 3 occupancy That's 3.

Thank you.

That's what I thought.

I wanted to make sure.

Thank you.

Does anyone have any other questions?

I'd just like to make a comment.

I, I think it's great that the students are walking to UVU. I think it's great we've got that wonderful bridge, but it appears that these students still are bringing their cars with them so they can go shopping, go to work, go see our beautiful environment, our beautiful amenities here. So I appreciate this change because I really believe that it will solve the problem that has been overflowing into the neighborhoods.

And I received a lot of information or, you know, contact from neighbors there.

So I appreciate your being proactive on this and understanding that this is an important thing for our residents. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Yeah, there's, there's this larger project left, and so we just want to get that before they came in. Yes, no, I, I agree with Lene. I think this is a great move by the city because essentially we're increasing the parking from 0.6 to 1, which is a huge increase, and to solve the problem of not enough parking. And this is great. The city is being very proactive about this. And what we found over the last couple years is that, to Ms. Millett's point, is that everybody is bringing a car. They're not, you know, keeping it home. They're going to work, they're doing other things. So it definitely hasn't worked out. I mean, there are bigger, larger cities that it's more walkable. It's downtown Salt Lake, for example. I mean, they can get away, I think, with not having as many vehicles, but Orem at this point is not to that point. So perfect. Say, Heather, do we need to vote on this, or—

Um, you need to open the public hearing for public comment.

Okay, Jason, do you have anything else? I don't think— okay, we'll invite anyone from the public that wants to make a comment on this to come up. Looks like there aren't any comments.

So go ahead and close the public hearing portion.

So we'll close the public hearing portion.

And then back to the council for discussion, deliberation, and eventually a vote.

There you go.

Would you like a motion, Mr. Mayor?

Unless somebody's got something to say. I move the City Council approve portions of Section 22-11-33, parking pertaining to parking standards in the PD-21 student housing village zone, by increasing the parking ratio to 1 stall per occupancy unit.

Second.

Can we vote? Aye.

Aye.

Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. Thank you. The motion passes, or the ordinance passes. All right, next we've got a presentation on amending Appendix A of the Orem City Code by amending the Standard Land Use Code 6232, Tattoos and Body Piercing, from a not permitted use to a permitted use in a C-3 zone. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the council, this is an applicant, Indie Studio Suites, which is currently located, located up in the Pinehurst Plaza, which I'll get to in just a minute. They're requesting that they allow— that we allow, I guess, the city tattoos and body piercings. They have estheticians, I think about 40, if I recall. I think the applicants are here, but they want to be able to do tattooing. which is multiple faceted, right? You got the eyebrows, you've got eyeliner, I think, is a tattoo now. And so there's, there's other avenues just than a typical tattoo you see on your arm. So there are other things, and right now they wouldn't be able to do any of that type of stuff. And so that's why they're proposing that this be amended. We do currently allow it on the C-2 zone. So anywhere along the State Street corridor is currently a C-2. There are other areas that are not Zone C-2 but are permitted, which we're going to talk about next city council meeting. But tattoos are currently allowed anywhere along the corridor. They're requesting— we have 2, one currently, one is proposed to be rezoned to C-3 in a couple of weeks. The Pinehurst Plaza, which is— I can point out— Up where the Sonic restaurant, and then the other 3 office buildings here. You got the Simplician Regional Hospital. Which is there. So this portion of the city is Zone C-3. This map represents what portion of the property will be Zone C-3. So this portion here, the rest of the property along State Street is currently Zone C-2, which does allow it. In addition, the Smiths here across the street is proposed to be Zone C-3. So in practicality, we have 2 areas in the city that's Zone C-3. And then we have the rest of of it is C-2. What they're proposing is that that be amended to allow tattooing in the C-3. Currently, we have 9 fully licensed tattoo and body piercing businesses in the city. So the City Council— or excuse me, the Planning Commission reviewed this request and did make a recommendation, positive recommendation, the Council approve this request. I'd be glad to address any any questions.

So I'm really okay with the makeup, the permanent, you know, makeup stuff. But I think we have plenty of regular tattoos and body piercings. Is there a way to distinguish between a, like a cosmetic? Because a lot of people get the permanent eyes, the lips, and I'm perfectly comfortable with that.

But so currently, the Utah County, and I think the state as well, the way that they regulate it, there's not a differentiation between the two. So when they have to get a license through the county health department for their license, if they do any, any tattooing at all, it has to be a license for body piercings and tattooing. So there's no differentiation between those two.

Could we differentiate for it?

The county would not issue the license. It's a county issue as far as the health license goes. So that's regulated by the county, not by the city. So they— we require them to get that license as proof before we issue the license for that type of—

So do we have people who only do cosmetic tattooing?

Well, I think it's a combination. We have several in the city in the C-2 zone that are beauticians but also do that type of tattooing, right? It's not just the typical, you know, razor thing or whatever on your arm. It's not that type of tattoo necessarily, but there are people that get permanent tattoos that are part of eyebrows and things like that. But that's part of currently allowed in C-2 zone.

Okay, so of the 9, do we know how many are just like an esthetician doing permanent cosmetics?

I'm sorry, that's, that's not related to tattooing. I'm talking about we have probably 30 or 40 or maybe even more, uh, the beauty shops, beauty beauticians— I don't know the proper term, sorry. We have many, many of those that do a combination of tattooing and that because they're in the C-2 zone. Okay, so we do have a lot of home occupations as well that do hair and different things that probably don't do tattooing, but that's a different category. But we do have some that also do tattoos and hairstyling, toenails, fingernails, all that kind of stuff as part of a full package.

Okay, thank you.

So just to clarify, there's 9 regular tattoo— 9 that just do tattoos. 9 that just do tattoos and And there's 30 or so that do— there's probably more than that. I looked briefly, but the list was really, really long.

It was long.

That was a combination of home occupations as well, because there's a lot of people that have, you know, a hair salon in their home, which we do allow as well.

But I don't know that they—

I don't think they do tattooing. It's simply those that, like in the mall, there's people that do ear piercing and things. They have to get a license from the state or the county, excuse me, to be able to do that. And it has to be a permitted use. So the C-2 does allow, you know, I don't know, the thing in the mall where they do just ear piercing, but that's still under the guise of piercing and tattooing, and they have to get a license through the county. So they make sure that it's a permitted use in the city before we'll issue a license. Okay, thank you. Anyone else? Terry? So, um, I like this, the C-2, which, like you're saying, Jason, is pretty much most of State Street is— will be C-2 with the change that we're voting on in 2 weeks, if it's not currently. But— And so there's plenty of places to have tattoo and body piercing. I am opposed to adding more locations. I just think we already have places where you can do that business. And so, and it's kind of what Debbie's bringing up, everyone's definition of beauty is different. So, you know, what if I'm getting— what do you get, your eyebrows tattooed?

What do you— Eyeliner around your lips. So, you know, like that eagle on your back.

Yeah.

So if I'm getting my eye— if I'm getting my eyebrows done. If I'm getting my eyebrows done, that might be something I think's nice, but someone else will disagree. Where, like Tom says, the big eagle— where is it? On my back? Anyway, you know, it's— I mean, it's just all in the eye of the beholder, or the eye of the whatever, the person looking at it.

Well, can I say one thing?

Like, I would not get a regular tattoo.

That's just not my style. But I would consider a permanent cosmetic, an eyeliner, lip.

That's, that's mainstream, right?

Yeah. And I'm not making any kind of judgment about any of those kind of things, since obviously I don't know what I'm talking about. The only thing I am concerned about is opening up to a lot more tattoo parlors, because it's not— it's not— it's, it's both, Jason, from what I'm hearing. So there's a, there's a wide variety of things that can happen. I'm just opposed to adding it to more zones in the city. We already have it C-2. And that's appropriate for all those people that want to go to have those services. And if that's their decision, good, more power to them. But I just don't think we ought to open up to bigger, more parts of the city.

Thank you, Terry.

Lynne?

Um, I guess I'm going to say, my understanding is the C-3 zone is often used as a buffer for homes.

There's often homes bordering the C-3 zone, so it has a little different standards for a reason. And I agree with Terry, I think we do have a lot of opportunities along the C-2 zones that we have in the city for this type of business license.

So I don't have a problem with them maintaining that opportunity in the C-2 zone—

C-2 zones and still trying to continue with the integrity of the C-2 zone.

Thank you.

zone as a protection for the surrounding neighborhoods that are there.

Thank you. Any other comments?

I think this request came to us from a good business in that area.

And, and so I'm inclined to support that business and the Planning Commission with their recommendation, but I know you're going to open it up to public discussion.

So this is the applicant here.

Yeah, the applicant should have a opportunity as well. Okay, would you like to come up?

Sure.

First of all, thank you so much. I appreciate the council, the mayor, for taking the time this evening. Appreciate also the Planning Commission and Kevin Bench for his time and Jason Bench, excuse me, for his time and those of his staff. So my name is Val Gregory. I'm with Indy Studio Suites Orem. A couple things, if I could just mention them, just a few things for consideration. One of them is that, you know, currently, if you look at the C-2 zones that are current in Orem and even being proposed, I guess, another week or so, you know, those are all bordered by housing as well. It doesn't go C-1, C-2, C-3. There's really not a buffer between the housing and the current C-2 zones. C-3 borders housing just like C-2 does. But the thing that I will mention is that what we're talking about is not piercings, it's not tattoos like you would traditionally think of piercings and tattoos. What we're referring to is if your daughter says, hey, you know what, Mom, Dad, I want to get my ears pierced. daughter, granddaughter, you know, then you're like, okay, well, let me look up piercings, you know, online and see who does it. And you're taking them into somewhere that may be like a tattoo parlor, you know. If they go, hey, I want to get a single needle tattoo that lasts about 2 years, it's very small, a lot of people that get them, maybe somebody that's lost a child at birth, and they want some type of token of memory that's not up on the mantle of the fireplace, but something that, you know, reminds them of that, that baby, that child that's theirs. And so they get something small. It's one of those ones that may say, be kind. It, you know, they might say, hey, I want, you know, a butterfly on my stomach. But these are single needle tattoos. Traditional tattoos are 16 needle, sometimes 32 needle. They kind of are the eagle on Terry's back, right? That's traditional. And traditional piercings are the ones that you go, hey, like, wow, look at that person, where'd they come from? You know, I mean, not to cast judgments, but you're kind of like, I don't know that I would want my daughter to date this guy necessarily. necessarily, you know. Maybe you would, because again, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. So, Terry, maybe, maybe there you go. Um, but I will tell you that we're talking about saying, hey, okay, come. And, you know, instead of having to take her to a tattoo parlor that has hours from 2 till midnight, you know, we're going with this is a traditional beauty accessory. And so the same person that comes in to get their nails done gets their hair done they get teeth whitening. It's that same beauty seeker that now can also stay the same place and get a tattoo. We're talking about facial tattoos only. Facial tattoos only. We're talking about single to 3-needle tattoos. It's not what you have at a tattoo parlor, a minimum of 8, 16, or 32 needles. It's entirely different. And so So, you know, that's, that's really to distinguish. And we have, as was mentioned, we have 43 studios. And so we right now, I think, are, you know, just about fully occupied, certainly above 90%. And so we're talking about having maybe, you know, 1, 2, or 3 people that are doing these health accessories or these beauty accessories instead of sending them down to the corner of 40th and North to, you know, get a tattoo the same place. In fact, it's an entire different school. I know I've gone beyond my time, so I'll stop at that. Natalie, go ahead.

Um, so my name is Natalie Hampton. I'm the leasing manager at Indie Studio Suites, and I am just going to read something that one of the business owners that would like to rent from us She wasn't able to come today, but she does tattooing, and I'm going to just kind of read what she wanted to say. My name is Liv O'Born. I'm an artist born and raised in Utah County. My senior year of high school, I was diagnosed with a life-threatening eating disorder and spent a lot of my time in treatment centers and therapy. After years of recovery, a therapist recommended celebrating my growth by doing something symbolic and meaningful. A tattoo was suggested. After receiving that— the tattoo, I I was able to have this daily reminder of how far I've come and to keep going. I thought back on it and my only wish was that the environment was not as intimidating and a little bit more inviting. I have loved my— I have loved art my whole entire life and thought of providing a safe place for other people to get tattoos. I mentioned it to my sister and she was immediately on board considering she had received a meaningful tattoo as well.

This was the core of what our business was built upon.

Our hopes are to allow people to create symbolic and permanent reminders in a safe place. We also have a few restrictions as far as tattoo goes. We don't allow hand tattoos, color tattoos, except for when a rainbow is designed for rainbow babies, a term used for when a mother miscarries, any hate or negative artwork, and any walk-ins. Every client needs to schedule an appointment in advance so that designs can be discussed. And so we can guarantee the, the best art for your needs. Me and my sister appreciate everyone taking the time to hear us out. Thank you. And then I just wanted to mention, I am also an esthetician and rent a studio from Indy Studio Suites, and it's given me the opportunity to own my own business without having to find something like have a storefront location and have to worry about the cost of that, whereas all the C-2 zones, they're more of those types of businesses. So somebody like Liv just wanting to start her own business and be able to provide this for her clients, Indie Studio Suites and something like that gives her the opportunity to do that and me the opportunity to do that without having the major expenses or risks that come with that.

So thank you.

Is there enough time?

Okay. Hi, my name is Hope. I'm actually one of Liv's clients. I have one right here. I don't know if you can see from here, but it's just a little moth. It's very light. It was one of my very first tattoos. I don't have very many to begin with, but I was just the same, born and raised here, and I got that tattoo at a time that was super hard for me, and I wanted something to resemble me growing and kind of like rebirthing or whatever you want to call it. And Liv worked very hard and well with me on it and really took the time. And I love looking at it in the mirror every morning and just reminding myself of what I want to be. And she also just created such a safe environment, which was really scary for me, who had never gone into a tattoo and only really heard, you know, not the best experiences from everything else. But it's a very clean, very light, very positive, and comfortable place.

So.

Yeah, and I would just say that Liv, if she were here, would say, I, you know, it's by appointment only. And that's how it is with basically any— everybody at Indie, right? It's, you walk in, it's not inline retail where people are walking by and we're putting up big signs and banners. You know, they have a scheduled appointment and it's a consultation and it's what's going to be meaningful for you. And, you know, we're not sending them down to the corner of, you know, 5th and Main and saying, hey, go in here and, you know, we hope you come back out. You know, it's a scary environment, especially I think What percentage of our people are females that come into Indy, would you say, Natalie?

I would definitely say at least, at least 98%.

What questions do you have? We'd love to entertain any questions. So could I just make a comment? Yeah, talking with Mr. Earl, maybe a compromise. I'll just throw it out there that maybe in the, under the tattooing, in the parentheses, these, we could say subject to being accessory to a beauty salon. So it couldn't be a standalone tattoo in the C-3. It would have to be accessory to a use that's already permitted as a beauty salon.

That might—

and then we're going to limit it to not have a standalone in the C-3, but it would have to be a subject to or an accessory use within an established beauty salon. So there's just throwing out there as an option. If I may too, I like that. The other thing is you could even define it by a percentage, that the percentage of services that are rendered in piercings and tattoos has to be less than 15%, for example. And so, I mean, just to kind of give some options.

Okay.

No, I think that's, that's great as far as giving us an option, because basically it was either all in, you know, on a traditional tattoo shop or nothing. And, and I've got mixed feelings on this whole thing. I like that you're a successful business and you're adding a lot of value to Aurum, and I want to support you as a business in all that you're trying to do. And I also Totally agree with you as far as tattoos are individual. And, and they mean different things for different people. So I think that's a personal, personal choice. That said, we're trying to— we've got a mission to beautify State Street, which is to, you know, in my mind, make State Street beautiful. So I personally would be okay with what you're proposing, Jason, that you would— it would be allowed, but it would be with those limitations. That way, that's kind of a way to split the baby that I think solves everyone's needs. So for me personally, that's, that's where I would be.

So I just have a question about that, Steve, Heather, because I talked to the county health department.

In—

I saw your presentation in the Planning Commission meeting, and I was so impressed with you ladies. I mean, really, you do offer an incredible service, and I, I can appreciate what you're doing. But in anticipation of that, I called the County Board of Health and asked them, you know, what's the deal here? Do we not have cosmetic tattoo designations? We should, with the microblading and everything that women are getting, right? And they said that they do not, and, and that it all falls under the same window. So I don't know, Steve and Heather, can we change that? I mean, is that a licensing issue?

Steve? I guess I'll come up here. You know, I think it's really difficult to do that. I mean, if you try and define it by the number of blades, is that what— or needles or whatever it is. I mean, you still potentially can get, I think, traditional tattoos with that sort of thing. You know, they might be a little bit different style, but, you know, you could still— I'm assuming you could probably still get the eagle on the back if you wanted to with that. I think, and I'm not a professional, but— Nor am I. If I'm mistaken, I think you probably could, but it may take the better part of of a month to do a single needle as opposed to 32 needles.

Right.

So, I just don't know that we're enough of an expert on this subject to kind of define the difference on that, or that we could even accomplish our objectives in doing it that way. So.

Yeah, because when I asked them about that, the county health department, they said they have actually requested that type of thing from the state legislature.

It has to be changed in really have gotten a lot of pushback.

And this is such a new area that maybe that's the direction we need to go is get some changes there to accommodate these kinds of beauty products is really what I see you're promoting here. But I don't know about right now.

To me, the—

when my conversations were with them were that was the law, and that opens it up to every type of tattooing, body piercing, you know, that licensed under that ordinance.

But weren't you saying, well, is this something that could be done that you could limit it the way that you're talking about? So it's, it's within a beauty salon and it's a certain percentage of business. Is that a possibility? So yeah, so that's, that's an idea I think that we talked about as a compromise. You could say that it's only permitted as an accessory use to a beauty salon, and we define that as being you know, maybe less than 20% of the revenues generated by the business to ensure that it is truly— and by accessory, we mean it's customarily incidental to the main business. It's not the main or the primary business. It's a smaller subcategory of the operation. So I think that would be one way of making sure we're not getting a standalone tattoo shop in the C-3 zone, you know, if that's the concern. And obviously you're more likely then to get more of the, the beauty, uh, esthetician type of a tattoo. I mean, you could still get the regular tattoo, I suppose, but you're less likely to get that in that scenario.

Which, do you do those?

Do you do microblading and eyeliner? I don't offer that, but yes, the people that are in there do that microblading and lip blushing and all of those types of cosmetic services, and then also the ones that want to would do fine line tattooing. And a lot— anybody that I've spoken to that would be renting there have very strict guidelines as to what they'll offer. They don't do a lot of those traditional things because it is a single needle.

It's—

you can't do a lot of things. It might take a month to achieve something that With a 32-needle tattoo would take an hour. So, um, that's kind of it. So Steve, we can limit the percentage of the profits, but we can't limit the number of needles? Well, the type of tattooing— again, to me, that would be the better option.

You know, I'm not an expert in, you know, how tattoos work, you know, whether it's 1 needle or 2 needle or, or, you know, whether you can do a 3 or a 5 or 7 needle and, you know, what, what's the most commonly used, or what's the difference? I mean, I guess I'm just not enough of an expert in that to know how to adequately differentiate that kind of a product. So, okay, we get Debbie and then Tom.

Well, my question was about the, about the professional, you know, cosmetics, the single line, um, because that, that is a— that's more mainstream than, than— and so you do offer that, and And even though you don't do it, someone in your shop does?

Yes.

Okay, and I'm comfortable with doing this with the beauty shop. I think that's a good compromise.

I think it's safe to say that a regular tattooer isn't going to come into a beauty supply— a beauty place and only do 20% of your revenue. I don't know if I should admit this in a public meeting, but I'm about to do that. My wife went in a few years ago to get a piercing in her ear for migraines. if some of you heard about that. And as soon as she walked into this tattoo shop, she asked me to go with her. It was clear she wasn't the demographics looking that they were typically looking for. And they said, you want to— you want an earpiece for your migraine, don't you? They quickly stereotyped her, put her in a different place, and she quickly got it done.

And it was great.

But if she went to your place, I don't think I'd have to accompany her for her to feel safe.

So I know this is a public record. Please don't call my wife and tell her to hold on to her. Mayor, could I ask a question of the applicant? Now, going back to Ms. Millett's question, is it purely single needle that you use, double needle? I mean, what's the maximum number of needles that you, that you use in your— or you want to use in your business?

Oh, me?

So it's, it's, it's 3.

3.

1 to 3 needles.

And I'm sorry, I don't know if this is recording me. I should speak carefully. It's 1 to 3 needles, and, you know, typically a regular tattoo parlor, it will be 8, 16, or 32 needles. And so, I mean, that's why they don't last, you know, forever. They, they, they, they wear off in time. As Liv also, or Natalie, explained, Liv doesn't even do any color tattoos. Except with the exception that somebody has lost you know, or has miscarried. And that's the only time that she will do them. But it's, it's a consultation as much as it is a service where she actually does it. And it takes about how long, maybe, like, would you say?

Um, I preferably get very small ones. That's what I'm more comfortable with. And that's what Liv offers is only really smaller ones for people that don't want something valuable but don't want anything big or super colorful or really packed with black ink, you know. So mine take underneath an hour, maybe even 30 minutes.

So to address the concern, you know, if you wanted to, you know, based on what they've said that they're not going use more than a 3-needle. You could add that stipulation onto this too, I think, if you wanted to, that it's not more than a 3-needle type of a tattoo. Yeah, I honestly think that's a brilliant idea. That's very, very smart offering for consideration, because the thing is, is that the type of people that we would have come into Indie Studio Suites, it is a beauty accessory. We're not going to have somebody that would typically operate a tattoo parlor, we wouldn't let them come in and operate within our business. It doesn't go with our branding, doesn't go with our clientele. It's not a beauty accessory. It doesn't fit our target demographic. I mean, there's nothing about it that we would embrace. But this is absolutely a beauty accessory, and I think limiting it that way gives the council and the mayor the assurance that, hey, we're not going to have 43 studios that are filled up, you know, with— as a tattoo parlor is traditionally. And same thing with piercings, they're facial. It's— this is not some type of weird awkward place on, you know, in a business complex. It's that somebody gets an ear pierced in a place that they're comfortable with, not like the place that Tom went to or brought his wife to, you know, because— Because it was the lowest place in town, because it was the lowest cost place in town, you know. I mean, Tom, just kidding. Cal, I'll let Dave Spencer talk and then wrap up here. Jason, I've got a question for you.

So in the C-3 zone, it wasn't a permitted use back then. What was the reasoning, you know?

I'm sorry, last part of the question.

So in the C-3 zone, they're not—

it's a non-permitted use, right?

Correct.

So what was the reasoning then?

Well, probably about 10 years ago, we didn't allow tattoos at all in the city. And it was just an applicant came in and wanted to add it to the C-2 zone. And so as a city, we processed that application, and that was the only zone that we allowed it in. So as a city, we didn't add it. It was added by— well, the city did through council through this process, but their application was strictly the C-2 zone.

And my question too is to say 3 needles, how would you enforce that, Steve?

How would you enforce it?

Sorry, this is like Provo doing a mask mandate.

How do you enforce it? Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what we're talking about.

I mean, virtually—

I mean, virtually impossible, right? We're not going to go in and check the needles, you know, we're not going to go in and check their books, in all likelihood.

That's a concern. And then you have any studios? Do you have—

We have 43 studios.

That's 43 studios that can do tattoos.

And I think we have enough in the city, so I'm, I'm good at sticking with C2.

So—

I'm sorry, maybe you misunderstood. We have 43 studios and none do tattoos right now. We're requesting that maybe up to 15% of those be allowed to do tattoos, which would be the beauty type. And how would we control that too? And that would be like approximately 5 suites or so. And so how would we control that? We're the business owner, we choose who comes in and who doesn't, and we don't want to be fined and lose our business license and have to kick everybody out because we're in violation of city ordinances for the same reason we're here tonight trying to get this approved.

But I don't think the, the C-3 doing this is going to say, oh, you can only have 15% of your business doing tattoos.

enforced. Like I said, we're not going to be able to verify to the smallest detail, but if we saw a place opening as a sole tattoo place, then we would obviously say you're not in compliance. We would shut down that type of operation. But if you went and looked and, you know, what they were doing and they were operating a beauty salon and they were, you know, offering these tattoos as part of that, then you would probably say it looks like they're probably in compliance. That's probably the level of enforcement we'd be at. As part of the business licensing process, though. Somebody wouldn't be able to come in and apply for a tattoo parlor. Let's say you put the limitation that it has to be part of an accessory to a beauty salon. They would have to get a license for a beauty salon, not a tattoo. So if somebody came in and wanted to do a license solely for a tattoo shop, they wouldn't issue the license because they're not a beauty salon. So it'd be accessory to— so the signage would be beauty salon, and maybe, you know, one or two of the estheticians would do tattooing, but the whole premise of the business would be a beauty salon, not a tattoo shop. And can I ask for a point of clarification also, Steve and Jason? So when we're talking about limiting it to 15%, we're not talking about 15% of the amount of money that they make. We're talking about 15% of the business footprint would be limited to that type of business. I was actually contemplating it would be based on revenues, because I would imagine they'd be using the same space for the tattooing as well as the other beauty services they're providing. I'm not sure how you would— maybe they would have a segregated space, but I don't know. The applicants can speak to that. Yeah, we, we would need to word it in such a way that it's compliant, that it's functional. And so everybody, like Natalie expressed, they run their independent business. within any studio suites, and the rent's approximately $800 a month. That's why Natalie expressed that if they were to go do it at inline retail, they might do all kinds of TIs, have to do personal guarantees. It's thousands of dollars. And at the end of the day, I just want to run my own business as a hairstylist, for example, or offer piercings or tattoos. And so I don't know how you would word it, but I think you would need to word it in such a way that the combined— so my idea would be saying, hey, it's 5 suites or less, or 15%, call it, that would be able to offer beauty accessory tattoos. And this would be also— it could also be limited by both, by no more than 3 needles. If you do that, like, that excludes all the tattoo parlors from a traditional sense. You know, Terry's not going to get the eagle on the back at our place. He can at a lot of other options, but, you know, ours is the females that are going in to say, hey, I want a beauty accessory. And we don't want to send them down to the tattoo no more than Terry— no more than Tom wanted to take his wife to that same place, you know. But I know he's going to deny everything. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start using Someone talked about stalking. I'm gonna find your wife and explain everything, Tom. I'm just kidding. So, so anyway, hopefully we can word it in such a way because they are independent businesses. They're leasing space from Indy Studio Suites. Every space has a sink in, you know, it's, it's, if you walk through there, look at the, look at the gallery online. It's a very beautiful place. Okay, so, so we're gonna have to—

Can I just go for a question?

Just so I'm sorry, you're 50. So if you charge a monthly rate for the booth, I mean, that's not going to be anywhere near 15% of your profit. So that's not going to really be a deterrent, or they could be— I don't understand. Help me understand how you're—

are they independent contractors?

The 15%, I think, should represent 15% of Indie Studio Suite's revenue. And so if you just go, hey, we have 43 suites, and we charge about the same for every suite. And so 15% of that revenue makes sense. Because I don't know the P&L of each and every one of those businesses. I do for Indy Studio Suites, and I'm just going to divide it by 43 and say, here's the relation of profit to revenues, the same. But I, I think you do it off of revenue, because revenue doesn't lie at all. I mean, it's like, It's like why franchisors use revenue as a basis instead of profitability. So can I just address one thing? I think as far as enforceability and as far as ease, I mean, if we start getting into the minutiae of 15% and all this, it's going to be a little more difficult. I think if we just simply say if, if the council chooses to, it has to be an accessory use incidental to the salon, then somebody couldn't come in in the C-3 zone and apply for a tattoo shop.

shop.

It would have to be a beauty salon, and they, they also offer that as a service, but the majority of their service will be related to beauty supply or beauty things rather than tattooing. That, that would be the easiest and simplest way that we can enforce it as far as business licensing and land use. I think that would be— rather than getting into the 15% or the number of needles and all that kind of stuff. So Jason, one of the easiest ways to do it is to keep it in C-2, because that's another— we're kind of Crossing what I heard Renee say, we're crossing over county ordinances, there might be state regulations, and all of a sudden we're going to carve out our own little niche in Orem that C-3, if you do this and, and if you only have so many needles. So I'm, I'm wondering if, Josh, if— are you going to have a special policeman that's a tattoo and body piercing officer that checks how many needles they use for the tattoos? I don't know if we're going to do that. or not. But anyway, I think, I think it's getting very confusing. And I don't think— hopefully we don't do something as a city that we find out we're in violation of other ordinances that we don't even know about by trying to carve out a niche. Jeff.

Okay.

Okay, so—

Mayor, we still need to open this up for public comment, public hearing.

Okay, have we got someone from the public that would like to comment?

Stephanie Visnot, 399 West 1560 North. From what I've read and understand of zoning and ordinances, there are reasons for certain zones to have different land uses. The C-2 zone is to provide a wide range of commercial uses, whereas the C-3 zone has less. The couple of C-2, C-3 zones in the city are located near neighborhoods and include ordinances to act as buffers to mitigate the commercial impact, like setbacks and even garbage collection times. I believe the specific land uses allowed in the C-3 zone also act to mitigate the impact on these nearby residents as well. The applicant and business requiring this land use change is not an undesirable business at all, but as even stated by the statement read by the young lady, when she went and got her traditional— her tattoo at a traditional parlor, she was intimidated and felt uncomfortable there. Since there's no differentiation between traditional tattoos and salon-type tattoos, allowing this change in the land use opens the door for traditional parlors in areas that currently are restricted from this type of land use for a reason. And maybe, as Jason mentioned, it was because it just hasn't been applied for there before. Until the county and the industry works to differentiate between salon type and traditional businesses of this type, land use regulations must remain in place to appropriately direct use and, and impact upon the city and its residents. I do appreciate you taking time, and I'll some really difficult topics, and for your continued efforts to protect our neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have anyone else? Let me just ask one.

Let me ask one.

Close, close the public comment portion of—

okay, we'll close the public comment portion. I just want to ask a question of either Steve or Jason. So, Steve, do— is this— is there a way that we can do what we've described? In other words, can we limit it to 3 needles and a percentage of revenue? I understand that enforcement might be difficult.

Yeah.

But at least we would have an intent going that that's what's supposed to be going on in that business. And if it's not, then they could lose their business license. Yeah, I think you could. Again, the enforcement would be, you know, somewhat of a challenge. But again, if you saw a standalone tattoo place, you would know that's not in compliance. But yeah, you could do that. Right. So a standalone tattoo place would, would not be allowed in C-3s?

Correct.

But a beauty shop with 15% tattoos done with 3 needles on a very minimal basis, that would be allowed. And if that got violated, then they lose their business license, right?

Right.

So, well, let me, let me back up. I don't know that they would necessarily lose their business license, so they would have to shut down entirely, but certainly that would be a violation. That would be a violation of the zoning ordinance. So if we found that violation, they could be cited for that violation.

Put it that way.

Okay.

Any other comments? I just don't know how to make that motion, Mr. Mayor. Can we make it? So if you want to make that, if you want to allow that, then you could just make a motion to approve the application to amend Standard Land Use Code 6232, Tattoos and Body Piercings. from a not permitted use to permitted use in the C-3 zone, provided that such use is accessory to a beauty salon, meaning that 20 or less than 15% or 20%, whatever you want, of the revenues or the space is devoted to the actual tattooing. Can I just piggyback that, make that motion, Stephen? If you can just tell us the 15 or 20.

That you want.

Well, so before we do that, I feel like we need to— I just need to state I appreciate where you are. I appreciate what you want to do. I'm very uncomfortable with changing land use ordinances to accommodate one business, but I appreciate your purpose. And I, after my conversations with the county health department and everyone else, you know, in the Planning Commission meetings, I really feel like There's some changes that need to be made on the state level, which I'm more comfortable with if we could get those changes made, but I don't feel like I can support this for one business.

I feel like we need to follow the proper channels to bring credibility and awareness of what you do.

Well, thank you.

Anybody else?

Councilmember McDonald, is there a motion?

There is a motion. And I think with a limit of 15% of total revenue and no more than 3 needles, is that what we said? Sorry, that's a little bit confusing, but I think we now know the spirit of it and you'll codify it in our minutes. So that's my motion, Mr. Mayor.

I will second.

Okay, can we have a vote? I'm going to vote in with that stipulation and that compromise.

I'm going to vote aye.

Nay.

Nay.

Aye.

I'm gonna vote nay because there's no way you can enforce it.

Aye.

Aye.

The motion passes. Thank you very much, Mayor. Thank you, council members. Appreciate all of your insight and feedback.

Appreciate it.

Okay, thank you. Next, we've got, we've got a resolution on the Utah Lake Authority. And we talked about this at length in our planning meeting. We didn't have quite enough information to vote on it tonight. And so we've, we've moved it to the City Council meeting on the 22nd. Yeah, she's going to tell us what we need to say.

Okay, may I make a motion that we continue, continue item— which, where is it—

8.3, the Utah Lake Authority resolution, with stipulation that we may do it next week if we can put it together, but it's all we need to say is continued. Okay, second. Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. Motion passes. Last, we've got an ordinance amendment to Article 2-15 of the Orem City Code Planning Commission. Jesse, if you'd like to show us that. I know Tom doesn't want to bring it up, but I heard his wife say that she accompanied him there. So sorry, Tom.

I, I'm not really that good at hearing.

Anyway, this is a change in the Planning Commission ordinance. There's generally 3 reasons you change an ordinance: is to clarify issues, to make sure it complies with state law, and to provide the legislative body that are the governing body, their powers and rights underneath the code. So the changes here are— some are really fundamental, and some are cosmetic. For example, do you have a redlined version for us to see? I don't have it in front of me. So I did say I do not. Does this Steve, do you have one? I believe it's in your packet. Yeah, it's in the packet.

Thank you.

I'll know where to find it then.

So the 2 major ones are the, the former code, or the code that is currently in place that we're proposing to change, provides that a Planning Commission member who misses 25% of the meeting, or Planning Commission member who moves out of the city or is out of the city more than 60 days is automatically removed from the Planning Commission. The problem with that is that if the City Council, which is the governing body, doesn't know that this member is disqualified and the member doesn't know that they're disqualified, there can be ongoing votes as a result of no one really paying attention or knowing. So we've kind of changed— we've changed that to suggest that We recommend that the Planning Commission attend more than at least 20 to 25% of their meetings, but the City Council would determine if there should be a removal or some other remedy with the count— with the Planning Commission member to help them to come in attendance. We also put the onus on the Planning Commission member if they move out of the city to give the City Council Council notice that they've changed their permanent residence outside of the city.

Debbie, did you have a comment?

Okay.

No, I didn't.

A couple other issues. We wanted to comply with state law. The code provides that you had to physically meet in this building. The new state law provides for virtual meetings, so we provided a provision that the Planning Commission could meet in accordance with state law. Also, apparently there was an attempt by some planning commission previously to disrupt an issue and delay an issue that would need to go to the city council. So state law provides that, that the city council can take up an issue that's voted in favor by the planning commission, or a negative recommendation by the planning commission, or in the event that the Planning Commission delays an action. And so we've added that language from the state code into the Orem City Code. Other than that, I'll take your questions, answer any questions you may have. Do we have any questions? We discussed this in the work meeting, so I think we're pretty on top of it.

We If there's no discussion, you can entertain a motion.

Okay, we'll entertain a motion. Mayor, I move that we amend— move that we approve the amendments to Articles 2-15 of the Orem City Code Planning Commission as presented by Jesse Riddle.

Second.

We have a second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The ordinance passes. Last thing we've got on the list is city manager information items. Yes, thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of things. One of them was already mentioned. We do have a meeting with the Alpine School District that is scheduled during the lunch hour on the 16th of February here in the council chambers, and it will be a live meeting, and I understand we will have at least Per RSVP from the Alpine School District, we'll have the superintendent and members of his staff and at least the 2 members of the Alpine School District board who represent Orem. So just want to remind you of that. In addition, we have prequalified 3 well drillers to— We have 2 wells that we are in the process of drilling. One of them is obviously at Heritage Park, where we are looking obviously to locate our water tank. But the other one, we have a well in the Hillcrest neighborhood that is tied to our Hillcrest Park, and we have prequalified 3 well drillers. I just wanted to make you aware, so that's encouraging. We have 3 options to choose from. That's the good news. The, the not so good news is today was the deadline for submittal for architectural services for a new city center. And we actually had a good group of people who came and toured the facility and asked a lot of questions about 2 weeks ago, but unfortunately we only received one submittal for architectural services. Method Studio presented and participated, submitted a a bid. So obviously we're discouraged in that the number of submittals was low, but we're encouraged from the perspective that Method Studio, we know, is a quality architectural firm. And, and we will— obviously the bid closed today at 2 PM, so I haven't, nor has staff, had an opportunity to review what is included in the bid. But we do have confidence in the work. work that Method Studio has done in the past. We are also meeting as staff in cooperation. In fact, we had a meeting last Thursday with staff, including Mr. Riddle, to review the city's efforts to continue with this rebranding effort to include Family City USA as part of our branding in the future, and hopefully hear in the next few weeks we'll have some ideas and, and some things to share with you and show you as it relates to the manner in which we would recommend that, that rebranding take place. So that's encouraging as well. Just the last thing, tomorrow is the halfway point of the Utah State Legislature. So we are halfway through the session, session ends on the 4th of March. There are a couple of, I know, bills that, for example, Mayor Young was inquiring about, as well as we anticipate here in the next couple of days, the big housing bill will be released to the public. We understand that it is making its way internally within the legislature. We understand it to be approximately 80 pages. It's going to be a pretty big bill, but we have yet to see a copy of that bill. Mayor Young was asking specifically about 2 particular pieces of legislation. One of them is HB 151 that relates to retail facility incentive payment amendments. This is a piece of legislation sponsored by the House Majority Leader that would limit and essentially not allow cities to provide any sort of tax incentives to retail outlets. So to a certain degree, some of what we've been talking about with our economic development strategic plan and the presentation we had earlier today about, you know, are there things that we could do to enhance and assist in the redevelopment of State Street? If they are retail outlets, then potentially this bill would limit our ability to provide any sort of incentive or any sort of help to a business owner, whether big or small, towards revitalization of their properties along, for example, the State Street corridor. Now, the— we understand that there are as well amendments that are being made to this bill, and we expect that those amendments potentially will be made available tomorrow or will be made available on Thursday. It's been suggested that this bill is going to go before a committee on Thursday. So we don't have, you know, amendments. I would anticipate that there's probably going to be movement away from the absolute no incentives to potentially some, I guess you could say, some openings where it would be permitted to provide retail incentives to particular retailers. who need assistance as it relates to economic development. Again, this bill is one that is in many respects tied to housing, because the suggestion is on the part of some that some communities are, rather than proactively doing things to solve the state's housing crisis, they are going after retail establishments and they're using tax dollars to lure these retailers into their respective communities. And so, in part, the suggestion is if we can eliminate the— I guess you could say the temptation for cities to zone for dollars and try and lure retail, then we can promote and grow the city or the state's housing stock. So that's HB 151. The other bill that you were interested in from what I understand, Mayor, is SB 140. This is the Housing and Transit Reinvestment Zone Amendments. This is a bill that is essentially a build upon from last year. Last year there were specific, I guess you could say, opportunities that were extended to development in and around light rail stations— or excuse me, commuter rail stations. This year, that bill has been modified to allow the same type of incentives and the same type of improvements to happen in and around light rail stations and potentially bus rapid transit stations. So what would happen is, if you are within a certain proximity to a light rail station, a Frontrunner station, or a BRT station, then you could be eligible for tax increment financing, provided that you met a set number of— or a specific set of criteria, including providing 51% of whatever development you are suggesting and proposing as residential housing at a density of more than 50 units per acre, or— and 10% of whatever you provide in terms of housing. is affordable as defined by the state of Utah. So this is not something that we have to do, but this is something that you would have an opportunity to take advantage of if you so chose. So it's not a requirement. It's not something we have to do, but rather there are communities in the state that are looking at building residential density in and around transit stops, and they are looking for this as a means to help them do that and to use tax increment financing to do that. So it wouldn't be mandated, it would be an option.

Correct.

And that's House Bill 140? Senate Bill 140. And that is all I had.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Jamie. I think we're good. Someone make a motion to adjourn. I'll make a motion to adjourn.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.