City Council · 2022-04-26

That is a mark that not too many partners achieve. It just goes to show the dedication that the city has had with the program, and we're thrilled to be able to continue this partnership. I did want to just kind of give you just a brief update, let you know where we stand as far as the contracts and the customers that we currently have. Right now there's a little more than 3,200 customers in the state of Orem, or in the city of Orem. And that equates to about 5,300 contracts. So it's still a very strong partnership. The residents— your residents are happy with the program. Whenever we do complete a claim, we send out a survey, and you can see that residents are judging us at a 4.8 out of 5. So we do take that very seriously. If there's ever an upset customer or a negative score that comes in, we We do look at those and we try to address them to make sure that we fix it as much as we can. So really, Orem continues to be the standard when it comes to the partner, how a partnership should operate. Each time we have a communication goes out to residents, I work back and forth with Mr. Stephen Downs, get his feedback, any input the city might have, recommendations, what really catches the residents' eyes. And then there's also a great page on the city website. So at any time, a resident, if they happen to be interested in the program, there's a link and our phone number and a link to our website so that they're able to get that information right then and there. And we really do enjoy the partnership. A little bit earlier today, I did give a check for Summerfest, about $2,500. We love The sponsorship, we look forward to continuing to be a sponsor. And, you know, maybe as I mentioned before, maybe one of these days I'll get to be the grand marshal. You may have to move the bar onward.

A couple more zeros on there, we can talk.

Start early with the lobbying.

At the end of the decimal, you can put as many zeros as you want. So really, I just wanted to provide a brief update and really let everyone know about the great milestone. Dennis has been around a while too, and he can attest This is— the $1 million in savings really is a fantastic milestone. Not too many partners achieve that, and we're thrilled that Orem reached that, and we're looking forward to saving $2 million. Especially for a city of this size, you know, $1 million is a lot in a city of this size. One thing that I would like to add is when I speak to other Utah cities about, you know, the partnership opportunity and what it is that we do, No pressure, but I use you all as a model because of the buy-in that you have, the proactive steps that you take by putting information on the website or addressing residents in the way that you do if they do have any questions. You know, that's the model partnership. That's really what makes it successful in a community so that you can reach milestones like that and help all those people. So I—

Thank you.

You know, I congratulate all of you for doing it the right way and as a result making it successful for the folks that choose to participate and protect themselves. I have a question. You used to help us with our utilities, people who were low income, is that correct? Yeah, each year you provide us a $5,000 partnership amount, not a commission, which is $5,000 for being a partner, and we utilize that money to help low-income families who are struggling to pay utilities.

So that continues.

Is that ending?

And also just let you know too, we do have a foundation called HomeServe Cares, so that would be for any A resident or that is not currently a partner, and let's just say they have an issue that basically put them in dire straits, you can go on to HomeServe Cares and they can apply to have the job completed at no cost to them. Again, we'd always work with the local contractor.

We actually got a call—

this was earlier this year, right? No, I think the end of last year. A gal, a grandmother caring for her special needs grandson whose husband just passed away from cancer, and then the sewer line went out. And we knew about this program and reached out to Steve and he helped us through the application process. And that family got a new sewer line through this. They weren't a partner, they weren't paying their dues, or they weren't, they weren't a customer, but they didn't care.

They saw the need and they took care of this lady's sewer line.

It was really great. Typically those come through referrals from the contractors in the field. It's somebody that's not a customer of ours, but the contractor gets called by a resident who has an issue and they tell them what it is and, you know, they're financially disadvantaged or not able to pay for the issue themselves. And, you know, if they qualify, we do pro bono jobs. As a matter of fact, we just recently did a water line job as well in Boise, Idaho, that was $6,500. That was a pro bono job. So it's nice to work for a company that has a charitable foundation as an arm of the company to give back to the communities that we work for. Could you define just what the program costs per person, and then what benefits are, and then also just how you get to the million dollars in savings? Sure. Now, I'm not familiar with the pricing structure in Orem, so I can't speak to that. I don't know if you know the pricing, but I can fill in some of the other specifics. Yeah, so Orem for the water is $4.07 a month, and then sewer, I think, is like $5.10. And those are separate charges that wind up on, on your water or sewer bill? They pay us directly. Yeah, there's nothing— so you call them directly, they pay directly? Correct, correct, yes. And then they can bill annually, quarterly, biannually, whatever works best for them. And then there's no deductible, no service charge. And then how it works with the claim, they just have to give us a call, we send out a contractor, whatever the issue is, they fix it, and then the contractor invoices us and we pay them. So really all the homeowner has to do is give us a call. Okay, so you're outsourcing it to local contractors?

Correct.

And you're like the insurance company?

Correct.

Facilitates it all?

And maybe, maybe some history is good.

So we entered this partnership in 2015. Uh, Chris Shirkey, who isn't here— Chris Shirkey, our public works director— the issue we were running into was that we would have citizens call because their sewer line went out, and they assumed that that was the city's—

they didn't know that that was their responsibility.

It's connected to the city's sewer line or water, and that's when they would learn that this was their responsibility, not ours. Okay.

And state laws actually—

they've actually passed a state law now requiring cities to notify Residents of this responsibility. So our partnership with Service Line Warranties fulfills our state requirements to notice all of our residents of the responsibility, but it also gives them options as to what they can do to protect themselves moving forward.

So we were getting a lot of those calls. It was a bad time to tell somebody that this is their responsibility.

We wanted to be more proactive, entered this partnership about almost 7 years now. And it really has reduced those. We don't get those calls anymore of people wondering if the city's going to come fix their line.

Does it cover everything from the meter to the house that goes wrong?

Whatever the homeowner responsibility is, so however that's defined. So the easy way to say it is from the foundation to the point of utility connection for both the water and the sewer. So just whatever goes wrong, if it's plugged or if a line breaks or whatever? Broken, cracked, leaking pipes, tree root penetration. You probably don't have too many frozen external water lines in these need to be thawed, that that's covered. Clogs, any of those types of things, anything that impedes the flow or creates a leak, you know, what we call an operational failure is what's covered.

And then is the million dollars what you paid out towards those claims?

Correct. That's what we have covered for residents here. Now we've reached that milestone of over a million now.

So, if it's covered by your homeowner's, I guess, like a hose bib?

So, external lines typically are not covered by homeowner's insurance. There's coverage for damage that might be caused from sewage backing up into the house or those types of things, but the lines themselves typically are not covered. A lot of people have home warranties these days. That'll typically cover internal plumbing, but not the external. So, that's kind of that no man's land that when this program was conceived and put into place 19 years ago is, here's a niche that we can fill that nobody else touches. So the 2 gentlemen that actually founded the company came up with this idea, worked for a company called Columbia Gas that did it for gas lines, and they thought, well, why can't we do this for water and sewer lines? Program was born. So we can tell when you send out the— when the mailer goes out because They have friends that say, hey, is this a good thing to do?

Is there a—

is there kind of an age as far as pipes that we should absolutely be saying, you know what, yeah, for sure you need to do this because your home's 25 years old or 30 years old and the data shows that after 35 years is when the professionals see problems start to pop up? Yeah, that's a, that's a very good question, and that's really, it's dependent upon materials used, of course. If you have no idea what's underground, and based on the age of your home you can kind of get a general idea of, you know, this might be terracotta or Orangeburg, something along those lines, that those things just basically collapse. But generally speaking, most materials, when you start getting to that 25 to 30 years and beyond. It's not a matter of if it's gonna happen, it's a matter of when. The severity, of course, how bad will it be? You know, so really that's one of the beautiful things about the way the program is offered is it provides that proactive education, but it also allows the homeowner to decide themselves whether or not they want to participate in it. You know, some people will just kind of plug their ears. No, this will never happen to me. And then it does, and they go, oh, I should have got it, right? So really it depends on materials, but generally speaking, 25 to 30 years, you're entering into that period where— I mean, even on modern materials, joints can fail and so on. You start getting leaks, or sewer lines, when joints fail, that's where those tree roots start getting in. Every now and then on LinkedIn, some of our contractors will share pictures of some severe tree root issues, and basically the tree roots that are in the form of the pipe. Because they fill the entire inside of the pipe. They just break the pipe away, you know, tree roots that are, you know, whatever the size of that sewer line is. It's horrible. One complaint that I've had, if you're willing to accept those, is sometimes someone sees a problem, they immediately call the plumber of their choice without calling you and find out that plumber A wasn't approved, plumber B or C are.

How do we make—

how can you make that clearer? And how does our city reply?

Hey, I've got this problem.

I have this insurance from I don't know who. What do I do? Yeah, I was, I was just gonna say, when those instances happen, we do work with those individuals so that they're reimbursed. It's— it complicates the process from a customer service standpoint because of the way we're set up. So I'm not going to You know, misrepresent, say, yeah, we just have this smooth process put in place for that, because it gets tricky when it comes to compensating contractors and so on. So in the messaging, you know, we try to make it clear to them that don't call the contractor, call us. So I would say that might be an area that we could look at is making it more prominent in communications. Yeah, I mean, because if If sewage is flowing into your home, you're not cool, cool thinking right now.

No.

And so you and I have a common friend, the Watsons, who live over by you, Jeff, who called the wrong person, paid for the whole thing, and got nothing. And so, you know, they weren't a happy customer. But, uh, but if we, um, if we had that availability, you guys probably do if someone calls to the city.

But again, that's assuming someone calls the city.

And so That, that maybe send out a little sticker they put on, I mean, on the magnet on the fridge or what. I don't know. Magnet actually screwed into my head. But some way to just make sure that they know the step, because when you're having a catastrophe, you're not thinking clearly. Yeah, that's a great point. And if someone does bring it to your attention, please let me know. I'll try to get it resolved and make them aware. And to your point, why it might be good if we can come up with something like that to help in the partnership that we have here. Once somebody's a customer, they're not receiving the marketing materials that go out, so they're not seeing that message. It's not being reinforced that if there's a problem, you call us. So people that we're soliciting to that aren't currently customers, they see that message. So that's an excellent point. Yeah, well, that's what jumped into my head when you said that right away. But I have a freezer in the garage.

It doesn't stick to my—

it doesn't stick to stainless. They do on the new fridges because the women complain. Yeah, we'll figure something out, but that's a great point. If I may as well, some may wonder how did we develop this relationship with Service Line Warranties. We actually did go through a formal request for proposal process, a bid process, and so When we did award this contract and forge this relationship, it was by way of a competitive process where ServiceLine stood out as the best of the organizations and companies that offered this kind of service. So it's not the, you know, there's sometimes concern that this was something that was, this was done exclusively with one vendor. But no, we did go through the formal process and award the contract based on a formal bidding process. I'd also like to point out you were our first partner in Utah as well, so we appreciate you taking a chance on a little company that was based out of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania at that time, which is just outside of Pittsburgh before HomeServe acquired us. And you gave us the opportunity, and I feel like we've come through. But as I mentioned, I use you all as the model. Because I feel like you've come through for us as well in being proactive in the partnering. Some questions you may get at times, do you get commissions? We don't receive any commission for what they— so they have a commission model that they offered. We actually had a price reduction made in lieu of commission to our residents. And then yeah, there's 3 bidders. One did an opt-out program, which we weren't interested in an opt-out program where everybody was going to get this.

These are the other bidders.

Service line warranties bid and then HomeServe bid. The opt-out one, I don't know what happened to them.

HomeServe then bought Service Line Warranties.

So now the other— the 2 bidders are now together, but they honored all of our contracts and agreements and nothing has changed since. And really the reason that happened is because the Service Line Warranty had the endorsement of National League of Cities and HomeServe wanted that. So yeah, they bought the company. We're also partnered with and endorsed by the Utah League of Cities in town. So let's come to the conference in Salt Lake City, you'll get to see me again. One last quick question. So that 3,224 customers covered, is that how many people have you given a check to or paid for their service? Oh no, the 788, those are the completed claims as of the beginning of April. So what's the difference between the 5,326 and 3,224? So some customers might have signed up for water and sewer, some might have just signed up for water, some might have just signed up for sewer. So that's where you get the 50/50/100 contracts. Oh, I see. Some customers have multiple contracts. Yeah, it's à la carte, so they can choose any one or combination. Some people might pick just water or just sewer, some will pick both, some people will add in the in-home plumbing. So it's really flexible to what they desire as far as, you know, hey, I just got my water line replaced, so I'm not going to sign up for the water coverage, but I don't know what's going on with my sewer line, so maybe I better get that. So that $788,000 basically is the million dollars. That's what it costs to take care of them. Any other questions? So are our numbers growing? They're still pretty good, actually.

Just in the last month—

or I'm sorry, the last 12 months— we've completed 161 jobs, uh, totaling about $205,000. So it's still chugging along, still doing great. When I look at the, um, The customers covered number on the weekly report that we get, it seems to be pretty steady because obviously— so it's a program you can opt in or out of at any time. So a lot of people, when they have work done, they'll opt out, but then we get new customers that'll opt in, or those people will opt back in again later because the work that is performed is warrantied for a year. So after that year's up, they might jump back in again just in case something happens.

So—

Right. The number's always changing, but it's pretty steady. To answer your question, I didn't need a yes to sign up. It's $110 or something.

Any other questions? We're gonna have to move on.

Okay, any other?

Thank you for coming and updating us on that.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you, everybody. Appreciate it. Y'all have a great afternoon. Next up, we've got a presentation on the finance. All right, Mayor, Council, City Manager, everybody, we appreciate your time. This is a follow-up from what we About 2 months ago, um, just to kind of see where you're at. I know Aaron has met with several of you, got some of your feedback. We're kind of at that point where let's kind of make a decision. You guys make a decision collectively, um, and we'll move forward either way at your recommendations. So again, the reasoning of this is the City of Orem has one of the lowest parking fine schedules in the state of Utah, places a higher emphasis on those safety concern violations which we talked about And then we're changing how late fees are assessed to be in line with an update to the state code. Again, this is just a brief summary of what those look like. The proposal from ADA to $150 from $100, the safety concern violation $50 from $25, all other violations $40 from $25. Just a basic comparison, all other local cities around us are anywhere from $45 To $340. So we're behind the ball. So option 1, uh, we approve the, uh, resolution with the proposal with the fine increase and the amended late fee schedule. Option 2, we don't approve the fine increase and we approve the late fee schedule change by resolution. So those are kind of our options. Want to get your feedback, where you're standing at this point. And then once we're there, we'll have Aaron draft what your recommendations are, and then we'll have our, our council continue after session.

Yes, we see the numbers.

Yes, Aaron, procedurally, would these— if these amendments were to be made, would they be effective July 1st, or would they just be effective upon passage? They would, I believe, be effective July 1st as part of the new budget. So that's part of it. Another thing, just in terms of discussing the numbers, we didn't just kind of pull $40 out of thin air. Most of the parking violations that are enforced by the city are violations of state code, state traffic code, and the state has recommended fines for those. And the vast majority of parking violations in the state are recommended to be fined $40. In the, in the, in our Justice Court, if we were to file the case there instead of doing it civilly the way that we are, which is more efficient, um, the Justice Court judge would be charging $40 rather than $25. What's a safety concern? Give me an example. So those are the ones, if you look at, um, Okay. So these are kind of the ones that we, we had mentioned in the prior presentation. Fire line, fire hydrant, within 30 feet of a stop sign, obstructing traffic, and angled parking. A lot of those ones where we need to get an apparatus in there. Someone trying to make a turn on the street, blindside, right?

Which could cause a traffic collision.

Potentially cause a traffic collision, things like that. So we just, as we were putting this together, we felt like that needed more emphasis, right? As we talked about previously, sometimes the $25, people just kind of laugh at us and say, well, I'll just keep my car there, keep it parked there, right? We want to have a little more And then based off of the state recommendations as well. In addition to the state recommendation, just as far as the history goes, the city passed an ordinance back in 2002 where we set up— where we decided we're not going to enforce parking through the criminal courts anymore. We're going to do it through our police department through a civil process. And back in 2002 was when these fine amounts of $25 and $100 for handicap violations were were adopted. And again, just so we understand where the $40 is coming from, if you check an inflation calculator, the government inflation calculator, February of 2002, which is when the ordinance was passed, until March of 2022, $25 then was worth $40.43 today. And so that's another justification for trying to Where these numbers come from and why we're changing them. It's been 20 years since this has been addressed. So to answer, answer your question, the late fee schedule is— was amended a few years ago in the state code. As I was researching starting a parking team 6 months or so ago, myself and Aaron came across this code. We feel that the way our current pay structure is set up is not— could be construed as not in compliance. So we're trying to be proactive in changing our late fee schedule to where basically after 14 days, a 25% late fee would be assessed in addition to where currently on the last presentation. I don't need to go— it just, it doubles and then it doubles again. So we felt like that was a little excessive to the citizens, and so we're also— that was— is the other part of the piece. And is it, um, I know when I've gotten a speeding ticket, it says you need to wait a few days before you go pay it. I always forget. I'd rather just go pay it right then. Yeah.

Do these say the same thing on it?

So these are, um, these citations are a little different.

They can come in and Pay it at the police department. As we, we have a partnership with a software company that we do our citations through, and Ernesto can attest, we're in the process of building an online payment system as well with the city and that so they can make their payments online.

And then, I'm sorry, he was laughing at me, so you just can do it right when you get it, or you have to—

Yes, so to answer your question, no, you, you can You can come into the records department the next day, it processes immediately. But you don't— but you're working on the online? Correct. That's just gonna be another feature. You don't have to come in, you can do it right from your curb. Right from your curb. So I should repeat, coming in is like an additional fee. Maybe in your case they will accept a credit. So I have a question on the legal parking. We were down in Springwater. They all got tickets because they were in a cul-de-sac and they parked their cars in parks. So the question there would be, what is the warning issue? And I think we need to be— I think we need to get warnings on the— So we actually did. We actually issued out— now I don't know about those specific vehicles, but we issued out We've issued over 1,800 parking citations since the parking team has been in session, and we've issued over 3,200 warnings. So we've doubled our warnings compared to our parking citations. So a lot of that education and those warnings come first prior to citations. If we do that, then yeah, that's fine. Yeah, so that is— now I can't give you that specific situation, but the first—

yeah.

The houses are sinking. And speaking of Springwater, they— we actually received a petition on a parking district, so we'll be speaking to you again in the coming months on that. So when you go to non-safety violations, so does parking the wrong way in front of your house count for a $40 ticket? So that, if you look at the, uh, the proposal, that would be under your, your all other violations of $40. The safety ones, we've done 50. Now, if you want to recommend that we do 40 for all, we can do 40 for all. I'm just saying that particular violation. That particular violation, no, that would be considered into all other violations. Because that— and I know that that's a state requirement, right?

Correct.

It's also one of the most annoying violations because most people don't even know it's a real thing. Yeah, my kid got attention to it. I think they were taught by somebody.

Their dad.

Well, and I don't know, we're not prepared, I don't think, with numbers on that specific violation, but maybe that's something we can look into and see how much it's enforced. Because I know that the police, as has been mentioned with the warnings that are given out, where twice as many warnings are given out as tickets, Um, I know the police exercise discretion as to whether or not to actually ticket someone for something like that, right? Sure. And I don't know, that's just a violation that comes off the top of my head as being extremely annoying.

Sure.

It hasn't happened to me, but it's happened to people all around.

Mike, that could be something that you could counsel with parking team. Yeah, strongly encourage the warning track rather than— I think again, I understand what Aaron talked about, this The way the city changed, and we don't put these through the justice court. We have the civil process, and because of that, we have a lot more discretion on— people call us a lot of times, we just— if they got a valid reason or can say, hey, you know what, I messed up, or did this.

But they're—

my parking team's job is to enforce the law, right? They're, they're out there. These parking things are not just minor— they may seem like minor things, but there's a reasoning why it's in state law. Right? And their job is to either, by their discretion, issue a warning or a violation. But to that end, we have a lot more discretion at the city if someone was to appeal that citation to us. We're willing to work with those people, which we do on a daily basis. So is our first reaction a warning? Or like that, like the mayor's example, is that guy going to get a ticket or a warning? I can't tell you. Based on what I've trained my officers, yes. Initially, we always try to issue warnings first. But there might be situations that dictate that need a citation calls for, right? I can't— I'm not going to take away their discretion and their ability to do their job, but I also will give them directions as far as, hey, this is what we want. They know what Chief Adams wants, what the council wants. This is the direction we kind of want to go. Okay, let's issue some warnings first. Let's try to, you know, educate, um, and which we've done. But at some point, the law still continues to be broken. We need to enforce it. My other question is, how many— what percent of repeat offenders do we have? Because if we don't have a lot of repeat offenders, I don't know why we have to raise rates. Yeah, unless we're— yeah, um, UB's probably actually have quite a few. Um, you know, I think we have one guy who's got 11 outstanding parking citations right now, um, you know, that eventually will go to collections. And so yeah, there are several of those repeat customers. You got one guy that parks every day in a neighborhood parking and the neighbor calls, the resident right in front of him parks in front of his house and the guy calls every day and go down and issue a ticket and, you know, so we'll send them to collections. I guess for me, I don't have a problem going, you know, $25 to $40 or $25 to $50. With things that seem like, I mean, like running a stop sign or speeding or things that you know these are wrong things. This parking the wrong way on the side of the street, that seems— I, I just still can't wrap my arms around why that's a crime. Well, and that's something that we can sit down with, you know, and, um, again, if there's certain ones that you say, hey, you know what, we would like to see a little more education on this and some warnings issued, You know, and get that message clear. But if the problem still continues, right, we need to correct the behavior. And just to provide some context, um, for, for other parking fines tend to be very lowest within the criminal system or the traffic code. So for example, if you're given a ticket for speeding 5 over, the fine for that is $130. So this is, this is still substantially lower than what you would see, you know, if you're going a stop sign or a red light or Or failing to signal, that's a $130 fine. All of those are. So, um, again— Oh, so these are mostly parking-oriented? These are parking only that we're dealing with. Yeah. Um, things like parking in, in neighborhoods where we have our parking program where you can't because they're, you know, near UB or whatever, and students are parking there. Or people parking too close to stop signs or whatever, things like that. That is what this covers.

I guess I see this more parking tickets.

I would prefer a more instructional approach. So to me, the $25 is an instructional approach. You know, you go out, you've already had your, you know, oh no, something's on my windshield, and then you go up and you're kind of like, oh good, it's not $100, you know. But I'm not going to do that again because I really don't want to get $25 and I don't want you on my ticket.

So I don't know, I'm okay with the $25.

The handicap though, I don't have a problem with that one because to me that's just, you know, that's not the way I accidentally parked the wrong way on the street or, you know, I don't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with the handicap or the safety concerns. The other ones I'm okay sticking wherever we want to. The safety concerns, if you're parking too close to a stop sign, someone has to pull around you and maybe have an accident. Of course you need to help do the remarketing. And then there is a factor, I mean, except for this parking in the wrong way thing, but there's a factor of people just park wherever and they're okay paying $25 because it's like going to a jazz concert. Yeah, I guess that depends on your income level. I mean, if you have people that keep doing it and keep doing it, then maybe you can go up to higher prices. Yeah, and then it really bites them. Could we have a graduated scale where they, you know, first offense is so much, but then if they continue to do it, is that something too complicated to— That's something we can do. There, um, uh, absolutely. So, um, in the criminal law, like I say, which is where this came from, um, there There are several offenses that have graduated effects depending on the number of offenses that you've committed in the past. So we could write it such that, yeah, on a second— once you— on your second parking ticket, it's, you know, $50 instead of $25, you know, $75 your third. However it is, we just need direction from you in terms of how you want it structured so that we can write the ordinance and update the code. So, Aaron and Mike, just quickly, in the software that you use, To administer this program, is the graduated option— is there going to be a way to do that administratively? I'm sure, I'm sure we could meet with them, but it wouldn't be an instant thing, right? It's not something that's created. Yeah, yeah, we'd have to build it out. I'm sure it could be done. So what if we— I don't think we're going to come to a resolution right Right this second, maybe.

But I think what might make—

and I know you guys want to get this— So the timeliness issue here— sorry to interrupt— is just that it needs to go in with the budget. Okay. Um, so what if we had like 3 city councilors that met with you guys and came up with some kind of a, this is what it is, and then we just vote on it and decide we want to go with it? When do you need to vote by? That's your question, right? That is a good question. Where's our, uh, The budget document will actually be presented to you next council meeting. So we can have the fees— let's say, for example, we can have the lesser $25 fee for all general infractions, and then a higher fee for safety infractions, and then the highest fee for handicap accessible infractions. We can start there, and if you wish to modify it thereafter, you can modify it thereafter. We just kind of need a base number to include in the budget. Yeah. And what I'm hearing from you, you know, relative consensus is let's leave the, the kind of all infractions at $25, the safety infractions at $50, and then the handicap infractions at $150. What is your safety again?

I just don't know. The cul-de-sac one, to me, that's just like parking the wrong way.

A lot of people don't know know that. So to me, although it is a safety concern, I think there's some education that needs to happen there. So that would fall under the current bylaws? No, it's a safety issue. The safety issue there, right, is if you have a fire truck that enters the cul-de-sac and needs to turn around and it can't because the cars are sticking out. Or just a standard car. I get why it's a safety issue, but I also understand that I talked to my neighbors about it they're like, oh, I thought that sounded part of the code set. Yeah, no, I think that's a legitimate and a common point of view, and that's why we did education for literally— well, we just started, I think, issuing tickets on it right now, but we might actually still be doing education. Those are warnings, different things written with a letter with the state code. But I will represent that it's not just, for example, a fire issue. It's getting the snowplow into a cul-de-sac. It's— we deal with neighborhood disputes, cars being parked there. I mean, I think Chief Adams can speak to— we've actually had fisticuffs result from people who park that way. So if you're punching me, Chief, I'll have to throw you out. What if we said the fire hydrant, to me, that's a no-brainer. The 30 feet of a stop sign, to me, that's not a problem. Obstructing traffic, I don't know what that is. And angled parking, if that's the cul-de-sac thing, maybe we dump—

drop them down.

Obstructing traffic? But the fire hydrant, you got to get your hands on it. Yeah, a car has to go into the opposite lane of travel because the car is parked in your double car roadway.

Okay, is that what obstructing traffic is?

Yes.

People know not to do that too.

So the only, the only one that I think You and I had a question on—

See, it's handled apart.

I mean, that's an easy switch right there. And then the other violations is $25? Yeah, keep the other ones at $25. Yeah, keep them. So you want to keep them at $25? Then maybe we don't need a meeting later. If we can agree to that, if everybody likes that.

Does anybody complain about that?

I'm okay with that.

On the other violations though, if it's safety, I'm, I'm comfortable bumping it up.

I mean, because there's other things we're not mentioning that would be—

Those are kind of the main ones that we identified.

If we do come across with those, we will— I will email you collectively, say, hey, we've identified this as a safety, are you okay with the $50?

If that's the case, though, we would need to pass another resolution.

Yeah.

But if we get there, we can do that. Yeah, $32 is—

When we get there, we can do that. I just— it's not as easy as just sending an email and saying, But if I may, I mean, this is— we're not setting this in stone.

Not right now.

The next, the next budget session, we can continue to evaluate, and you could come back to the council next year and say, hey, this particular concern is starting to become a very big problem, and you can recommend an amendment to this. Or the $25 situation is not changing behavior, we need to change behavior. Maybe it's $30 or $35 or $65. You have discretion. I mean, we're only talking about the next 12-month period. But if it's not changing behavior, that means you're— Yeah, my representation is eventually, as we talked about, if we continue to have like what the mayor is talking about, well, that's just not a big deal, that's what I pay for a Jazz game, well then we're not changing behavior. And then we need to strategize and say, okay, how can I change? Is your within 30 feet of stop signs, is that curb to curb? I don't know what it is. I think that's just in the traffic code and something that you learn in like driving school or whatever. You've been driving for a long year.

Yeah.

So guys, just a comment because you're hearing all the different— I want to say thank you because you're trying to keep us safe. The 30 feet stop from stop sign issue is a big problem in my neighborhood. And the guy that abuses it parks a big truck right in front of there and people can't see the stop sign. And that's also a bus stop for the kids going to elementary school. So we appreciate what you do. I mean, we're all going back and forth on these different numbers, but you're trying to keep us safe. And if you err on offending somebody sometime, you know, darn it. But that was a big one.

Parking in handicap.

I walk over to Glasa and I see people jump out of the handicap. stall and run into VASA. I'm going, you know what, somebody, some paraplegic's not gonna be able to get in there today. I mean, those kind of things I think are terrible. So thank you for what you do.

I think we do want that repeat offenders, though.

I think, I think that's okay. If you can add that. So would you like me to determine exactly what those numbers would be? Or—

I think it sounds like maybe that's something we can look at next year.

The general conversation was second offense is $25 more, third offense $25 more than that, fourth offense $25 more than that. Is that— Well, it could double.

Or just double.

$25 to $50 to $100 to— I'll just add the $25. But we have to put that on the ticket, right? Do this again, please put a double. We can make that part of it, yes. It normally doesn't say that on the ticket. It just says— but it will be, yes. Can it?

I mean, to me, that would stop them.

That may be a deterrent.

Oh, $25 for the double.

But next time it's gonna be 50. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I put on a regular traffic citation.

Yeah, it would be done.

But do you want to keep doubling forever?

Because this guy with like 13 tickets or whatever is going to be like in jail.

Let's talk about it.

So if we do that, we just double it and call it a day for a repeat offender? Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, I think that makes more sense. What about repeat repeat? Well, then they just keep it at that $50 rate. Yeah, I mean, we can change it next year. Yeah, we'll write it up that way and we can reevaluate. I got 4 more years. It will be $8,000.

Okay, so we need to wrap this up. Okay, so are we to a consensus?

Can you summarize what we decided?

Sure.

So, okay, all right, so ADA handicap violation is increased from 150 from 100.

Safety concern violations like fire hydrants within 30 feet of stop sign and obstructing traffic minus angled parking will go from $50 that is currently at $25 for a first violation. All other violations that are currently $25 will remain at $25, including angled parking. We'll also build in a late fee schedule into these. After 14 days, if it's not paid, 25% late fee will be assessed. It will also, for a repeat offender, the price will double to $25. For standard violations, the safety concern will double from 50 to 100. Is that repeat offender thing, is that like annually or is that like forever? So you get— well, so if you get—

Same location?

Great question, right? I mean, same violation, right? And again, it's up to administration because if you do it annually, then you guys are going to have to track who's gotten a parking ticket, what offense it's going to be within a 12-month period.

So administratively, that makes this program more difficult.

Not impossible, but more difficult to enforce. I think the threat of it will be enough though.

Perhaps.

And on the angled and the ray, uh, other violations, education first. And that's been the standard for our program from day one.

Okay, the angled, let's say you park the wrong way, I mean You are really caught up on that parking wrong way.

My neighbors are always parked at angles.

I never knew it was an issue.

It isn't until it is, right? Okay, so I do have kind of a problem with the fire lane one because at 2 of the schools that my kids have gone to, they have painted things red just because they don't want parents parking and walking in the school. So it's not necessarily a fire lane. In fact, one of them, the principal always said, this is just during school hours and you guys can then come after because there's other parking. So then we go to the school play and we come out, there's 15 cars with tickets on them because they parked where, um, it's PTA painted red. So, um, do you have a solution for that?

Does it depend on who paints it red?

Yeah, I mean, all that stuff has to be dealt with in Uh, works with like Taylor Corbush down at the city. They keep track of everything like that. So if it's designated, I'll— I guess to answer your question, I will follow up with him and make sure that he has a conversation with the schools and making sure that they're not paying red for the shoes. So, okay, based off of what Heather's saying, my suggestion would be we hold off on the doubling, uh, because that is going to be a logistical nightmare. For right now, start out with the $25 for all, $50, and then see where that goes. I guess if he just keeps getting tickets, he's doubling. Yeah, I mean, he's getting another ticket for another $50, right? Or he or she.

Yeah, we can evaluate it.

How's that sound?

We could evaluate it.

What would that evaluate in 6 months?

And I think the big thing on evaluating it is what Terry was saying, which is the number of repeat offenders.

If you got a lot of repeat offenders, then you probably need to double up. But yeah, we can do that next year.

We—

I'll start tracking that. Well, I easily can track that, right? In 6 months, I'll give you a report what violations have been issued citations for, all the way down on every violation so you can see those. Um, and I'll give you a list of repeat offenders, and then we can have a further discussion into next year. Okay, is everybody in favor of that?

Yes.

Anybody against it?

No?

Then go ahead. Aaron will put something together and we'll see you in a month or so. Okay, somewhere like that.

Thank you.

Thanks. All right, next on the agenda, we've got city branding. Mayor, can I just offer an introduction to this conversation?

Yes.

We're pleased to have Brooks Advertising with us here this afternoon. A number of years ago, the city engaged in a rebranding effort And that led to changes in the city's logo, and we created a new style guide. When, um, when we had a turn of elected officials at the beginning of this calendar year, there was intent to express that we take a look at re-emphasizing the words Family City USA as part of our overall messaging to the community, and that included the communications that we have in our, obviously, our internal and our external communications, but also it involves the messaging that we have on vehicles throughout the community, so on and so forth. And so we reached out again to Peter and his team who helped us back in, I think it was 2016. It's the best logo in the state, if you ask me. Yeah, we re-engaged with Peter. So I love the whole thing.

And I said, let's—

the council wants to take another look— or not another look, they want to take a look at enhancing what we're doing. Can you begin working with us? And so we have started down this path of working with Brooks Advertising again as it relates to messaging and including the Family City USA message in our communications going forward. So we wanted to give you an update today as to where we are in relation to that effort and to provide Peter and his team an opportunity to share some of the thoughts and research that they've been doing relative to this messaging effort.

Sounds good.

Perfect.

So we're going to start off with a test, Mayor.

Oh, good.

And everybody gets to participate in this, okay? This is branding. This is my life. I've had my own ad agency since 1984.

I'm from Southern California, worked in many cities including Avalon, Lehigh, Eagle Mountain, and other places.

So here's the test. What is the brand or slogan of Provo?

Welcome home.

How did you know that?

I've seen it on signs, I've seen it on their—

How many else? Who else in this room knew that?

We all want to look smart.

Okay, no, no, no.

Okay, now we're going to go to something a little harder and see if you really think American Fork. Okay, that's one of you. You're okay, you can stay in the meeting.

No, I know it too.

No, no, no, no, no, you already said— there's no prizes for this. Helper.

Excuse me.

It's easy for us to know. Helper's the hub of Carbon County. So we got hubs everywhere in the state here. Just a couple more here. Um, oh, this is an easy one. Springdale.

Artsy. Yeah, yeah, they've done well with that.

And how come they did well with it? What have they done?

It's here a lot.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's everywhere. Here's one. You'll— you— if you— anybody gets this one, you get another prize. Pleasant Grove.

Strawberry. The Garden City. City of Trees.

Tree. Yeah, City of Trees.

And Linda's a little bit country.

Strawberry days.

Is it? Is it a little bit country?

Yes, a little bit.

No, see, here's the bad roads.

What was that? Where's the underlying joke that I missed?

She said bad roads.

I said a little bit country. Okay, okay, okay.

We are being videotaped right now. I know, it's tragic.

Okay.

It's Donald McDonald.

One more.

One more. Do you know Canvas?

It's the gateway to the Uintas and stuff like that.

How do they do it?

You pick something that makes sense for your city and then you brand it.

You pick something that makes sense. You folks did this in '85. I've lived in Orem— well, I moved here from Hawaii in 1976, and my mom still lives here. And back in '95, my friend Norm Nielsen—

Oh yeah.

Was a friend of the family here in Hawaii and in Orem. He's the one that kind of introduced us with the events that were going on here. Then it kind of petered out. In our research, we found out that Orem is still known as Family City, USA, especially if you're a crossword puzzle guy, because it's still out there. So how do you do it? You do it slowly and carefully, and you don't change your message again and again and again and again. I'm surprised you knew Provo because they changed their—

they changed their mind a lot.

And we don't want to change our mind. If we are committed to doing Family City USA, we're going to be doing it the right way. Show them the right way. Oh, this is Jake. He's the art director.

Nice to meet you.

Yeah.

I'm also the creator of the logo.

Oh God. Okay, no. I created the logo. No, it's you. Well, actually, Jacob is. So please don't go opening all the pages, okay? Can we do this just— let's do it one at a time. And love your input on this. And if you have ideas, there's no bad ideas in doing this kind of stuff. The rule number one is, is that you need to view this slogan as kind of like you're planting a seed and it's going to grow and get better and better over time. One of my friends was the chief financial officer for In-N-Out Burger. They've not changed their message since 1948, and we don't want to change our message.

So does everybody have—

Almost. Okay, all right. So what you're seeing is the effect of conversations, our research, doing multiple ideas. We're starting off with the logo and what we think the logo ought to look like. Jacob, you're going to come up here and explain Why we're doing it this way.

Put me on the spot here. All right. So you can start with Jamie.

Just one thing. For the last couple of years, you've been using that. That swash thing, Pete, what do you call that? The banner type thing, which we've been emphasizing the year that ORA was founded. We're probably— we don't want multiple messages out there right now. We're Families for the USA, okay? So it's probably gonna go away. And if you have thoughts about that, we'll talk about that.

Is that our centennial banner that we're saving?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So usually when we create a logo, we do a style guide. That's purely because once you create a brand, it evolves into something hairy, like Frankenstein, within 5, 10 years. I've noticed Orem has done a really excellent job at retaining that brand throughout. So even, even the, you know, the signage with the centennial, you guys did okay with that. But so I wanted to retain your logo without messing it up too much, honestly, because it's such a great logo. I'm seeing it on everybody's shirts, bags. And by adding this subtle font, as you can see, it does an excellent job at portraying who you guys are. And if you guys want to just follow me throughout.

Yeah, let's go to the next page.

That's fine, next page.

So practically, are you asking for one or two or whatever you want?

So it's, again, it's both, and it depends on the application, as you'll see. So business cards, as you can see, I do want Family City USA to be forefront on your business cards. I don't want it necessarily to be hidden. I want it to stand out. If you guys have any objections to that, you can say that as well.

Before you go on, this is an interesting topic, the topic of family. It's a real common— it's a safe theme to an extent. However, keep in mind that more of your citizens are single than they are part of a family. We are now in a single universe right now, but still single people want to be part of a A family, so it has multiple meanings and reach, so people will share the signs and stuff.

And honestly, we're just going through this. I want to demonstrate visually what this would look like because obviously people have their own idea on what it could be. But even the welcome sign, at first I was a little hesitant. I'm like, oh, maybe they won't see it. But honestly, the mock-up demonstrates that it does work.

Just, you know, next page as well, as you can see on the website.

It's subtle, but I feel like if we're gonna go gung-ho and throw it on banners and everything, we're sort of getting into tricky waters on identity and who's part of that family, right? So we're gonna sort of hold back a little bit and introduce this subtly, if that makes sense. Peter asked me to make a sticker for— I don't know why, just to demonstrate as well.

I like stickers. I think you have a sticker on there.

For sure. And then you can see on the utility bill as well. It's a subtle thing, but I think it's a good direction that you guys should be taking.

I have a question.

It's still gray like Orym and the—

Yeah.

Can we ever make it blue or something else?

No.

Okay.

From a balance standpoint, sure, you can. I think retaining the steel gray looks aesthetically more pleasing. Because when you start throwing in other colors, your eyes are sort of going to be—

But what if I want to emphasize that?

So when you say emphasize, what do you mean by that? Well, like make it larger? Sure.

If I want to draw attention to Family City and I made that a blue color that was darker.

So give me a specific scenario on which you would want to emphasize Family City, because that's what you're like— if we're going to put on a banner, it would be larger.

I'm over Summerfest, and to me that's our greatest activity we do.

I think there's a way to— okay, would you put it like on a banner, say, or?

I'd put it in a magazine.

Okay, magazine.

It could be a banner.

I'm just saying, we may not do it, but what if I want to emphasize that part of it?

From what it sounds like you're saying is that maybe it's a little too subtle for you. Is that what you're saying?

I just want the option.

You want the option?

Okay, I'm going to help you out here.

So maybe just an alternate alternative. What if I'm the parks department?

Sure.

And I want to put Family City USA in green, or I'm the fire department, I want to put Family City USA in red, or I'm the police department?

Yeah, here's the difficult— do you guys have an in-house designer? Hey Pete, if you want to talk to me, we can brush off ideas, whatever, that's totally fine. I am afraid that Pete's gonna die tomorrow And you're gonna get—

I'm just kidding.

Somebody's gonna get a hold of it and they're gonna go— it's not gonna be cohesive, it's not gonna be repetitive, it's not gonna be— it's gonna be a different color. You're not gonna realize what— you know, it doesn't have that same brand.

I'm not trying to hijack this discussion.

No, no, no, no, I love it, I love it. Pushing back, I love it.

No, no, let me tell you what's gonna happen. So A, before I start, I start with T-squares, X-Acto knives, colored pencils, and things like that. '87, '88, '89, computers started coming out and everybody thought they were a designer. Now, we give you your logo and we're going to also give you some rules that you have to follow with these logos because everybody wants to change it.

Case in point, Gerber Construction is a client.

A few years ago, we did their logo. We head over to the Lehigh Roundup Rodeo. Those suckers put it in pink and then they squished it down because somebody got their hands on it and said, oh, We need to fit this. They should have called us up and said, what do we do for this banner? I said, first of all, you don't add a color that's unapproved.

Think of every brand that you know. I mean, there is some evolution to the brand, obviously. You're not going to see a McDonald's logo squished and not recognizable. That doesn't feel like McDonald's, right? So how do we do that? And that's very subjective, and I'm not the one— if you want to do it, let's get to a, you know, a triangle. We'll talk about it.

We're not going to allow you to be FedEx. FedEx made a mistake.

Here we are, little puny little ad agencies.

They should have stuck with their original 2 colors, but they wanted to get a ground color, an air color, international color. We are in the over-communicated business now. We got so much coming at us. In 2004, when Facebook came, now we got that coming at us, electronic stuff. So what we're doing here is we're planting the seed, and we will help you with—

What if I just want a blue and not red or green or purple?

You'll have to ask us for permission.

Have you read the style guide, by the way? You've looked through it? There's only one guy in the building who cares. Let me tell you, page, I think around 10 or 11, there's a page dedicated to what you should and should not do to the Orem logo.

There's examples.

What was that? There's examples.

There's examples of what you should not be doing because I have— everybody in the design field have found that when people get it who's not familiar with the software, they don't know how to proportionally make a logo, right? They'll add a shadow somehow thinking it will emphasize it, or they'll make it larger and it will somehow So it's, it's how do we retain your logo? Look, I'm looking around, you literally have a puzzle that has retained the look. Like, he didn't mess it up.

Whoever—

who's the artist?

I don't know.

So, um, yeah, so that's, that's all I have to say about that.

Well, just to— this is—

I, I get it.

I support keeping the same colors. I mean, McDonald's doesn't change their colors. I, I support that.

Yeah.

Page 2, and I'd love to hear your opinion about this, and hopefully this is going to be changed. Can you imagine a city that's the The commercial hub for the county having a metal sign like that? Isn't that pretty ugly?

Yes. Oh, you're looking at the Witten sign.

Are you talking about that?

The intent?

I'm just talking about that needs to be replaced with something substantial. Oh, no, no, no, no. Yeah.

So here's— this is to give you ideas. So it sounds to me like you have some ideas on what could make the sign better. And that's good. I want the gears to go.

The city's already done other projects.

I'm just— yeah, we completely agree, and we are budgeting for replacement and creation of these monument signs, right?

I would hate to spend 4 hours making a beautiful monument sign for no reason other than, you know, we don't all agree, right? So it's like, I completely agree, because I think you have it— is it on 8th?

You have some beautiful— you have some beautiful—

and I completely agree.

But the one on Center Street needs a little bit of help.

That monument sign's a little squishy, and so maybe we add it underneath or whatever.

Quite honestly, as you can tell, this is actually a Google Map picture. I wanted to demonstrate that the words themselves could be legible. So, and I will— I'm not in charge of making the signs, so you guys will have to decide.

So maybe just a note about that Center Street sign you had is actually not a city sign. That was done by a developer.

Oh, I wish they had their signs.

They weren't following the guy.

No, they weren't. No, it's funny you should say that because they weren't.

Well, it's not almost as bad as the one on University Parkway that was designed in 1972. Hey, you know, but don't— we are in the process of replacing these.

Keep in mind too, when we redesigned your logo several years ago, it was a very gentle thing. I don't know if it wasn't across the face, we just— oh, it looks so nice now.

Well, I mean, we retained elements of the old one, so Honestly, it was a Trojan horse.

You know what we're doing? We're reigniting something that's already in people's hearts. So I quizzed my 84-year-old mother, what's the slogan for my mom?

She said, why, it's Family City USA. That's why I'm here, son.

No, I'm here because you forced me to be here, Mom. Yeah, it's already in there.

So why not blue? Why not USA?

We could try it. I don't mind going down that avenue. Gray is sort of a neutral color. So it fits everywhere. You know, could you imagine, you know, wearing a blue hat every day? Just doesn't fit with everything, do you know what I mean?

So—

Oh, I don't know, I think blue is neutral.

Okay, I mean navy is, you know, technically in design they actually say navy blue is a neutral. This is not navy blue.

This is like BYU in-your-face blue. But this is why, like, if you go in everyone's house here, the walls are blue.

Sure, thank you.

As far as a constant, we've got to have a constant.

Yeah, I get it. And that's all I wanted to do. If we want to make it fun with the fire department or whatever, I don't see anything wrong with that. I'm just saying I don't want people to go crazy with it, start adding drop shadows and messing around.

I do think you get a really nice look with these.

Yeah, I told her you needed one.

See, that's what I'm saying. The reason I made it so small was because of the length of it. It's a long thing to say, Family City, USA. And so if you do it too bulky and too big, it's—

the weight proportionally doesn't look well. So we think of everything when we do these kind of things. For example, the proper English in this would be a capital F, capital C, comma, U.S. This is design, this is messaging. So the proper way of doing it is Family City USA all in one word.

Little things like that, the kerning, the leading, the The way things are put together. Somebody suggested that we put it right below the orb and move the ocean— I mean, the lake down.

Uh-uh.

It's done good.

Looks good.

So, I personally, I like it. I like the simplicity of it. Anytime you're trying to communicate a message, you've got that one. A billboard on the freeway. Cereal boxes in the grocery store, book covers on a bookshelf, wherever you are, you've got that, just that short amount of time to communicate that message. And the old adage of keep it simple, stupid, I think applies very well. This is simple, it's beautiful, it's elegant, and it's easily implementable.

Yeah, and you're— I'm also utilizing the style guide in that I'm using the same font It's a corporate vibe, but it still, you know, retains a—

Years ago, we were asked by Eagle Mountain to do their branding. We were not hired.

They didn't want— they didn't like what I said.

It's okay, that's a long story.

I'll get over it in just a minute here. However, they had a budget of like $100 grand or something.

Do you guys remember all the billboards that they were doing and all the promoting for Eagle Mountain? Nobody does. Nobody knows where Eagle Mountain is. Nobody cares. Because they did have a message that resonated, and this resonates. We are kind of resurrecting something that's already been there, and now it's just going to be gently put out there again.

Oh yes, Families of the USA.

So we're not going to—

I really like this business card.

I pulled out mine, right?

And I really like it.

You will get the first new business cards then. I don't know who you are, but you'll get the business card.

Debbie asked, but she wants to write about Provo, so she should be fairly quick too. No, and I'm only asking what it would look like in blue.

I don't mean—

do you have it? Give me your email address. I'd be happy to send you.

I want to look at— maybe it's not going to look as—

you're totally fine. Are you a city councilwoman?

Yes. Oh, then we'll give you whatever you'd like.

No, I just want to know what it looks like.

Yeah, that's it. I don't want them multicolors.

So totally fair.

By the way, so what does the rollout look like?

Well, right now, a website's easy.

With Pete, that's—

put that up there. Business cards, a little pricey because you got to print them all again. We do your business card printing, so we can do all those. The signage is your most expensive thing.

In fact, in my original proposal, we were a little too gung-ho.

We were going to spend millions of dollars. We used to be the ad agency for Thanksgiving Point.

We wanted a million-dollar sign like they had. Jamie said, you're not getting that. And so we're going to do a couple. But for example— Thanks for throwing me under the bus.

Like, we have been—

we have banners along some of our key corridors that we have partnered with UVU, and a number of them have come down, a number of them are ratty, and I've been waiting for this so that we can put, for example, these rebranded banners on our key art. Put on the light poles. Yes, yes. So, or we could take this and we can work with our paint crews, and you've seen this, for example, where we put down UVU on, on the roadway.

Yeah.

We put it on Provo.

Provo, they have BYU on the roadway. You do this on a roadway. We have our Summerfest coming up, and so we have branding that we put on shirts and things like that. We can start doing that with this. So we don't do it all at once, but just as activities and programs and projects continue to come forward, then we do this. And when Debbie needs new business cards, And we order the new business cards when we need new stationery, then we order new stationery with this. And things like the website, we can do that tomorrow. But some of these things are going to take a little time.

Well, that electronic media, that's going to have a big impact, right?

Yeah.

I mean, the website, the emails.

Yeah, you have 21,000 followers on Facebook. You have 10,000 on Instagram, I think.

2,000—

less— 500 on Twitter now, right?

And we don't have to make a big deal out of it. I mean, meaning, meaning I want people to know it, but I don't want to be, we're Family City USA. So I want to slide it in.

Here's a principle in marketing.

Pay attention because this is, this is years of experience.

You always start from within. You always start with this group. If this group likes it, then we move it out electronically, and then we move it out to the citizens of the forum.

Then the rest of the world I don't really care about.

I mean, because the best marketing is always word of mouth, and we want my moms of the world saying, yes, Family City USA.

And I want it to be the boiling water frog analogy. By the time they're boiling, they don't even know they've already been indoctrinated to it.

But do we totally want it that way, or do we want to go out and say, we are rebranding the CEO site and we're moving forward?

You mean for like the banners and stuff? That's a good example.

Yeah, I mean, you could.

What kind of imagery would we do for that?

Now we're getting into kind of the tough part here too. We were thinking of, yeah, an introductory statement For example, let me tell you a real-life story.

My grandfather, his name is Samuel Brooks, first student at Dixie State University.

They renamed the Bison Brooks the Bison. Okay, that's my claim to fame. That's my genealogy.

And they had a kind of introductory pamphlet that said, why is it called Brooks the Bison? Well, Samuel Brooks slept on the steps and he was the first student. His relative was Juanita Brooks. Do not hold that against me because she's a wonderful woman. Oh man, those might—

Yeah, yes, yeah, and a lot of other great books too. But what they did was—

That's why Brody—

This is a long story. Um, we've got to— how do you tell the story carefully?

Again, this is a universal topic, family, and we can think about it.

Yeah, I just, I want to make sure we're at least starting the process.

Yeah, we're starting to look. Now, this is the foundation of the message, but it's only 100%.

Just a comment about— just, I'm thinking about what the mayor said, because we're not changing the logo, we're just adding 3 words. It's not like it's a different— but it would be kind of cool if, like, for the Summerfest, if the city council and city staff, where we all get shirts anyway, if the shirts at that time do say Family City USA on them, or hats, Family City USA.

Banners in the parade.

I mean, it's just, it's just a subtle thing that's been added to the logo.

I mean, I think that'd be pretty cool to come out of that point.

Well, and the banners too. I mean, if they're in need of change, I think it only makes sense to do that.

2 things.

I'm sorry, that's not so firm. A little birdie in my ear. Josh, why don't we change Summerfest? Because that doesn't make sense either. Family City Shake.

Or you're saying like a family fest or Can I say something about that?

So I served on the Summerfest committee. Yes, you can.

Um, so it used to be the Miss Orem— or excuse me, the Miss Utah Pageant Night Parade that was held in Orem. And then we transitioned to the City of Orem Family Summerfest and turned it into a 2-day thing.

So there was a time when it was called the City of Orem Family Summerfest.

That's a mouthful. So just family Summerfest. That's a lot.

How long has it been— sorry, I'm from Provo. How long has Summerfest been around?

Like 80 years.

80 years? So the name Summerfest has been around? Don't change it. It's changed.

It used to be Autumn Days.

Right, but when was that?

When we were kids.

Okay, so the 5th— that was '60.

Okay, careful.

Let me grab it.

Carry the 1.

Okay, this is exactly what happens when you have a committee putting things like this together.

Brainstorming is wonderful, and I'm not writing anything down right now. Brent, take some notes for me, would you? I mean— He's got everything right here. So what we do is we take all these wonderful ideas.

Do we—

how do we have family at Summerfest?

And do we even dink around with something that's 80 years old? You know, again, these have had their own lives, their own— do we change the name of Sarah Theater?

And we sponsor Sarah Family Tour.

Family City USA came from Sarah Family Tour.

Yes, Brad.

I can maybe restate what I think part of what we're trying to say is Orem's always been Family City USA. And so rather than trying to make this act like it's something new, just trying to say we've already— we've always been this way.

Um, so what we're doing right now is all these brainstorming ideas are wonderful. Now we've got to figure out what we're going to be doing. I was talking originally to Jamie and the guys. I said, I want a balloon and I want a woman coming out of a cake, you know, dropping down into the stadium with fire, with Family USA all over it.

That's a good idea.

It's an idea.

It's an idea, right?

So, and again, also on the design, okay, so ideas number one, there's unlimited ideas. Right now we are at the starting point here.

We're kind of wanting your—

I guess we're wanting approval.

I'm testing the waters and it sounds like everybody is sort of on the same page.

We're okay there.

Um, the second thing about the design of it, once we're in the design, the, the 2 guys appear with the Nazis on them. You know, you— this is the way we do our logos, so how do we do it for you?

We'll make you happy.

I just want to see you put the flag in the ground.

I agree with her.

That's the first thing.

Yeah, well, there's 2, there's 2 of them.

And maybe the women in us are coming out.

That's the blue in there.

I think the color of it.

Yeah.

Anyway, I like it.

I like it. Well, we'll collect these ideas. We're not going to do them all. I mean, for budget, we're going to do the easy things first and the most impactful. You always ask, okay, is this going to make any difference at all? For example, we have a lapel pin on there. Yeah, they're cool. Are they going to do anything?

Here's one thing I was concerned with coming in here was it's going to peter out after this, right? I show you this, everything's great, and then you guys let it die. But I love your idea on the street. I love the idea of the banners to just slowly, you know, crank it up over the next couple years.

How expensive is it to do those window stickers? Cheap.

I mean, is that something we can give out at Summerfest or, you know? Yeah, when I say cheap, they're like business cards almost if you get them in bulk. Um, yeah, can't do magnets right now. There's a supply chain of magnets, so you don't get any magnets.

And we— and Pete has been very good about kind of creating— I call it swag— that we share with the public. And so we see that in and around town, and we essentially give that swag to our customers, our residents, and they become our advertising.

Exactly right.

And I will also represent that in recent years we have tried to make a greater effort in emphasizing the word family. So for example, when we built the new fitness center, we intentionally called it the Orem Family Fitness Center. And when we, for example, are going to have activities in the park or a concert series, we can package it as the Orem Family Concert Series or the Orem Family Harvest Festival. So we can, in a very, I guess you could say, soft way, introduce that word. where it doesn't feel forced, right? And it doesn't feel in your face. And I think that's what is good about this. It's subtle and elegant, and it starts to communicate or re-communicate a message that people already know in their minds and in their hearts. And now we're just kind of restating it in a more, I guess you could say, direct way. There's some good news too.

This is kind of interesting news in our research. Very few, if any, cities in the United States are using family in the name. I just couldn't find them.

It would be memorable then.

See, I wish you guys were like Las Vegas.

That's easy to promote.

You know, what happens in Orem stays in Orem. Or I lived in Southern California.

Huntington Beach is Surf City, USA, and they don't even have the best surf. It's on Oahu where I used to live, so Anyway, what I'm saying is it's a wonderful theme.

Um, I, I hope it's all-inclusive because a family is not a family without family, if you know what I mean.

So yeah, should we change this summer, like Summer Family Fest?

I think like more of a family.

Well, I mean, I, I think— I mean, we have actually held our last Summer Fest meeting for the year, so— Is the magazine done? No, but it's close. If, if we are going to head down that path, I would suggest let's, let's make plans to do it next year. I know we're changing the brand. I mean, that's maybe something—

it's a pretty strong brand, I'll be completely honest.

But all of the stuff that comes from Summer Festival will have the new logo on it, right? I mean, we can have the new logo on the catalog, already on the magazine, the banners, all that stuff. We have to do— if you are collectively comfortable with what, you know, has been presented, then we can, we can load it up on, to the mayor's point, on electronic resources this week.

Electronics is inexpensive and really impactful, so you get a lot of bang for your buck when it's there.

What we want to do is get the plates spinning, keep that home going, you know, just— Yeah, I think we all like that.

But I'm gonna go back to the beginning of my thing here. You passed the test pretty well without cheating.

Um, you've got to be committed to this.

Don't call me up in a year and a half and say, tired of family, let's do something else.

Okay, we're committed. So we just need to—

okay, we— I think everybody likes this.

Yeah, there's no dissenters, right?

Yeah, I think it's great. So I think what we need now is just to kind of map out the plan going forward and what that looks like. Okay, communications team, you can sit down with, with the Brooks advertising team and come to you with a Hey, this is— these are the 10 things we're going to do in the next 6 months. These are the 10 things we're going to do thereafter, and so on. Yeah, hope to see it soon.

But if you're going to do Summerfest, when's your drop-dead date?

Hey, we're ready.

We're ready. I don't think—

I don't think we can repackage Summerfest beyond 72 hours. I think we need to— I think we need to say, okay, this is where we're at. But this is where we're going and make plans to appropriately go there.

You don't think we could—

we have this logo?

No, I'm not saying the logo.

No, I'm asking the staff of the Summerfest magazine that logo. Yeah, I'd say, why can't you just send that logo over? Yeah, yeah, it's an email and a copy and paste pretty much. Sure, just to comment with what Jamie's saying, but the company I used to work for, we, you know, we bought some other companies and every time we've kind of changed this and that. But, but the policy was use up what you've got in the office, and then we'll reorder, right? Which probably makes sense in the city too, because we don't need to have stacks, reams of paper now, right, to throw away. That doesn't save family city. I don't think that's what I'm here to say. Now, if we want new business cards within limited reason, we can do that. That's not a problem. And all of the future, you know, clothing and all that, we can do that. But Changing out the street signs, things like that, that is something that we would prefer to do over time. And even our fleet, we get new fleet, we need to mark our new fleet, market the film, see if it's safe.

And when are you going to buy that million-dollar sign that I want you to buy?

That's next week's meeting.

Okay, okay, I'll come back for that video then. All right, so I think we're gonna have to move forward, but I think everybody likes that.

to try and figure out a schedule of how to roll this out.

Sounds great.

Good job. Thank you. We appreciate it.

Thank you. Very good. Okay, next we're going to talk about the City Hall where we're at. Yes, these guys again.

Good afternoon to you all.

Hey, we're the guests. Bring on That's all the fun stuff, right? Mayor, City Council, thank you for the opportunity to bring you up to date on a little project that you may have heard about, that of the City Center. As you know, we've teamed up with Method Studio for the architectural design of this new building. Method Studio is not a stranger to the city of Orem. They designed the air— Fiber optic thickness and muscle thickness map. We're excited to team up with them again and have another very successful project. So representing Method tonight, this afternoon, Joe Smith, Rob Easterling, and Jay Taggart. I'm going to turn the time to these gentlemen to provide the information they prepared for us. And then we'll go from there. So this is actually— you have a presentation that's going to be after this one. It's just a— this is not— okay, so wait, they—

they're—

they're— can they just plug their machine in here? You don't have the presentation? Oh, I don't have it. Okay, um, this is going through Zoom, so whoever is on Zoom won't be able to see it. It's not on this, so they could email it to me. I'll put it in the presentation folder that you can—

Okay, okay.

Can we just emphasize real quick what Rob just said? Constructability isn't necessarily whether we can or can't, although in some cases it might be a little bit. It's more the effect it has on the cost of building new.

So yeah, you can see in this option there's more trees that are Come through.

Okay, um, so for parking, before we are having to replace the parking that we lose in here, plus some stalls because you're adding some square footage. So this adds 81 new stalls and we lost 46, so the delta being the difference because of square footage gender zone requirements. It's still $2.5 million, whatever, that's a lot of money wasted. That can go a long way. And I think, if I may, I think the— whatever option you select is one that is going to impact to some degree The trees on campus. So I don't think there's one alternative unless we literally build on top of the very footprint that you're currently—

Can you go to 3?

That we're going to be able to eliminate all the tree—

Kirsten?

Uh, Catherine, but— Yeah, the knee being your focal point is the biggest thing right now. The other thing that I like about this orientation, Joe, is it's less emphasized on the rest of the face. Whereas I think for many people, if you work in this building in the middle of the summer, you really do feel the effect. This is just the formalization of the presentation Emergency Manager Keith Stevenson gave—

or tried to approve it then and couldn't.

Yeah, this is just the formalization of that.

Okay, so do we—

is the resolution just that?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

All right, and then we've got scheduled items.

9.1, Cannon Cannishill.

And this is the required second public hearing that is necessary as part of the federal safety justice So, uh, Mr.

Ransom, the chair of the committee, and Ken will be here to speak to you. So is this going to—

a motion on this?

Yes, yes.

So this time we will.

Yes.

Can we give him some kind of flyer award? Yeah, just kidding. All right, well, looks like pretty straight up.

Okay, over and under on 6 We'd like—

we would like to take your picture with the mayor, if that's okay. I have a lovely phone.

Karen, are you representing this committee or?

Oh, I'll stay here so the the plus one is in the picture.

Okay.

He's not alone.

Just stand up.

Okay, friend, you tell us when.

1, 2, 3. I'll get a couple in case you blinked. Congratulations.

Thank you for your conservation.

Yeah, thank you so much. So, um, we really appreciate your leadership in natural resource conservation and just being a model for how businesses across Orem can be really good stewards.

Thank you.

So we have another award tonight, and that's for a private individual. That's the next slide. So this is really exciting. This is our first year honoring an individual and their stewardship amazingness. So Tara Bishop is here, and she'll be getting this award.

Picture of Tiana.

Yes.

Okay, 1, 2, 3.

Yeah, from what I hear— I'm meeting Tara for the first time— but she's just a really active citizen and really is always thinking about sustainability and stewardship. So thanks, Tara, and thank you all for letting us have a few minutes.

And yeah, just, just, just to note, right, this was up there on the slide, but I'm just very impressed that CleanFills Utah, been in business since 2007, and has helped Utah drivers save about 10 million gallons of gas. That's, that's a lot of gas and a lot of money. So thank you, Derek. And, and, and I just met Tara, and I just think that's marvelous. You know, same kind of impact, different, different kind of impact, but the same, same community impact in educating our children. And, and us in wise use of resources.

That's our report.

Happy to have questions if you have any, but thank you for your support and working with us on all these issues.

I just want to say one thing, because I've worked with your committee on the Utah Lake project, and I was getting a lot of feedback, and we were very actively involved in that. But I just think your committee is a great example of how these committees are supposed to work. in the community and actually, you know, really working to make a difference. So I appreciate all your efforts. Did you want to say something, Debbie?

Yes, I also want to echo the mayor's sentiment.

You guys have great minds. Each of you have expertise that I learn a lot. And Sarah, honestly, you started this committee 6 years ago, is that what you said? And I still was impressed with her—

how little bit of recycling she did with her family before.

It was amazing.

So you have been a pioneer, and I'm told that you're going to be leaving the committee at the end of the year. And honestly, you are one of the great— makes me emotional— you are one of the great Orem citizens, and we thank you for your service.

Let's give her a—

And I also want to thank the, to the individual Tara and the business, because you're exactly what we want to see: great ideas, being wise stewards, and teaching the future.

I think Tara was a teacher, and to teach others about how to wisely Use our resources and please nominate businesses or individuals to the community as you see.

We'd be happy to consider people for next year.

So thank you again.

Okay, thank you. Next on the agenda, we've got personal appearances. I'll just read this. Says 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. Please limit your comments to 3 minutes or less. And tonight we've got a smaller list, so we'll be able to have everyone come up. I'll just call your name, and if you just state— just state your name and then also where you're from. First on the agenda, I've got Carrie Sigua.

Hello.

So my name is Carrie Sigua and I am in Orem, and it appears that our feasibility study has created quite the stir. It actually is providing many of the residents here a voice that has been neglected within the Alpine School District, so I thank you for the opportunity to be able to let us residents share our concerns and voice them.

In a recent school board candidate debate, candidates were asked about the Mountain View investigation.

Board Member Wilson stated something to the fact that the moment she received a concerned email from the parents in July of 2020, she immediately removed herself from representing the parents from the situation, that in case the board needed to review the investigation That way, she admitted right then and there that she was not an advocate for students or parents, and therefore left students and parents unrepresented.

To help refresh Board Member Wilson's memory, she did actually listen to us the first couple of months until the investigation concluded in September of 2020.

She then removed herself after we requested her help for the retaliation we received from the Mountain View administration, as well as appealed the district's investigation decision. Instead of putting us on the board agenda to listen to parents with what she claimed fresh eyes, the board had their lawyer send us a letter to no longer speak to board members, which a copy has been sent to you in your email.

From there, we reached out to state school board officials for help, where the state Superintendent Dixon advised us that she would do nothing until an OCR report was on her desk, so we did as we were told.

We filed with the Federal Board of Education Office of Civil Rights, where we discovered the Alpine School District actually has the highest number of federal investigations going on in the state of Utah, which has also been emailed to you.

Unfortunately, school district students, parents, teachers, and staff have been blacklisted and retaliated against by Alpine School District employees and administration, as well as board members, for doing exactly what we're asked to do, which is to see something, say something. We have no representation at the school level from our districts.

For many parents, it is easy and better for them to transfer, move, for employees to change jobs, and to even suffer through incidents to avoid what they've experienced.

A good example of that is the representation that Ada presented last month. So really fast, sorry, I'll finish. My conclusion is, please give us residents a continued voice. Thank you.

And I would like to ask for a proposal that these council members would let Orem residents speak without fear of retaliation by letting residents vote on a district split regardless of what the study reveals.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mike Jones.

Okay.

Oh, I see. Okay, and I see there's— yeah, I'll be curious to see what this is, this swimming. So anyway, go ahead.

Yes, so my name is Jen Gale. I live in Orem. I've been a resident for the last 15 years. And before I start, I just want to thank all of you for serving. I know you spent countless hours and it is a thankless job, but our family appreciates it. So thank you. I'd like to tell you why I feel qualified to speak about swimming in Orem. I have 6 children. And they have all swam in varying degrees of enthusiasm and ability and even desire. They've done virtually every program that Orem City has to offer, starting with Mom and Me lessons to swim lessons to the summer recreation program to OTAC to high school swim to UV Rays to BYU swim. We have all across the spectrum. I currently have 4 swimmers with UV Rays, and 3 of those will be doing summer rec as well. I was the president of OTAC for 4 years, and I was the high school coach at Orem High for 2 years as well. So I kind of travel in the swim world, and I feel like I'm pretty invested and know what's happening there. I'd also like to share just a brief bit of history because most of you probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about swim and what happens in Orem. OTEC, as you may or may not know, was the club team here in Orem and has been for like the past 40 years.

They have—

they serve developmental through competitive, and they kind of had a little bit of a difficult history with Orem City, and that came to a head last fall when they felt like they were forced to dissolve. And there's a lot of debate about who's to blame there, and I don't really want to go there right now. But what I do want to talk about is those swimmers that were left behind.

There were 60 families representing—

66 families actually at the time— representing maybe 150-ish swimmers. And when the club dissolved, they were left without a home. So Orem OTAC leadership went to UV Rays and said, hey, can you take all these swimmers and help us out? And UV Ray leadership rose to the occasion. They spent 14-hour days trying to accommodate all of our swimmers, and the end result was when swim season opened, all of our Orem swimmers had a place to go. So UV Rays has been managing the Orem water and taking care of all of the Orem swimmers. They have a pool at BYU, a pool at Provo, and a pool at Orem. In March, so last month, the recreation department approached the city with a potential budget and asked for money to start their own club swim team, and that budget was approved, but I'm here today to ask you to reconsider that decision. I don't think it's in the best interest of Orem swimmers or Orem City, and the reason for that is twofold. First of all, Orem families are happy. They're having a great experience with UV Rays. They didn't want the switch. They were jostled about. They were unhappy, but they've gone and had a fabulous experience, and I have not spoken to one Orem family that wants to go to a new Orem City-sponsored club. 2, it takes a lot more time and energy to start a club than most people are aware of, including Orem City, and I think it's going to cost the city more, and it's going to take them longer to get critical mass for it to be successful. Either case, though, if Orem City starts their own club, Orem families lose. They will either have to choose to go to Orem City's new offering, which is inferior but costs the same amount of money, or they will choose to stay with UV Rays, in which case they will be forced from 3 pools down to 2 and lose access to their 50-meter lanes. So in sum, I would just like you to reconsider that decision. Orem families want to stay with UV Rays. We want that to be our home swim club. We want to embrace them and have them as part of our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, Mike, Mike Jones.

Thank you. My name is Mike Jones. I'm an Orem city resident. We've lived here for about 20 years. I have a swimmer who's 11 years old and competes in the developmental level. I also have 2 swimmers who swam with OTAC and Tumpanogos High School who also swam at the developmental level. So on March 22nd, the City Council approved a budget request that allows Orem to form a new swimming club affiliated with USA Swimming, and I'm here to invite the city to reconsider the approval of that request and instead build a partnership with UV Rays, which is an established swimming club, to provide competitive swimming in Orem. I believe this will be better for Orem families and Orem swimmers who want to be involved in competitive swimming, and a better use of city— of public resources than forming a city-run club. We were members of OTAC when the membership voted to dissolve the club in late August. We were reluctant to join UV Rays because our swimmer is not an elite swimmer, and our family goals for swimming don't include Olympic glory or even college scholarships. However, looking back, our swimmers had a great experience on her team, and we're very happy with UV Rays as a, as our new swim team. As an elected and unpaid UV Rays board member, I worked with others to develop a proposal for a partnership between UV Rays and Orem, which was submitted to Orem Recreation earlier this spring. It contains a 6-point plan that addresses some concerns raised by Orem community leaders and Orem families. So I'll just mention 2 key points in that proposal here. First is that UV Rays will provide priority access to the Orem Fitness Center for Orem families who want to train at the Orem Fitness Center, up to the capacity limit of the pool. Second, UV Rays will become Orem swim team by being an active, visible part of the Orem community. This will involve inviting public officials to swim meets, press releases, service projects, that sort of thing. So in closing, I'd just like to add that in all my discussions with Orem Recreation staff, City Council people, especially Bryce Merrill and Dave Spencer, as well as others, UV Rays leaders, the focus has always been on what is best for the swimmers. We might not agree on how to make that happen, but we all agree on the end goal, and I'm glad to be part of a community that's focused on what's best for the youth and children. So in conclusion, I'd like to invite the city to reconsider forming its own swim club. I think Orem families, including my own, are happy where we are, particularly developmental swimmers, because at UV Rays there's a, there's a training process for new coaches. So my daughter will always be coached by the newer swimmers of the newer coaches of a club. She'll not be coached by the elite coaches. At UV Rays, we were surprised to find that there's a process and a structure in place. for developing the newer coaches who will coach swimmers like my daughter. That'll be very difficult to recreate in a smaller club. Thank you for your attention, and thank you for serving on City Council.

Thank you, Mike. Next, we've got Ashley Shumway.

Hi, I'm Ashley Shumway. I have been an Orem resident since 1987, so I've spent most of my life here. I'm asking you the same thing, to reconsider forming an Orem swim club.

I have had 3 swimmers.

I have 2 swimmers currently swimming with UV Rays.

Both of them are swimming with OTAC, and we are really enjoying UV Rays.

We're really, really impressed with the, the coaches, the organization. It has been exceptional. The only real argument I've heard for forming an Orem— and for Orem forming its own club is that UV Rays can't provide something for these recreational swimmers or these swimmers that are brand new starting out. I think it's a misconception that they are— they have this super competitive program that's only really good for, you know, kids who really want to swim in college and things like that. And I just wanted you to know we've had the opposite experience. My middle son was never interested in swimming.

My other 2 always did.

And a year and a half ago, he decided he wanted to start swimming and had barely started when we had kind of the shift and ended up swimming with UV Rays.

And they have an amazing program for high schoolers.

My son has had fantastic coaching. He had great kids. He has been able to swim at all 3 pools based on availability. You know, when Orem is closed, he'll be at BYU or he'll be at the Provo Rec Center. And there have been plenty of times where the pool has had to be closed and we've had to be at different locations. I think having the access to different pools has made a world of difference for him and the ability to provide coaches who have the amount of training has been huge as well. So, um, he, you know, he was a beginning swimmer. I wouldn't call him a beginning swimmer anymore because of the amazing coaches and the amazing team that he has had. Um, but I just wanted you to know that I see room for everyone in this club, and I think that they do a fantastic job and would continue to do a fantastic job if you let them. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we've got— I'm not sure I've got your name right, but Jairo Habino.

Thank you. My name is Jairo Habino. I've been a resident of Orem for 25 years. My son, 15 years old, swam with Otag for 5 and a half years and is currently in the elite national group in UV Ray. When Otag dissolved, it was the end of the world for him. He loved Otag that much. But as soon as he joined UV Ray, He got to know the club provides an excellent competitive swimming program with experiences, coaches, a well-organized administration, and great people. Actually, it was much better off. No wonder UV-Ray had been the number one senior team in Utah State. We are pleased to be a part of UV-Ray now. Forming such an excellent team will take years of effort. As a resident of Orem, I will be so proud to have UB Raids represent our city. I'm here tonight because I was hoping you could help prevent taking the pool away from our Orem swimmers again. Some previous Otak swimmers had to quit swimming because of the difficulty of traveling, traveling to Provo or BYU pools of UV rays. If Orem City forms a new club, those who, including my son, practice in Orem pool will lose water access one more time. I don't want swimmers ever to have to go through this painful experience again. Please choose the best way for current Orem swimmers who have been swimming for years, and I'm sure UBRA will be the best choice for prospective Orem swimmers. Thank you. Thank you.

Next, we've got Sissy Rasmussen.

My name is Sissy Rasmussen. I'm an Orem resident and have children at Orem High, Lake Ridge Junior High and Centennial Elementary. I continue to be concerned about the study to consider creating an Orem School District, and I want to be very clear, I'm not against anyone personally on the City Council. I'm only in favor of doing what's best for our schools. Leaving Alpine School District is not in the best interest of Orem schools and Orem students. We already know from public data and recent studies that a split like that will require increased property taxes and decreased services. What the feasibility study will show is just how much the tax increase would be and what services would need to be cut. Unfortunately, the city's choice of Discovery Education consultants raises some red flags. I'm not sure we'll get the most accurate, pertinent information from their study, but I hope we do. 2 weeks ago, I shared a petition here. It's not a petition to stop the idea of creating an Orem School District. The petition specifically addresses the company chosen by Orem City. There is no misinformation in the petition. While you may disagree with the conclusions or opinions, the facts are accurate. Discovery Education is newly formed, has no experience specifically doing feasibility studies, and does have a founder who is working on creating a Draper School District. Almost 2,000 people, Orem residents and Orem teachers, have signed that petition. Comments made by the mayor in the last meeting tell me that the petition is not taken seriously, and that in fact my views, or views of anyone opposing the district split idea, are not taken seriously. I don't know if you intended to send that message to dismiss our views, but that's the vibe a lot of us are getting. I asked the mayor and city council to welcome differing views. This is an incredibly serious issue with long-term consequences. It would affect my children and their education. My views matter, and the views of any Orem parent with kids in school right now matter. The views of teachers matter. Just a quick story. Councilmember Linnea Millett has been visiting PTAs and SCCs lately, and I appreciate her willingness to have those open discussions, but I'm not sure that a message from many parents and teachers is coming across. A couple weeks ago, she visited Centennial Elementary School Community Council and she asked 2 questions. First, when we first heard about the study before a company was even chosen, who supported the idea? No one raised their hand. Then she asked who opposed the idea of studying an Orem School District. Everyone opposed it, all 17 in attendance, including parents, teachers, and administrators. Then our PTA president asked this question. question in return. She said one reason that's been given for doing this study was that Orem schools were being closed and consolidated. Then she waved her hand to the room and said, we, we were the ones who were consolidated. What message does that send to you that we oppose splitting from the district? That's a viewpoint that matters. It's based on experience and knowledge and a belief that any problems we have with the district won't get better by creating our own district, but by working within our district. So please invite those views to the table as well. Thank you.

Next we've got Connie Christianson.

My name is Connie Christianson. I'm a 25-year resident of the city of Orem, and I've been speaking about the proposed city-sponsored swim team. I'm in agreement with all those who have previously spoken. I served on the former OTAC parent governing board for almost 8 years in a variety of roles, and I am now currently the meet director of the BYU swim and dive team. 2 of my children swam on the OTAC club team, and 2 of them now swim on the UV Rays club team. As has been said, UV Rays is known as an elite club with numerous championship achievements, but they're— what is not commonly known is that there is a healthy developmental base that far exceeds the number of high performers on the team. The kids are encouraged to swim and compete at whatever level they can, wherever that is. I have a 15-year-old son who swims on the nationals team, what would be considered to be the top team. However, he is encouraged to swim where he can and how he can. And similarly, the quality of coaching that he experienced between his OTAC coaching and his UV Race coaching The incremental jumps that he has made have been phenomenal. They have created him into an elite swimmer. I also have a 9-year-old daughter. She began swimming with UV Rays last August when she was 8 years old. She began on their UV Ray Swim School swimming at the Orem Fitness Center in the water that they allowed us to have. The swim school team is designed to let potential swimmers just kind of dip their toes into the water of competitive swimming without fully committing. Swimmers on the team are not required to volunteer or fundraise, nor are they held to attendance requirements. They are permitted to compete in 2 swim meets per year, and they are taught by quality coaches. My daughter attended practice regularly, and she made enough progress to move up to their entry-level team. She is not particularly competitive, but she enjoys going to practice and getting a little bit better every single day. And she's in a team of kids exactly like her that come from different areas, whether it's from Orem, Provo, parts of Utah County. She didn't qualify to swim at the state meet. She didn't even qualify for the second-tier championship meet, and her coach was overjoyed with the progress that she has been making. It's not all about winning on UV Race. I would also like to speak to the formation of an Orem-sponsored club team as a citizen and the taxpayer of the city. My kids have tried out lots of different sports through Orem Rec's program. We have tried swimming, track, soccer, ballet, gymnastics, to name a few sports through the rec department. They were always considered an introduction, not an elite academy. And if my kid had wanted to progress in those sports, I would have signed them up for private lessons or for school teams. I just don't feel that it's the responsibility of the government to provide elite competition opportunities for its citizens. I feel like if citizens want those opportunities, they can find them and pay for them privately. A club team is hugely expensive to launch. UV Rays— it also requires a dedicated parent volunteer base, and UV Rays has that. It will take a long time to replicate that. To sum up, I, I'm asking why we would use Orem tax dollars to recreate something that already exists and already exists in, in a great, in a great manner. So Orem families are happy with their status quo and want to continue. I encourage you to create a partnership with UV Rays and allow them access to Orem water. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we've got Jesse Evans.

Hi, I am Jesse Evans, and I have lived in Orem since the day I was born. Um, um, in November, my 7-year-old son Ian was run over by a truck walking home from school. He was life-flighted to Primary Children's Medical Center where, by the grace of God, And because of Orem's quick and capable first responders— shout out to the fire guys Cameron, Casey, Camden, Braden, and Officers Tracy, Andresen, and Hancock— he made a miraculous recovery. Over the course of his rehabilitation at home, his incredible principal John LeBear of Northridge worked with our Alpine School District to secure funds to pay his teacher to come to our home and make sure Ian didn't fall too far behind the rest of his class. Ian suffered many injuries during his accident, including bilateral skull fractures that separated his hearing bones, resulting in moderate hearing loss on both sides. As he prepared to go back to school in person, audiologists from Alpine School District reached out to us to make sure that they were providing the resources that he needed to be successful in the classroom. When he returned, he returned to a crowd of cheering teachers and administrators Who'd been following his journey and were there to assist him every step of the way. Thankfully, Ian is now thriving. In fact, he recently tested into the Alpine School District Advanced Learning Lab program. We are very sad to be leaving the incredible students and staff at Northridge, but he is super excited to join his older brother who's currently in the ALL program at Foothill Elementary. We are hopeful his younger brother and sister will follow suit in a couple years. My oldest child also just tested into the gifted services program at Oak Canyon Junior High, where she will be starting this fall. We are incredibly grateful for the programs we have access to through the district, and I know that as a family we have barely scratched the surface when it comes to resources we have access to. In the mayor's April message, he said, when I ran, I promised to help keep Orem a great place to live, work, and raise a family. There are many parts of that promise, but let me mention 2. First, to keep your taxes low. I believe that you can make better decisions with your money than any government organization can. Second, provide the best education possible to our children and young people. As a parent of 5 young children here in Orem, I have been following the City Council's move to explore the option of splitting away from the Alpine School District since it was first mentioned. The economies of scale suggest that keeping taxes low would either take away from the resources we spend currently have access to, or it would raise the financial burden on our community. I don't want my children to lose access to what currently makes their education great on a day-to-day basis and an emergency basis. I don't want students with special needs to lose access to necessary services. I am concerned that the breadth and depth of services Orem students currently have access to through the Alpine School District would be very hard to replace. Especially without having to raise taxes significantly. And these are things that I hope to see addressed in the feasibility study.

Thank you.

Next we've got John Wolf.

Mayor and council members, thank you for allowing me an opportunity to be able to speak. I am very grateful. I want to start out by saying thank you very much for all your hard work and all your hard labor. I've come to know some of you through my wife Liz, who has been so graciously serving on the Summerfest committee. She does a wonderful job and she keeps me in line. And personally, to Lynnae, I owe an apology to her to her team for last year's Summerfest when I got a little voicey when, when trying to follow the recommendations of my wife on how to run the parade. At this time, I'm very grateful that I live in this city. I am a lifelong member of this city. of, of being able to not only be raised here but to raise my children here. It does sadden me that in, in trying to work very hard in raising my family and to protect my family against the hard times, that I've recently received a letter from the City of Orem, a warning notice from the, the NIT. The neighborhood improvement team, in no fault of my own, unawares that— of where I can park my vehicle on my personal property, of things as to how to collect the resources that are no longer needed on my property, and how to distribute those, those resources. to the proper locations where I can store them on my personal property as I prepare for the cleanup that the city holds once a year. The Neighborhood Improvement Committee or team is doing a wonderful job. They have a valiant effort. I saw the presentation that they gave you 2 weeks ago. When, when they voiced how, how there's many wonderful homes that are being brought back to beautification. Unfortunately, in an effort to beautify those homes, that I feel has overreached and stepped into people who are working as myself to, to be a good strong neighbor, to be a good strong homeowner to try and improve his personal home. I, I've found it very emotional and I got very emotional when I, when I found out that I was being charged potential fines if I don't improve this. So in conclusion, I want to let you know that I've, I've taken the necessary steps to try and come into compliance. Compliance with the current codes of the city, but the city codes need to be looked at and that they need to be reviewed. The mayor told the city last two weeks ago that he he had the ear to listen to the to the team members. Let's let's strive really hard to improve that to look at the codes from the Constitution of the United States. and, and, and how to keep that in alignment with the Constitution. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Next we've got— and, and just one, one thing to say about that. I mean, we're supposed to just let you talk, but you can reach out to that NIT group directly.

And I have.

Okay.

I, I have.

I've had them over to my home.

I've had wonderful conversations with them, uh, but again, I think it's the code that needs to be addressed.

Okay, different, different parts of the code, uh, and, and we can go into that later.

Yeah, we will.

No, if you, if you want to shoot it— like I said, I'm not supposed to do this, but if you, if you'd like to shoot us an email about your specific concerns, then we can try and get that to the NIT. Thank you. Next, we've got Kelsey Young.

Hi, my name is Kelsey Young.

I am an Orem citizen. My daughter Sadie, she's 9, almost 10, swims with UV Rays, and we've loved our experience there. About 3 years ago, she swam with O-TAC when she was in first grade, and it was great, but it wasn't a good fit for our family. At that point in time, we decided to just focus on summer swim team and kind of see where she went from there. Um, and then last summer we realized it was time for her to, you know, really develop her skills and, and kind of dig in a little bit more. And so we joined the UV Rays team, um, just a little less than a year ago. Um, at that same time was the time when the OTAC was, um, like going away. I don't know the word for it, but they were closing and they were going to be joining with UV Rays or some of those swimmers be moving over. And I was really nervous for that because I didn't love the OTAC program from my experience. And so I was nervous that that was actually going to make UV Rays a less better team or a lot like just not a great program. But I've actually experienced the opposite by the OTAC team and UV Rays coming together.

We've seen an amazing just community come together with these children.

And our team is better for it. I've loved getting to know the families from all different places in Orem that were part of OTEC. The biggest concern is that we only have 3 pools available to us, and that might not seem like a big deal, but that's 33% of our resources. And if we don't have access to the Orem waters, then we really do have to change how our team runs as it stands. And it could potentially mean that we have to not welcome as many swimmers to our team, which will push for a more elite club, which is not what we want. We want a place where our kids can develop and grow and have fun, as well as if they want to compete at a higher level, be able to have a place for that as well. So we've had a great experience with UV Rays. I'd like to echo what other parents have said, that to just reconsider and to collaborate with UV Rays to finding the best solution for Orem residents. We— the coaches are incredible. They, they are absolutely incredible. We love every single one of them. So thank you.

Thank you.

We've got Ross Potts.

Hi, my name is Rob Potts. I'm sorry, my spelling is— my writing is bad. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, council members. David and I have known each other for 40 years. We served together in the California Anaheim Mission, so it's good to see him again. And, and I think he looks better than I do, so I think the years have been good to him. Um, let me just describe my, you know, interest in swimming. I'm here to talk about, uh, the swim, uh, team that we're talking about here. I echo everybody, what everybody else has said. I've been a competitive swimmer since I was, uh, 9 years old. I swam all the way through high school. I was on Brighton High School swim team. We took state when I was a sophomore in high school with 14 people. I swam in college for a year. And all my children, I have 5 children. I've lived in Norm now for 14 years. My youngest daughter is now 15. My oldest son is 35 and my youngest son is 28. So I have a big gap between my youngest son and my daughter. She's blessed. Same wife, big blessing. This daughter showed up and we love her to death. But it's been very interesting. My experience in swimming back east, I lived in the New York metropolitan area. My son swam in New Jersey. New Jersey swimming is very competitive. It gets to the point where you have to either make your times and you stay on the team or you get kicked off the team and there's really no thing. I was really— for those in the swimming community know that when OTAC was being dissolved, I was probably the most vocal person about the dissolution of that. We had a meeting with all of the members of the team at the very end. I was very skeptical of going to UV Rays. I was very skeptical at the time because I was just concerned that UV Rays would not allow swimmers who are not marginal. My daughter at the time, I didn't really view her as being really competitive swimmer. She loved to swim because her brothers did. Her brothers were very competitive. And so when UV Rays took her in, I to what Connie Christianson said. My daughter now swims on the national team and our national swim group in UV Rays. Her times have been great. She swam at Orem High School. She's the only girl, 9th grade girl, who actually lettered at Orem. She went to districts this year. She actually finished 9th in 500-yard freestyle swim. And so it's been a big change for her. And my skepticism has changed. The one thing I wanted to point out, and just because I'm just a dumb engineer by trade, um, is the, the money, the cost of this. So to put in perspective, for Orem to be able to put together a swim team, let's just go through some cost numbers. The, the equipment that's going to be required, if you just look at the short course, and we have a, we have a 50-meter pool, and I've talked to David about this, there are only 2 50-meter pools in the state of Utah. We have one and the other one's in Kearns. We don't use that pool the way it really should be utilized. In order to have the equipment, it's going to cost at least $32,000 for the short course. Long course, you can add another lanes to that. It'll be somewhere between $48,000 to $52,000. Coaching staff is going to run you anywhere between $80,000 to $100,000 a year, and then all the ancillary volunteers that you would need. This is a big expense item that would be a recurring expense. I deal in public partnerships all the time, and I think this is a public partnership that works. I think that UV Rays can provide that. The budgets that they run, just to give you an idea, are probably in excess of $400,000 to $500,000 a year. We don't have that in Orem to do that, but we do have a group that already has been there. UV Rays is the oldest U.S. swimming association here in Utah. It actually was around, believe it or not, when I was swimming when I was 9. So I just would like you to reconsider that and let's use resources we have and not add any more cost to what our good city has to bear.

Thank you. Thank you.

Next we've got Haley Hamblin.

Hello, my name is Haley.

I'm a teacher in Alpine School District. in an Orem school, and I just have a few things to think about. You, the City Council, need to make sure that your feasibility study looks at the impact that a split district would have on teachers— salary, benefits, lane changes, step changes, retention. Every teacher I've talked to—

and trust me, I talked to a lot of teachers—

have said that they are 100% against an Orem School District, and many of those that I've talked to have said that they would leave Orem, the Orem School District, and mostly because they— it's hard to leave a school district that you've worked at for so many years, and it would be difficult to match those benefits, salaries, lane changes, etc., in a smaller district.

And I don't think that that's an idle threat either.

Before making any decisions at a school-wide level, at a classroom level, we always ask this question: what is best for students? And one of the number one answers to that question always is retain and support quality teachers.

And I can guarantee you that you guys are going to lose good, high-quality, effective teachers if this split goes through.

So, as you consider your feasibility study, make sure that it's looking at teacher impact as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We've got one more, and I just want to say to all of you that are talking about swimming, Dave Spencer has agreed to be the point person to work with you to try and bring your ideas together and, and just sift through all that. So feel free to reach out to him. And you can reach out the rest of us too, but he's going to be in charge. Our last person here is John Barrick.

Mayor and city— I'm John Barrick. Mayor and City Council, I appreciate your time and grateful for your service. I'm here to talk about the Alpine School District, often known as the ASD. We can also refer to it as the apathetic school district. 2 days after I last spoke to you, I met with Kimberly Byrd, Barry Beckstrand, David Stevenson, Mike Browning, and Rob Smith, who decided not to show up. For our meeting that had been scheduled several weeks in advance to talk about Northridge Elementary and the problems there. While Northridge has great teachers and we love our teachers, I think teachers love schools, they don't love school districts. I'm going to say that if you pay teachers well, they'll stay. So why are they apathetic? Well, they didn't know they lost 83 students at Northridge Elementary School last year. A quick calculation by David Stevenson while we were there is over 55 of them are still in the district. They're at private schools, charter schools, Provo School District, or somewhere else, but they're not at Northridge. They didn't know they left. They didn't care, and they don't know why, and they didn't care much either. Debbie Larray followed up, and I thanked her last time, and I'm going to thank her again about the naked incident at Northridge Elementary. When we asked this group of executives that are part of the $5.2 million of 28 executives, that's $186,000 per executive. They started telling us about a little girl that was naked in front of school children at Northridge, not the boy, which was the problem. So now there's 2 naked incidents at Northridge that parents weren't notified of. They are apathetic. They wanted to talk about— they want to talk about FTEs, full-time equivalents. That's all they want to talk about. Well, Guess what? The overhead for busing— and there's no students that get bused at Northridge that live in the Northridge area— is $246 per student per year. And multiplied by the number of school students at Northridge, that's 2 teachers. When we have classroom sizes of 33 through 37 for 3rd through 6th grade, that is too large. And Alpine admits it, but there's nothing they can do financially. Alpine has $31 million depreciation of new schools. That get allocated. That is $386 per student. Guess what? Not a single student at Northridge gets any of that. That costs Northridge 3 teachers a year for overhead costs. North— when the City Council hosted the Alpine School District in 2017, the overhead was $1,257 per student per year. In 2020, the numbers they used— Rob Smith presented at the split proposals— Alpine talked about splitting in last year. It was $1,907 or $1,903. That is an increase of 11.5% per year, or 51% over a 3-year period. Who has overhead that grows like that?

Apathetic.

They don't care. They have wrought iron fences around brand new schools at Eagle Mountain, and they can't afford specialty teachers or class sizes under 33 at Northridge Elementary in Orem. Everyone else took a little longer. I'm going to take about 10 or 20 more seconds. Northridge was ranked 46th in 2011. In 2017, it ranked 335th in elementary schools on standard basic tests. 6 years later, that's 50 points, 50 schools per year.

Why?

Apathy.

Now, Oak Canyon Junior High standard exam proficiency pass rate 49% in the most recent standardized testing. 49% are proficient. That means 51% are failing. Alpine School District is apathetic. I encourage you to look hard and long. We have withdrawn— we have notified Alpine School District that we have removed our children from Alpine School District. We are going to Provo School District. District next year. People malign Provo. My 3rd grader will be in a class of 22. My 6th grader will be in a class of 25. They have art, music, STEM, coding classes after school. What's wrong with Provo School District? The answer is nothing. I'd like to be like them, and we're going to be with them. And if things don't change, we might move to Provo. Thank you very, very much, and we appreciate all your service.

Thank you.

And the study. Please look long and hard. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, we'll move to the consent items on number 8. We just need to approve the meeting minutes from April 12th.

I make a motion that we approve the meeting minutes from April 12th.

Sorry, and we've got a resolution adopting the 2022 MAG pre-disaster mitigation plan.

So there's 2 items there.

Okay, then my motion will include approving the minutes and approving the resolution for the MAG pre— 2022 MAG pre-disaster mitigation plans.

I second the approval of the minutes.

the consent items.

Start down there.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Thank you. The consent items pass. We've got a couple more things. We've got a public hearing, and we'd like to invite Ken Ransom and Joe Matthews to come up.

There it is. Hello, Mayor and council members.

Good to see you again. It's been 2 whole weeks. Thank you for having me back.

Yeah, thank you.

So this time we have 2 recommendations for CDBG COVID funding. And here's a summary of the initial COVID allocation that the city received from CDBG funds, and then the summary of the second allocation, and at the bottom there you can see the amount that's remaining, $70,928.

And these—

this is the limitation for use of these funds listed for you. And so our first recommendation for you is the Orem Library would like to purchase an additional 25 wireless hotspots for LMI households in Orem, and that cost is $10,000, and we recommend that this request be approved. Then Sharon Elementary is requesting $5,500 for the purchase of 5 picnic tables so that students can eat outside and spread out and not be so close together. And so we've— we recommend this, this proposal as well. So there's our summary for you. Be nice and quick today for you. So here's our summary, and this— we recommend that these funding recommendations be approved. And so that leaves— this is the balance that's remaining, and there are 2 possible uses of this remainder that will come to you in the future, within the near future hopefully, for city parks, water fountains at city parks, and then also to— for the senior center.

Right.

Yeah, for the senior center, for meals at the senior center to finish out that funding. Any questions?

Yeah, I do. Debbie?

Oh, Debbie.

Yes, I was at the senior center today with my father and they had made us aware that MAGA is not going to be delivering on Monday.

So the senior center, is that to help them provide these extra meals, or tell me what that is?

So it will be helping them provide extra meals at the senior center. Okay, but we'll be bringing— we have to have a 30-day public comment, so we have to wait another 30 days before we can bring that to you.

Okay, I think that—

I mean, that happened really quickly, and it sounds like there's a lot of changes on the MAC side.

I don't know if we can get more information to see if there's a way we can help on that side as well as our own center.

Yes, and we'll have the other— the other entitlements have more money than we do, so So I will let them know. I have a meeting with them next week and I'll let them know that MAG needs more money for—

Okay, thank you so much.

Terry, so on the first page, what was— what did we do at Geneva Elementary?

Geneva, when we were at Geneva, they actually put plexiglass dividers in on their lunchroom tables, and they actually took those with them when they went to Suncrest or Parkside. So we put them in before they closed the school, then they closed the school, and then they took them over to parks.

And then Sharon's another one that we're hearing rumors that they're going to close. So apparently they're not spending money in Orem, they're just taking from Orem. But so we're going to put picnic tables in Sharon and then they're going to close Sharon?

I don't—

I don't— I'm not aware of the Sharon closure. We just had the request for the picnic tables from the principal.

So I just saw that Geneva— I mean, I hope they don't I don't know, who knows where they're going to close.

Hopefully they will, they'll move them to— if they do that, they'll move them to another low-income school.

If there's another elementary school left in Orem, then they'll move to that one.

Okay.

Also, can you, can you just explain those hotspots? I'm not clear if they're just in the library, if you check them out.

My understanding is you can check them out for 6 weeks, and then you can renew them. We did a series in the beginning of COVID of them. It was a very popular program. They were actually able to get money from another source for people with higher incomes. It's been a very popular program, so they want to continue that program for low-income families.

So if I could start, that'd be great. My question is just kind of how that— how they work as far as—

Yeah, we—

I was really just coming up to express our appreciation for having that option, because in the depth of the COVID closed-down We had a lot of low-income residents who would access Wi-Fi at places like McDonald's and other places like that, so we worked with Ken and the CDBG program to provide hotspots from T-Mobile. T-Mobile does not charge for the actual physical hotspot, but they charge for the service. And so, 2 fiscal years ago, we were able to circulate those to low- and moderate-income residents, and they just filled out a short application. I'm familiar with the CDBG program, and I was just really grateful for the resource when the applications came across my desk. I could see the depth and the breadth of the community that was using them. There were a lot of older people who were using them, and there were a lot of different parts of our community represented in those applications. So then we were able to get a grant from the state to continue the program, and then this year we would love to continue to offer them primarily to low and moderate income individuals. We just do not feel like it's feasible for us to take on the whole bill, so we will work with T-Mobile to reduce the load that we've had in the mobile hotspots, and then we will still be able to continue to check them out through primarily the CDBG program and maybe just a very smaller amount that we use another grant for to We do have them for those who have over-income.

So just to clarify, so these are hotspots that you can check out the library, you take home, they just work over cellular, but they provide Wi-Fi at your house.

Yes.

Is that right? And so, so that, that cost is fixed and just, you're saying the ongoing cost, that's dealt with as far as if we add— how many did you say, 25? And so that ongoing cellular cost, you said you had a way to deal with that?

Yes, we will reduce from 45, which was the total that we had at the kind of height that the funding we had available, we will reduce that probably to 30. So we'll just keep a smaller amount for households that do not qualify as low and moderate income households. We had some, some interesting situations You know, people may not have the low moderate income housing, but they were short just a couple of weeks while they were waiting for their Wi-Fi to be installed, or they'd moved houses and they just hadn't had the chance to find Wi-Fi. So we used we had a few really great stories where people used them to bridge those gaps. But primarily, we wanted to make sure that those who you know had been using hotspots or mobile resources in other locations that were closed during the pandemic. We wanted to make sure that they had availability. And they can check them out for 6 weeks. They can renew it if there is not someone waiting for them. But we felt like 6 weeks was a good period of time to let them conduct household business, whether it was for school or personal or work business. And then if they needed another one, they would get in the hold queue and take another one after the fact. But it's been, it's been a great program. It's been highly utilized. And we really appreciate the CDBG program for supporting that need in Orem.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Does someone want to introduce a—

we're allowed to approve this week, right?

So no, yeah, we need to take public comment and then close the public hearing.

Okay, so we'll open a public hearing. Somebody's got to have something they want to say.

Yeah.

Normally they don't.

Okay, well, we'll close the public hearing. And we'll have a— someone like to make a resolution?

I move—

I make a resolution the city receive—

nope, sorry.

Move that we— what am I doing?

By resolution.

By resolution.

The city—

where are we at though?

The city You accept the projected use of funds for CARES Act CBDD funding and approve the substantial amendment to the 2019-2020 Annual Action Plan.

Second.

Do you want to start down there?

I'm not sure what that was that you just said.

It was all good.

I understand what it is and I'm going to second it.

No, it's already been seconded.

Aye.

Aye.

I understand, until, until Jeff tried to second something that had already been seconded, but I'll approve.

The resolution's passed.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Um, lastly, we've got, uh, Jamie, do you have anything?

Yeah, Mayor, just a couple of items, uh, of information. The first one being the Mountainland Association of Governments annually accepts applications for transportation projects prospectively to add to the MAG's Transportation Improvement Plan. This year we are— they are accepting applications for funding for the '25-'26 construction year. And this year we submitted the Lakeview Parkway project, which is the roadway that extends from essentially the Provo Airport Center Street in Provo and connects up with the Geneva Road corridor in Orem. It's an $18 million project. That application goes before what they call the Technical Advisory Committee at MAG, and these are engineering professionals who score the projects based on merit. And I just wanted to let you know that our project scored number 2 on the list, so it scored scored very high on the list, and, and we were encouraged by that. The only project that scored higher was a new UVX light rail or bus rapid transit station at 900 East, across from the BYU Law School and new music school. So you recall when they built the UVX project, the neighbors in that area were adamant that they did not want UVX in proximity to their neighborhood, and so UVX bypassed that specific station. Well, now they've come back and they've requested that we add the UVX station at that particular location. And so that was a project scored better than our project in terms of meeting the merits of all of the technical transportation criteria that is part of that MAG process. But we're encouraged, and we believe that the, the scoring puts us in a very good position in the future to receive funding to help in the construction of that road. Like I said, ideally in the '25-'26 fiscal year. The other— a couple of other things I want to just say. We want to wish Councilmember Lamson a happy birthday, and we do have some treats in the council conference room after this meeting, and we would invite you to enjoy them. if Councilmember Lamson chooses to share them. And then finally, as many of you know, we this week are going to say goodbye to Heather as our full-time city attorney, and I just wanted to publicly express my appreciation to Heather and my thanks for her contributions. She has been an outstanding employee, and she has done so many remarkable things here in the city. She has always been so responsive to my needs as city manager, but I think I can speak for the collective city as a whole in recognizing the caliber of work that you have done and the way you have carried yourself and the character and integrity that you hold. And I just want you to know that we will miss you, and we hope that you will continue to maintain association with us, and we wish you well as you move forward and you work with your husband and, and you grow your family business and everything else that's wonderful in your life. We hope that it continues. So I just wanted, I just wanted you to know how much we appreciate you.

Thank you, Jamie.

It's been an honor and an absolute privilege to serve the people of Orem, serve the City Council and staff. When you leave a place, you realize how much you enjoy the people that you've been with.

And I appreciate all of you, and I appreciate the kind words, and I wish Orem all the good things that it deserves in the future.

We just want you to know we're not going to ask you for your keys, your— or your proximity card, just in case, you know, so Okay, okay, thank you, Jamie.

And we all second that from over here, Heather. We really appreciate everything you've done for us, and we'll miss you, but you'll be stopping in. And I'll make a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Yes. Here, he did it first.

The meeting's adjourned.

Okay.