City Council · 2022-07-12

So we really appreciate the efforts.

I know this is not the hot topic of the day, but we're grateful that this is going forward. We're really hoping to get this instituted soon because, as we know, most of those residents of those apartment buildings are students, and so they'll have an influx of people coming in in the next month and when UB starts up. So we're hoping to get this rolling.

Thank you. Any other council or mayor have any other questions for Cindy? Or me?

Can you describe how the permit program works?

Yeah, I'll flip, I'll flip through here. This is our city code that basically says recommendations, city manager designee, which in this case we do Chief Adams, we consider for designation residential permit parking area for those residence areas meetings and satisfies the objective criteria. therefore established in this article, they may, in their discretion, then designate by resolution certain residential areas as residential parking areas in which motor vehicles displaying a valid parking permit may stand or be parked without limitation by parking time or parking area restrictions.

So, so my question is, how do you get a parking permit? How many?

Gotcha. So the way it works is, is the ones we've done previously, Once approved by the city council, then we will first send that letter out for the public hearing. We'll notify residents that there'll be a— during the city council that they can come give their feedback. So they need to be notified that it's being voted on or discussed. And then at that point, once it goes through, then we would send a mailer out to all the residents. And then they would come into the police department, we make the permits for them. Any registered vehicle to that address can get a parking permit for their vehicles.

What about visitors?

Visitors, they will receive 2 visitor passes for people to come if they have large events. What we've done in the past is we've just had— they'll contact us, say, hey, I— we try to tell these people as well as they come into their permits We'll print them out a little document that they can put in, in their vehicle if they're having a large gathering.

Thank you. Can I just make one more quick comment? Some people have concerns about the permitting process and we're asking these same questions.

What—

how does it work?

What if we have a gathering?

And so I—

we have a neighborhood Facebook group and I asked people what their concerns were and just compiled a whole list of questions that they had.

And he was kind enough to be on the phone with me for about 40 minutes answering all those questions.

And so with that information that he gave us, passed back to the residents, we answered most of the concerns.

There's very few people that don't want this in our area. This seems to me like one of the But I mean, you get visitor passes and you get to— but a lot of people have larger families, get together every Sunday kind of thing. So it might make it easier for those people, like, that might— that's just my general— yeah, yeah, to get extra passes on a regular basis.

Yeah, and that's something that maybe, maybe we can do. That's just the way our current code is written, but that's something that we could easily amend and issue more visitor passes out.

That's a pretty—

What is the—

what's the number again?

2 visitor passes.

2 visitor passes.

Yeah, those are, those are like the hangar tags.

What about your actual car? You can get—

there's not a limit.

Oh, if you have a—

it'd be okay if the vehicle's registered to that address, then you can have a parking pass.

And that doesn't include parking on your driveway?

Correct. This is only for on-street parking. So these are the streets that we've identified that would be in this. This, uh, basically what we'll do is it'll still be the Sunset Heights because we already have one, so we won't create a Springwater. It'll be— we will add in these streets to the Sunset Heights because it's all located within that neighborhood.

So do you patrol this occasionally, or do the neighbors call a tow truck or call you guys?

What What happens if someone is illegally parked?

Both. I mean, we have, we have our, you know, obviously our police officers are, you know, they're gonna, as calls come in, they'll go to the area because they're going to focus on priority calls.

But we have, we have our parking officers that regularly patrol the city.

You know, they don't specify go to one specific area. But yeah, they're going to patrol that area throughout the day, obviously.

assume they'll make it there. There's a requirement too for the different apartment projects right there, particularly Axis, to advertise the heck out of this is illegal to park across there now. Yes. And make it clear this is where you can park and this is where you can't. Otherwise, right.

So yeah, so one of the things we'll do, we'll work with the, uh, we work with, uh, streets down there.

I can't think of his name.

Trent Mallinson. They get their signage out. We get the big electronic barriers, parking permit area. They move that around 3 or 4 times on all the streets. You know, we notify the residents. We'll make sure that we notify the apartment complexes, the management as well, about the, you know, the potential.

So, you know, we're not dating people as far as that. Be nice if the first notice is a warning. Yeah, so we don't change the ordinance all of a sudden, everybody's getting towed or getting big tickets and, you know, there's a warning the next time. Yeah, I think we could ease into it.

Yeah, because you'll have a lot of neighbors as well. What we found is, as we start to institute it, it takes, you know, might take a couple months for the residents to come get their permits. And so what we usually do in the mailer, I'll put out some verbiage that will say, you know, there'll be a 45-day grace period type thing.

before enforcement starts. So that's, that's all included with the language.

So basically the next step at this point, we kind of already talked about that, but we're going to notify, you know, the residents of the decision. Then legal will prepare the resolution. Then we'll go live with this during the City Council session on August 23rd. And then if enacted, in the neighborhood we'll put that signage that I just talked about, um, get everybody their permits and start rolling.

So that's, that's what I have for you.

What questions do you guys have? Is anybody totally against this idea of this, this area receiving a residential center?

I think it's our neighbor center. Yep.

Yeah, I mean, again, 150 signatures on this petition. I mean, I mean, they knocked on every door they received. I mean, you can see their signatures on the paper. So it was very— it's needed, I think. But this was requested from us by the citizens. So this isn't like the police department sought this out, right, to solve the problem. This was something brought to us. Thank you.

for all your hard work bringing the neighborhood together and coming up with a resolution. So are we sure then? I mean, we know that Access is going to have enough parking?

Well, I mean, in one of our previous meetings, Jason can take care of that.

Well, they got the UVU. Yeah, so they signed, they signed an agreement with UVU for 150 spaces. Mr. Clark, who is kind of the owner-operator of the access reports, that about 2/3 of those spaces that are used, they operate also shuttle, shuttle service during kind of late hours of the day. People are coming to and from the parking lot in a safe way. He's also come to you recently and talked about Additional developments in that area, trying to accommodate some additional parking into his proposed project, if you would like to build to further accommodate additional cars.

Well, I would say if no one is an absolute for, we move this forward with the paperwork, get the resolution done. get this formal in the— on the 23rd.

Anybody have a problem with that? All right, that's good.

That's all I got.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So every, every, uh, year since 2009, when the Warren City Council adopted a resolution, uh, regarding gang loitering, uh, we're trying to revisit that. So just as a review, Utah Code 769-902 defines gang loitering and allows municipalities to determine gang loitering areas, which would be— so the violation is remaining in an area under circumstances to be a reasonable person to believe the group is intending to establish control of the area, intimidate others from entering that area, or criminal activity within that area. So again, 2009, the City Council adopted a resolution that identified all city parks and schools as gang and warrior areas. And, uh, historically, Utah Valley experienced an uptick in gang activity in the late '90s and early 2000s. That has been managed rather effectively. The key tools that we use is our dissemination of intelligence, the Utah County Major Crimes Task Force. And we have a very active SRO program, summer programs, and after-school activities that we co-sponsor with Alpine School District to have some of these kids that we seem to be at risk in programs with us, our SROs, and so forth during the summertime, which we're planning to be effective. We have a great working relationship with large mass gathering sites, uh, privately owned ones within the city such as University Place. Also to our, to our portion, our city is— the layout of our city gang-friendly. And our parks are very well maintained and so forth, to not particularly be inviting to criminal activity. We don't believe that most of the graffiti as it occurs within the city, which it does, it's not always necessarily gang-based. And I can also report that we do have a number of what I would call retired gang members that live— that came from out of state and are living and working peacefully in our community. The only way to know who they are is, uh, their chance encounters with them in traffic and so forth, and they may be wearing half markers, tattoos, and so forth. It's lifestyles. There are several people like that that have found Warren to be a good place to live. Are disruptive. So we have any gangs right now? Uh, mostly what we consider to be active gang activity is more cartel-based drug trade stuff. That's all handled through the Taka Enterprise. But as far as any low-level street gang stuff, specifically where they're trying to control any area, turf, streets, or anything like that, we don't have anything like that. We're usually getting out in front of that stuff right around junior high. Any questions? Unrelated to this, KSL reported that an officer was hit in a traffic thing yesterday.

Yes.

Is he doing okay?

He or she doing okay?

Yes, he's home from the hospital. He's recovering. Trying to help a disabled car get out of traffic. One of our vehicles, that vehicle ran into the officer, officer about 30 feet. He's thankful he's one of our biggest officers. So he's doing okay. It was a scare and so forth. But yeah, it cost us a That way. And just a question regarding gangs going back, um, like the 2000s, has it changed much as far as gang activity? Yeah, I would say nationally, I think that— I think the culture around gangs has, uh, has changed. It's not back in those eras. It was, it was kind of a popular, socially accepted in pop culture and so forth. Most gangs didn't really regenerate a new generation in our millennial population. So as far as those types of things, and with the basically the advent of social media, people just sit in their and their shorts on their laptop and do all their gaming. So I guess that's a positive. Yeah, we'll take it. So yeah, they don't need to go out on the street.

Thanks.

Thank you.

All right, um, got a fair amount of time. The food's here whenever you're ready. Yeah, why don't we, um, I guess let's go ahead and have a prayer, grab our food, and we'll be left with that item. Volunteer. Our beloved Father in heaven, we are so thankful to gather together this evening. Grateful for people that we're able to work with, for the wonderful staff, for the great work that they do. Father, we thank you for this food. We pray that that would bless us, be nourishing and strengthening to us. Pray that we might use that strength to do good. Father, especially bless this fight. Is your daughter here now? Well, that's right. Oh yeah, that's my wife. Oh, my daughter. And that's the books for sure.

I actually want to go to the other island.

That is beautiful.

All right, all right, we'll start back up again. Um, Jeff, if you've got something you'd like to share with us about your committees, you bet. So, um, I serve on the CARE Commission, Transportation Advisory Board, Neighborhood Commission, and just a quick rundown on each of those. CARE, we all know that That's going smoothly, and lots of people are being blessed with those, those dollars. Lots of good things happening.

The Transportation Advisory Commission, some of the things that are on the radar, some that have been there for a while, but some of the things that we're working on—

roundabout at 1200 South and 400 West, the 1600 North to State Street to Cleveland Road, basically, and that's the alignment. Yes, on the side of the book itself. Cleveland Road, View Dot, that S-curve there at 4th North. Yes, that one, and then just the whole the whole project, uh, temple, all of that, that whole situation. Um, 400 East and 1600 North, the, the light there, uh, talking about the possibilities of things that could happen there. And then 400 South, 400 West, where the new park and the water tank will be. That traffic light. Staff's working on a transportation master plan. They'll be sharing somewhere down the road. Neighborhood Commission, it's been a fun commission to serve on. They're in the middle of doing a bunch of picnic with the police in the park events.

There's one tomorrow evening at Westmore Park at 5:30.

So, uh, yeah.

Oh no, it's a— yeah, it's a, it's a Westmore.

And, uh, so it's an opportunity to come and meet some of the police officers and Our neighborhood improvement team, they're always there. They have some fun things, fun activities going on to interact with the public.

Utopia Forum is almost completely filled out. There's one pesky area that they're still working on, trying to get that nailed down.

Hopefully that will be done here in the next couple of months. And projections are that they will still be able to continue to pay us more money than they're supposed to.

So that's on a good trajectory.

Pleasant Grove, Syracuse, Cedar Hill, Santa Clara are all in the process of building out, which, which helps everybody. They've completed West Valley and Murray, which were 2 major And then UVU, I understand that we'll be getting together sometime. One day. They've also had a change in management at that part of the organization, so I think that's going to be happening.

Nothing to report there, but the Wolverines. Nice.

Did you know those, uh, they were opening the park with the police? Are those mainly for that group? Are they other officers?

There are other officers there.

There's usually 4 or 5 other officers, and they bring cornhole games and, uh, the people from the Bike Commission, little obstacles for kids to ride around on their bikes and All the hot dogs you can eat. So that's good. Okay, sounds good. Does anyone else have any questions? Sounds like you're doing a great job. We're gonna run through the agenda fairly quick. Move out of here fairly quick because Steve's been trying to transform this room into a table. Hopefully Steve and all of us, but it's cool.

We've gotten all the tables.

Obviously the chairs are sitting around. We just need to roll these tables out and put them in the hallway and just line up chairs.

The audio will be piped into here.

That screen will show what's being shown in there. Okay, so you just want everybody to—

Yeah, we could all just help get the chairs.

Yeah, quickly. Okay. As far as the regular agenda, starting 6th, we'll have call to order, invocation, public readings from Crystal and Mark Bartlett. And we'll have personal appearances.

We've got on here 15 minutes.

We anticipate that there might be more people than 15 minutes worth that want to comment, and so what we're going to do is we decided to have 7 people, um, that are only in favor of the split versus 7 people that are against the split. We'll give us a total of 14, and then we're going to limit their comments to 2 minutes. And we, we put that all in the instructions out there so people can see Just so you know, the comments that Michael's been there helping people guide is people saying, I haven't seen the study yet, I don't know if I'm in favor or against.

So there is some of that.

So that may kind of show up on that sheet.

Yeah, I think we'll say if they generally favor, generally against. And we've got consent items, which is catching us all up on these minutes. City Council's— Quite a scheduled items. We've got Planning Commission appointment, and, uh, I'll probably step by him to just introduce himself. And then we've got the other appointments for the commissions. We've got the CDBG Commission, um, the members, which is all actually all reappointments, it looks like. And then we've got the Public Works and Private Commission.

Those are both my commissions.

Okay. Okay. You want to— I need to announce those 2. Mayor, we have 2 minutes. Could Jason give us a little backdrop on that? What's that? Could Jason give us a little backdrop on that when I first read what was sent out?

Anything else?

Just one lot they want to divide into 2. In order to get the bid on that one lot, they have to read the rezoning down to R-6. This back lot has to be 125% of the reason for the R-6. They're here to just create 2 lots, 2 single-family homes. And what's the neighborhood? Is it all R-8s? Uh, there's mostly R-8s. There are some other zones. Generally, it's Joshua Tree. Is there very much feedback from the neighbors? Have a public hearing about that. We've got a resolution to renew the contract with the Legislator's Counselor. We've got our— our school district split feasibility study presentation. So any questions or comments? So Jason, on the 359 South 351, is that 2 lots into 4?

One lot tonight? Yeah, it's one lot into 2. One lot into 2. So there's not gonna be a house that's gonna make 2 lots.

Is that the one with the church across the street?

I think it is.

They want 4 lots.

The one that's on tonight is simply—

maybe it's a different one.

So there is one coming in the future.

When they're doing the study, can we ask, can we ask questions so it's interactive? If we see some slide, we can ask a question about it. Yeah, what the intent is, is We'll invite them up. They'll come up, do the presentation of the studies. They'll go into slides, and then as we're going through those slides, the city council should be asking questions as we go through the presentation. So the presentation will take quite a bit longer, but as we go through it, we'll have— it's actually better than waiting till the end. And feel free to— I mean, this is our chance to learn and And as we learn, the citizens will learn. So we'll ask lots of questions to make sure. Any other questions? Okay, well, let's go ahead and adjourn and I'll speak to you before the night is over. Steven, what do you want us to do with these chairs?

We'll just use them.

Yeah. Save them a way to get out.

Save them a way to get out.

We can probably just push them against this corner.

Yeah, we can probably leave one.

Yeah, we—

I think all of them would have been Sorry.

3 feet away from the wall, they can be right up against here and then a 3-foot aisle down the center, just like that setup there.

Hey, I'll decide. Yeah, all right.

The only fire you worry about is firing up that smoker and getting us some brisket.

And let's just—

yeah, we can leave some up.

We'll set more up today. Right now it's looking like it's gonna be okay, but here you go. And then, uh, Brian, hopefully you guys want to just take this. Yeah, I'll stay with you. Okay, thanks, Byron.

Okay, appreciate it.

I'll send it to you again with the invites at 1 o'clock.

So you guys, give us a little bit of a heads up and sign in. Yes, but it was something to do with scheduling conflict. I sent him an email back when— yes, we've been changed to 1 o'clock. I never heard back. I like it, Jamie.

You have to, you have to work on here.

Something bad is happening. Look, and then you call, you call the exec staff member.

Test, test.

This is a test. Test, test. This is a test. Uh, Steve Cannon, please report to the desk, please. Steve Cannon.

Hello? Hey, Mayor.

We'd like to go ahead and start the meeting. We'd like to welcome you all here tonight, and we'll start out with an invocation by Crystal Bartlett.

Our Father in heaven, we're thankful to be gathered today in this great country of America, in this beautiful state of Utah, and in this family-friendly community of Orem. We're so thankful for those that serve our, our city. We're thankful for our mayor and our city council and for the countless others, their hard work and dedication. We ask thee to give them wisdom, that they may be able to solve problems, that they may be able to distinguish right and wrong.

Bless them that they can make decisions that will bring stability and prosperity to our community.

We're thankful to be part of this community. Please tonight bless us with the spirit of unity, that we can effectively communicate one with one each other, that we can work together for the good of our community. And we say these things in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you, Crystal. We'll now have Mark Bartlett lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Thank you.

Moving forward, we've got a, a full agenda tonight. The main item on the agenda— we've got a lot of different things. But the main item on the agenda will be the presentation of this school board study that we've been waiting for several months to see. And as such, we're going to have some personal appearances. And I've got, I've got 30 people that have signed up to make an appearance. And with 30 people, if we each take 3 minutes, that's an hour and a half of comments. And the real purpose of the meeting tonight is to hear from the consultants and hear what their findings are. And once we've got those findings, it'll be a lot easier to actually have an opinion on whether a school district split makes sense or not. And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to try and— I still want to have some time for public comments. I'd like to narrow it down. And I'd like to narrow it down to 7 people who are in favor of the split and 7 that are against. And I know it's pretty much impossible to really have a legitimate opinion without the information, so I'm not sure how to divide up other than I know some of you are friends and you're here with your— you know, you're in the same groups and you've been on the same side. And so I can either just go down the list and take the first 14, or we can divide up and have 7 who are in favor and 7 who are against. So I think what I'd like to do is, is, is take the second route so we can hear from both sides. Um, why don't we do this? Why don't anyone who is— why don't we have anyone who wants to speak in favor go on the right side? And then when you're amongst yourself trying to figure out who would be the 7 that you want to speak for your side, and then we'll have 7 who are against go on the other side. And if you don't know if you're for or against, maybe just go off of how you're leaning without information. So there's 30 of you. If you'd like to stand up, like I said, those who would be on the for side, if you'd like to just go stand on that, on the right side, on my right, and go, let's go ahead and make this happen. Yeah, and then we'll Well, yeah, we'll get into that.

Mayor, there's, there's maybe an outside chance that somebody's signed up to make a personal appearance on a topic other than the school district as well.

Okay.

And if they're in the top 15 who have signed up, maybe you just want to see if anybody's come to speak to a topic other than school district as well.

Okay.

Is there anyone who has a topic other than the school district that they want to speak on? If so, if you could just raise your hand. No, it looks like it's all school district. Yeah, we'll just do 7 and 7. I understand that, but we— if we can get good input throughout the district, that'd be helpful.

Okay. Time to go everywhere.

You, you were signed up as for the signing up to talk about the school district.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. Are you— let's, let's start. Okay, Sissy. Are you ready? Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna alternate back and forth. And we'll let you— we'll let you go first, this side. And then, like it said in the signup sheet, we're going to go for 2 minutes each. Okay, so has everybody got that? We're going to go for 2 minutes each. That's, that's what we changed the signup sheet to. All right, let's go ahead and start. Okay, go ahead and come up, please. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm Sissy Rasmussen. I've lived in Orem almost 20 years. My kids have attended Orem schools for 17 years and will attend for the next 10 years. Today I represent the group Stronger Together. We believe Orem schools, families, and teachers are better served by remaining with Alpine School District. I'm here to share our survey of Orem school employees. The full study has already been sent to Orem City, and anyone can see it on our website. When we learned that the feasibility study would not collect input from teachers and employees, we were very concerned, so we created an objective survey to collect that data. 371 Surveys were completed and the results were overwhelmingly conclusive. 91% of Orem employees opposed the formation of an Orem-only school district. Additionally, when asked about their feelings towards working in an Orem-only school district, 84% said they would definitely look for a way to remain with Alpine School District. Stronger Together stands behind these survey results and we're happy to answer questions about it. But the question to me today is, if the DEC feasibility study did not take teacher and employee views into account, what else might they have missed? Will they note that school funding comes from 3 major areas, with property taxes accounting for only 22%? Will they show that the bulk of funding depends on student enrollment and that Orem student population has been steadily decreasing for the past 20 years? Will they show that Orem schools receive An outsized portion, about 80% of the Title I funding in the school district? Will they show that ASD estimates, estimates that Orem schools cost $29 million more than Orem generates in school funding? They do have that data, DEC does, according to the grammar requests on the city page. And then will they show what programs would have to be cut, or how much taxes would need to be raised to make up that shortfall? I hope the study will answer those questions and that City Council will be careful in making a life-changing decision. Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Joel Wright. I'm not a resident of Orem. I live in Cedar Hills, Utah. I've had 5 children attend Alpine School District. This will have a huge impact on, on all of us. I think there are lots of really good, important variables to consider. One variable that I'm very concerned that's been ignored is seismic safety. For well over 20 years, a lot of schools in Orem are not safe. I don't think the city council would have your employees working in those buildings. I don't think you'd be raising your families in those buildings. So I know this is gonna be a bit crass, but I'm going to say it. What if we had a big earthquake in October 2022? Do we have data?

What would happen?

What would be the fatality rate in Orem schools? What would be the fatality rate in Eagle Mountain schools? We know that all of Eagle Mountain schools currently comply with seismic code. Is that code just silly? Does it mean something? Is it meaningful? What would the fatality rate be in Eagle Mountain? What would it be in Orem? Is that a question that we can ask? Why haven't the schools been fixed in Orem? They've been seismically unsafe for a very long time. I mean, at COVID, I've talked to a number of sources. We made enormous effort to save lives for COVID, and that was valiant. It was noble. It was hard. From what I understand, one employee of Alpine School District died and no students died. If we hadn't made that effort, do we know what would have happened? We don't. But we do know what would happen. We do know with seismic safety there is very good prediction what will happen to the buildings in If we had a major earthquake that we're long overdue for. We need to ask those questions. I hope this feasibility study tonight shows what buildings are not safe in Orem, and how is that compared? When are you going to fix that? You can say, oh, that's the school board's problem, isn't it? Well, tonight it's now your problem because you're making a major decision on how Orem schools are going to be funded and how they're going to be maintained. So if there's a major earthquake and the fatality rate's a lot higher in Orem, It's going to be your fault as well. Chris McFadden, resident of Orem since 2000. I have children that go here, and I've had 2 children that go through Dan Peterson School. The teachers are the person that died in Alpine School District was the principal of Alpine School District.

We're well aware.

I don't know what's on the study yet, but let me list some of the things that Ann Peterson provides for the students with special needs there that have severe special needs, not those that are high functioning and can do very well in traditional schools. They have dedicated PT, OT, speech, vision, They have therapy pools, adaptive kitchens.

They have a laundry.

They have—

all the classrooms have changing stations off of them so that children that need to be changed can do so in privacy and dignity.

They've got full-time nurses. They have teachers' aides. Class sizes are from 8 to 12.

43 of the approximately 120 students at Dan Peterson School live in Orem.

And yes, I do know that. I talked to the principal. I'm also on the SCC there.

They just put in wheelchair— 2 small wheelchair swings, not like the adaptive playground over here, but smaller. That alone cost $100,000.

Even if we get grants from somewhere, from government, that's still taxes, whether it's local taxes or not. What about the safety of the students if they're put in traditional schools and don't have their own?

My child—

many of you saw him reaching out and touching you.

He does that all the time.

He does that in a traditional school.

He's going to touch a student inappropriately, accidentally, because he doesn't know better, or he's going to break his arm because they're going the opposite direction.

They have difficulty.

They have—

they make noise that are not conducive to those To those situations. I have many, much more, but time is up.

Have a great day.

Hi, my name is Michelle Lee. Not that it is a prerequisite to having an opinion, but I am an Orem resident. The Educational Intelligence Agency conducted a study to determine if district size impacted how much money was allocated into institutional instruction in the district. In a sample size of 61 school districts nationwide containing between 50,000 and 100,000 students, which for reference Alpine School District contains 85,000 students, the largest in the state, they found that only 2 districts in this sample size of 61 hit the threshold of allocating 65% of funds to education. Only 2 school districts were able to allocate 65% of their funds To instructional education, that is 8%. Our Orem students deserve better than this. Larger school districts equate more money wasted on overhead and not being spent on educational instruction. We are seeing the fruits of that in Alpine School District. Currently, right now, 1 in 6 Orem students do not attend public school in Orem. 1 in 6. They are homeschooled, they attend private or charter schools, or they attend Provo schools. Why are so many Orem parents choosing not to put their students in school in Orem? The first commenter over here mentioned, for the other side, she mentioned that she believes that Orem student population is decreasing. It's actually not decreasing. The data is very clear on that. It's not decreasing, but students are leaving Orem schools because Alpine School District is not meeting their needs. It is too large. Many students are choosing to leave, 1 in 6, to be clear. The district is too large. Our educational system was not meant to function as a department of the state. We need local regulation, community involvement, and accountability, all of which are not possible when each one of our 7 school board members represents over 12,000 students each. Each one of our 7 school board members. And we do not need to have the biggest school board in the state, and our Orem students deserve better than this.

Thank you.

First, thank you for your service to Orem City. I know all of us, even when we disagree, want the best for our city. My name is Jennifer Ellingford, and I'm a resident of Orem, mother of 4 children that were in 3rd, 6th, 10th, and 12th grade this year, a member of PTA. In fact, I volunteered with Linnea at Canyon View several years ago, the wife of a teacher at Orem High School, and I recently returned to teaching part-time at Orem High. I love Orem and our schools. My husband Brian Ellingford has taught at Orem High School for 16 years. In addition to teaching, he has served on School Community Council for many years, helped with clubs, set up a cross-curricular writing center, and spends many hours outside of Contract time helping students with college essays. He loves Orem High School so much, and although it would be devastating for him to leave if there is a split from Alpine School District, he will look for a job outside of Orem to be able to stay with Alpine District to protect our family's financial stability and healthcare. Many teachers simply cannot risk the potential decrease in salaries, benefits, and school programs after the 1-year match that is guaranteed by the state. Good teachers are the most critical part of our education system. As you know, the last few years have been especially challenging for them. In addition to the difficulty of teaching during the pandemic, they are trying to remediate learning loss while schools were closed and facing increased criticism from parents in the community. If we lose these experienced Dedicated teachers from our Orem schools, there is no army of qualified teachers waiting in the wings to take their spots. I will be so sad for my children to lose these excellent teachers that we love. I know not every teacher will be able to stay with Alpine School District, but even losing a few teachers at each school would be devastating. Losing these amazing teachers will hurt our children, our schools, and our community. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Jennifer Young, and I've been living in Orem since 1986, and I did move out in '91 and moved to Davis County. I have 4 kids. My 4 kids have been in many different kinds of school settings, both in Davis County and back here in Orem when I moved back in 2006. So, and I work right now currently as a 2nd grade teacher. I've had my degree about 9 years now. My kids— I say that with my students too. They— when I get my students in my own classroom, I feel like they're the same students that we've had in Alpine School District.

They're such amazing kids.

Thank you. Mix, you know, coming in and out. And I felt like my own children did that too. They sometimes they started in one school and then they went to a different, different model completely. And it's great to have choices. My biggest concern is, as I've been studying, kind of watching what's been going online with the Facebook name of their group, Staying Together Stronger Together. My concern is, is that we're already making decisions without getting the data first. So I just want to say that I'm happy to be here together tonight. I hope that we stay open-minded. I hope that the data will shed some new light. I don't think that we do know the numbers yet. I see flyers already with numbers on it, and I— they may be correct, they may be really way off. I just want to stay really open-minded. In my experience, when I, when I was in Davis County and I was in my first marriage, we went— my husband and I got heavily involved in working at a charter— not a— sorry, a private school. And we studied many different school models. Every— we went and sat in with the best administrators from St. George to Logan. And what we found with the best results for students was that smaller was better. And so I just want to keep that in mind, and that I think that local control can be better represented by a smaller number. So thank you very much.

My name is Jared Whitlock. I've lived in Orem for 28 years. All my kids have gone to Orem schools. Um, I would like to speak about some of those numbers that we already do know, or some of those things that we already do know about Alpine School District. They have a AAA bond rating, which is very difficult to get. There are very few organizations in the country, especially schools, that have a AAA bond rating. Uh, it's taken them more than 17 years to earn this. If Orem were to split off, we wouldn't have that bond rating. ASD bonds can be issued at no extra cost above what is already being paid to taxpayers because of their excellent bond rating. And because they pay off previous bonds in layers, that amount— the amount owed does not increase even as more is borrowed. ASD can also pay off previous bonds early because of the lower cost of borrowing, which also contributes to lower costs of buildings for taxpayers. Each city in ASD benefits from a bond, even Orem, in building projects as well as in debt that is spread out over many areas, so no one area has to bear the burden of the entire cost. In the last several bond cycles that ASD has issued, Orem has received many benefits. Mr. Wright asked about seismic capabilities. Orem High was, was completely rebuilt. Timpanogos High School has a new roof. Mountain View High School has a new addition. Centennial Elementary School replaced old and unsafe Hillcrest. And if we compare that to Provo, our neighboring district, they have a Timbview High School that is struggling. So I think we can see there are many benefits to being a part of ASD, and they're financial and very important to all of us.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is also Renee, and I have 5 kids, 17 all the way down to 6, and all the ranges. And these past 2 years, I have I've seen things that I guess never thought I'd see before.

And I've heard this so many times, when things get back to normal, and the rehearsal of that to my children over and over again.

We've realized things were never meant to go back to normal. And I think that's been my kind of rude awakening, is just realizing that my children— there was never an intent to go back to normal, because I peeled back layer after layer after layer. And I'm going way off script.

I had a lot of notes and data. But I'm just—

I'm gonna just talk to your hearts right now. I pulled my 2nd grader out of public school because I couldn't let his little mind go back to public school. It was ruining him. And I am watching my 3 older kids who are still in the public school system, and they come home to me and they tell me it's a joke. They're on their laptops a lot, 80% of the time, roughly. And this book, I've read it twice now, but it talks— written a long time ago, but their big pushback then was to get every kid on a laptop.

Because education could be manipulated, distorted, and teachers and principals, we can't keep up with it because it's changing so rapidly. Parents can't even really get a grasp on it because it changes, and we're just trying to keep up along with everything else we're dealing with.

So my big thing right now, like I said, I have a lot of data on this, but smaller classroom sizes, more parental involvement. My one son goes to a charter school now.

It is amazing.

to watch his little mind grow.

And that—

they don't have lots of money. They don't have— they do a lot more fundraisers, more parental involvement. Parental involvement, okay? Um, that's big. Smaller classroom sizes— that can be accomplished if you can break away. There's a lot of money. I've seen the pages and pages and pages of, uh, administration.

You know, the money's—

there's a lot of money there, but it's being spent in all sorts of ways. If you just funneled that back into the smaller classroom sizes, teachers. I appreciate the comment about earthquakes, but I'm more concerned with the structure of my child's mind versus buildings. Thank you very much.

Hi, I'm Hannah Wolds. I have been an Orem resident for 6 years now. I bought my home and I'm planning on staying here for the next I have been an Orem teacher for the past 9 years, and I chose to buy my home in my school's boundaries because I believe in the education system in Orem. Um, something that makes Alpine School District a great district that will not necessarily be represented on the feasibility study is the opportunities that teachers within Alpine School District get. One of those opportunities was a few years ago, I did a Building Effective Readers training where I learned how to be better at teaching literacy to my 2nd graders, the 1st graders when I taught summer school, and now my 5th graders. Another thing the Alpine School District has done for me is allow me to go to the Topaz Museum and spend my Saturday and my free time learning about things that impact my students in their lives today. Without these opportunities, I wouldn't be able to be as an effective teacher. I've had the opportunity to go to Washington, D.C. because of Alpine School District and bring back photos and artifacts for my students. With Orem City School District and the possible split, we can't guarantee that these things will continue to happen because we won't have the number of 5th grade teachers in order to fill a charter bus on a Saturday and spend 10 hours in Topaz. I'm really, really concerned that I haven't been heard up to this I've been to 3 different meetings, and at those meetings I had comments such as, you can't measure student impact. That highly concerns me as a student with a master's degree and a student who's about to become a doctorate, and I'm just really concerned about that. I also am concerned that I had a comment at an earlier meeting that said this is not a political issue, when before that 30% 30-plus minutes were spent on budgeting and money when it should be about the students. Thank you.

My name is Murray Lowe. I have 4 children who are all students in the Orem— here in Orem in the Alpine School District. I believe that both sides here share more in common than what you might be led to believe. I think for what's primary for all of us is the quality of education for our children, for as many children as possible. And I strongly believe that, and I'm sure everyone in this room strongly believes that quality education is crucial. That said, I really don't know what to think because I haven't seen the report, but I do have a bias and I want to share that bias today. Before I do share that, I do want to echo what our honorable Councilmember McDonald suggested— he did an editorial in the Daily Herald and suggested that we take this to a vote, and I think that makes sense. In 2006, Council had a decision whether to take it to a vote. It was voted 4-3 against, and that's fine. I believe we have enough concerned citizens on Orem to make that happen. My bias is that bigger is not better. Bigger is bureaucratic. If bigger was better, then we wouldn't have a Utah government. We would all be governed out of Washington. If bigger was better, then we wouldn't have a Utah county government or an Orem government. We would be governed out of Salt Lake City and out of the state. If bigger— so again, my best friend growing up is the chancellor of the Nevada school system, and they have all their universities and all their school districts together. And 6 years ago, their state legislature passed a law requiring the Clark County School Division to give more authority to people in that division. Bigger is not better. Bigger is about control. And if we want to give control, and if we want to get more responsive then we need to make sure that— I believe, and again depending on the study, I believe we need a new district. Thank you.

Thank you for your time this evening.

I love Orem and Orem High School. My name is Brian Allen, and I teach at Orem High School for 16 years, as my wife mentioned. I love it so much, and it would be a Devastation to me to have to move. To address a couple of earlier points, I do see the need for reform in some areas of education, but there's nothing that suggests that splitting the district will in some way magically change parental involvement rates, change the curriculum that will be taught, or how it is taught. We take the same tests. We have the same Utah Core curriculum. Additionally, I'm concerned about this plan. plan because Orem receives at our high school 5 additional full-time employees beyond what would normally be funded based on our population. Other schools like Mountain View and Canyon View Junior High School have that same situation. With only 25% of school funding coming from local taxes, I'm concerned that we'll be able to maintain dance, French, and other programs at our school like orchestra and marching band. Even more than that, though, I also work with special needs students in 2 of my classes, and high-risk students as well. Alpine staffs and maintains the Dan Peterson School and A-TECH, a transitional school for students with severe and profound disabilities. In addition to that, for our at-risk students, we have Polaris High School, Summit High School, and East Shore High School, as well as summer programs. If the district cannot provide these, the new Orem district, we will have done these students a deep and grave disservice. We will harm members of our community. And so I urge you as a council not to vote to put this on the ballot until you are absolutely certain that the at-risk students and the high-need students and special needs students all receive the help that they currently need.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Aaron Davidson. I'm a member of the Alpine School— well, my kids went to the Alpine School District. So I, I walked in a little late today after it started, and I had about a dozen people say, Aaron, you got to talk. 'Cause I was just planning on coming, just listening to what you had to say. But, you know, as listening to the different sides with these pie-in-the-sky numbers and everything that's catastrophe that's gonna happen before the report's even out, kind of sounds a little bit redundant to me. I mean, it's like, you know, maybe we should have postponed this until afterwards so we could actually talk about real things that's in the findings. But I just think that, you know, there's the financials. I mean, everyone's going to look at the financials, but there's other things. There's morality and there's ethics, and you need to look at what the Alpine School District board members have done, what they've said, and what they've actually done. Look at what they say and their actions. Go to their website and read what they say about how they're concerned about the kids, but see how they treated the kids last year. When you get so big, the kids become numbers and not individuals. And so I respect the, the integrity of the City of Orem wanting to do a feasibility study to look at the numbers. But the numbers aren't the most important. The kids are the most important, and they need to be looked at and what the— what Orem School District can offer to the kids, because the Alpine School District is just— they've got a billion-dollar budget this last— this coming year. And that's just too big.

Every—

the parents and the kids have just become numbers to them, and they're just doing things to operate according to the district policies, which they don't even know. And I've got proof that they don't know their own policies. So yeah, I look at the, the report that's come out and make the best decisions with the kids in mind. Thank you very much.

Say, sir, so there's supposed to be 7 on each side, so are you the last speaker on the left side? Okay.

Yeah, thank you. My name is Keith Wilson and lived in Orem for over 35 years. Point of disclosure, I'm married to Ada Wilson, who is a privilege and responsibility of representing Orem and Vineyard for the past 4 years on the Alpine School Board. She's attending the board meetings this evening. I'm also part of a group, call ourselves Orem and ASD Stronger Together. I'd like to make a couple points about school funding. May not be popular here. Anyway, some have said the discussion shouldn't be all about money, and of course it's not all about money. It's all about education, but education can't happen without the funding. So I say it begins the discussion of, of money. Regarding money, Stronger Together has demonstrated with verifiable historical facts that if Orem becomes its own school district and if our schools continue to be funded at current levels, there'll be a revenue shortfall of over $21 million requiring a property tax increase. At the council meeting I attended in April, Mayor Young assured everyone that raising taxes was not the intent. That you would not propose a new district if you believed it would require a tax increase. I think there's another even more important expectation. It is that any proposed school district would continue to fund schools at the current level, that we're not cutting school funding by tens of millions in order to dodge a tax question. So I ask on behalf of our residents, and especially on behalf of our children, we have your assurances that the proposals for new district will continue to fund schools at the current level. One more note on the budget shortfall. The $21 million figure is not totally accurate. Rather, I should say it's not complete. We shared that there are a number of factors that are not included. For example, the startup costs of a new district. Normally, district will pay higher interest rates, has been referred to already. What would that be?

The figures we're—

that we've used are a year old. What impact of time, in particular higher inflation, will have on them? These and other factors are not part of the budget. of the $21 million shortfall, but they are absolutely real. We expect and hope the feasibility study has taken these into account. We look forward to the presentation this evening.

Thank you.

I had some prepared remarks, but I think I'll speak from the heart tonight instead. My name is John Baric.

I'm an Orem resident.

I've studied these issues pretty intensely for the last 4 months. As you know, I've brought plenty of data here to talk to you about. I'm a CPA. I'm a tax professor, but not the tax professor that everyone's speculating about, but I do know that tax professor. I worked for the Congress doing revenue analysis and expenditure analysis regarding taxes, and I'm pretty good at governmental funding and expenditures. And I can tell you without question, Orem residents are being manipulated. Stronger Together is a Utah registered PIC, a political issue committee. They are organized and formed on May 9th to fight against the Orem study before the Orem study was ever a study. Why would a registered PIC whose treasurer just talked to you, whose spouse is a school board member, try to manipulate you? Well, they're trying to make you afraid of something. And tell you who's to blame. So they've been shooting the messenger—you, the city council, and mayor—the consultants who are hired were more than qualified. It is—it is important to know who you know truth from fact from fiction. I can tear apart. I've got an F written on the paper that was just delivered about revenue analysis and expenditure.

It uses two-year-old data.

Alpine School District.

Has run 30-something percent and is over a billion dollars since that revenue estimate was made or expenditure analysis. They out they they just revised their budget without disclosing it with 819 changes, including $17 million in decreased state funding and $15 million of increased local funding. Your taxes Alpine School District is using our taxes, our tax dollars to fight against us and to fight against you. I think it's wrong and it's against policy 2024. as well as Utah neutrality, political neutrality laws. Uh, the BYU study that's not really independent used data from Stronger Together without citation. That's academically dishonest, and I have proof that will be coming out shortly.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you for all of those comments.

We'll move forward.

With the— some of the work that we have to get done tonight. It's a fairly short agenda, so you'll be happy about that. Before we can go into the— to hear the feasibility study, we'll start with the consent items.

Item 7.1, move for their approval, Mr. Mayor.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Consent items pass. And we'll move to our scheduled items. We've got some different commissions. First, we'd like to— we've got an appointment to the Planning Commission. And This is for Jim Hawks.

So we're very pleased that Jim Hawks is willing to accept an appointment to the Planning Commission. And Mayor, is Mr.

Hawks able to speak for a minute?

Is that okay?

Sure.

So Jim, are you here? Will you stand? Would you mind coming to introduce yourself to the City Council? Many of us know you and appreciate your service in the community and your willingness to serve on the Planning Commission.

Oh, say, Jim, hang on one second. We're gonna vote.

Okay, so I'd make a motion that we appoint Jim Hawks to the Planning Commission.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Now speak to us, Jim.

I don't have much to say. I just feel loved.

You're talking about all these years that you've lived in the community.

I outdo all of you, I think. Just look at me, you can tell that's the case. I've lived with my family. We've had 7 children, raised them, they've moved on. We have many, many grandchildren. We've lived in Orem for 50 years. I've worked in Salt Lake principally with We've chosen to remain here because of our wonderful positive experience in Orem. So being retired, my wife insists that I get out and do something productive. So this opportunity has come my way, so I'm grateful for the chance to continue to keep Orem a wonderful place to live. And now I'm on this committee, feel free to reach out to me if you feel the need to do so. But don't be too emotional with me. I'm kind of a tender fellow. So it's great to serve with you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We've got 2 other committees.

I'll have—

Yeah, those are both my committees, Mayor. So the CVG Commission, we have 3 reappointments. And if you're here, we'll have you just stand. You won't— we won't make you talk, but if you're here, please stand. Um, Kenneth Ransom. Uh, he's in the— oh, there he is in the back. Okay, thanks, Kenneth, for coming. He's in the very back, um, room. Uh, Tanya Harmon. Um, Giovanna Alyssa. Okay, that is the appointment to our CDBG Commission. And I'd like to make a motion that we appoint Kenneth Ransom, Tanya Harmon, and Giovanna Alyssa to our CDBG Commission.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Okay, I, um, let's also do this. I'll do this first. I'd like to make a motion that we appoint the following individuals to the Public Works Commission, and if you're here when I say your name, will you please stand? Brent Tobler. Thank you. Joseph Gordon. Thank you. Robert Moore. And Gary Morley.

Thank you.

Second. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The appointments are all approved. We really appreciate your service on these committees. We're going to go to item 8.4. We've got a public hearing on an ordinance. We'll have Jason Bench come up and discuss this with us.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. Michael and Lisa Kelly are here. If they— if you'd like them to come up, they're welcome to. Come up as well.

He might be in the back room, so it might take a minute.

Yes, go ahead and come on up there in the back room.

Technical problems. Hey, Ryan, what is the code on this?

Now we have to change it.

It's confidential.

Too many.

Good thing this minor Presentation would be that complicated.

Sorry about that.

Tonight, the Kellys are here before you to request a rezone to their property. They have a property that's north of their existing home. They own— see my mark? Turn this on. They live in this, this one here, and they're proposing— they own this parcel to the north, requesting that They rezone into 2 lots, and I'll let them explain that, but they want to build it— have their children have the availability to build them homes on those lots. So tonight they're requesting the rezone from an R-8 to an R-6 for the ability to be able to split it into 2 lots. It's not quite large enough under the current zoning of R-8 to be able to split into 2 lots, so they're requesting they go to the R-6 zone. You can see there are some zones around that. This is an R-6.5, R-7.5. They're located at location there. So they're proposing to create 2 lots. One is a deep lot, so you can see the street in this location. Here they have one lot in the front, and then they'll have an access on the north side to access The deep lot in the back. The largest. So they're about 7,500 square feet, square foot lots. In order to qualify for the spur lot to be 75/55, then you need this R-6.5— or R-6, excuse me—

to make that happen.

A deep lot is required to be 125% of the underlying zone. So R-6 lot is 7,500 square feet minimum. And so The 75/55 is the minimum they'd be able to do that deep lot. So the Planning Commission did review that and are recommending that the City Council amend the zone from the R-8 to the R-6. Be glad to address any questions that you may have.

Do we have any questions?

I do, but I don't know if my mic shows.

Okay, Tom.

Hey, Jason and applicants, forgive me, what's your name again?

I'm sorry.

Kelly's, Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, thank you. Did we have a neighborhood meeting as we would normally have here, and how did the neighbors speak regarding it?

Thumbs up.

And part of it because you're a nice neighbor. The Kellys are nice neighbors, I'm sure. Normally we would kind of not rezone something in a neighborhood, but this seems like a good time to do it when lots are hard to come by. We were trying to make housing more affordable. This seems to be a reasonable case. And you know, the one flag lot— I think that's what we call them when they're deep like that, Jason— this seems to me to fit with the ability to have 2 kids, grandkids— who cares about your kids? Your grandkids will be living near you. And I think that's a wonderful idea if the neighbors were okay with it. Jason, can you reaffirm what they—

That's correct.

Thank you.

Um, so the home to the north, I noticed on the map it also is labeled as Kelly. Do you own that, that home as well? His sister.

Okay.

And my question was, does the immediate neighbor to the north, are they also in favor of this?

I'm assuming that's an affirmative.

Yeah.

They're very happy.

Just a comment and full disclosure. When we first moved back to Utah, I was neighbors with the Kelly family, and I'm a little bit older than you. I'm the age of your sister. That's where I first learned about an electric fence, was right by your house. I learned about it twice. I hit it and then I lifted up again, didn't understand why that kept hurting me. But that was the cows that were right by your house. But so very happy to get to be part of this vote tonight because your family's a fantastic family.

Thank you.

Fantastic family and a great— and has been generations of great people in Orem.

So Jason, I have a question on safety with the fire. So I'm assuming that meets the code to be able to— since it's a flag lot, that that's safe to be able to put the fire out if something happens?

It does.

It's within 150 feet is what their requirement is before they require a turnaround. So this is less than that.

Okay, thank you.

And just for clarification, I'm wondering if you could kind of talk about the shared driveway and how that works.

So Orem City Code does require that Lot 2 have perpetual access, and the way the Kellys wanted to do it— there's 2 different ways you can do it. The back lot can own the panhandle or the driveway, or they can share it across the property on the front. In this instance, Lot 1 will own the entire property, but there will be a 20-foot easement across there that would be in perpetuity for Lot 2, so they would not be able to close it in the future. It would be an access, and we do require that to be paved, so that 20-foot asphalt strip that will be required along that north line for the purpose of access for Lot 2.

And that's 20 feet wide.

Is that what you're saying?

20 feet wide?

That's correct.

And is that what it shows on the map here?

How wide?

Yes.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

Any other questions? So we need to open this up for a public hearing to see if there's any comments or, or concerns from any of your neighbors or anybody else. Okay, we'll close the public hearing. Okay, yeah, she's just on the phone.

I don't think she wants to talk.

Okay.

Okay, can we have a vote on this?

First you need a motion. I'd be happy to make the motion.

Terry, let me defer to you.

You've been long friends.

Sorry, Mary, did we close the public hearing?

If we did, I didn't hear it, but okay, just want to make sure. Okay, public hearing's closed.

So I'd like to make the motion that we amend Section 22-5-3A and the zoning map of the City of Orem by rezoning the property located at approximately 659 South 350 West from an R-8 zone to the R-6 zone.

Second that. Oh, go ahead.

Go ahead. Second.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Motion passes. Thank you. Next item, 8.5 on the agenda, we've got a renewal contract. for the Office of Legislative Counsel to the mayor and city council. Do we have any questions on that item?

Okay.

I mean, to clarify, I think the contract is a 6-month extension, correct?

Right. It was originally a 6-month contract and it's a 6-month extension. We have no questions. Would somebody like to make a motion?

I'll make the motion here. I motion that we renew the contract for the Office of Legislative Counsel to the mayor and city council.

I'll second that.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Nay.

Okay, the motion passes 5 to 2. Thank you. All right, now the part that you've all been waiting for. I'd like to invite Dr. Paul McCarty and Mr. Michael Wankier to come up and present the findings of the 2022 Warren School District Comprehensive Feasibility Study. We're excited to see the study for the first time tonight. And those studies are about to be distributed. At the same time, this comprehensive feasibility study will be uploaded on the Orem Transparency Portal. So this will be available to anyone who wants to, to go through it. It's located under the tab School District Study on the Transparency Portal. It's not on yet, but it will be uploaded as we're speaking.

Thank you.

Before I introduce Dr. Paul McCarty and Mr. Michael Wankier, I want to— I wanted to let you know that each city council member was invited to meet with our consultants and ask any questions of them. This was very early in the process, and when the study was just starting, we rotated the council members. So that there was not a quorum present at any one time. These were great meetings, and we were able to ask any questions and to meet and learn about the background and experience of DEC. We're grateful for, for DEC accommodating our request to meet. So we finally have this study that we've heard about for months.

What is this? This is 281 pages.

This is a very serious study. Councilmember Peterson, I'd, I'd like you to read this tonight and report back to us at 9 AM tomorrow.

I am a speed reader, so it will be done.

So you can get to know our consultants a little bit. Set this down. So, Dr. McCarty and Mr. Winkler, welcome to the Orem City Council. We really thank you for taking the time to compile and present this 2022 Orem School District Comprehensive Feasibility Study. Dr. McCarty, from my notes, just so that the audience could get to know you a little bit, I recall that you received the John and Karen Huntsman Award. I don't know what that is. Can you please explain that to us?

Excuse me.

It was formed in 1993 by John and Karen Huntsman. John himself, a great humanitarian, He grew up in a household where his father was a teacher, and he has great passion and admiration for all teachers and all administrators and all volunteers in our schools. And he set up this special recognition, recognizing the most outstanding individual in particular categories in the state.

an honor.

Thank you.

That is, that is quite an honor. I also noticed, and I'm just trying to get a little bit of your background here, but I also noticed that you were recognized by a joint legislative resolution of the Utah House of Representatives and the Utah State Senate. Can you share a little bit about what that was about?

That was 2, 2 recognitions for outstanding public school administrator. For work that I had done in, in the area of education and improving schools and test scores and achievement.

And those were 2 separate—

They were 2 separate— they were 2 separate projects. I was quite startled, you might say, that the— it was a joint House recognition signed by the governor and that they would do it twice.

So again, Is that something that happens every year, or is that—

No, sir, it does not. Resolutions are not given out that frequently, or it's something that, well, it doesn't happen very often.

Okay, thank you.

There's also an award. I'm just going through some of your resume here, but there's also an award relating to the Smithsonian Institution. When I think of the Smithsonian, I think of the Wright brothers. Were you back there then?

Well, you know, with my hair, and especially the aging that has happened in the last few months, yes, I think I could— I almost could say that. But that was dealing with national recognition as instructional technology leader in the United States. And it was an honor. In fact, it's interesting you should say the Wright brothers. What I received from Smithsonian was a small model of the Wright Flyer 1, which was the first airplane by the Wright brothers. And it's special. It's very special.

Thank you.

That's awesome. You obviously have— I mean, you've been involved in education for 40 years, and it's obvious by your resume that you have a passion for students and teachers. Can you share with the group just a little bit of your, your history?

Well, 44 years in public education. I have served as a teacher, as a principal, and a senior school district administrator. Also, I have served for 35 years as a professor at BYU in the departments of education, family life, and psychology. And then also I served as vice president of the Utah Transit Authority Board, where I was Director of TRACS, and my job was in the area of engineering feasibility studies and also final environmental impact studies. And if there's anybody in the audience that's ever seen a final environmental impact study, it's perhaps one of the most comprehensive studies you could possibly get into.

Okay, thank you. You've got—

obviously got a very impressive background. Like to move on to Michael Winkler. You're a CPA with a background as an auditor. Our city audit ordinance requires the city to be audited every year. We select a new auditor every 7 years. I recently sat on that committee to select our new auditor, so I'm very familiar with this. I just want to mention that I'm in the investment business and I deal with studies and audits all the time. And from an investment standpoint, I need to know that any company I invest in is properly audited. Otherwise, I wouldn't know for sure what I was even investing in. In addition, my company runs 2 private equity funds. Both of those are independently audited each year. This assures our investors that we're doing exactly what we say we're doing. That's why we use independent auditors outside of our organization. Can you just explain to the group the role of an auditor?

First of all, I'll say the worst thing you can do for an accountant or an auditor is put a microphone in front of their face. So I will do my best to speak slowly and clearly.

Can you pull that just a little closer?

Yeah, sorry, I'll get closer. Again, don't put a microphone in front of an accountant's face. I began a career with Arthur Andersen as an auditor straight out of college. I transitioned to KPMG when the Arthur Andersen accounting firm went away, and I worked in auditing for about 7 and a half years, reaching the level of senior manager on the audit side. What I would say to your comment and your question is I came into this without any background really on the issue at all. I was brought in to specifically look at numbers. One of the great things about being an accountant is numbers don't have emotions. And so I've tried to stay as impartial and independent as possible because the facts are what's important. And we've tried to put in the report just information that will help people make a decision. Because in the end, I don't have a vote. I don't live in Orem, and the goal here is to provide you information to help you make the determination as to whether it's worth putting on the ballot, and then to give citizens of Orem the opportunity to make their own decision.

Thank you. I, I noticed on your resume too that you were the Chief Financial Officer for the Larry Miller Group. Is that correct?

Yeah, I worked for the Larry Miller Group from July of 2012 until the end of 2021, and worked in various positions, ultimately reaching the position of the CFO for the management company of the group.

How large is the Larry Miller Group?

It's tough to tell because in the auto world, revenues are distorted because the price of a car is so much higher than the amount of profit that you get to keep. So, but it's a $6 billion organization from a revenue standpoint, was before I left and getting bigger every day. So it's a great organization and had a lot of opportunities to— in the private sector, we don't call it a feasibility study. It's generally called a decision analysis or something else. But the point is to gather all the information available and help make a decision. And so I worked on several projects there on acquisitions and divestitures and other projects to help make a decision for the shareholders, uh, in this case the Miller family. So, uh, here, that's the goal. The shareholders are the taxpayers, and the goal is to give them the information they need to make a decision.

Okay, but it is safe to say you were the chief financial officer?

I was.

Or was for a $6 billion company?

Yeah.

That's a lot of money moving around. Um, this study is obviously extensive. I mean, it's 281 pages. I would dare say that it's probably the most comprehensive feasibility study that's ever been done in the state of Utah. Can you, Michael, just give us some of the different sources that you used to come up with the findings that are in the study?

Yeah, we, we put a list of requests together and supplied that to Alpine School District to help us try and identify the data that was going to be necessary to do the analysis that we did. A lot of that information was provided through their website that they already had a lot of— excuse me— a lot of the information publicly available through links on their website. Some of the links had to be open to us to get to some of the reports after the initial request. We had several questions, we went back to them, and in addition to that, we looked at other school districts and their publicly available data. We went to the state of Utah and its transparent— transparency portal to pull information to help us supplement the information that we got from Alpine. We looked at county treasurer records, tax commission records, different public sources of data to supplement what we got from the Alpine School District.

Okay, so it sounds like extremely comprehensive coming from Multiple sources. We're, we're very excited to have both of you here tonight. Hopefully that lets the audience understand a little bit what you're about and what your qualifications are. We're going to move into the study now, and as far as the City Council, what we'd like to do is we'd like to have you go through the presentation. And then be open to the different members of City Council as they have questions. We'll just raise their hand and, and we'll answer those questions. And we'll do our best, because this is a 281-page study, to stay focused on the key points and the key areas and try not to go sideways. But we do want our council to, as representatives of the citizens of Warren, to ask as many questions as they, they need to gather the right information.

So we'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, Mr.

Okay.

What you have there on your screen, first of all, is our table of contents.

Paul, I'm sorry, can you pull that microphone as close as you can to you just so everyone can hear?

Okay.

There we go.

Okay.

The first slide there is the table of contents. This probably, with the direction from you and the the city council, we were directed not only as a feasibility study to see if the creation of a new school district in Orem would be feasible and sustainable, but also what would be the impact on students and teachers. And so this is what we focused on. In the table of contents there, you could see that, first of all, you have the financial evaluation. those of you that have access now to the study digitally, it starts on page 39 through page 114. And then after that, we have the student test scores, student achievement, Title I. That starts on page 114. And then also we address also the cultural and ethnic diversity of Orem. On chapter 3, we deal with FEMA. Earthquake safety. There was 2 important studies that we looked at, the 2016 study and— excuse me, that was supposed to be the 2006 study and also the 2022. Those studies start on page 160. And then on Chapter 4, as we wanted to know what the impact would be on the teachers, there was many discussions to tonight. We really wanted to know. Our job is to, is to be— it's a study of analytics. And so we're looking at the facts and looking at any type of information that we have, but we have to— we want the data. And we, and we did our very best to make sure that the data was accurate. And so we looked at teacher and administrator salaries, Particularly here in, in the Orem School District, and what was the variation. And then also we looked at, as we started the study, as Michael had just mentioned, a lot of the things there was, we, we got the fiscal year '23 budget released by Alpine. So we need to focus on that again. We also found out about the, the recent teacher raises, so we need to factor that into the study and how that will affect the students and also the continuity of those, of those raises and salaries into the new school district. Looking at the bond and what was, what was the effect there. Then Chapter 5 deals with class size and student-to-teacher ratio. One thing we're concerned about is that going to be increasing teacher salaries. not necessarily at the cost of class size. That— and we, we did an enormous amount of research on that, and, and that we can present to you tonight. Obviously, a lot of this information is like getting a drink out of a fire hose, and that's why you have the study in front of you. And again, we'll be around for a long time to answer any questions, not necessarily tonight but in the days to come. And then also, we have— we looked at at Chapter 6, we look at student accessibility to what we call specialty classes, which is extremely— seems to be very important in the schools that we have here in the Alpine School District. And then also Chapter 7, one of the areas in which in the initial proposal that came out from the city was to focus on school size, and what is the optimal enrollment in a school, and are big schools better, are small schools better. We did an enormous amount of research review on that which we can go over. Also, there was— what we did is that we, we took all of the comments that were put on the portal and all the comments that we received. We received comments from teachers and parents and students and taxpayers. Not all of them were from the portal. A lot of them were from texts, a lot of them were phone calls, a lot of through email. And as we looked at that, we consolidated to make sure that, you know, we were looking at all of the areas of concern of those people there, those professionals and parents in the Orem area. And so we looked at also the Pioneer study. There was a 2004 Pioneer study. In fact, we owe this to you, Mayor, for alerting that, in which we got from the Utah County Commissioners. And then also the history of the Canyons-Jordan split. There was a lot of discussion about that, and we wanted to get the facts. So there is a whole chapter dedicated to what exactly what happened, what was the impact, what was, um, what really happened dealing with, uh, student achievement. And, uh, also in that study, obviously the split which officially started on July, uh, July 1st, um, 2008, uh, when, uh, Canyons became the LEA or legal education agency for the school district. We wanted to know what were all the implications and difficulties, so we interviewed quite a few people regarding that. It's interesting, we received a lot of inquiries regarding the Vineland-Linden area and the prospect of students attending new school district, and so we looked at that intensively. What do the laws say?

What can we—

what can be possibly done with that. We looked at the high schools in the district because we received, especially from a lot of high school students, about the Utah High School Athletic Association, UHSAA, activities. And I think we can tell you right now there will be absolutely no change. We met with senior leadership who assured us there was absolutely no change once the district continues. And then also we looked at the proposed new district organizational chart. There were some questions, you know, especially from teachers of what, what, what would the new school district look like in the district office. And we spent a lot of time talking to administrators up and down the Wasatch Front from Ogden City clear down to Nebo. And we, we put a proposed suggested organizational chart in there for you. And then also there's a chapter on the new district boundaries. Obviously it's very simple. The new district boundaries would follow the municipality's boundaries. And then also there is a primer in there. Education law and education tax is extremely complicated. And so we put together a little primer in there, how funding works in Utah public education. The next slide that we have, I'll turn it over to, uh, to Michael.

We thought we'd organize the slides maybe not, uh, to match the order of the report, but to jump to what we think right from the beginning and some— what are the critical issues to consider. We believe it is feasible to have a new school district for the city of Orem. And we'll talk a little bit about why we think that is true based on the next few slides. This first slide is a comparison of taxable values for various school districts. Those that we selected in the study are primarily neighbors to Alpine School District or to other city school districts in the state of Utah. So that we could have some comparative numbers. All the information for all the school districts wasn't available for 2021 and 2022, but we did have enough information from Alpine to, to compare that. But the table on the left looks at the fiscal year 2020, and you can see that the taxable value for Alpine as presently constituted was about $34.2 billion. Based on a student population of 80,953, that is a value per student of about $422,000, $423,000. If you split the, the Alpine School District into 2, a new district and the remaining district, you can see how that $34.2 billion is split. $6.7 billion of that value is related to Orem and the residents of Orem. 14,770 of this student population is going to those schools that are inside the boundaries of Orem City. And you can see that the value per student is a little bit higher because of the way the property value breaks out. The, the overall is a little bit higher than it is in the rest of the district. There's little pockets in the rest of the district that have high values or higher values like Orem, but there's pockets of the district that have a little bit lower values as well. Um, but as we, we look at 2021 and 2022, you can see first of all, uh, how much the value grew going from '21 to '22. Overall value for the Alpine School District was pretty flat going from '20 to '21, but we see a significant increase, uh, raising to $47.1 billion in 2022. The value of property for Orem increased significantly as well from that $6.7 that we started at in 2020 to $9.2 billion in 2022. And along with that increase in value, we saw a significant increase in the value per student. And so this is important because that value is what drives Ultimately, the taxes that are paid by the residents in whatever the district looks like at the end of this.

Go ahead, Abby.

So usually with property tax, the way it works, even if your house goes up in value, the city gets the same amount, only the new growth, because they change the actual rate. So even though our value may have gone up, we're still going to get the same that we've always got, unless we do truth in taxation and/or the different components raised. the different parts through their own truth in taxation. So even though we may have a higher value, it doesn't mean their property taxes are going to be that much more unless there's been growth. So did you factor that part in, or—

Yeah, that's a, that's a good point. When we built our model, we based the model using the 2 different pieces, pieces of the, the value. One is the historical value, and, and we based the property tax or the property tax calculation breaking out the new growth because they're taxed differently. So you're correct, this doesn't necessarily mean that it changes a whole lot, but we did in the model separate new growth from historical value growth.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

When, when we went through and built our model, we, we went through a few different scenarios in In this slide, we're looking at 3 of those scenarios. I'm going to skip to the next slide actually and speak to this. We created a baseline in our model that represented the district as it sits today. We forecasted revenues and expenditures for the district as constituted today to build a baseline so that we could understand what would be the impact in different scenarios. One of the things that's been discussed is a new bond by the Alpine School District. And so we wanted to understand what would the impact of that be going forward. So in our study, the baseline represents no split and no bond. So continuing as the district is today. Based on that, you can see Orem taxpayers would pay $62.8 million in taxes overall. We did a calculation based on an average household worth $450,000, and, and that would represent roughly $1,591 per household based on that $450,000 value. For the remaining district, the total property taxes collected would be $258 million, but again, It's going to be that same average because everything's still together. So $1,591. We thought this was the best way to approach the different scenarios because it, it gives you something to compare to based on what you're experiencing today.

So on that baseline, that's keeping everything together?

That's keeping everything together. That's no change from how it is today.

And just breaking out the numbers.

And just forecasting what is the average per year are going to look like for the next 10 years.

Okay, that's the baseline. Thank you.

Mayor, if I may. So, excuse me, Michael, right?

Yeah.

If I read this right, then in a new district I'd go from $1,591 to $1,866. Is that an increase per year, or are those the 4 different scenarios?

I guess I don't— That's the 4 different scenarios. So I'll talk through each of the scenarios and the assumptions that we put into each one of those.

But every— well, 2 of them are the same, right?

Yeah, go ahead. I'll explain that. The assumptions. Okay, in Scenario 1, the assumption— sorry, I'm gonna skip ahead for just a second. Scenario 1 was that there's not a split and there's a new bond issued. So if I go back to that slide, the total amount of property taxes is going to go up to satisfy the bond Correct. The— what that means to an Orem resident is the total tax bill goes up to $70.9 million for the whole new district, and the same increase happens for a pro rata increase happens for the remaining district. Their property tax, total property tax collected would be $290.9 million. You have the same per household because this is assuming no split. And so it's probably worth mentioning, um, Councilmember, uh, Laura mentioned that the process of calculating the property tax is a little bit calculated. I probably pronounced your name wrong.

I apologize.

Sorry, I apologize. Um, the way the process works is you determine your budget for your general fund. You determine your budget for your— well, for your general fund. Then you deduct state revenues, federal revenues, other local revenues, and whatever's left over is what property tax has to cover. And so property taxes go up or down based on those other factors. So the size of the budget impacts what's going to come back to taxpayers in property tax. The amount of allocation from the state, from the federal, which are based on the number of students, that's going to impact that calculation. And so property tax is what falls out the end. That's why we, we focus on property tax, because what the state decides to grant on a per-student basis and what the federal government decides to grant on a per-student basis, you don't have really any control over that. You take those revenues and, and it helps with the revenue for the school, but it ultimately is used in the calculation to determine the amount of property tax that you're going to pay. So that's the approach that we took in our modeling, is to develop a budget, estimate what we thought those state and federal revenues would be, and then the property tax was the, the number that fell out of the bottom. We did the same thing for the capital fund and for the debt fund, the debt service fund. They work the same way. There's a portion of For the capital fund, there's a portion of the funding that comes from the state, but most of that comes from property taxes. And so we determined based on what Alpine had, had budgeted for capital expenditures, how much of that would split between the 2 districts and how much revenue would come from the state. And then we calculated what the property tax would be needed or required to meet that budgeted number. So that said, baseline and Scenario 1 assume there's no split in the district, and the only difference is if there's a— we used $595 million because that's the number that had been suggested earlier in the year by the Alpine District. Using that number, you would see an increase in property taxes of about $200 per household. Scenario 2 starts to look at it from the standpoint of if there's a split or not. So Scenario 2, Scenario 3, Scenario 4 are all different iterations of if there's a split. And so Scenario 2 assumes that there's a split and Alpine still does the bond. They still bond for $595 million, but Orem does not bond for $505,000.

Sorry, did I get that right?

Sorry, I apologize, I did not get that right. Scenario 2 is there's a split and there's no new bonds for anybody. Scenario 3 is there's a split, Alpine bonds but Orem doesn't bond. Scenario 4 is there's a split and both school districts issue their own bonds. So I think each of those iterations are possibilities. Which one is most likely, I can't say, but we thought it was important to look at the calculation for each of those so you could have the information to, to make a judgment by.

So if I may come back to that.

Yep.

In 2 of the 3, ORM taxes go up.

Yes.

Higher than if we were one district.

Yes. So I have not heard the effects of the Alpine School District bond. Sometimes they roll things off and they try to have a net zero. Had— did you, did you ask them, would it go up? I haven't heard.

So we modeled based on the amortization of the existing bonds and just layering new bonds on top of it.

And you've— but you factored the ones that are rolling off?

We factored the Continued repayment of those bonds with new bonds on top of it, yes.

Okay, thank you.

So would you kind of— I feel like that needs to be clarified, the net zero statement that is continually made. Would you kind of explain what that means? That's in reference to the mill rate?

Yeah, so again, it comes back to how the calculation works. Without any bond, the amount of debt service gradually decreases each year. And because of that, your tax rate should go down each year, particularly because your— as your value increases and the amount that has to be paid stays the same, the rate is going to change, but the total dollars that have to be paid reduce a little bit each year as you amortize the bonds. And so the goal in a net-zero situation would be, as the property taxes increase, you can issue a new bond and have the same rate But the total dollars that you pay still has to increase because you have to cover the old bonds plus the new bonds. So I think it's, it's a concept that it all depends on whether you look at the rate or you look at the dollars. I think from my standpoint, the dollars is the right way to look at it because that's what actually comes out of your wallet.

And would you— could we classify that, what you're talking about, as the tax burden?

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Say, Michael, can you— you just to make sure everybody's on the same page, including me, can you go through and just state the context of the baseline scenario 1, 2, 3, and 4? What makes that up?

Sorry for creating confusion, and it is difficult. Baseline assumes that there is no split and no new bonds. Scenario 1 assumes that there is no split and there's a new bond.

Issued.

One is no split, no split, but a $595 million bond.

Scenario 2 assumes there is a split, but there's no new bond. Scenario 3 is there's a split and Alpine issues a bond but Orem doesn't. And Scenario 4 is there's a split and Alpine issues a bond and Orem issues a bond.

Okay, go back to 3 as far as the bottom.

It's—

number 3 is a split.

And Alpine issues the same $595 million bond.

And Orem doesn't?

And Orem doesn't. Zero bond on the Orem side. And under Scenario 4, Alpine— there's a split. Alpine issues a $595 million bond and Orem issues a $125 million bond. And the reason that we estimated $125 million is it's close to the share that Orem would have In the $595 million bond, and we rounded it to $125 million because there's at least that much work that we think needs to be done to bring schools up to code or, or renovate schools that need to be addressed in Orem.

And that's assuming that of the $595 million bond that Alpine does, that Orem gets a percentage share equal to what they put in. Is that what you're saying?

Percentage share equal to property tax values.

Property tax values.

So, um, the estimates that we were using, Orem's property tax value is about 19.4% of the total value. And so that's the number that we multiplied by to get to the 116 that would be the share for Orem.

Perfect question. Has Orem ever gotten 19% of any of the past bonds?

I don't think so. I think the dollars get allocated by the district once they get the money, and based on the numbers we've seen, 19% of the proceeds have not been allocated to Orem.

So we've never gotten our portion back of a bond, any bond that the district's done.

Council Peterson, maybe I could answer that. Historically, 13.3% of all the bond allocations that were, were, uh, were— came to Orem. So of all the bonds, of all the school bonds from 2002 to 2021, Orem has only received 13.3% historically.

We received 13, but we pay in 20-something?

19.4.

19?

20.

Wow.

Okay.

19 to 20%.

Is that, is that, is that 19? Is that the number, the percentage going back in time, or is that just the current That's the estimate based on the values that we forecasted for 2023. But as far as going back in time and to match up—

Going back in time, it varies, but it's somewhere between 19% and 22% historically.

Is this slide in our book by page number that I could find it?

No, but we're gonna— we'll publish the slides and give you a copy of it.

Thank you.

Yep.

Okay, so, so just to, just to Just to be clear, then what you're saying is, is right now if there was a bond and putting historical numbers into that, that would be— we would pay 19%, 19-point-something, and we would get back 13%. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, that's if the proceeds were used the way they've been used in the past, 13% of it would come to Orem schools. We can't predict that. I don't—

it's—

that's going to be up to the school board, and that's why I hesitate to talk in, in that context. But we don't have control over that. We just know that's what's happened historically, but it could change in the future based on decisions from the school board.

And just taking that one step further, so we're saying right now 19%, but if we went back— this, this is over 20 years, right? So if we went over the last 20 years, is that ratio— what was the starting point for that ratio? And what happened? And then it winds up at 19%. In other words, was it 19% for the whole 20 years?

I can't remember exactly, but it's been between 19% and 20% for that period of time.

For the, for the 20 years?

Yeah. Okay.

This slide talks a little bit about The same information in percentages. So if there is a split and there's no new bonds issued, Orem taxpayers would see an increase in the dollars that they pay. It may not necessarily result in an increase in the rate that they pay, but based on our forecasts, we think that there would be a dollar increase in the amount of taxes that were paid. Which of these scenarios is most likely? I don't know. That's for you to consider and try and determine what you think is most likely. We just wanted to give you the information so that you could compare among the different scenarios what could potentially happen. This next slide talks a little bit about the information that Paul just mentioned and what we've been discussing: the allocation of the debt obligation and the allocation of. the allocation of the proceeds and the reinvestment of the bonds. This slide talks—

Sorry, back up. The $121 million just caught my attention. Would you— $120 million. Would you explain that?

So the top bullet there is— what it represents is the difference between what Orem taxpayers pay in taxes versus what has been reinvested in Orem schools.

So over 19 years, Orem's paid in $120 million in property taxes to subsidize buildings outside of Orem, which is $6.3 million annually.

Correct.

So in 2002, I don't remember, I don't know what the cost of schools were then, but you could probably build an elementary school for $6 million. I have no idea. But, and so $120 million We've paid in the last 19 years left Orem that we didn't see back. Okay. Wow.

So, so how does that work? I mean, we pay those taxes and where do they go?

It goes into the capital fund of, of, well, it either goes into the capital fund or it goes into the debt service fund of the district, and then the district pays the bills out of the district, out of each of those funds based on the decisions that are made for the budget for that year. So if they decide to build schools, that money goes to pay for those schools that are built in that year, wherever those schools may be within the district.

So, so even though it's tax revenue coming out of Orem, it wouldn't necessarily benefit Orem residents.

That's right.

Do you know how many schools are in the school, or how many cities are in the school district? It's like 10 or 12?

Yeah, I'll— I'd have to go back and look. I don't, I don't remember exactly. It's Close to 10.

That's what I'm guessing is around 10. So essentially that $120 million went to other communities to build their schools.

Okay.

Debbie, was there a time before that when we were the benefit of money coming to Orem?

I mean, I don't know. We only looked back over that period of time. There could be in the past where Orem residents have benefited from other cities subsidizing or paying into.

Because it seems like there's cycles in different cities with populations younger, older, and then I don't know what is fair allocation, but I know that sometimes, you know, this area of the county is growing and this area is not, and this was paid when they were growing, and I'm just trying, I'm just trying to find out.

Sure, no, that's a very good question and a valid point, and I don't know. quite frankly, what happened before 2002.

As far as I understand, nobody knows. I mean, I'm sure we can go back and figure it out.

Sure, we can go back and calculate it if needed.

But I'm just— from my perspective, I'm looking at it and saying, well, Eagle Mountain didn't exist back then, and Lehi was half the size. And so if Orem was the biggest city in the district, going back for as long as you want go back, it wouldn't be— it wouldn't flip until those other cities became bigger than Orem. I mean, we would be— it seems like we would be subsidizing as long as they grow, as we're the biggest player.

That's, that's right, but I don't know the numbers on it.

Mayor Young and Councilmember Lorette, if I might be able to address that. In your study, if you go to approximately page 219, you're dealing— and also you look at the timeline. timeline on page, I believe it's 35. In the, in that timeline, we tried to put down all of the discussions of the split. And going back to the 2004 study, at that time, the Orem was still subsidizing other, the other parts of the district. The 2004 study was was called a New Pioneer District Feasibility Study. It was authorized by the Utah County Commissioners, and it was for Lehi, Saratoga Springs, and Eagle Mountain to form their own school district. And it was found in that— it was found in that study that it would not be financially feasible for Lehi, Saratoga Springs, and Eagle Mountain because it would be a great increase in taxes to the taxpayer. However, They found— they came to the conclusion that if it was to split, then Orem, as well as the communities of Pleasant Grove and American Fork, would actually realize a tax decrease of between 10% and 17%. So you can see even at that time, Orem was still subsidizing other the west side of the school district and all its growth. In this particular case, they were subsidizing greatly Lehigh.

The next slide here is intended to present a little bit of a historical look. So going back to 2002, you can see the bar graph represents the, the property value for the residences within the Alpine School District. The numbers on the left side are in billions, and you can see the breakout between potential new district and the potential remaining district. The black line represents a growth rate, and that's the change in the value from one year to the next. And so there's a couple of things to point out here. I will— I Many of us remember what happened in 2007, 2008, 2009. Property tax— or sorry, property values increased dramatically.

But $80 billion to $10 billion?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

But a drop of 1/8?

That's what was recorded with the property— with the Tax Commission.

Yeah, I just—

that's just a shock.

Well, so sorry, the black line is the percentage on the right. So the black line represents the percentage change from year to year. The numbers on the left are the total dollars. So thank you. Sorry about that. You can see that property taxes slowly increased until we got to 2008. They decreased a little bit for a few years, and then they've been increasing steadily since then, with a significant increase going from '21 to '22. And so sorry, I misunderstood your question. The black line is the percentage on the right. And so you can see a really big increase from a percentage standpoint going into 2008, and then decreases for the next few years, and then steady increases since then. The shaded items to the right of the chart is our attempt to project what this would look like going into the future. We've used a steady growth rate. I don't know how to say or how to project what's going to happen after this most recent increase in property values. It's more likely than not that they're going to come down a little bit, or they're going to not grow at such a high rate. So we've forecasted using a 5% growth rate, which I feel is a reasonable number based on the average over the last few years. But there's the chance that we see a decrease for the next few years, and then it starts to increase again. If it follows that same pattern that we saw back in 2008. Again, I don't know how to predict what's going to happen in the future, and so we've just said for the purpose of this study we're going to use a flat 5%. The, the next chart here— sorry— is the, the total taxes paid. Again, I like looking at it from a dollar perspective. as opposed to a rate perspective, because I think it helps you see from a dollar perspective the total property taxes collected over time has steadily increased. I didn't put the growth rate over the top of it, but you can see that the, the total property taxes have increased over time. Our forecast again flattens out a lot of things, and so because of a disparity in And how we looked at forecasting state and federal revenues versus our forecast of the expenses, you can see a little bit of a predicted decrease in property taxes. I don't know whether that's going to be realized or not because it's really going to come down to what happens with state and federal funding. If state and federal funding continues to increase the way that it has and the budgets stay consistent with what we forecasted, you can see a little bit of a decrease in property taxes. For a few years. But again, if federal funding and state funding is decreased and the spending at the current level remains in place, that property tax is going to have to be increased to close that gap. So again, I like to tell everyone that forecasts are guaranteed to be wrong. It's just a matter of how wrong are they. What we've tried to do in the report is give you the assumptions that we've used. You can agree or disagree with those assumptions. But it will allow you to understand the thought process that we went through. Again, there was a comment made earlier that I think was really good to focus on. There's a lot of components to revenue beyond property taxes. Property taxes are somewhere between 22 and 25% any given year of the total revenue that comes in to the general fund. The most significant number you can see there, and, and I apologize, I needed to fix this slide. The green bar on the top is the total general fund revenue. It was supposed to be removed from the slide. I apologize, but you can see the total. It's $147 million is what we forecasted for total revenues. That comes from property tax on the bottom of $40 million. State revenue of $89 million and federal revenue of about $15 million. Interest and other local are so small, we didn't put them— we didn't put the number on the graph. They're included in the number, but it's just so small that we didn't put it on the graph. So in our forecast, the assumptions that we've used is that state and federal funding will continue to increase at 5 to 6% over time. That's consistent with what it has increased over the last few years. But again, if that changes, um, and state and federal funding either increases or decreases, it will have a net impact on the property tax number going forward. In addition to the general fund, you have the capital fund and the debt service fund. So for the 3 major funds, this slide represents the total amount of revenue that would be collected in those 3 funds. You can see that the general fund is the most significant at $147 million. That pays for the operation of the school district. It pays for, um, the, the day-to-day functioning that happens in the school. And again, this is for a potential new district. The numbers for Alpine as a whole would be much, much bigger. The approach that we took on making assumptions again were to grow the state and federal revenues based on what they have been historically, and then the property tax was the gap that filled in in each of those funds, what the difference was between the expenditures and the revenues. For the capital fund, we've forecasted $6 million, roughly $6 million a year of expenditures. I don't know what they need to be. That's going to be a decision that would be made by a new, new school board. $6 million isn't going to build one new school, but it can build a sinking fund over a couple of years to then go build a school. $6 million can take care of repairs or maintenance or other things that need to be done in the existing schools. For the debt service fund, we've only forecasted in this model Paying Orem's share of the existing debt. So the property taxes related to the debt service fund in this model are proceeds that were received in the past. They've been put into the capital fund or already spent, and they just need to be paid off over time as those bonds continue to amortize.

So those bonds that we would be required— the debt service Were they 20-year bonds? Is there a point when obviously they're going to fall off?

Yeah.

Do you know what, what that date is?

I'd have to go back and look. It's within the next 10 years, I think, or it's slightly after. So we're going out 10 years and the amount that would be paid is $5 million in that last year. I think there's 1 or 2 years after that, uh, that it holds on. I think the last bond was 2016 and, and our model goes to 2032, so The last debt payment on that most recent bond is what you're seeing in the debt service fund on that far right bar, and there's a couple more years of payments that would need to be made on that bond.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

Michael, could you just clarify? You mentioned just a couple minutes ago that there was something that would be building up every, every year.

Can you define where that might come from and how that Yeah, so, so what we've made an assumption, because we don't know what decisions will be made by a new school board. In the capital fund, though, that money that gets collected can only be used for capital projects. And those capital projects would be new buildings, repairs to buildings, anything that is a capital asset.

And that's collected from where?

It's being collected from taxpayers. There's a portion of it that comes from the state, but The bulk of it comes from property tax.

Yeah.

And so we've assumed $6 million every year, and that $6 million doesn't have to be spent every year. It can be accumulated in a sinking fund for a project in the future. But for modeling purposes, we just estimated $6 million because that would be similar to Orem's share of what's going into the capital fund now.

Okay. So that, so that would be money that could build up to build a school or be used however the district wants to use it.

Or repairs for existing schools, anything that's going to build or repair a capital asset, those funds can be used for. They can't be used for operation of the schools and the operating expenses of the district.

Okay.

I probably should have talked about expenses first because that's what drives everything. But this slide is here to demonstrate or present the forecasted expenditures for a potential new district. The blue bar on the bottom is by far the largest expense that represents salaries and benefits for the teachers and the administrators in each of the schools, as well as— sorry, it doesn't include district expenses. District expenses will be in the green bar, which we've labeled overhead. The cost to run the district, the staff at the district office, the operating expenses of the district office, those are in the green bar. But the cost to operate the school is everything under the green bar. So you can see supplies and— supplies and materials is the red bar. The black bar would be professional services that would be outsourced. There's a really thin light blue bar that represents other expenses.

So Michael, question, because I keep hearing that the teachers are only going to get paid for a year, then you're paying them nothing. So this is calculating that they're actually getting an increase each year?

Yeah, so what we forecasted, the assumptions that I've used in my forecast, we had actual data from Alpine for 2021 for each of the schools. We use that data to build a model. We don't have actual numbers for 2022 because that year just finished. We compared the information we had to their new budget that came out where they've updated their 2022 numbers. And I think we're pretty consistent with what they've done for 2022. But what we did is we took the '21 numbers that we had and used a few assumptions to try and build what those expenses would look like in the future. In the model that I built, we grew teacher salaries and benefits 8% from 2022 to 2023 because of a decision that was made by Alpine in their budget. That was a cost that is going to carry into the future because they've asserted that they're going to increase salaries and benefits 8%. So we built that into our model. The next year we grew it at 5%. I don't know what the right number is. That's going to be a decision that would maybe be made in the future. But for every year after 2024, we've used 3.2%. And the reason I use 3.2% is that's the historical Consumer Price Index over 100 years. So when you look at the CPI increase over the last 10 years, not factoring in 2022, the increase is only 2% a year. We've had really low inflation the last few years. That's going to change going into the future. And so I've used the higher numbers for 2023 and 2024, uh, so that We can capture what Alpine is committed to, but we've used a standard Consumer Price Index going forward, an average for 100 years, just as a factor to grow expenses going into the future because we don't have anything better to go by at this point.

So, so just to put that into context, I mean, when you say it there, so there's going to be an 8% increase is what Alpine is proposing?

Yes. And sorry, I think that goes— it goes into effect for the 2023 calendar or school year. So this school year that's starting, in their budget they've budgeted for— it might be 7%, I apologize, it might be 7% that they've committed to in their budget, and I used 8% just to make sure that we had a number that represented what I think is a reasonable estimate of expenses.

I went—

and so, but you're saying the long-term number is more like what?

3.2% is, is the long-term year-by-year increase that I've used.

And then, and then this year it changed from that average to 8 or 7% or 8%?

Yes.

When did you find out about that?

It's in their budget that they published, uh, in May. I think it was right at the end of May they published a budget and then revised it in June.

Okay. So, so you say it came out in May and then they revised in June. Was it in the May budget or was it—

Yeah, they discussed it. I can't remember exactly if, if those were factors that changed in the 2 different versions that came out, but in the, in the final version, the most recent version, it's a 7% increase to, to teachers. It was an 8% increase to support staff, and I think it was a 6% increase to the administrative Okay, and so that's uncharacteristic compared to long-term averages? It's not consistent with what the averages are, but I think it's a measure of the expectation of inflation going into this year. And I think there, there's other districts that are increasing salaries and wages at a high rate like that again this year, going in, you know, going into the '23 year. So Alpine's not the only one doing it. I've seen, I think, those Farmington or somebody else I saw was going to be increasing salaries and wages that much as well.

Okay.

So last year, the percentage increase was— you just clarify that again.

Um, I can't remember last year. I— so I don't know the number from '21 to '22 because I don't have the actual '22 numbers. But I use 3.2% to go from '21, just again using that historical average.

Oh, that's the historical average.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So, so, Mayor, I did— I have been speed reading. So I'm looking at on some of your summaries. May I quote just something that kind of fits into the salary thing I found disturbing, actually? But Alpine school teachers' salaries as to fiscal year 2022 are approximately $7,532 below the national average mean salary. Alpine School District administrator salaries are approximately $2,715 above the national average mean salary. If I was a teacher, that ticked me off. The largest disparity between administrative and teacher salaries of Utah school districts surveyed by this study is the Alpine School District. In 2021, 29 ASD district office administrators' combined salaries and benefits cost more than $5.5 million. Anyway, I'm just quoting from your study, but I found that interesting.

Okay, um, I'd like to talk a little bit about, uh, if we look at the expenditures, as Mike said, these expenditures are based upon all the full services that are current that will continue. It will be the status quo, and that will include the 8% salary increases and benefits. And that's what we factored in. It's taken a long time with, with the, with the study, but— and we had to change a few figures, but that's where we are. But we're also interested in cost savings and increasing the quality of, of service. And as we mentioned, We met with district representatives, particularly business administrators, up and down the Wasatch Front from Nebo to Ogden. And there was— we were looking at the area of shared services agreement. This being the 21st century, it means having a shared service agreement can be very effective. And it was interesting how often shared service services agreements were entered into. For example, when Canyon School District was— was— well, let me give you a little bit about my background. I'm a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and St. Mary's, and I had my degrees were in— and credentials were in special ed. When I first came here to Utah, I worked as a teacher in the Hartvigsen School for the medically fragile and severely multiple handicap. And this gentleman over here that testified tonight about the needs for his own special needs child— the— when Canyon split, the Jordan Valley School was in the Canyon School District. It's being used at the time for the entire Jordan School District. Canyons and Jordan entered a shared service agreement in which all the students that were being served in Jordan could then come over into Canyons. This saved— obviously, it was a great saving for both districts as they had just one site. This was done until Jordan was able to build the Karmasu-Hammel Hamilton School. Another cost savings was in the Granite School District. I don't know if you're familiar with the Martin Bates Central Kitchen. Martin Bates Central Kitchen serves 90 sites within its district and then outside its district. And also it serves neighboring schools and school districts and also the charter schools. a boon to all those other schools where they wouldn't have to worry about having their own site kitchen, but they could have it catered as it brought into them.

The—

getting back to your particular question, Mayor Pro Tem, and also Councilmember Peterson regarding the teachers, we have a whole chapter there in, in the book, in, in the study regarding— we researched the importance of teachers' pay and salaries upon student achievement. This is found in Chapter 4 and Chapter 4.1. And this was again a directive that we received from the Council and the mayor as to the importance of teachers. And having been and currently are am, excuse me, a teacher, this really struck home for me. We found a— the research showed a direct correlation between teacher salaries and student achievement, especially among low-income and English language learners. As you know, that approximately 31% of the students in your— in Orem are both culturally and ethnically diverse. The research found that higher pay for teachers is correlated to teacher achieving higher performance as measured by test scores. What was interesting, if you raise teachers' wages by 10%, it reduces the high school dropout rates by 3 to 4%. Teachers' salaries have long-term benefits for teachers— excuse me, for students. A 10% increase in Pew Purple spending for each of the 12 years of education results in students completing more education and having 7% higher wages and having a reduced rate of adult poverty. That is with a 10% raise in teacher salaries. So in the, in the front load, it looks like a lot of money, but it has a tremendous effect on the students. It also boosts teacher morale. You have future teachers working second jobs, reduced turnover, which increases student performance. And when teacher salaries increase, the quantity and quality of teacher applicants increases. And then, as you mentioned, Councilman Peterson, Alpine School District had the largest disparity between average teacher salaries compared to the average administrator salary. The average teacher salary in Alpine was measured at $54,965, while the administrator salary— now this includes not just the district office but also the local administration and the principals— was measured at $101,000, which was a difference of $46,170. That is the difference between a teacher and an administrator in the Alpine School District, over $46,000. And then also, uh, that, um, And so, again, we are— we recommend that make sure teachers are first.

The—

and whatever you can do is working on, you know, focusing on increasing the teachers' salaries and pays as much as you possibly can that's feasible, because you will not go wrong. Student achievement will go up. High school graduation will go up too. And that brings us to the next slide.

But before we move on, I just want to make sure everybody understands the assumptions in the expenses. There's one I didn't get to, to mention. When I looked at other school districts, the percentage of benefits paid to Alpine teachers as a percentage of their salary is higher than it is in other school districts. Other school districts are around 42 to 45% benefits as a percentage of salaries. Alpine's doing a really good job from a percentage standpoint of keeping, uh, or adding benefits to the teachers. The benefits are about 52% of the salaries in Alpine School District, and, and so I've modeled that into this so that there's not a change In what the teachers have experienced historically, if they were to go forward in a new district. The other thing that I want to mention here: everything that we've done is on a per-student basis. So you can see the blue line that represents enrollment as forecasted. We took the numbers for the forecasted enrollment from information provided by Alpine. It was mentioned earlier that total the total number of students in Orem is not declining. Declining, but the number of students in the public schools is declining, and you can see that decline with that line. And so, because of that decline, that is going to drive revenues and expenses. As that number goes down, it will change those per-student calculations going into the future. But if those students come back from charter schools, from homeschooling, that will drive revenues up. It'll also drive expenses up because you'll You'll have more students that will need to be serviced, but those are the assumptions that are built into this model. Sorry.

As we looked at the— getting back to your original concern there, Councilman Peterson, regarding the future teacher salaries in the News District, and as I could hear some of the testimony of some of the teachers, as by law we're locked in for a year, but what happens after that year? Well, that's up to the new school board. That wasn't in our preview or our scope of this study. However, I could tell you exactly what happened in the Canyon split. When the, when the Canyon split, the Canyon School Board immediately, even though they had a year, immediately negotiated a very robust new salary schedule and step-in lane, as well as and benefits for the teachers, because they knew if teachers happy, kids are happy. And so getting— so working with that, we'd like to get into the test scores right here. With the test scores—

May I ask a question first about— just a question on the teacher salaries in Canyons. So they got a raise when they— when it was first split, but how does their salaries compare to other districts in the state.

Their salaries are some of the highest. They maintain— it was from the very beginning, it was the determination of the school board that we— they increased the salaries. And, and because they knew that if they could attract, you know, salaries would attract good teachers, and also longevity. So they're still up there.

So it just wasn't a one-year—

No, it wasn't a one-year thing. They've consistently been It's been, it's been consistent ever since 2008.

Thanks, Debbie.

I'm like, go ahead.

I have one more question. I know class size is important to teachers because obviously the more you're spread so thin if it's large. Did you factor in a certain class size, or was that something you hadn't studied?

No, we factored that into, you know, I like to mention that You know, it's one thing to increase teacher salaries, but it's another thing to increase the class size too. And we were very much alarmed when we, when we studied what the class sizes are going to be at. It's going to be increasing every— anywhere between 22 to 30%. It's interesting, the national average is at 17 to 1, 17 to 1. Right now you're having class sizes in excess of 30. In fact, we even looked at class sizes at Lone Peak High School, and we found classes at 70 to 77. So, and I understand that there are plans in which the class size will exceed over 30 in many of the elementary schools. Class size obviously makes a huge difference to students' social and emotional well-being, as well as the academic performance and teacher instruction. There, we looked at many, many studies, and the studies show that reducing class size increases overall student achievement, especially for younger disadvantaged students. And again, this is your population of your new school district, and a partial population. Also, the students receive more individualized attention, interact more with the teacher. Teachers have more flexibility to use different instructional approaches. Fewer students are less distracting to each other than a large group of children. Teachers have more time to teach because there are fewer discipline problems. Students are more likely to participate in class and become more involved. Teachers have more time to cover additional material and use more supplementary texts and enrichment activities. As we looked at this, There seems to be what we— what I guess we're calling a— the Hobbit effect. When you have small classes that, you know, in smaller classes and smaller schools and smaller school districts, that was the correlation that we found. When you have a larger school district, you will have larger class sizes. There was a direct correlation. correlation in that, and this is nationwide research. All that research, Councilman Lorette, is in your handbook right now.

Did you actually have a class size in mind, like in the 20s, 25?

Well, because you obviously, you know, in Utah, in most districts, for example, we look at neighboring school districts and we're looking at 24 to 1. It's quite alarming to me as a as an educator how high it's going to be going in Alpine School District.

For example, um, excuse, excuse me, when you say neighboring school districts 24 to 1, what?

Provo?

We looked at Provo, we looked at Nebo, we looked at, um, you know, also going into Canyons, going into Jordan.

So did you use a similar assumption?

I guess that's my question.

Did you—

was it 20, 24, 25? Did you base—

for a, for a sweet spot is what Yeah, I'm trying to figure it out.

Yeah, because there's a certain point where you're gonna have to hire another teacher, right?

If you get—

Or that's what I'm saying, you know, obviously, if you're going to— well, first of all, to answer your question, the sweet spot would be 17. I mean, that's the national— that national— but not realistically, a little bit more real, you know, a little bit higher than that, that you're looking at, at 24. A few years ago, the state legislature proposed that it would be at At 26. And so, but not over 30, what seems to be coming.

So where is Alpine right now?

Alpine is going to be coming over 30.

Dr. McCarty, can I—

is that throughout the entire Alpine School District, or is that just Orem, or where is it?

We found that in our study, we found that the schools on the west side of Alpine have, have also have increased class sizes and student-to-teacher ratios also. So it looks like it's, it's pretty much— what we found is that we also had a survey of elementary schools and parents' responses through Orem's Seamless Doc portal and reported that classes for the 2022-23 school year may dramatically increase approximately 23% compared to the prior year, and increase— and that will continue to increase, especially for grades 4 through 6. We found also, for example, teachers at Northridge Elementary were told by school administrators on March 4th, 2022, that grades 3 through 6 were going to be reduced by one class each, resulting in the following class size for the 2022-23 school year: 3rd grade at 37, 4th grade at 37, 5th grade at 33, 6th grade at 33. And so this—

So I'm sorry, where exactly was that? That was Northridge?

That was at Northridge Elementary. It was on March 4th, 2022.

Dr. McCarty, may I just point out, this is page 27. I was flipping through this, this compares when you're talking about smaller school districts. This is comparing Provo School District to Alpine, and it said the average size of an elementary school class size in Provo is 25.9. Oh, excuse me, that's Alpine. Provo is 20.6. By the way, if there's any elementary school teachers here, in Orem that have a class size of 25, I'd like to see it because I don't know of any. So middle school is 30— middle school, let's see here, Provo Middle School is 25.5 middle school and Alpine is 33.9. The only, the only thing I could see difference, it looks like Provo increases their class size by a couple of, you know, 32.5 versus Alpine's 30.3 for the high schools. So if you're going to have to add a class size, it looks like Provost decided add more to the high school, less to the elementary and junior high. And that's our neighboring district. There's a lot— anyway, that's like 5 students different in elementary school if I'm reading that report right. But anyway, I just found that as you were talking.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Peterson. The next slide we go to, we'd like to go over tests. We looked at the test score analysis. This again was asked of us to look at as because we wanted to see what the impact currently of where students are in the Orem schools and what could possibly the implication in the future. The high schools are in a freefall, indicating a severe drop in systemic issues. Since 2017, high schools— scores for Orem high schools have dropped 11.2% average. The school district ASD's average dropped 2.3%, while the Utah average increased 7.3%. Orem junior high schools test scores declined since, and this is over the last 5 years, dropping 8.6%. The middle school scores dropped 6.8%, and then throughout the district, while the Utah state average decreased 3.7%. Then Orem's elementary school scores have significantly increased at least 1.2%. Uh, the elementary school average in the district-wise has dropped 1.9 while the state elementary age had dropped 4.5. Um, if we can go to the next slide here. Uh, here is— this is the OREM test score decline. That's kind of hard to, to see, but you can see the elementary school is the black line— excuse me, I'm sorry.

The dark blue, the bottom line is the elementary, the black line is the high schools, and the top line, the lighter blue, is the junior highs.

So you see, but maybe I can make a little bit more clear. Let's look at the test scores. Let's go to the next one. This is the high school test scores. First of all, These are the composite scores from English and math and science— English, math, and science from 2017 to the present, or to 2021. You can see that Orem's average in high school test scores is down at a negative 11.2%, while you have the—

11.2%.

The state average is at about a 7.9% in, in, in gains, and then, uh, and then the rest of Alpine School District is coming at 2.3%. If we go to the next slide, is with, with the, the middle and junior high school scores. We have 8.6 for Orem, and the average, it's a negative 8.6, while it's an— well, in the state average is a negative, uh, 3.7. And then for the rest of Alpine School District, it's coming in at 6.8. We can go to the next slide. And this is what I was talking about. You have with the elementary test scores, they're above the line, the baseline, at an increase of 1.2%. over the last 5 years. And then you have the state average at -4.5, and then alpine coming at 3.9. One of the things that we had is that it took us a great amount of time to really gather accurate data, and we really focused on gathering this accurate data, and that's what we definitely strove So it was complicated, but we were able to do it.

Can I ask where you gathered this data from?

We gathered this data from both the Alpine School District and also the Utah State Office of Education, or the Utah Board of Education. The reason we had to have 2 sources is because there was a disparity. between the scores that we received from Alpine School District and from the state office.

How does that work? I mean, doesn't Alpine provide that data to the state?

We found the appearance of alteration and distortion of student and school testing reported by Alpine School District as compared to the same amount of information that we received from the same students' test scores reported by the Utah State Board of Education. If you turn to page 133—

Before you go on, I do have a question.

Sure.

Some of these years were COVID years. So did you factor in—

oh yes, an automatic—

I mean, across the board, we had negative.

Did you factor for that?

Did you—

We did, Councilman. Councilwoman Lorette, we looked at— there was no testing in those COVID years, and we did not fact— we did not— it was not part of the average. We did not.

So technically, this would not have— so this is really 2017 to 2019, only 3 years. But the 5 include the COVID years, right?

Yeah, but we didn't factor in the COVID years.

Okay, so it was just zero.

There was such a disruption.

Okay.

Yeah, and otherwise it would have skewed the numbers and we didn't want to do that.

So, so just to clarify, if you didn't include the COVID years, so you got 2017, 2018, 2019, you skipped 2020, and then you got 2021. Is that what, what you've got?

That's right.

That's right. So to answer the question, we received data from Alpine And we compared it to the data that was on the state website. We used the data on the state website assuming that was the official number, so that's the, the numbers that we based our calculations on were the numbers that came from the state's website.

So, so just to understand how this works, does Alpine submit that data to the state?

Yes, Alpine submits the data to the state. And then, and then, but the, the numbers that we got from Alpine did not match the state.

So which numbers did you use?

Well, we use the state. What happened with the information that we got, and we compared the state to Alpine's data that they gave us. We have found that when a school district fails to generate or report accurate or usable student testing data, local school administrators and teachers are deprived of an extremely important and reliable best practice to assess academic learning and curriculum instruction. And so, for the purpose of this study, we requested data regarding student test scores from ASD. Student testing received from ASD was compared to the same data that we compared to— that we collected from the Utah State Board of Education. We found various discrepancies in the student test score data provided by Alpine School District for elementary schools, and it's, it's in your— it's starting on page 136.

Was it just one year?

It was 5 years.

So there was never a matching number?

Yeah, in that some numbers match, some numbers didn't match.

Yeah, in fact, was it a certain year or it was just— It was gathered. If you look on page 136, you'll see the original data that, that we got from Alpine. And then what alerted us is that if you look— and again, to answer your question again, we're looking at 4 years of data. We're looking at 2017, 2018, 2019, and then 2020.

2021.

Obviously, we skipped that COVID year. If you look at Northridge, for example, test scores for science in 2021, you have— you notice that there are 3 digits pretty much for every single test score, but all of a sudden we've got 4 digits. All of a sudden it's going from 48.7 to a 476.6, and then that with Orchard coming in at 736. This concerned us, and so what we did is that we went ahead and looked at the state, and if you look at the state figures on page 138, The state figures are in the red and the green. And so what we found out there is that looking at the elementary schools, out of 165 data points from ASD, only 4 data points were accurate, shown in the black with a check mark. Out of 165 data points, 119 data points were inflated or overstated. These are the ones that are shown in red. Out of the 165 data points, 42 data points were deflated or understated by Alpine School District, and this is shown in green. 24 data points were withheld entirely. We— Suncrest and Geneva were not submitted to us for our evaluation. And then it's noteworthy that Alpine School District provided data for Hillcrest and Sierra. which merged in 2017, but again withheld data from Geneva and Suncrest Elementaries. When we look at the, the junior high and middle schools, and again the public can look at these, these, these pages, only one data point was correct, and that's shown in black with a check mark. It's in the second row, the 2021 proficiency. Of the 48 data points, 36 data points were inflated or overstated by Alpine School District, which is shown in red. And of the 48 data points, 11 were deflated and understated by Alpine School District, which is shown in green. Again, I'd like to emphasize that student test measure scores are a measurement of the success or failure of a school district's commitment to its students and teachers. And when a school district doesn't generate accurate or usable student testing data, the ability to evaluate and improve the student academic learning and curriculum does suffer. So what does all this mean? Well, the data results in this chapter report that Alpine School District showed less than a 2.5 accuracy rating of student data reported. In other words, Alpine has a 97.5 inaccuracy rate, and this should be disconcerting This should be very concerning to the public and raises the alarm of how vesting, auditing, and distribution of Alpine School District materials should be handled from this point on.

So, question, did you confront the district about this or tell them there's a discrepancy?

Yes, we, we scheduled a meeting on July 6th, and we scheduled it approximately about a week, 10 days before. And because we were going to sit down with them and say, hey, what happened here? But they canceled the meeting 24 hours before with the excuse that their lawyer got COVID. And they wanted to reschedule after tonight's meeting. But that was not rescheduled because we really needed The, the information before tonight for the purpose of the study.

So 97% of the test scores were reported and were not accurate.

That's correct.

So give me a comfort level. How can I trust any of the other numbers the district is providing to you?

Well, we trusted but verified, and this is thanks to, to Michaels. expertise. A lot of the, a lot of the information, for example, we were for a long time, we were wanting to get the expenditure per school in Orem. This was a long time coming. It took 4 or 5 GRAMA requests. Finally, we received some information that was partial and, and Michael had to literally redesign and, and, you know, and, and the data so that it would be accurate for this study.

Well, to be fair, they gave us information that was difficult to use. We made some additional requests, we got some more information from them. What I was hoping to get was a— I come from a financial statement world— I was hoping to get a financial statement by school. We got a spreadsheet that had expenses per per student, but we never got a financial statement per school. And so we got information, we verified salary information against what the state website had. We recalculated revenue numbers. I think we got comfortable with the financial statements for the most part. I think we were able to verify the accuracy, materially accurate, but this wasn't an audit. So I didn't perform audit procedures. I did procedures to get myself comfortable that the information I was using was accurate and so that we could put an accurate model together. So the, the grammar requests that they satisfied met the requirements. They gave us the information that we need. We just would have benefited from some additional information in the process.

So, so the test scores are easy to track because the state has what's reported and what they have reported. The other information, you don't have a way to track it. Just assume—

Well, salary and benefit information is available. The, the operating expenses, supplies and materials, those are numbers that I can't verify anywhere other than their annual financial statement. And so we were able to agree the expense schedule that they gave us to their annual financial statement, which has been audited. So whether it's in the right category or not, I can't say because I haven't audited each of the categories, but I know in total the expenses that we were given agreed to their financial statements.

This brings us up to specialty programs. As an educator, I was very, very interested in this and of what the specialty programs offered to the students. These specialty programs throughout Alpine School District provided everything from art, Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese immersion, music, physical education, science, dance, drama, humanities, fine arts, health, advanced learning labs, science technology, Christa— the Christa McAuliffe Space Center, social emotional wellness, science, technology, engineering, the STEM classes. As well as the performing and eclectic arts. Um, these are extremely important because they, uh, they add more, uh, experience and more, uh, relevancy, you might say, and excitement to the, to the curriculum and also to the students. What we found was that not all schools had full access to these programs. What you see there is, is the black, the schools in black, and I've got the numbers of those schools. I— so if you need the name of the schools, but we have most of what we found that appears to be unequal access to the specialty programs for students in Orem.

It's interesting.

that one of the school board members mentioned— her name is Julia King— that it is important to note that one of the conditions to split the school district was the issue of equity, and if students in different zip codes are getting different experiences that aren't able to be solved. And so we found that students within 4 of the 7 Title I schools Again, those are usually low-income families that are funded in the city or appear to be denied full and equal access to specialty programs as compared to students' accessibility to the district specialty programs in the west and in the north end of Alpine School District, which are in more affluent communities. The same can be true about the 3 Advanced Learning Lab schools. If you look at the learning lab schools are in blue, they're located in more affluent neighborhoods and are not close to major transportation corridors, making transportation to and participation in these these programs difficult for lower income students. As we understand that busing is not available for students to attend those schools, so parents have to drive. But some parents, especially in your low-income areas, don't necessarily have access to cars, or they might be a single parent and they really can't take their children to the schools. So that's a grave concern. So what we found, that 85%— 83% of students in the north and west end of the district have access to, to robust specialty classes. But only 48% of students living in Orem, Pleasant Grove, and American Fork have full access to these specialty programs. Many of— again, as I emphasized, again, those— many of those— 4 of the 7— there are 7 Title I schools in Orem, and 4 of them do not have that full access, equal access to specialty programs. Programs as, as what the other schools in the district have. Let me go to next. We looked at FEMA and building safety. That was one of the things that were brought up tonight. In August 2006, now if you look at your timeline, and Your timeline is on page 35, and I'll draw your attention to 2006. In May of 2006, there was a citizens petition to, to have Orem have its own school district. And in July, the Orem City Council approved a feasibility study to split from Alpine School District. The study resulted and gave several options, and which included Orem to to form a 4-city school district with Orem, Linden, Pleasant Grove, and Vineyard. In August of 2022, the Orem City Council voted to include that school district split on the ballot— whether or not to include it. The motion was defeated by a 3-4 vote. What we found out there is that there was a feasibility study that released in early August prior to that vote. That feasibility study was never made available to the city council. In fact, we're also discovering that feasibility study was not necessarily made available to the public, or to the public, it was not noted of that, of that feasibility study. If, and in that feasibility study, and we compared it to the 2022 study that just came out last February. Many of the schools— and going back here is that, again, this Alpine School District, which was responsible for the feasibility study, retained this engineering firm and conducted a seismic vulnerability assessment of all schools in Alpine School District, and it found that 10 schools in Orem had moderate to severe seismic issues. Neither— again, neither the 2026— now that neither in 2026, and also neither in 2017, when Orem School District made a presentation to the Orem City Council about splitting the district, did they mention the Orem schools that needed upgrades, retrofits, and replacements. And again, refer to the timeline. Last February, The state of Utah, FEMA, and other entities surveyed every school in Utah and provided a K-12 unreinforced masonry inventory. The initials are URI. Okay. And Alpine School District was found that they had not resolved the pressing FEMA issues. In Orem, 12 schools were identified with seismic problems. 35%— actually, that's 40%. We found out just recently it's 40% of Alpine School District's 30 unsafe schools are in Orem. 4 Orem schools identified in the 2006 assessment as unsafe remained unremediated, and that was Orem Junior High, Sharon, Windsor, and Geneva. And Geneva is presently in a status of pending review. Now, just hit this button. Okay, these, these are the schools. Now, you can— what you have is that the schools that are identified with URM, which is unreinforced masonry, which are in red, and then the green is schools with suspected URM, and then the schools with an RVS score, which is a rapid visual screening, are in purple. You can notice where they are. It's interesting, but if you go back to the former slide, we don't have Time to do that. But if you go back to the other side to see where the specialty schools are, they seem to match. The schools that do not necessarily have the specialty classes seem to be matching the schools that have the FEMA issues. But this is extremely concerning. And again, as I mentioned before, back in 2006, prior to the vote by the council, So the first FEMA, the first engineering study was not given. We could not find it in any of the council minutes. Oronoara was addressed as an information item prior to the vote of the city council.

If—

Now, it's a what-if, but if Orem had voted to leave Alpine School District in 2006, And left, and actually remember when you vote to leave, it's usually two years. So for example, if the the vote is favorable in November, you're talking about the school year beginning in twenty four twenty five. So, but if Orem had, and we've been talking about tax revenues and keeping the dollars here, and as I said before. 13%, historically, 13% of the, of the, of the bond money comes to Orem. Unfortunately, the other 86% goes outside the district. But if Orem had formed its own school district at its, at its continued property tax revenue, um, it could have retained $570 million in tax revenues from from '09 to '21. And then since '09, Orem received $87 million of ASD's $815 million bond allocations. So, but if Orem had found— had done its own district, they could have used these funds to pay for the needed seismic improvements to its schools and not see the elimination of Hillcrest, Geneva, and Polaris schools. So these are things that, again, as we researched, we wanted to present these findings to you at this particular time. Last slide deals with our local representation. As I said before, the And as mentioned, I think here tonight, that right now there are 7 school board members in Alpine School District, and each one represents an area that's larger than their state legislator. And we have found, and it's in your packet, that local representation and small school districts are really really the best. You are in charge of your future, or your future and your fate. Again, if, if, if, if it deems by the new school board, and if it's a vote of the people to have their own, your own separate bond, 100% of that money goes to Orem and Orem schools. As an educator, I can't emphasize enough about the importance of making sure that our schools are seismic safe. And this is a big concern. Again, as I said before, all the tax revenue would stay in Orem. With Canyon School District, going back to that, both, both Jordan and Canyons, we have The aftermath was that Jordan was able to generate its money through minimum tax increases to build up these schools and build the schools that they needed on the west side. And with Canyons, they were able to generate the money to replace any of the aging and seismic unsafe safe schools. It turned out to be really a win-win to both school districts. Student achievement went up and also the high school graduation rate went up. It's not a doomsday scenario when a school split. There are so many safeguards right now in the Utah law. For example, when Canyons and Alpine— excuse me, Canyons and Jordan We there was an arbitration process that lasts for for two years. Right now, by law, that arbitration process needs to be ended within approximately about I think it's seven months after the the the split. And then at the time, there was an idea: How in the world do you divide up the bond? As Michael had talked about, we have a pretty good idea of how the bond, what the bond indebtedness will be for Orem School District based upon assets. And that's the key. That's what the legislature is now focusing on, is that the assets, and then that determines what the percentage would be with the bond indebtedness. Then also with local representation regarding decisions. The district, you could deal with your own district structure and budget. The teacher compensation and benefits, as we've mentioned in the study, we have found that there is that huge correlation with the increase of teacher salaries and student achievements. Class size, don't necessarily, you know, if you're going to increase teacher salaries, please don't do it at the, at the, at the the sacrifice of, of, of class size and making them larger. Then capital investment, new building remodels, for example, FEMA safety, which definitely is, is in the forefront. There might be a question or comment that, well, we got to stay in Alpine School District. It's the only way to, to Make your school seismic safe. Well, Alpine has not made all the schools in Orem seismic safe in the last 16 years, and we really can't see that really happening in the next 16 years. Local control, you got, is really the best for local representation, because then, because you're, you too, if you decide to have a school district, have 7 representatives. Can you imagine how Orem would now be divided into 7 districts? You'll be more responsive to the, to the parents, and there is a huge accountability. The research is showing that small school districts have a huge amount of accountability to their constituents, and particularly city school districts. And with city school districts, and In the school district itself, the, the, the school board is responsible for the school district and accountable for the school district. But the city council, though not responsible, is also accountable. And so you have— and we have found that, again, student achievement goes up as much— it goes up improves in smaller school districts, as well as teacher morale, as well as the, the parent satisfaction for their students, and also the quality of education. Any questions?

Fine.

Sorry to keep asking questions. People have asked me about a bus depot and not having our own bus depot.

Did you look at that? We did look at that, Councilmember Lorette. What we did is that there is many different types of, again, shared services and ideas that we could possibly do. For example, In a municipality, you've got transportation, you have, you have a garage, you have vehicle maintenance that could easily be shared service agreements with the, with the municipality. But also we discovered that in one school district, that school district is saving between 30 and 40% of its transportation budget by outsourcing. There is a company called Student First, and in this particular school district, which is quite, quite large to the north, that school district doesn't have to worry about bus drivers, doesn't have to worry about buses, doesn't worry about maintenance, doesn't have to worry about garages, doesn't have to worry about liability, and that is assumed by the outsourcing that transportation. Also, with— you have— you don't have a— we fortunately in Orem, you have neighborhood schools. You really don't have that much proportional busing, but what you have could easily be outsourced. Also, a shared service agreement with neighboring school districts. A neighboring school district could easily just, you know, for example, the Orem School District could buy a few more buses and then, and then house them at a neighboring school district's garage vehicle maintenance. So there's many, many ways to, to meet that. And again, you have 2 years to get your ducks in order on this one. But excellent question.

So Can I just comment on that again, just a little bit? We did look at what would it cost to build a bus garage as well. You have to have land, you have to have materials, all those kind of things. Based on the number of bus routes in Orem versus the rest of the district, I think the size of the building would be somewhere in the 10,000 to 11,000 square feet. And so we asked— I estimated a cost of $225 a square foot for that, it's going to be a couple million dollars to build a bus garage. You're gonna have to buy more buses on top of that. The difference between the shared services and building your own and buying your own is what fund it comes out of. So building your own and buying new buses comes out of the capital fund. If you rent the service from somebody else, it's going to come out of your general fund. So So one way or the other, one of those funds is going to be affected. And so that's a decision that would have to be made by the district as to how they wanted to manage the money in each of those funds and how they paid for that transportation.

So I got a question on the busing. How many kids are bused to Orem, if you know that? And then what is the cost per student? So I heard that Alpine charges every kid $2,100, whatever it is, and we only have so many buses in Orem, so I'm assuming we're subsidizing busing too in Alpine. So can you clarify?

So, so I don't know the number of kids specifically. We can go find that out. If you look at the financial statement for 2021, the average cost per student of transportation is something like $225. I can't remember exactly, it might be $275. The average cost to provide transportation services for a student in Orem is somewhere in the $120 to $150 range, so there's a difference because of that smaller geographic area. The $2,100 that I think you're referring to is the— on the sheet that we received from Alpine for expenses by location per student, they had a $1,900 number that they called overhead. And that overhead included the salaries at the district level. It included the transportation costs. It included maintenance. It included supplies and other things that were for the whole district at the district level. And so there they were taking all of the revenues in, and they were allocating to the different expenses that existed. And so the overhead as a whole cost $1,900 per student. So it wasn't necessarily they were taking money from. Orem kids and paying it to other places. They were taking $1,900 from every kid and putting it in a pool that was then used to cover all those expenses, some of which Orem shared in at the same level as other schools, some— or other communities, some of which they didn't. So there's going to be some of that in the fact that we're using an average, and because I couldn't get specifics on a true financial statement per school, it's tough to say exactly what that cost is because I don't, I don't know exactly where that transportation cost is other than buried in that overhead numbers.

So, and a question on the FEMA condemned schools, how many do we have in Orem today?

Could you repeat that question?

How many FEMA condemned or seismic So how many are still— so we have 10.

Okay, we have 12 schools that are identified with seismic problems, which is approximately 40%, not 35, 40% of Alpine's 30 unsafe schools that they found.

But to clarify, FEMA condemned doesn't mean the entire school needs to be taken down. That just means there's something wrong somewhere, right?

When I— not necessarily. It means that a portion of it. For example, when Canyons had their seismic issues, they did an engineering report to look at what schools, and it was just, and some of the schools had to be torn down. For example, Midvale Elementary. But some of the schools, the portion, there was a portion of it that was unreinforced concrete masonry. And so So it's not necessarily the entire school. That's why it's extremely important that if a new school district is formed, that there is a professional engineering property engineering survey that is going to find out exactly what in the schools, because the FEMA did not do the extensive— they did a portion, and then, and it— They did a good study, but obviously it It wasn't as, as thorough as a district needs to find out exactly where, how, and what needs to be done.

So is that like, as an example, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong here. So my kids went to Windsor Elementary, Title I school. It has one 50— well, probably 60-year-old part now. They had the 50-year anniversary when my 24-year-olds were in 2nd grade, right? But they have added on to it. So you're saying then that the whole school is not condemned, but that probably that 60-year-old portion is on this report as, you know, something to identify.

That is correct.

Okay.

Yeah, so I mean, that concerns me that Alpine School District hasn't done anything with those schools since 2006. So that concerns me, but Another question I have is, yes, ma'am.

So I want to just tag on to one of his questions to you, Michael. When you talked about the overhead, so help me understand the depreciation aspect of that overhead. So, and how it relates to Orem.

Yeah, so we were dealing with the general fund. The depreciation really isn't included in the general fund, so that $1,900 doesn't include a depreciation amount. We were focused on really cash in, cash out type of expenses. expenses. Depreciation is in the governmental fund and, and the governmental layer of the financial statements. We didn't look into that because it had a lot of non-cash items, and, and the bulk of what's in there is really the general fund, the capital fund, and the debt service fund. The other things are going to follow on, on a consistent per-student basis for the most part. But yeah, that $1,900 doesn't include any overhead. That's true cash that they're Collecting every year and expending every year.

So that does not include depreciation for the schools?

Correct.

Okay, go ahead.

So, um, you know, from Alpine School District Team Ezra, Ada Wilson and Sarah Hacking in the Facebook group Stronger Together stated that Alpine School District is subsidizing Norm schools to a deficit of $21 million, and some people are saying $29 million. So can you answer that question on You know, how did they come up with that number? And in reality, if we're— they're really subsidizing Orem $29 million, why do they want— why are they caring about Orem? You know, I mean, to me it doesn't make sense.

To answer the question on how they calculate it, I don't know.

I, I think they took some of the same information, but I think there's 2 funds. We need to figure out exactly how it works because I think people are getting misled in that aspect.

So there's 3, 3 main funds. We looked at the general fund, the debt fund, and the capital fund. In the general fund, there probably is some subsidy. The, the way you would calculate that is going to depend on the assumptions that you use on the expenses. So again, the way we calculated our forecast, there wouldn't be any surplus or deficit because we're matching the revenues coming in with the expenses that we've budgeted. And so, in the standalone case of Orem separating as a school district, we We made an estimate of what we thought the expenses would be. We estimated what the state and federal revenues would be, and then the rest is the property tax that would have to be required to pay for that budget. Sorry. And so I'm not sure what they're pointing to to come up with that calculation of a surplus or a deficit. One way to look at it, though, is there, there are Title I monies coming into all schools, but the only Title I schools— or most of the schools that are identified as a Title I school where the money is being expended is in Orem. So there is a slight subsidy in the Title I number specifically because the Orem schools themselves are collecting somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million of Title I money. Maybe it's 2— I can't remember the number exactly. $2 million and, and plus, they're collecting that much, but the amount that's being spent in those schools on Title I things is $4 million, $4.5 million, something like that. So there's a bit of a subsidy from that standpoint, but for modeling purposes, because property tax is going to fill that gap, it really comes down to what's the right budget, what's the right level of expenditure so that you can Have the programs that you want, and then the property taxes— how do those property taxes to make that happen compare to what you've paid in the past?

And then, Paul, I've got a question for you on the, the district employees that have teaching certificates that aren't teaching in the classroom. Are they counted as teachers, and that's how their student-to-teacher ratio comes down and makes it look better, or is that not?

We specifically asked them to a GRAMA request from Alpine School District, and they didn't give us an answer on it. They said that the concern that you have there is that we've looked at the administrative salaries and they're— I can't remember the— I don't know if the— I can't remember the page that's in your book and for the public. Oh, we retracted all the names, of course, and we looked and we were concerned about that there was There was a line there where it said certified teacher, $1,000, and then plus approximately $313 in benefits, which was approximately $1,300. The question that we want— we had to the Alpine School District is that, are those now teachers? Are they now— since you're paying them, are they— would you look at the district average for, you know, teacher-to-student ratio on a district level, not a school level. Are they factored in as a percentage of a teacher, as a full teacher, so that the district average could, you know, the student-to-teacher ratio that we're talking about before could be lowered? We wanted to know. The answer they got is that they focused on the school school level and talked to us only about the school level, but they really fully didn't answer the question that we had. And this is something we really wanted to take up on, on July 6th, in which they canceled.

And then my last question is, we've heard a lot from teachers that I think it's been a scare tactic by the other group that your salaries are going to go down. your benefits are going to go down, your retirement's going to go away. And I think you've justified in this feasibility that that's not true.

Yeah.

And I think—

You're, you're a teacher, an employee in the state, is a member of the Utah Retirement System. And that is, that transfers, that would transfer immediately if there's a creation of a new school district. So your retirement is not affected at all. You know, some school districts have a longevity program, or they have any type of early retirement program. We would encourage, you know, you know, that as part of making sure you have a complete transfer.

But that would carry over.

That would carry over is what we're asking. And by law, it's, it's, it's, it's— I don't know if I don't have the law in front of me, but I believe But I believe it's greatly implied that that is transferred over to. And then also, if the new school district can follow the example of Canyons, and that is immediately meet with, you know, the new Education Association so that, you know, to make sure that teachers will get a regular— continue to get a regular increase And also in benefits.

So with this new budget that Alpine Scooters has come up with, I'm assuming they can balance their budget because where's the money coming from in the future to pay for those salaries?

We're concerned about that. And what we found out is that as it's approximately about $25 million is what they're going to be needing for that 80%. And again, we wanted those figures in our July 6th meeting. We've only met with them once, and we wanted this meeting on the 6th. But as I— just an estimate here, we're looking at approximately $26 million for that, that's that salary increase, increase in salary of 8%. It's interesting because, as I understand it, that there was with the association, there was supposed to be a 2% each year, but all of a sudden they're confining it all in one year. Interesting, the same year that we're discussing this. But anyway, the— so where would that 25% come? Well, we're also finding from a lot of teachers that have contacted us that there's a great deal of discussion about early retirement, for teachers to retire early. And if that's the case, You know, you know, as a teacher retires, gets into the URS. And then also, is that teacher being replaced? Are there some new hires? Because again, the concern is these class sizes are going up 23 to 30%. What is going on here? So it's a very good question.

Councilmember Spencer.

And, you know, you know, again, we're looking at the findings of the study. We can't speculate, we can't mind read, we don't know. Again, we wanted to ask Alpine that specifically, but we weren't able to.

So are you going to follow up with them to make sure you get that information, or— because I know I'd heard on grades 4 through 6, 4th, 5th, and 6th, that their class sizes going to increase. I don't know if you heard that.

Yes, I think I read that data tonight. Yeah, they are greatly reduced, going up. It's interesting, we, we did the research on nationwide. When class sizes go up, they usually start picking, you know, the 4, 5, and 6, and also in the middle schools. In fact, one of the research studies that we had Was a very— it's mentioned in your— in the research chapter. And it was a study done over about a 10-year period of 99 of the largest school districts in the United States. What was interesting is Alpine was number 42 of the largest school districts in the United States. And And what they found there is that the impact, you know, again, as I said before, they found that as the larger the school district, the larger the classes. And then, and this resulted in what grade— we want to know what grades were most impacted. And according to the study, it was the middle school grades that were most impacted. And which students And it's interesting, when a student drops out of school, it's not necessarily in high school. It's usually in middle school or at the end of middle school.

Thank you, Paul. I guess my last statement would be, I'm definitely not pro-splitter, which I was called. I'm pro-feasibility study, and that's what we gave to the citizens tonight. So thank you.

You're welcome.

May I ask— yeah, I got writer's cramp writing all my notes, but may I, may I repeat some of my notes and you correct me if I'm, if I'm saying this wrong?

Sure.

Is that fair?

Yeah.

So, if Orem did a $125 million bond, you were just talking about if Orem was going to be their own district, all that would stay in Orem. That's obvious. I heard I've never heard that. But if the $595 million bond the district's going to do, you can't guarantee me what percent is going to go to Orem. You can tell me in the past that it hasn't been the percent that Orem put into it. It's been less coming back. Okay, so, and then the FEMA reports, you were telling me 16 years ago there was a study done by FEMA. And the decision by the district, instead of solving the problem in a widespread problem in Orem, the decision was to move the money north and northwest because there are new schools being built instead of saving that. I mean, there's been a few schools rebuilt and some of that, but is that my—

That's pretty accurate, yes.

And then just a couple other questions was, I have to smile when people say that our population is declining. I drive the Orem streets. I don't know if any of the rest of you do, but they don't seem— it seems like there's more traffic. But I smile at that because I then— but your report, I heard you say homeschool, charter schools, private schools. And I was on the school board at Alpine for 6 years, and I was a big defender of the district. But a lot of friends of mine, they send their children to Tempe View High School, and which was disturbing to me as an Alpine guy. But they told me to get a better education. And then I saw in your report where it says average Alpine School District average class size is 10 to 30% larger when compared to Provo School District. So that kind of verifies what I was trying to argue that.

But addressing the— we found no decline. In fact, historically, if you look at going back into the, the 2004 study, again, that 2004 study was extremely important because they did a very thorough And when the, the size— I don't have it in front of me, but approximately 15,300 was, was the amount of students that were in the, um, the, uh, Orem School District at the time. And we have— and that is approximately the same amount of enrollment right now in the Orem School. One of the, the parents alertly mentioned something We found also, and that is 1 in 6 of your students here in Orem are attending either homeschool, private school, charter school, or going to a neighboring—

1 in 6?

1 in 6.

Okay, thank you.

So then just a couple of— make sure I'm on the right track. Um, so I have to smile about when, again, about this declining enrollment. In my neighborhood, as older families are dying and moving out, younger families are moving in. And I won't ask for the audience's response, but I think a lot of primaries, for those that know what a primary is on Sunday, that they're growing in Orem. They're not shrinking.

That's right.

So my last comment I just wanted to make, and this was probably because of my involvement with the school district, that I love our teachers. I was educated in Alpine. There was a great time when Alpine— when before it was 14 cities and a billion-dollar budget, all these things. But I value my education from the teachers in Orem, that they taught me to love reading. And so in their time, when I went to school, it was small class sizes. And the principal actually, you know, the secretary for the principal knew my name and knew my parents and knew the situation of my family. And so I value our teachers. I would, you know, we don't get to vote on this, so City Council would be the new school board. I would strongly recommend and want the Orem teachers to be the highest paid school teachers in the state of Utah. I'd love that. And, and that they feel, they feel secure, they feel that they are valued, and that's a great way to let them be valued is to say you're the highest paid anyway. So that's my comment. It's not a question, but I just wanted to run these comments to make sure I was on the right track about the FEMA and some of these other things. Anyway, thank you.

So I just want to ask Councilmember Peterson if the reason why they all knew his name is because he was in the principal's office so much. Assets, infrastructure. If there were a split, who gets what?

So it's prescribed by state law how the split would happen, and I'm trying to remember exactly. It comes out to be roughly 20% of the assets would, would be, would follow the new district, but there's an arbitration process that decides what assets Now assets are different, so an asset that is physically located within the new school district boundaries stays in the new school district, but an asset like a cash balance or something that's held at the district level that's shared among all the schools would be allocated based on property values. And so that's going to really determine— or that's going to be determined based on what are the property values at the time of the split. And there's basically a mathematical formula that determines that, but any asset that's within this, the boundaries of the new school district, that's a physical asset stays. Any asset attached to the school should stay and follow the new school district. It's just a matter of the shared assets that get allocated, and they get allocated based on property value.

Councilmember Thompson, also it's important to remember that You need to take into consideration when you're assessing the property and the buildings, you need to take into consideration the FEMA study. How much would it cost to either replace, retrofit, or remodel the school?

So that needs to be factored in into the arbitration process also, because that can greatly devalue So that was my question, is do you typically have a real estate professional come in and assess the value of the buildings?

In the Alpine School District— one, excuse me, in the Canyons-Jordan split, each side really needs to come up with their own, obviously, or have an independent one where they will both agree on to go in and do that asset. If a new district is formed, that's usually one of the very first things that happens. For example, with a new school district, if the new school district is formed, you need to set up a transition team. And then that— and one under the state law, that is the first thing that has to be done is the arbitration process. They do not want it lingering. for 2 years like happened in the Canyons-Jordan split. So approximately by— I think it's either August 1st or August 15th, if, if the election is in November, that is the deadline when the arbitration has to be concluded.

So to maybe add on to that answer, my experience comes from the business world, and when you acquire a business, a lot of times it comes with the acquisition of real estate. Most of the time in those transactions, there's an agreement either— like Paul said, there's an agreement on who's going to do the value assessment, the appraisal, or each side gets their own appraisal. And if they're within a certain amount, you take the average and you move on. If they're outside of a range, then you pick a third-party independent appraiser to come and do an appraisal. I think it's just important to take that type of an So just, I just want to clarify, because once again, this is something I've heard quite a bit.

We now have statutes in place to guide this process. So it's not the same as the ugly divorce process that happened in Canyons.

That's correct.

On that, a little bit.

Utah Code 53G. Okay, thank you.

If I may.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, Paul and Michael, Clearly, you've spent a lot of time on this. Thank you for your efforts and energy and interest in doing that. I understand that Burke Jolly was heavily involved in the Jordan District split as the business manager, and he worked a miracle in working out some of the things that Michael was just referring to.

So we work very closely with Burke.

I'm sure he'd be excellent at helping us. I am concerned. I mean, first of all, we all like to do what Councilman Peterson said, and that is have our warm teachers paid the most, but that also comes at tax issues. And you mentioned that 2 of the 3 scenarios on the sheet that I haven't been able to review yet, but it's on the website, so I'll be able to review it, resulted in a tax increase. And also on page 68 of this lengthy report, the new district has a tax increase every year and the old district has a tax decrease every year based on the number that you had proposed, if I'm reading that correct. I did a little speed reading myself, Terry. So the question isn't, are we getting— putting on our fair share or not? The question is, will the taxes increase? At least in 2 of the 3 scenarios it will. And in this one, it looks like my property value, um, what's it called, mill level, goes up every year. Is that an accurate depiction? Am I reading that If I'm looking at this correctly, Michael, your page—

Yeah, I just opened the page. This is talking about the overall general fund. And again, the approach we took was estimate the expenses, subtract from that the amount that would be covered by state funds and the amount that would be covered by federal funds. And so yes, the mill rate does go up, and I don't know how to say it any other way than that, but the— if you look at this slide, the bottom bar, your property taxes have been going up every year anyway. So, so I, again, I'm, I'm not a governmental expert. But when I, when I look at it in total dollars, it makes more sense to me that property taxes go up every year. I've never seen my own property tax statement. Yeah, I change. And I've never looked at the mill rate because I only care about what's the cash that's coming out of my pocket. And so yeah, the mill rate's going to go up under, under the way we forecasted it. Again, there's no guarantee of that. It's just unfortunately that's—

And there are initial costs to do this study. Yeah, that are outside of this purview that somehow we have to fund. And I assume that would come since a new school district wouldn't be founded for 2 to 3 years after the vote approves it, if I understand correctly. Then we would need to fund that somehow at the city level. Is that correct?

That's correct.

And those are not insignificant. Have you estimated what those might be?

I've estimated a couple of different things. I estimated capital expenditures, like I talked about earlier, for a bus garage and some new buses. The decisions that are made on the startup costs really could range anywhere from $3 million to $6 million, which is not an insignificant number, but it depends on who you hire and how extensive that is, but it will cost real money to start a new district and get it up and going before it starts collecting taxes.

Councilmember McDonald, if I could, please. First of all, under the law, half a million dollars, $500,000, will— is— can be paid back to whatever you give, up to $500,000.

And who does that get paid back by, Paul?

Excuse me, I'm sorry. The school district, the new school district would pay back the city up to $500,000. And then also, if there's any other money, it could be taken as a loan or some type of financial agreement in which the, the new school district could eventually pay back after, after so many years or whatever you whatever you state. So it's not— you might say it's not a loss. Okay, it's an investment.

One of the—

and also on the— if the school district— the voters do vote, if you do vote to put it on the ballot and the voters do vote in November, by January 1st or sooner of January 1st of of 2024, under the law, $9 million, at least $9 million from Alpine School District's general fund will then be put, put into the new school district fund. Now, for startup costs, for startup costs. Exactly. Now that $9 million does not itself does not have to be repaid. it will be part of the arbitration process and taken into consideration. So there is ways in which, uh, there would be the initial investment, but there's ways in which also you, you can get your money back.

But either way, it's coming from Orem taxpayers, whether it's going to a school district or the taxpayers, right?

Yeah. And as the taxes, you know, in the different scenarios, if, if, if, if Orem does form its own school district, And there is the increases in taxes, that money is staying in Orem. It's not going anywhere else. You're not subsidizing anyone else in the district.

Okay, thank you.

So, so, Tom, you're talking about speed reading?

Yeah.

So, um, oh, I forgot what I was gonna say after I said the speed reading thing, but, uh, you're still trying to get in good graces with the principal saying you speed read.

I know, I'm still thinking about meeting with the principal.

Yeah.

But the one thing you can guarantee, as a former stockbroker, I would love to own stock in Alpine School District because those taxes go up huge every year. You and, you and I pay them, all of us here pay them. So if you want a guarantee of increased taxes, we have that now. And like, uh, Michael's saying, show me anybody who doesn't have their taxes go up. So the question is, are we better off? Yeah, that stays in Orem.

And taxes go up by more or less is the unknown.

Yeah. So yeah. We don't know that, but I can guarantee you if nothing happens and we stayed in Orem, they will go up. I mean, if we stayed in Alpine, they'd go up every year.

That's, that's a guarantee that we can bet on, as he's guaranteed if we split, right?

So I don't know.

I don't know that right here.

So, Mike, so, but, but I know what we have now. Yeah, huge.

So, so, Mike, can you go to the slide of the $595 million, what that shows, what that does to the tax rate each year? Because I think Councilman McDonald says, oh, there should be no increase, and I don't think that's correct.

What's that?

You're talking about this, this slide?

Correct. So the $595 million, that scenario, the taxes are going to go up, right? Property taxes will go up, and we're accused that, oh, my property taxes go up every year, but in reality, it's Alpine School District, that percentage goes up, not what we get from what you pay to Orem. So is that— that's correct. So the $595, even though the Alpine School District said, oh, there's going to be no increase, but the mill rate goes up, so it is going to go up. And you— so your tax is going to go up, what, you know, $200 a year, whatever it is?

Yeah, so the way we've modeled it, if, if there's a bond, the total dollars paid we think will go up $200 per average household. Okay, the mill rate is going to probably go down because the property values have increased, right?

But it's just—

it's smoke and mirrors, basically.

Yeah, just, just to clarify, so we're all using the right words here, that's why I said tax burden, right? That's why our property taxes go up every time we get that statement right now, because our homes are appreciating, our tax burden increases. So the mill rate is a whole nother issue there.

The mill rate's a measure of the amount of tax as a percent of your property value.

Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a formula, but the net result is year after year your taxes go up. I mean, it's, it's magic.

So, so what— so one thing I find— All I know is my— I pay more taxes every year to Alpine. But, but here's, here's something I can wrap up.

I was just gonna say, you know, and I watched the, the video where the Y2 Analytics was talking about that for the survey they sent out. And they were really careful about the mill rate going up or down, holding steady, the burden, you know, and with inflation, that makes your burden greater. You have less money in your pocket. So it, you know, the wording here is just confusing for everybody, I think. So, you know, whatever you can say to clarify that is helpful, I believe.

Well, and that's why I wanted to look at it in dollars. Again, the estimate that we put on the top line of each of those scenarios, the average total property tax, that's the total for the geographic area. That number includes houses that are worth $250,000 and houses are worth $800,000. And it's all averaged. But, but if you look at the total dollars, that's why I think you're going to see the total dollars collected go up every year. What that means from a per-household standpoint, or from a mill rate standpoint, is just a matter of math. Once you get to that point.

I mean, from the way I'm interpreting this, is taxes go up no matter what, right? Unfortunately, a scenario where we just like wave a magic wand and now taxes will trend down forever.

And if you, if you left your budget the same and you didn't spend any money on capital improvements and you didn't ever issue new debt, your taxes would go down, right?

But that's an unlikely scenario, right?

And, and to Councilmember McDonald's point, if you want to pay teachers more, that means the budget goes up. And it has to be paid for somehow, whether that's through Alpine School District, whether it's through a new school district. That the problem is, if you want to increase compensation, increase operating costs, that increases taxes, right?

So you've got this whole— you, you've kind of got 2 things going on. You've got this general fund that's got tax revenue coming in from all these different sources, and that's— that seems like that just comes down to a matter of deciding how we want to spend the money, but it will be coming in. And, and, and then it's a conversation of, can Alpine do it better, or can Orem do it better with their own school board? I mean, that's, that, that's that piece of it. The piece that seems more absolute, unless I'm not understanding this correctly, is early in the presentation you said that over the last 20 years of the bonds that were issued, Orem netted Got a net $125 million less than what they put in. Is that right?

Yes. What we did is we took the proceeds from all of those bonds, and then we calculated the percentage of that that Orem contributed to based on the amount of property tax they paid. And then where did the money for those bonds get reinvested? Some of it got reinvested in Orem schools, some of it got reinvested in other schools. The percent that got reinvested in Orem schools was a lower percentage of the total than the amount of property tax paid by Orem residents.

And the net of that over 20 years was Orem got $120— Orem did not get $125 million of the money they paid in taxes.

Correct.

That went other places. So that's an absolute $125 million over 20 years that you can put your finger on and say that went somewhere else. And then when we move into the rest of this, it really depends on how the districts are managed, you know, which is better, who's running it, what the strategies are, you know, will local— what will a local district make better decisions for its own city than a group of 10 or 11 cities working together.

So that's the— Yeah, that's the decision that has to be made is if you believe that to be true, then that will influence your vote, obviously.

Right. And that piece of it is the much more mushy, harder to tell what will happen because that depends on, you know, dozens of decisions that are made along the way.

Correct.

But as far as, as far as the property tax piece, the net-net there was $125 million over 20 years, and had Orem had that, they could have used it on Orem schools.

Correct.

So anyway, um, I mean, I think, I think that's all. fairly significant. I'm just trying to boil— I mean, this is a lot of information, so I'm trying to boil it down into something that works in my head.

Sure.

Do you have any idea— the test score data that you showed was pretty drastic in terms of the decline. Do you have any idea what's causing that, or is that— are you just pulling the numbers and saying this is what's happening? Because it was not like a little bit. It was a lot.

Yeah, um, this, as I said before, we're looking at analytics and, you know, in our scope we're looking at, you know, the test scores. We can't, we can't really explain why. There's a— there might be the correlation. For example, uh, you know, uh, there are 9 on the east side here. There are 9 Title I schools. 7 of them are in Orem. And I think we found that there is, in those Title I schools, for example, we talked going back to the slide of specialty classes. We don't have that fair and equal access as throughout the other district. This could be a factor. And, and, but we don't, but, you know, I can't conjecture that.

Right.

But, but I guess the essence is, is, I mean, somebody needs to figure out why those test scores are declining, because that's the essence of how kids are being educated. And I mean, that seems to me like a big deal, whether we figure it out or Alpine figures out, or I don't know how we get Alpine to figure it out with our schools, or who cares more about our schools than we do. Anyway, it just— I don't know what the answer is.

Yeah.

And I don't know why it's happening, but If I could just be addressed.

Yeah, if I could just, you know, because that was one of the questions that I had too. And again, the research is showing that the smaller the school district, the better. There's a sweet spot I found in the research. The sweet spot for the size of a school district is between 5,000 and 20,000. You know, there's an argument out there that the economy of scale. And bigger is better. That does not apply to education. When you get larger, the research is showing that you end up having more of a sluggish bureaucracy. And, uh, and then as I said before, there's a direct correlation between large school districts and, and, and, uh, larger classes. But if you get between that 20— that 5,000 and 20,000. That's when your student achievement increases. So maybe in a very simple way, Mayor, to answer your question, it looks what the research is showing in our findings that smaller school districts are better, and that could possibly greatly affect the student achievement. And also it does definitely significantly affect teacher satisfaction and teacher morale, which is extremely important in the classroom if students are going to learn.

So I just want to comment. When Paul makes his comment that bigger isn't better, I think his focus is on what's going on in the school. I do want to be fair to Alpine. When you look at their cost to operate the district itself, their overhead, if you will, on a per-student basis, they're the most efficient school district that I looked at in, in all the school districts that I, that I looked at. Part of that is because they are so big. You, you have so many students to spread that cost over that it's easier to, to be efficient in the overhead piece of managing the district. And so the question there is really, um, more educational than it is fiscal, because from a fiscal standpoint the economy of scale argument works. It's just a matter of does the expense that you're incurring on a per-student basis match what you're trying to accomplish in the classroom from an educational standpoint?

Right.

I mean, and to make sure I understand, so you're saying from an expense and an operational standpoint, it's very effective. But the question is, is when you've got declining test scores and increasing class sizes and these different issues, something needs to be done operationally to deal with that, right? So you got 2 different things going on, right?

Yeah, I think they're, they're 2 independent concepts, but they are within the same sphere of what we're talking about, right? The running a school costs money. The more students you can cover with the one district obviously drives those costs down, but are you getting the results from the schools that you want as a taxpayer? So that, that's— I just wanted to make sure that we're clarifying that they, they truly are the most efficient at running a district compared to all the other districts. So it really is a matter of, are you getting the results you want out of the schools for the dollars that are being spent?

Right, that makes sense.

So I like this combination. We've got Michael, who's a numbers guy, And then we've got Dr. McCarty, who's a teacher and student guy, and I like that combination. That helps us because I think, I think all 3 of those are really important part of this.

So, Mike, can we go back to the $595 million bond that's coming up? So with that said, that bond is not in the general fund. That is for infrastructure and capital improvements, correct? So it's not for teacher salaries or anything like that.

That's right, it will come into the debt fund and then be reallocated to the capital side. It doesn't have anything to do with the teachers' pay or whatever.

That's right. And with that $595 million bond, Orem's portion was what, $125 million?

Or we estimated— when we estimated an Orem-specific bond, we estimated $125 million. The estimate that I think is probably closest for the Orem share of the $595 is about $16 million. Right now the property value within the Orem city limits is about 19.4% of the total value, the total property value in the district as a whole. And so that's how we allocated the share.

That's why you came up with $125 million bond, just as a comparison. Yeah.

If Orem did it themselves.

Yeah.

Okay, so I just know that Y2K Analytics did a focus group, and it was $495 or $595, and they said, oh yeah, you can get $595. And I'm thinking, you know, they're nuts. I don't know what focus group they're talking about. But in reality, we have to pay for $125 million of that bond, and I don't know if we're getting a return on investment. And that's why I think the feasibility study was key to see if it's feasible and if it made sense, because Alpine School District has done feasibility study in '06 and '17, nobody checked their numbers. The city, we have to do an audit every stinking year to make sure we have a balanced budget and check our numbers. So this is just a check and balance for Alpine School District, and I think it speaks volumes. Thank you.

Do we have any other questions? Comments?

No kidding.

I think we're good. Well, we really appreciate you coming tonight and walking us through that, and there's a lot of material to read through and digest and understand. As far as where we go from here, we're going to be having 3 meetings. The first one's tomorrow night, and the consultants will be there. You'll be doing another presentation, and then we're gonna— you'll be taking questions from the public. And so there's a public portal. So far, from what I've heard, there's been about 80 questions come in. I know a lot of those are duplicate questions and repeats, but the best way to submit your question to submit at that portal, uh, and then it will be— essentially what happens, all the questions come in, they get all divided out, and then we try and make sure that every single category is covered. And, uh, and then also at the meeting tomorrow night, uh, for follow-up questions, there'll be 3x5 cards that if you have a follow-up question that comes to you while we're— while they're doing their presentation, they can follow up. So the idea is that over the next 3 weeks, we'll We'll do our best to make sure everyone's educated and everyone can have as much information as they can, and then we'll go from there. Okay, yeah, Lynnae just mentioned that we do those 3 meetings, and then on August 2nd, we'll have a special, special City Council meeting, and at that City Council meeting Citizens will be allowed to comment again and, you know, give their input and that sort of thing. So anyway, this process, and we're just headed down this path, but we appreciate your participation. Before we go, I've got Jamie on the agenda, his last item.

Mayor, I think we're good tonight.

Okay.

Well, I'd like to make a motion that we adjourn.

Oh, you beat me.

Second.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Way to go, Linnea.