City Council · 2022-08-23

We're just very— we're so shorthanded. And as I made this transition—

Oh yes.

Um, it's a crazy story. Yeah, so I'm there. But yeah, so I won't have neighborhood stuff.

Members, and, uh, I'd heard from Renee, uh, earlier today that she wouldn't be coming because, uh, she's putting her daughter in the NCC and working with that. So anyway, we'll carry on. And we've got United Way. Go ahead.

Up here, Steve, is that—

yep.

And who are you, sir?

So I will introduce myself. Um, Bill Holterstrom is not away, and we— many of you may not realize this, but every— and you've probably been here before— every 3 to 4 years we do a major community assessment. And we do a community assessment, try to understand the entire community about issues, both understanding what people's perceptions are about issues, and then we try to find data to match the issues. Just the data I have is countywide with some very specific farm data, but in most cases we discovered that the data is almost identical everywhere. So I just want to share you some thoughts and have a chance to banter with you a little bit on this. And, um, like I said, we've been doing this only for about 36 or 37 years doing this, so we're still pretty young at doing this. You were thinking that, weren't you?

I was, yeah.

Um, Let me just summarize what we've been talking about. Is, as we look through COVID, growth has dominated discussions countywide. Everywhere in the county, growth is dominating discussion. I'll show you some data that shows that. We're also realizing at the same time that we think that we've forgotten our young children in some of these discussions. And I'll, and I'll show you some data on that. So we have this—

these questions you see asked, and we asked an open-ended question.

Are you able to see that okay? We have copies of more detail. Open-ended questions about what concerns you most. These are open-ended. This is the red, the dark red, dark blue is 2015, 2018, 2021. Growth took over all other issues countywide, people's concerns. What's interesting in this data is the growth slope actually slowed a little bit during those last couple years, but people's perceptions of it skyrocketed. At the same time, people's perceptions about other issues dropped down. We then went from top 5 issues to— so the bottom issues became Domestic violence, education, poverty, jobs, drug abuse dropped out of the— dropped off the list practically. We then reverse the question to try to validate the data and say, on a scale of 1 to 5, how big is an issue? So a non-open-ended question, growth went up a bit. Concern about housing costs, depression, mental health, drug abuse, suicide. Jobs and education plummeted. So in some respects, the issues that we in human services worry about, people got less concerned about. Some would tell us that this data would tell us that this is showing that we— it's possible in communities that we lost some empathy, that we— that as we went through these last 3 years, 2 and a half years, We stopped hearing— you stopped going to work and hearing the struggles of your coworker. You stopped for a while going to church and hearing the struggles of your neighbor or coworker. So we're seeing is that people were seeing issues and stopped paying attention to certain issues.

It's not necessarily because those numbers actually went down.

Actually the opposite. The actual opposite is in most of these areas, things got— we have data that shows these issues got worse. So we then start talking about depression. So we're very worried about young people being out of the way, and the SARC data tells us that, that our data on, on people having— this is basically your screening question for depression on young people. I don't think anyone in this room is surprised that that problem has gone up in the last few years. We— I think we've all seen it, we all know about it. I don't care what you're— whether you're a teacher, whether you're a parent, grandparent. You see it, that issue is getting worse. So what we're trying to say is that growth affects all of us. I want to talk more about some of this growth in a second here. I'm going to show you this very quick slide here because I think you already know this, but let me just— am I blocking the screen here from you? So let me just for a second show you what the illustration of what growth is looking like, what the state is predicting where the growth is. And you can just see that it's— it is really quite surprising to see how much we really are going to keep growing.

Can you back up once?

I'd be happy to.

That's interesting to me that American Fork doesn't grow— aren't growing that much, nor is Oro, right?

So it's according to the state's projections.

Okay, thank you.

That Provo still has a lot of growth going on. We certainly know Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs have a lot of growth going on. The part that always fascinates me when I tell this countywide is people don't realize to drive to Central City Eagle Mountain is actually a longer drive than to drive into Heber. So our community is changing rather quickly. Here's what I'm trying to say.

Can I ask why Provo so much? Do they have more open land, or are they—

Provo has both open land and they also have higher density growth in certain corridors going on.

Is the airport also affecting their growth that way?

That's— so that area, if you've driven out there, it's growing quite a bit. Um, something that you may— I'm gonna just confess, those of you that don't know me that well, I'm a neighborhood nerd and love Utah County. And every week I spend on a weekend 2 or 3 hours driving a different part of the community just to understand how things are changing. And there are certain areas where it's changed a lot, there are areas where it's not changed a lot, but the demographics are changing faster than we know. So I showed you just a couple of the data points that I'm saying. Um, our average household size is getting smaller, which puts an interesting pressure on housing, right? Does that make sense?

Um, what are the 3 different lines on that previous one?

The line here is average household size, and then it is— I'm missing the slide here.

It's great.

This is actually— we get this.

I really don't see—

Average household size. There's your answer. Yeah, let me find— I'm missing the rest of this, of the slide here, and I'm trying to remember.

It is Might be the years.

I think the years over here.

It's the—

it's homeowners and renters. And it's actually dropping faster. The size of the average household for renters is dropping faster than homeowners. That's what it is. Thank you. I apologize for having that before the landlord.

So what were you saying? So the middle one was house— homes. The bottom one was rentals. No, the top one was homes. The bottom one was rentals. And the middle one was Average.

So what I'm saying is the average family size in Utah County is getting smaller, which is affecting housing pressures.

Either less children or more moving out as we age.

And I'll show you some number on aging, which should make us be very comforted, by the way, because we're not getting older in Utah County, obviously.

I know I'm not.

I, I, I had data to prove that to you.

I'm aging backwards.

The other part, I think most of you know this, That most of our growth I refer to is locally manufactured, right? Um, most of our growth is coming from our own birth rates.

You know what the percentage was? It used to be like 80-something, about 80%.

We're not quite there in this one, but, but we're also discovering that a lot of our net migration are returning.

Um, so you've got something similar with cars, right? I mean, A few years back, family had one car, and then they had 2 cars, and now they have 6 cars, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's the same idea as the housing, is we're expanding the universe by compressing the family size.

Exactly right. Yes, exactly. Very well stated. Well stated. Here's the part that I want to make sure you understood here. This, this was for you, Tom. Um, Utah's county average age is 25. We are not— if you have noticed in the last 10 years, we have barely aged. And I think all of us around the table, there's data to prove that you're not getting as old as people think you are. There's data to prove that.

The fact that we have 75,000 students in the valley helps that number.

It does. Um, and so we have U.S. average, state average, local, but it also affects the whole change. So if you want to give a simple thing that changed in our community is that our kids come to school and now have— and don't leave and have jobs here.

That's—

if you want to just give one simple difference. So all that economic growth we're so excited about is why the state— you have a comment?

I'm just glad that I can tell my wife that I'm above national averages.

Yes, it's good.

Wait, this is very small, but let me— let me— this is very small. Let me show you. Average age in Eagle Mountain is 19.

Whoa.

Which means when you graduate from high school, you're over the hill. So you're 20 years old and you're the old side of your community. Orem here, 26.5. State is 31. Utah County is the 25%.

What's the far right? What town is that? Is that Fairfield?

This is Fairfield. The very—

I'm not sure.

Out there past Eagle Mountain. Yeah, north and northeast of— or basically east of Eagle Mountain.

What's Provo? Are they lower?

So Provo's average age is 23.7.

You always thought you're more mature than Provo, right?

Let's just prove that. I'm trying to give you some good data you can use here.

So, Karen, don't quote him.

Here's your other thing.

Half of our workforce—

our workforce average age is 31.7, which means we have a very young workforce. It also means it's affecting poverty and incomes, that people with such a young workforce are trying to find housing for this young workforce is very different because it's such a young workforce. Is that making sense?

I'm going to do a couple of housing ones.

This is one of the Um, simpler slides here. Like, your fonts here get messed up on the PowerPoint here, but let me give you the simple thing. Population growth of the county is dark blue.

Housing starts is the gold.

So our housing problem— we had a problem before the last recession. Recessions in a very cruel way, um, reduce the housing starts. So we are like basically, it shows here, about 12 years behind housing construction to match the growth rates of our community. Does that make sense? Simple Economics 101 on this one here. Um, increase in work, quite a bit of increase of young professional workers, quite a bit of increase of number of workers who've never been married, also increase of average age to be married increases. which all affects housing again and tax bases and all of that. So—

Can you go back a minute? Do you know the educational attainment of that number? Are they college graduates or are they—

So I threw those slides, I didn't throw them out. I'm trying to shorten the episode, but I have a whole series. So what I do know is that most of our immigrants that come in have a higher average education than those not here. So people who move in, have higher levels of education, like 2 to 4 years, bachelor's degrees, associate's. We have one of the highest rates in the nation with bachelor's degrees. We have, I think, the highest in the nation. And you may remember this from your UVU days, but we also have an extremely high rate of people who have had some college. But I didn't bring those numbers with me today. I apologize.

Governor Herbert had a goal that 66%, I think, 2/3 of all kids would have a 2 to 4 year. I mean, some certificates, so—

and I don't know if we're doing actually pretty well in that.

The MTEC is helping on that an awful lot. The low unemployment rate will historically hurt that.

So can you, can you explain that a little bit further? What the—

which— what's it—

how that works, those numbers that you're talking about?

So what I'm saying, so if we just look at pure raw census data, Utah County has, has increased quite a few young, young single professionals in the workforce. Simplistically, think of all the tech companies that weren't here 10 years ago and now have young tech employees. So we have an increased number of young tech employees, increased number of workers who have never been married, and increased later marriages also. I'm trying to describe it without being overly sophisticated because I don't have all the answers. is our world has changed around us when it comes to housing. And I don't, I don't know.

So that's just Utah County.

This is Utah.

This is only for every data I'm showing you since 2015 versus like now. Yes, everything I'm showing you, either 2010 or 2015, everything I'm showing you is purely Utah County. Great question. Anything else, Mayor?

Is that the question?

A couple of just other interesting points that I'm housing. I'm sorry, this part's quite so hard to read, but as far as the theory is, um, what— how much the Great Recession, um, average housing cost, average housing cost. You just see the housing challenge once again here. And equally challenging is our ability for the average income person of an average income in the county to be able to afford an average home.

Do you know the median average income? Used to be 50-something. I—

you got me twice now. I better not strike out here. You got me twice.

Well, that's an important number for me.

Yeah, and I could find it for you, but—

$53.2.

Okay, thank you. So once again, the recession— last recession made housing affordable for people, and then we're down this— once again, it's a terrible cure. But our number of people can afford housing is just—

it's plummeting.

I think that's no news for anybody, just the data.

So going back to that 2008 number and showing how housing dropped off a cliff during the recession.

Yeah.

And then it's been below— how much of a factor would just land availability to build be?

I can't answer land availability. I can say supply and demand says the fewer housing units, the higher the price is going to be. But I don't know how much of that is land availability. The factors that are increasing those increased costs, I can't tell you how much of that is opportunity versus scarcity versus— I don't know the answer to that.

I mean, part of that equation has got to be the recession knocked at the head, but then now you're going to build. Okay, where are you going to build? Like, you know, there's just not that many places to build.

Which becomes part of this challenge of what do we do for this next generation. And I, I was going to start this as I, and I said, let me give you my personal thing I was going to say. as I keep sharing this here. I have an almost 2-year-old grandbaby who lives here in Orem. And so I'm taking all of this in the back of my head, saying, what is this community gonna be like for her when she grows up? And I just, my big thing is I don't know, but I wanna share the data so we can make good decisions.

So Bill?

Yeah.

It'd be interesting to put a chart up for the nation as well. Probably very similar chart.

The nation chart follows pretty similar to this.

So this is not unique to Orem, not unique to Utah County, Or to Utah, this is a national issue.

The housing challenge is an absolute national issue. What makes it different in Utah County is the youngness of our population. So what makes it different in Utah County is that we're such a young population. Our workforce is so young and people are getting married younger than anywhere else in the country as well. So this family concept also is younger. So we, where people are getting into housing other communities 10 years into their career when they need family housing. Here they're getting the housing 3 years or 2 years or even less into their career. So that's what changes the scope versus national. Does that make sense?

I think there's also some other issues, right?

Absolutely.

You look at Arizona or Nevada, when they go to build— I mean, when they go through a recession, they come back it just keeps going sideways. They can go into the desert forever, right, as long as they've got water somewhere to go.

Anyway, so it goes out there.

You go back east, like in the, you know, the south, and the numbers are so much higher as far as the average age of the people versus the number of kids and all that. So they still have extra houses kicking around.

Right.

We've got kind of a convergence of everything going on, right? I mean, if we don't have space and we've got how the government's coming down, and I mean, it's It's interesting.

It's an interesting data point here, Mayor, that you look about 25 years ago, Governor Baker, 25, 30 years ago, there were headlines worried about how Utah was going to keep its growth and keep its population. There was a worry— headlines of everybody worried that everyone's fleeing Utah because there's no jobs. So we solved the jobs part of it, but we caused the other part of the problem. Let me keep turning some more data that might be helpful here.

I looked up the medium income in Utah County, $77,057, which is actually higher than I thought it was. So not bad.

And it's— what's really interesting on this is how you factor age into all of these things. The age, I kind of keep emphasizing this young population changes our analysis.

We can almost anything.

So basically, we are— we have the growth trend is towards non-traditional families, young childless professionals, single professionals. It's been much of our growth has been single professionals. That's been a lot of the growth in the county. I'm not talking about neighborhood attachment, a term that you may not be that familiar with. There's some interesting data. Neighborhood attachment is the emotional connection to physical and social environments.

It's the social bonds.

It's the part that I get most excited about what I want to share with you today. It's about what creates good communities and good neighborhoods. And I'm going to give you a simple answer at the beginning, come back, give you data, and then come back and talk about the simple answer. From all the research I've ever read, it seems to come down to 2 main points. that affect the quality of a neighborhood. And I'll be right up front saying it is not rentals, it is not income, it's not economic. The 2 factors almost every— so I can give you Robert Putnam, I can give you Falcon Earls, I can give you John McKnight, a whole series of researchers that say the 2 factors are neighbors that know each other and the feeling of self-efficacy. So neighbors that know each other is somewhat intuitive, and that counters That counters whether you're rich or poor, that counters whether you rent, that counters whether you're young or old, that counters that dilemma. The second is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the idea that you're feeling that you feel like you have control over your environment, over your neighborhood, over your community. I was sharing this data with— any of you know Kerry Patterson by chance? Author of Crucial Conversations?

Yeah, yeah.

You all know Kerry Patterson. I was sharing this and he goes, well, he started giving me all this phenomenal research about self-efficacy that Bandura's done. So those are the 2 elements that seem to be the most critical thing in neighborhoods, our neighbors that know each other and neighbor and self-efficacy. So we know that when neighborhood attachment is real, that crime decreases, income increases, health outcomes improve. All of it. Tons of research, they're doing this research all over the world, that neighborhood attachment creates this. For children, and we've known this research for over 30 years, for children, neighborhood attachment increases emotional intelligence, sense of responsibility, improvement in prosocial behavior. Bottom line is for children, they do better well in school, there's less crime, etc. And we were talking to your police chief last week on this topic. Tons of data on this. So what does it look like in Utah County? In Utah County, less than— we have over a third of our 12th graders who do not feel like they're attached to their neighborhood. High number of 10th graders on down. So this idea that kids are not feeling connected to neighborhoods affects their education, affects their mental health, affects their futures. We then asked the same question among adults. This is the first time we've ever asked this of adults. Do you feel attached to your neighborhood? Definitely agree is 30%, but the rest of these are either somewhat agree or disagree. So only 30% of Utah County residents feel like they feel significantly attached to their neighborhood. Let me give you a couple more points here. I don't know where my headlines went on this, these topics here, so I don't have completely, um, Um, we asked this question here. This question actually— this question actually here was— and if you can see them, my PDF, I think this is the one with, if you left your neighborhood, you feel left out. Is that right, Steve?

Or—

I'm somewhere— I lost my headlines on this, so I'm now completely making up the data to you, which is— I mean, what's the old saying, that 83% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

I think it's 57.

57? Okay, you're pulling my leg. If I'm not mistaken, this question here is, if you, if you left your neighborhood, would you miss it?

I'm pretty sure that's the right question here.

And this question is, um, can you find it there at all?

So far not. Sorry about that. I do something on the slides or something.

I don't know what to be doing installing. My apologies for this here. Um, I'm gonna go and come back to this here where we can see the headlines. Um, this is— I have— so this one here is, I have people in my life I can count on. Agree, somewhat agree, disagree. The part that's most distressing to me is I have this here, is I have people I can count on that live in my neighborhood. Can I count on Most, many, only a few. People I can count on, how many live in your neighborhood? So I can count— I have to count on how many live in your neighborhood. Most is only 3.4, many only a few, and none. I'm gonna be very blunt with you as community leaders. This is distressing to me. When adults don't feel like there's someone in the neighborhood they can count on, this is distressing to me. As we're trying to figure out ways to build communities, we've got to find ways for people to connect with their neighbors. Those 2 points I just said, these questions show that this is lacking. Let me talk about this data for a second here. This data showed virtually no difference anywhere in the county. It showed virtually no difference by economics. It showed virtually no difference on whether you rented or owned. There was not a statistical difference in those. So what I'm saying is we have a gap in our communities throughout Utah County of having people in the neighborhood you can count on. Anybody want to respond or give me a hypothesis?

Debbie, you can come counsel me. I'm not so formal here.

So any thoughts?

I think we are busy and a lot of us pull into our garages and go right in, and you have to make an effort To get to know your neighbors. And if you don't go to church with some of your neighbors, you know, you know, then you have to—

I just think we have to—

we just got to be social. You got to get out and meet people. So I think for us, we can, we can go our whole day and just talk to very few people. And it takes effort. And, you know, I used to sit on my porch and talk to my neighbors, and now I just go into my house. I'm just guilty.

But it's—

I'm just trying to tell you, if we're trying to solve neighborhood problems, we need to look at these kind of issues. Jamie?

I mean, to some degree too, I wonder if it could be pandemic-related, where people are looking to themselves and to, for example, immediate family for help and support, because we haven't had that social opportunity to engage and attach, as you're suggesting, with our neighbors in many years, because we've been essentially discouraged from doing so.

I think you're absolutely right, and I think this issue got— what?

Yes.

Well, and long before that bill, the high-density apartments really add to this. You're saying it doesn't make a difference whether you're in a residential home or in a high-density apartment, but if you're in a high-density apartment where you, you can't even go visit somebody and, you know, someone has to let you in at the bottom door and you don't— there is no reason to ever come outside and It's like Debbie sitting on her front porch.

There is no front porch.

You don't ever see your neighbor drive by. That doesn't add to a feeling of community. And just knowing some of the things going on there, high degree of mental stress and anxiety long before COVID just because that's your world. There is no connection. There is no outside.

There is no neighbor.

There is— I appreciate your hypothesis. I agree with much of it, but I'll give you a quick story here that tells me it doesn't have to be that way. My daughter, who I've talked about with you a time or two, lives in Orlando, Florida, and has some— and was alone, et cetera. 3 doors down, there was a mother of a retired couple who took my daughter under her wing, and on Christmas Eve brought her Christmas dinner. Somebody proactively decided, That being in an apartment complex was not going to make me not be a good neighbor. Turns out that this couple do this for like 7 different single people in that apartment complex. So I appreciate the naturalness of what you're saying, but I'm also saying that's part of why I'm here, is we have those structures. How do we help create connections in those structures? I've had this discussion with many apartment complex management saying you We've got to do a better job of creating neighborhoods. There's some principles of triangulation around that, but I'm right with you. The idea of isolation is easy, but we've also created that same idea of isolation in our own neighborhoods with the electric garage door opener. I mean, I, you know, we— I don't have time to talk to that person. Let me pretend I don't see him and drive in and close the door.

Well, no matter where you live, it takes effort, like I said, proactive, to reach out, visit your neighbor. I mean, it could be a townhouse, it could be a duplex, it could be a single family. It all takes effort of looking past your own uncomfortables, right?

And, and it's very—

some people are not comfortable, but other people should do more.

And then I'll continue to agree with you that I'm very uncomfortable with some— with gates everywhere or with barriers. I'm— I'm from a community guy, um, I'm— so I'm right with you on my discomfort, um, right there. It's The same idea, the more we pull people away from neighborhoods for different school and this and that, the more we create this isolation. So we have to compensate, I think, proactively for the world that we're in.

I mean, just take away a neighborhood school and you destroy a neighborhood if you don't have a community school where everybody goes to.

And so I'm— so we have some— so I'm sharing this data here to try to say that I think we've got to do more to create these neighborhood connections.

Can you go back to that? Sure. So you're asking for hypotheses. I mean, I completely agree that the more you can be involved with your neighbors in your neighborhood, the better, you know. Yeah, community and all the rest. But as far as if you go, you know, I have people in my life I can count on— so 50% definitely agree, almost 40% somewhat agree.

That's quite a few that agree.

So that's like 90% that say they have somebody in their life they can count on. Well, in some ways, if they've met that need, it lessened the need to do it in the neighborhood, you know what I mean? Because they're meeting that family friend.

So, Mayor, I had this discussion just 2 hours ago, and the problem I'll say on that one is I may need it— not need that neighbor, but that neighbor might need me because they have to be over here somewhere or over here somewhere. And so, so I'm right with you on what you're saying. And I think it's very rational that many of us with our family connections, especially in Utah County, we have our— you have the kids and the cousins, whatever, nearby.

That's very rational.

But my point, Roger, once again in my business is, but how do I deal with these people? And I will even say that some would agree it's not an overly strong endorsement of the state. I first looked at the same way you did, saying Well, that's pretty powerful. I now, as I spend some focus groups afterwards, realize I should be worried about everything over here. But great point, you bring up a great point on this here. So what we're really saying is that building neighborhood attachment saves kids and saves communities, etc., lowers crime, the whole bit. There's so much that we can be doing to build neighborhood attachment.

Sorry to interrupt, but to your point, About Neighborhood Attachment Saves Kids. I mean, your earlier number was like 30% of the kids didn't feel attached to their neighborhood. So within that age group of kids, they're very disconnected from the neighborhood.

Absolutely, very disconnected from the neighborhood. We know the research also says that the more adults that know a child's name, the more likely they are to succeed. So creating this collective community is essential. We're telling people we've got to do a greater job of connecting. We also are saying that our data seems to show that we've got to tell neighbors they can count on us. So my one push I tell all of you is tell your neighbors they can count on you. Um, and we need more people involved. We need to change the needle of which way we're directing here. And I'm just saying, and I'm going to give a very simple growth thing, is if we don't start addressing some of these needs, we're going to— the problem's going to get bigger with growth. I'm gonna slip to the very end here. Um, my simple thing that I'm trying to tell people is when we think of growth, everyone thinks of only this, and I want us to think of this. I want us to keep thinking about what is growth doing for our kids, for the next generation. So in summary, what I'm saying is we really have to do a better job collectively. I did this presentation All over the county, and the data is countywide data, but we know there are things that we can do in our neighborhoods to increase connection and strengthen kids. We know that creating design— you're referencing creating design that creates points of triangulation. Anyone familiar with the concept of point of triangulation? Simple way of describing that is in your office, people stop and talk at the coffee machine and the drinking fountain. In neighborhoods, they stop where? The mailbox?

Park.

And most— and parks, in particular places in parks, at the bench, whatever. So creating places of triangulation where people have a chance to interact is one of the solutions for it. That's both a design issue of space, and it's also a design issue of programming and services. So my final plea to you here is, as community leaders, is Let's work together to increase community engagement so we really can support the children in our community. Otherwise, we've been heading in the wrong direction on all these data points. I've taken my half an hour way over time, but any other questions you have for me?

So my question is, what, what things are you doing to address this? Are you having neighborhood picnics, neighbor, you know, meet a cop?

So we do that in Norma, but I think what is United Way?

We're trying to create a series of community centers. We have one in Provo right now. We have some tentative ones in Lehi. We'd love to do one here in Provo, in Orem, that brings neighbors together and has neighbors own it. We'd love to see that. We're also just trying to do more— we're trying to do more giving people permission to engage with their neighbors. We have to sometimes, as leaders, remind people it's okay to engage with your neighbor. Thank you all.

Appreciate seeing you all.

If you want more data, we've got tons of data. We'll have a printed volume, 2 volumes, about this thick of this data. happy to share with you.

So can you send that out?

Be happy to. I will send you the PowerPoint you've got right now. When we get the bigger version, I'll send you— I'll get you a couple copies of the book. And if you can have something digital that you can send, we can do that when we get that finished publishing. But we're, we're slow on our data because the census was so slow this year.

But Bill, if you want to just share that electronically with me or with Brynn, we can make sure the council gets a copy.

My point on all this is we can do something about it. We can reconnect people with neighborhoods, and that's what's going to change our communities throughout the county. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Let's move on to, uh, Sam Kelly and Sarah Sutherland.

Sarah is here with some of the representatives of the Utah Water Conservancy District. They're going to come present a little bit on Reach 2A. I don't know, you guys got so many acronyms.

It's a big pipeline they're looking to put on.

They're going to—

and they're—

we're going to have a public meeting next week. They are in the process of their environmental process to clear the actual alignment, and Sarah's here just to To briefly get you guys up to speed on those alignments and any questions you guys have.

I think, Mayor and Council, we shared with you earlier this year that this essentially project was in process. Now we're getting closer. Now we're going through and holding meetings, and we just want to make sure that you're familiar with this proposal because obviously it's going to impact the neighborhood. A neighborhood, it's going to impact residents. Yeah, Bill just talked about all of the new growth and residents. We're trying to provide water and keep water for that growth and future residents.

Like Sam mentioned, Sarah Sutherland, she's our Environmental Programs Manager at Central Utah Water.

She's—

she'll be talking a little bit today about some of the public outreach that we've made on this project. Chris Alisson is over here. Chris is the project manager, so he's involved in all the engineering and construction details of the project. And then Casey Shaw in the back of the room. We'd love to have Casey and Chris join us if they want, or they can stay in the back of the room. But Casey's been very involved on city issues as a member of the Public Works Advisory Commission. He's also a deputy general manager at Central Utah Water, and so he's Great to have him here with us. And I'm Mike Whitby. I'm the Chief Engineer at Central Utah Water. I'll be talking a little bit about the background and the need for the project, and then Sarah, like I said, will be talking about the public outreach that's been occurring on the project. Central Utah Water Conservancy District, our office, like you know, we moved from over by Krispy Kreme Donuts to the mouth of the canyon. We are a water wholesaler, so we provide water from the mountains to the cities. We don't have retail connections, so we don't sell to individual households or businesses, but rather to the cities everywhere from all up and down the Wasatch Front. A lot of people mistakenly call us the CUP. The CUP is a project that we operate. The Central Utah Project is the large project diverting water out of the Colorado River Basin from the Green River over into the Bonneville Basin. But Central Utah Water is much more than just the CUP.

That is one component of it.

This map shows all of our facilities. Begins with dams and reservoirs and pipelines clear out in the eastern part of Utah, brings that water across through a series of diversions and pipelines and tunnels to various reservoirs, including Strawberry Reservoir, and then pipelines that bring it down Diamond Fork Canyon, Smash Fork Canyon, all the way to the mouth of Provo Canyon. So we can get water here at the mouth of Provo Canyon from Strawberry Reservoir, water that normally would go down to the Colorado River.

River.

We also operate a large water delivery system here in Utah County, the former Geneva Steel property. A lot of you are familiar with that. We provide water through that system to Vineyard City, Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs, Salt Lake County. Anyway, so that's a little bit of background on the water district. Today we're going to talk about the Alpine Aqueduct Reach 1. This is right at the mouth of Provo Canyon. This is a graphic that shows how congested this area is in terms of water delivery infrastructure. There are multiple pipelines that serve not only Utah County and Orem City, but large portions of Salt Lake County, both the east side of Salt Lake County through the Salt Lake Aqueduct, the west side of Salt Lake County through the Jordan and Alpine Aqueducts. And the large red section there shown in the center of the schematic here is the Alpine Aqueduct, and I know this is not a Google Map, but just for reference, this is in the Cascade Golf Course area, Todd Peterson's property, as well as through the residential neighborhood up there to the east of that former golf course area. And feel free if you have questions or whatever along the way to let us know. But here's another— yes?

I'm just curious, like, I'm new to all this, but why is there water all the way from So his—

so normally as a kid, I would always drive to Salt Lake, going up over the point of the mountain felt like I was rising in elevation, but the flow of water naturally is down the Provo River, Utah Lake, down the Jordan River to Great Salt Lake, so the basin flows that way anyway.

Oh cool.

A lot of our early settlers settled at the mouth of the canyons on the eastern slopes of the Wasatch Front. Primarily for that reason. There's water supplies, there's springs coming out of those canyons, but as the growth extended out to the west, we had to go searching for, for water that wasn't just coming out of the limited sources at the mouth of the canyons. And so that's where these aqueducts bring water, like I said, clear from eastern Utah over and are providing water for all of our communities, including Powell West, Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs.

Cool, thank you.

So this graphic, the light blue line is the Orozoros-Alta Springs Pipeline, the purple or magenta line is the Solik Aqueduct, the black line is the Alpine Aqueduct, the facility that we operate, and the yellow is the former Murdock Canal or Provo River Aqueduct that runs down into north.

Oh, jumped a little bit too fast there.

And once again, just for reference, this is the service area of the Alpine Aqueduct.

Over 1.5 million people receive water through this critical facility that comes right through the corner of our city here.

These aqueducts, during the last legislative session, are starting to receive a lot of attention. A lot of these aqueducts are reaching their end of life. They also, in many cases, are running through geological difficult areas where they're very susceptible to failure during earthquakes as well as landslides, so that over the past year, several years, it's starting to garner a lot more attention statewide and from our legislature, because it really— the only reason we're all here is because of water. If we don't have the water, then everything ceases. So it is very critical infrastructure.

These—

I don't recall the name of this neighborhood up here.

Maybe someone from the city can help me, but it's the neighborhood that's there just above Mama Chu's.

Culver States.

Culver States.

So this is a photo.

So we've had numerous failures in this area. Fortunately, we haven't had any disastrous failures in the last several years. These failures always seem to happen on weekends, holidays, nights, whatever. But we did have one in 2000.

Mike, can you speak to the diameter of the pipe just so everybody has an understanding?

Yeah, so 90-inch through here, the tallest The tunnel and the pipeline is about 90-inch diameter, so the way we inspect these pipelines is on bicycles quite frequently. So very large diameter pipelines are not what we normally think of in terms of an 8-inch pipe in our street. So there is one segment you can see here in the photo that's— in about 2000, we replaced a section where the land was actually moving underneath it. That's the above-ground section. with all the arrows pointing to it. These failures occurred before that happened in this particular area, but the 2017 slide that's shown up on the upper right, where we had a large movement of landmass and was really critical to our facility, is continuing to put our facility in extreme, extreme risk. A couple more photos of the landslide that occurred there above Mama Chu's and some of the failures. A lot of these failures that occur catastrophic in terms of shearing off the entire volume of the pipe, but they can cause significant damage as the pipe separates. In one case there on the top left, it completely saturated the land until the land slid. And this is the 2017 landslide that occurred up on the— Casey said this was hole 16. Is it really hole 16? Hole 16.

Hole 16.

So those of you that— it's a little bit— Goliath, the course, is more different now than shown here in the photos. We had to come in, and as you can see in these photos, the land actually rippled up, the grass and the surface rippled up where our pipeline was essentially serving as a buttress holding the hillside, which is not sustainable long term. We did go in and remediate this temporarily with a berm or buttress to help prevent that, but all of this is crossing through a very geological complex area. Including the existence of a large landslide. So the area that's outlined in yellow delineates the boundaries of this large landslide complex that exists in the area. Within that large landslide complex, there's numerous smaller landslides that are occurring, such as the one that I just showed you from 2017. In addition to the landslides, there's of course the Wasatch Fault that runs along the mouth of the There's multiple fault strands that the pipeline runs across near the Cobas Estates neighborhood. What we're, what we're trying to do with this facility is make it not be the weak link in the chain. And so I won't get into details of this, but basically the facility that we're referring to is the top one that you can see is rated as high risk for all of these risk categories. And so we're trying to improve it to make it not be the weak link in the chain. We're using international, national standards for classification of these facilities. Basically, this is a very highly critical facility and doesn't meet the performance criteria. We look, we've looked at the vertical displacement that we would expect to occur in the event of a large earthquake. We think that in that area, some of those faults will displace 12 to 16 feet, and so there's very complicated design efforts, complications that we'll need to consider when we approach the design to make sure that we're putting a very secure pipeline.

Can I ask the question on funding?

Is this through property taxes? Because, you know, yeah, you're part of property taxes if you look at it.

We are pretty correct. Yeah, yeah, we had a hearing last night.

Yeah.

And, uh, but yeah, Casey could speak to that. He looks a little bruised up today. That's why. But But yes, we are pursuing BRIC funding, the Building Resilient Infrastructure federal funding. We're pursuing federal funding options. We expect this to be in the range of $50 to $75 million project, and so we're pursuing federal funding options, but a large portion of it will be through our property tax revenues. So in 2017, we had the failure. The next year, 2018-19, we began doing investigations. We wanted to consider all options. What options can we do to improve this facility and make it reliable well into the future? We looked at options going underneath the landslide, around the landslide, over the landslide, and through that we determined what options were most viable. And this just shows a highlight of the 15 different options that we considered. We then applied evaluation criteria such as reliability, repairability, O&M, environmental impacts, and constructability issues to those various options and came up with a preferred 4 options to carry further into additional evaluation.

I do have another question.

What is the life cycle of this?

Is this a 50-year will last pipe, or is this, uh, have to replace it in 50 to 75 years is typically the lifespan for these type of pipelines, and this original pipeline was put in in 1978. We have better information now regarding seismic design than they had back then, and so we would expect the replacement pipeline to have a lifespan of 50 to 75 years.

Okay.

At least.

So like I said, we came up with our highest-ranked options. From those, we did additional investigations, drilling, coordinated with the city to do some drilling on— to do some sounding on the public street up there at the top end of that neighborhood. Also coordinated with Peterson, Todd Peterson, to go in and do some drilling and evaluate these different options and see if tunnel was even a viable option. From that, we came out with a preferred Alignment alternative, and it turns out it's not through the landslide or under the landslide, it's around the landslide. Unfortunately, that neighborhood is developed right up to the toe of the landslide, and so there's no way for us to get around the landslide without impacting residents and neighbors of this area. So, so the preferred option— there are some variations within the neighborhood area, it's going down 1060 North, which is a very nice street, nice neighborhood.

We did—

Sarah will talk a little more about public outreach, but we had a meeting with the public, um, November. November, but I'll let her talk too much about that. But, but so yeah, so this is a schematic of what this construction might look like. It's a very large 180-inch diameter pipeline. There are city utilities that we'd have to work with the city to relocate in terms of sewer and water lines to be able to get down this street.

This is on 1360 East where we would turn north before we cut across the golf course.

I have another question. What's your construction time period you think this is going to be?

So total project would be about 2 years. Any given street or area, we would, we would It would be our objective to get through within a single summer season. This is a similar, albeit much smaller pipeline. This is a 48-inch diameter pipeline that we put in and did this project actually jointly with the city to replace some storm drain on 1000 East.

This was about 8 years ago, I believe, or maybe a little bit longer than that.

So there are impacts to the residents. We try to minimize those impacts and communicate well with them what is happening, but it impacts the neighborhood pretty significantly. Another picture of near the Murdock Canal where that pipeline turns the corner.

So, Mike, just so that I understand, for perspective purposes, if we need to accommodate a 108-inch diameter pipe plus all of the local utilities, we're talking about essentially taking entire street sections out of service for extended periods of time, right?

Curb to curb.

Yeah, it's not like we can do work on half the street and provide access to the other half. This looks pretty dramatic.

It is, it is significant. There obviously is a lot of coordination coordination that needs to take place with our— how we set up our contract with the contractor regarding emergency access. We heard a lot about that from neighbors. Obviously, not being able to pull in your vehicle to your driveway is a huge impact on them.

Yeah.

And so we would coordinate to, you know, typically when a contractor finishes up on a job like this, each day they're trying to— it may not be paved access, but restore some kind of access, driving access, Depending on, you know, some of the neighbors might trade in their Teslas for GMCs or something.

So Jamie, on that too, the services will not discontinue.

People will still be able to have water flush the toilets, but they will be taken care of in a separate, separate way, separate method, perhaps versus a pump bypass or something along those lines. Nobody will be displaced. But I also wanted to mention that 60% of our drinking water comes through the Alpine Aqua Bridge Farm. And so I think Mike mentioned that that provides water to over a million people in the Wasatch Front, and that's 60% of our drinking water for the city of Orem. So this is— without this system, we wouldn't be able to access any water derived from the Provo River. coming from Deer Creek Reservoir or Jordanelle Reservoir or any of our other sources in the county. So this is vital for us and our success. I appreciate that. My only point in making those comments was this is an extra— this would be an extraordinary project outside of the realm of what we do. It would require significant sacrifice and commitment on the part of neighbors that live alongside this. It's very impactful. And how big of pieces would be out? You said—

So typically a contract would be limited to 200 or 300 feet, so he might be in front of 2 to 3 homes at a time. Typically these pipe sections would probably come in 20-foot lengths. Smaller pipeline, it's 40 feet, but this size would be 20 feet. We did do a similar project to this. You can see here from where the purple pipeline exits the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon, probably about 5 to 8 years ago, we ran that pipeline north through Mapleton, which is a little more rural, but then we got into Provo City, Springville, Provo City, ran right around the MTC coming down and then down University Avenue. So some of you may remember I remember seeing that, but yeah, it's, it's a significant community-wide effort.

So you said it's about 100 to 150 feet long?

The trench would be open at any given time, it could be 200 to 300 feet typically, potentially a football field.

Yeah, right. And then, and then how long would that go on for? How long will the trench be?

Probably 3 weeks.

So people just park at the end of it and walk to their house.

We did, uh, we met with Todd Peterson last week and, uh, or had a good meeting with him to discuss some of the impacts to his property and how he would like to see it maybe better accommodate through his property for his future plans. So we are coordinating with him. We also— Well, Sarah, I'll let Sarah get into now.

So this is—

so big picture-wise, we would be— we're finishing up an environmental assessment process right now that Sarah will talk about, and then we'll be about a year of design and then looking to go into construction for about a 2-year construction window around the middle of 2024 through 2026.

And Sarah will talk about some of the outreach and public involvement efforts.

So like Mike said, I'm the Environmental Programs Manager of the District. Much of our facilities, anything that's referred to as CUP, our federal projects, federal pipelines. And so anytime we're doing— dealing with our federal projects, we have to go through the National Environmental Policy Act. So we've been doing that. We're doing an environmental assessment for this project, which we began last fall. And we— back in the fall, we met with some of the Orem City staff to give them a heads up of, hey, we're starting this project. And then we came and met with you guys, the City Council, back in November. And we met with a representative of the Canyon Cove neighborhood just to give them a heads up of this is coming and we need to discuss this. We wanted to make sure that they were involved and engaged really early on with this process. We met with Commissioner Bill Lee, we met with Senator Mike Kennedy, and then we had engagement with other federal institutions. state agencies. On November 30th, we had our public scoping meeting, held that at our office and probably had 30 of the residents show up, which is a pretty good turnout for a public meeting. Had good conversations with them. And with that, we have a public comment period that was open for 30 days for them to give us their initial concerns and thoughts with the project. So as we went into the analysis process, we knew what their concerns were to make sure that we could analyze those. So as a result, we received 11 comments from the public. This is their main concerns. They were concerned about, hey, picking out the pipe alignment, the construction timeline and process, their accessibility to homes, which makes sense, safety due to pipe rupture— what does that do to them, what does that do to their houses— and safety with construction of We've got kids running around here, and how are you going to keep our kids safe? The right-of-way process— this will be a federal right-of-way, so what does that process look like? Ongoing maintenance, those disruptions that could cause them grief through the years, and then groundwater issues. They were concerned about that. So as Mike pointed out on a different slide, this is our— as we went through the environmental assessment process, We kept that preferred alternative alignment that Mike showed earlier. Again, just trying to avoid that landslide that compounds the issues that we have with the Wasatch Fault. There's no way to get around that Wasatch Fault. But if we can cross the Wasatch Fault without also having the complications of that landslide, there's an increased benefit and resiliency to this project. So this is in the draft environmental assessment. assessment, the preferred alternative that we have carried forward. On the east end of that, we've got 3 variations that we've also analyzed, which give us— as we get into design, we can at that point decide which is going to work best with these variations. Blue, dark green, and lighter green are all tunnels. The red variation would be a surface construction that would be covered by concrete, but it would be a surface pipeline. Our preferred is the blue tunnel option.

Just to clarify too, this is east of the landslide, so this is an area that's already primarily coming from a tunnel from inside the mouth of the canyon out to the, to the Canyon Cove Estates neighborhood. So this is on the east end, it's not the landslide area that we're Needing to jog around for these tunnels.

Yeah, these variations keep us out of landslide and keep us on the east side of the Wasatch Fault lines. The red dashed lines are that Wasatch Fault, the splay of the Wasatch Fault. Our goal is to cross those fault lines as quickly and with a short amount of pipe as possible to deal with those issues. So Again, the draft environmental assessment is out for public review and comment right now. There's a 30-day comment period which ends— so we opened it August 9th, we will close that comment period September 9th. We always continue to accept comments if they come in later than that. We've made a large effort to make sure that we're communicating far and wide to the public. We send out 250 postcards to that whole neighborhood that sits just south of this pipeline. We want to make sure again that they are engaged, involved, and they have an opportunity to provide us their concerns. We've made posts on Facebook and Twitter and in your city newsletter. We're announcing a public information meeting on August 30th where the public can— hopefully they've spent a little time looking at the draft environmental assessment, reviewing, you know, the document that we've put together, and then can come to that meeting with questions and concerns, and then again provide us more comments if we haven't addressed something, if they've got new ideas that we haven't seen before, things that we can address as we move into a final environmental assessment. So we'll close the comment period September 9th, take those comments that we receive, analyze those, and move into a final assessment and hopefully a decision document. If we can reach a decision document to move forward, forward, then I hand it back over to Mike and he starts his design process. So that's the NEPA end of this, if you've got any questions on that.

Maybe if you could, I know some of the conversation is going to center on, well, why don't you bring the pipeline off the hill and run it down 800 North, for example? rather than through the neighborhoods.

Can you—

and I know that was part of the discussion under consideration—

can you speak to why that isn't necessarily part of your preferred alternative?

I can. That was— one of the residents suggested that alignment of bring it down Mama Chews to 800 North and then take it back up. Um, and so we considered that and looked at the issues with that. Part of one of the problems is where it sits coming down Mama Chews, it sits on west side of that Wasatch Fault line, and our geologic guys have explained that if that pipe ruptures on the west side the way the fault will rupture, you're going to have significant damage all along that length of the pipe coming down Mollenchuse Road, where if we can bring it down the east side, it stays level as that— I'm not using good geologic terms. But the other critical issue with that is bringing on 800 North. We've got 3 other pipelines that are part of this regional water delivery facility that run on 800 North. So if we have an earthquake and one of those pipelines ruptures, odds are good it also wipes out the other 2 pipelines. And now you've not just severed part of the water delivery system, you've severed a significant amount of water delivery to all of the Wasatch Front. So that was our reason we weren't comfortable carrying that alternative forward.

Question, so in the service, I guess we're confident that that landslide area is not going to move any farther to the east, is contained to Where it is.

We're not confident of that. In fact, in an earthquake, we expect it will move. It's really hard to do any exact—

The area that you're designating as the area that you're trying to avoid with— without an earthquake, we're confident that that will be contained to that area? Or is that something we're just kind of rolling the dice and hoping that it doesn't get bigger?

Well, we don't expect it to move down to 1060 North. Where the exact toe is, our geologic field experts have gone out and looked at that. It's a little bit difficult to determine because of the development that's occurred there to know exactly where the interface is, but we think it's pretty close to the edge of that subdivision. And so, so no, we think we've given enough of a buffer that the amount of movement even under a A large landslide would not impact this facility. But we do expect that landslide—

Even to the east, right? Even before the neighbors where you're proposing to bring the pipe down, to the east of that where the landslide currently is, so where you're proposing to bring the pipe down, is there a concern? I mean, I know you've probably looked at all of this, but I'm I'm just asking a question.

Is this the area that you're referring to?

Yes.

So that we can see the area where the landslide is, but it looks like it's just not that far to the east where the pipe would be. So that's on a very steep hillside. It almost looks like that landslide just cut those hills. So is that right? You can almost— is that right on the peak of the mountain where the landslide is?

Where it—

on the mountain on the west side?

On the west side, you can go out and go, that's the landslide.

And we're vertically far enough up that hillside that we're, we're out of the zone of the influence of the landslide.

You mentioned that you're going to send out, or you sent out postcards to 250 homes. How many homes do you think you'll impact in this whole process?

Is that a number Oh, it's less than 20.

Yeah, it's, it's 1060 North, which happens to be a pretty, uh, you know, there's, there's lots of homes on that street. I don't know, 30, 20, 30 homes on that street.

So is that all you're really talking is impacting 30 homes through this whole process?

Yeah, the residents there on 1060 North, and then Quite a bit of private property with Todd Peterson. A large portion of the property that he owns.

So the impact to the city will be limited, it sounds like, if it's 30 homes or whatever.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, we, uh, we appreciate the relationship that we have with the city. We work with city staff, Chris and his folks, quite often, and Jamie. We appreciate the relationship. That's why we want to coordinate plenty with you, because we know that as public servants, you'll be the people that will probably hear about it from those residents. And so we just want to make sure that we're providing all the information available so that nobody gets surprised by anything. There will be a significant impact, even though it's only 30. significant impact to those 30. We understand that. We'll, you know, we do things, you know, like I mentioned, at night we try to— we will make attempts to have our contractor restore access, but it might be dirt road access. And so, you know, in other projects we've provided car wash passes or just something to outreach to the neighbors to, to, uh, you know, help mitigate somewhat the impacts.

Yeah. So, okay, does anyone else have any questions?

If anybody would like to ride a bicycle in a pipeline, just contact me or Sarah. We'll accommodate that.

Tom?

Yeah.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

Appreciate your time.

Next, we've got Reed Price from Public Works.

All right, Mayor and Council, appreciate this opportunity to sit in front of you today to discuss some changes that we're seeking your endorsement of as we try to improve our operations at our wastewater treatment plant. The topics that we'll be discussing today are a pretreatment ordinance and also local limits changes. They're probably foreign terms to you, so as we go through this, I hope to clarify what these, what these programs and the ordinance would do. So first of all, pretreatment. What is pretreatment? Well, at the At the wastewater treatment plant, we have a group, the pretreatment group, and their responsibility is to monitor industry and restaurants around the city to make sure that they're not sending pollutants our direction that could be harmful to us. The pretreatment program is a federally required program, and it's used to control and reduce the amount of pollutants that are released into the environment. Now, the pretreatment program only focuses on industrial users. That's who we regulate. They're the ones that are most likely to put pollutants that could really disrupt our operations into the sewer system. That's why it's federally regulated. Residences are not regulated. We don't go and sample and make sure that no one's putting anything that's harmful down into the sewer system. That doesn't mean they can do it. It is still against the law to do that. If we did have problems and we were able to track it back to somebody, then they would be in trouble.

It's our phantom dumper.

That's kind of a phantom dumper saga that we had a few years ago. So the pretreatment program, it's designed to protect our POTW as well as the collection system. Simply stated, the program is designed to reduce pollution at the source, protecting the environment and extending the life of power infrastructure. If they don't put it in, it's not going to harm us. So what are we proposing? There's 2 things that we, that we're looking for guidance from the City Council today. First of all, we want a standalone pre-trial ordinance in the city, and then we also need to update Our local limits. I know you're asking, what's local limits?

We're getting to that.

Let's first of all talk about the pretreatment ordinance. Again, pretreatment is a federally required program. Right now, those regulations are embedded in Chapter 20 of Orem City Code. It's not in one real simple location. Our request is to take that out and put it all together to consolidate it and keep it into, into one area. So what we're primarily suggesting is we're doing a housekeeping, a housekeeping effort. Take the pretreatment information from Chapter 20 and put it into an area where it's consolidated and easy to read and understand and follow. By doing this, we'll be following the state's model ordinance. They have a recommended ordinance that we— that municipalities can use, and you can adopt it, tweak it, modify it to fit your municipality's characteristics. And so we've chosen to do that and work with the state closely as we've done that. By doing so, it will simplify our reporting process, and by doing so, it shouldn't— it shouldn't cause any concerns because the code already exists in Chapter 20. We're just taking it out and, and making it clearer, so there shouldn't be any concerns from industrial users. Food service businesses aren't considered industrial users. They're food services, and they would still continue to be regulated, however, under a different section. There's different, easier things that we don't monitor as many things with restaurants, but they are a concern to us because they can do damage to our systems, and so we do regulate that. PRE-treatment programs required to be reviewed and approved by DEQ. They come and look at our program and make sure that we're following the permits that we issue to our industrial users. Because we're taking pretreatment out of Chapter 20, we are going through a revision of Chapter 20 as well, so you get to hear from me again at some point in the future.

So you have that to look forward to. You should know ahead of time. That's why Renee's not here.

She's on the PWAC, she knows all this stuff, just like you, Tom, a former member of the PWAC. Let's get into local limits. So local limits defines the amount of a certain pollutant that's allowed in wastewater. Are discharged by certain industrial users. So we can take some pollutants, however, we can't take a lot. So what local limits does is it says, okay, Orem, you could— we expect you to be able to treat a certain amount of pollutants, and you can take that amount and allow the industrial users to give you a small amount. And so We are here to say, to show you what the new levels will be. We've had them in the past, we've done the study with an engineering firm, taken samples, and we know what our treatment plant can handle, and we've developed a concentration which we will then set as that limit. We'll get into that in just a little bit. But each— whenever we go get a new permit for our wastewater treatment plant, we're supposed to review the local limits and make sure that they reflect what our treatment plant is able to treat. This is— this is—

Do we have any large polluters here?

No, we— it's really not a huge concern for us. But we have to do it to make sure that if anybody does come in, you've got policies and procedures.

Is it generally a manufacturing sort of byproduct?

I'll let Giles So to answer your question, yes, it's, um, mostly manufacturing.

Warren doesn't have a lot right now in our categorical.

We have 12 that are permitted. We have 6 that are zero discharge. They still have to be permitted. And then, uh, on top of that, we have 96 automotive that are also permitted.

So why local limits? Local limits do the following. First of all, they address specific concerns related to toxic pollutants that can disrupt our operations at the treatment plant. And if it disrupts our operations, we'll likely violate our permit.

We don't want to do that.

It also collect— it also protects the collection system. from corrosion, plugging, treatment interference, and inhibition, and it also protects our workers as they're out in the field and the public at large. How are they developed? First of all, we need to— we determine what pollutants are we concerned about. The EPA has done that for 15 of them. They tell us you need to monitor these 15. Okay, thank you very much. We've also looked and tried to identify ones that we feel can be disruptive, things that we've learned from industry that you should probably monitor, you should probably regulate this. And the next slide will show you what, what additional pollutants that we will monitor. So we determine what they are. Next, we do some sampling to see what's coming in our plant and then what's going out. That gives us an idea of what our treatment plant can treat. And then that amount There's, there's some, there's some safety factors. We get some people that understand this a lot better than we do, engineering firm that runs the numbers and tells us what our local limits should be. So we calculate how much the treatment facility can handle, then we take that amount and tell industry that this is what you're able to discharge. So the 15 national pollutants of concern from the EPA are listed on the screen. You'll recognize some of them, and arsenic, oh yeah, we don't want that. Mercury, yeah, we know that's dangerous. Heavy metals, we don't want those. We've also chosen to regulate other pollutants of concern, including pH, which can cause corrosion in our collection system, so we try— we want to Make sure that pH is low— I mean, sorry, is neutral at 7. We've also chosen to add phosphorus, which you're familiar with the Utah Lake issues. If we can keep people from putting phosphorus in the water, we don't have to take it out. So we're recommending putting a local limit on for phosphorus.

Question, isn't that in the fertilizer?

Yes.

So how do we do that?

Fertilizers go on our lawns, and so we are primarily— the wastewater treatment plant's concerned primarily with everything that's wastewater flow that's going down the drain. So, but you're right, fertilizers, agricultural use of fertilizers is a large contributor to phosphorus, which makes its way to the lake eventually. Side discussion, but it gets there a different way than what we're doing, than what we can have an impact on.

I'm curious, what's contributing to the phosphorus in that, that you're specifically concerned about?

It could be detergents that they use in industry. It just depends.

We—

what our role is to say, industry, we can't have you putting phosphorus into the system. Then we will sample them, and if they do it, we say, you have phosphorus, you're not supposed to, you're in violation. And then we work with them to figure out where it's coming from, and then they stop putting it into the system.

Okay, great. Because I'm just thinking of the bathroom, like larger manufacturing facilities. I work at one and there's almost 100 people that work there. That's a lot of people using the bathroom.

Most detergents, most detergents have— they've been required to remove phosphorus.

Terry's point, and this is something that obviously we've talked a lot about, focus on the algae blooms and such has been residential, or I guess you could say human use, but really it's agriculture that's contributing in a very significant way to these phosphorus numbers, and we need to make sure that there's consideration there. So we can't solve the phosphorus problem of Utah Lake by just regulating treatment facilities. It's got to be something much different. Exactly right.

An additional pollutant is aluminum, which is a metal, and then phenol, which is a toxic chemical that, that can be found in wastewater as well. The current local limits that we have, you'll see on the left in yellow, it shows the concentrations that are currently in place. They're expressed in a concentration of milligrams per liter. The new ones that we're proposing, after working with the, with the engineering firm to do the sampling as the water comes in the plant, as it goes out, and help us determine how much we can allocate to industry, those new concentrations are found on the right. Red numbers indicate that they decreased, and a decrease means it's a little more strict. So you can see that in aluminum, it went from 83.1, our recommendation is 74.91. Total chromium was 0.73, it will be 0.39. Molybdenum, you just had to test before, now we know that limit should be 0.26. Cyanide— no, sorry, phenol is new. It's We didn't test. That's one that I said that we would. We are recommending a 2.0 TSS dropped, as did ammonia, and then we've added the phosphorus.

The green and red tell us which direction they're going?

Correct.

So arsenic's going up?

Yes.

So we can, we can handle a little more.

This engineer Ralph has read—

is this a Who's in?

He's not here. He didn't just pull these out of thin air. How do you come up with these? So, or she, if you're okay. Sure. Um, I have data going back to 2010 when Orem upgraded the treatment plant and put in, uh, their oxidation ditch, the newest one. I sample for all of these 4 times a year. I sample on influent, effluent. You work for Orem City? So we sample for this on influent and effluent. I also sample the biosolids, so I know what's going out in biosolids. Based on the removal efficiencies, I can move these numbers up and down. The treatment plant is doing better at removing some of these constituents. Gotcha. Thank you.

So what your question is going to be, what— how does this affect industry? Are we going to get industry that's mad at us? For making these changes. This should not be a concern for our existing industrial users. Nobody will violate based on these changes. If— when they are adopted, new users, if a large industry came to us and said, hey, we're setting up shop, they would have to meet those limits right away. Anybody that's existing would have 60 days to comply.

But they would face that no matter where they would locate, right? This is not just an Orem problem. Correct.

So all treatment plants have this, right? But they've— their treatment plant can handle those pollutants different, uh, more efficiently or less efficiently, so they have to calculate their own local limits and determine what they're allowed to give to industry.

What I'm saying, it probably wouldn't be an anti-business thing because no matter where they went, they would have the same.

So it's part of doing business. They would have to know this.

That's right.

Yeah, this, this, this is not— does not come as a shock to the ones that have been here because we've done this about every 5 years anyway. So, um, Giles mentioned that we have 12 current significant industrial users, 6 of which have zero discharge, and then we have 96 auto places that are permitted.

Is that mostly oils and coolants and that kind of stuff?

Yep.

So has this ever been an issue for anyone? Have you ever shut anybody down because of this?

No, we've— there have been violations. When it happens, we approach them and say, hey, we've got a problem, what Let's figure it out.

We went back for 5 years to verify the data. The industries that you're seeing up there are required to submit sampling to us so we can verify their numbers. We went back for 5 years, we noted 3 industries that actually had a violation. It was a violation because it was magnitudes higher than these numbers. They got something in the water. Other than that, None of them are having any problems.

We've been working closely with DEQ to review the proposed changes to the ordinance as well as the local limits. They've endorsed them. The process is work with DEQ. When we're comfortable, come to the city council and say, this is what our plan is, seek your endorsement. You're not approving anything, we're just informing you. And you're giving us a thumbs up. Okay, looks good to us. Next thing that we do is we work with the attorneys to provide the ordinance, the local limits, that information to the state, which then goes out to public comment. And the public has 30 days to respond, just like the Central Utah Water Conservancy District was doing through their NEPA process. We give the public an opportunity to, to let us know what they're concerned about. During that time, we'll reach out to the industrial users that we have and let them know that they have an opportunity to comment on that. We'll receive those comments back. We'll reply to them. If there are concerns, it's likely a misunderstanding, and it's just a matter of us needing to educate them on what we're doing and why. Once we are comfortable with that, we've addressed the comments that we've received, then we will come back to you in a regular session to ask you to formally adopt the pretreatment ordinance and the local limits. So that's the path moving forward. We would invite you to discuss amongst yourself, say, yeah, we're comfortable, go ahead and let's get to the public comment period, and we'll— we will work with the state to get that, that process going. So any questions for us?

So do you want us to do that?

Now, yeah, it's not— he can do that just as a work session thumbs up. There's no formal action taken, but we just need to be able to report to the state that we discussed this with the city council, they endorsed what we're doing. Let's go ahead and open it up to the public.

Does anyone have any questions, concerns, problems with any of this? Sounds good. I think it's pretty straightforward. So I think we endorse you moving forward with it.

Okay, we will take it to the state and we'll be back at a future date for formal adoption, and we'll let you know how the process went, any concerns that were had, how we addressed them.

Okay, great. May I ask you a question that's not related to the chemicals, but a piece of property that the city owns by the plant that's come up in topics, conversation with people have interest in what's going to happen with the— what do you call it—

we have a piece of land there. Do we have—

is that something we have future plans for?

Uh, you're talking about one that's west of the golf course?

Yeah.

That goes— basically touches the lake and comes— I don't believe we have any plans other than keeping it, keeping it open.

Part of the major master plan where we look at where it's blocked out for some reason. No, we've actually had conversations with the, well, the engineers that have been hired by the Utah Lake Authority to use that space as a trailhead.

Yeah.

The concern and the disagreement we're having is they want us to essentially use the property and then build it and maintain it. And our response is, well, we're happy to let let the state use this property or the county use this property, but the improvements there are improvements that need to be paid for and maintained by, for example, Utah County that's maintaining the entire trail system.

Thank you for your time. Sam's next, I guess.

Okay, thank you. Yes, next we'll have Sam Kelly. Uh, thank you.

I'm here to give you a brief little background on a resolution that's being proposed Proposed for your approval at— for consent as a consent item. What it is, is it's an interlocal agreement that we're going to have with Utah County for a MAG-funded project.

The project is the 16th North/400 East Intersection Improvement Project.

Here's a current aerial of the intersection as it stands right now. A little bit of background, back in 2018, we brought forward this project to MAG. for the TIP selection. This was a proposal that we had put together for that TIP selection process. We had hired a consultant at the time. They felt like the best way to improve the safety of that intersection was with building a roundabout. This was a concept that was put together for that.

Could you expand on the safety problem that they're trying to— Is it mostly for cyclists?

So there's a few things there. One, there's the Vermont Canal Trail, where you have a lot of active transportation use, both with cyclists and peds. And there's also— it's a fairly busy intersection with both the vehicular traffic. Mainly what we're trying to do is address how we could safely eliminate the conflicts with peds and vehicles, and be able to have a an intersection that had higher compliance. Right now, what you have is the way the signals are set up, it's in coordination. I think that has since been changed, but you'll have pedestrians, mainly cyclists and joggers, who will come up that intersection. There's enough gaps, meaning that there's gaps in groups of traffic, and instead of waiting for that ped signal to turn and allow them to walk, they'll go ahead and jaywalk. So what they're trying to do is make it more compliant for the active transportation, the peds and cyclists, but also try to create an environment so that as vehicles approach and they're wanting to turn right, that they can see those peds. And same with the ones that approach and they're trying to turn left. Usually folks are there at that intersection They're seeing the oncoming traffic, they're not necessarily looking for that pedestrian on the right-of-way. And because of that, we have had some accidents.

And many of them go straight, like on the trail?

No, diagonally, cut across.

Cut across. Does that take out any homes?

So with this proposal, no, it wouldn't have taken out any homes. There is some right-of-way that would have been to have been purchased on the northeast corner, small amount there on the northwest corner, and then as well on the southeast corner. The southwest corner is property that we have currently, so we would have— that's why I think a lot of that trail—

That bigger chunk? Yeah, exactly.

Is the canal going under the roundabout?

Yes.

And is there a walking trail So what's that that's crossing over towards the left? Is that a— that's not a pedestrian trail, that would be under the roundabout as well?

Yeah, so what we would have done here is we would have tried to do something where we would encourage folks to go— yeah, we want them to go east-west and north-south on those legs, and that's why it's as wide as it is, trying to funnel them as well as we could, being cattle, trying to get them this way so that everyone's used to that. The problem is, is that roundabouts are great for vehicles. It's not exactly the best thing for a really high pedestrian area. But understanding that speeds are going to be lower, you may not kill someone, but we don't, we don't want to get—

But to discussion, this did not have a tunnel under the intersection. No, it just— what you see there, Terry, is just pedestrian access. Access, right? Okay, so that's still—

it's all great.

It's all great.

It's all good.

So this was a former concept that wasn't— they decided not to do this, right?

Well, so what we have here is that this project was actually selected and awarded, and we were awarded at one point almost $4 million to build this. We currently have the funding now. But we— what we would like to do is with this resolution with, with the county is that we will enter into an agreement with the county because we're doing this— the funding is coming from the county, it's part of their transportation sales tax money. So we entered into this agreement with the county, and that's what's been proposed tonight for the consent item. What we will do with the funding is we will go back and reevaluate what was actually proposed. I personally don't think a roundabout is the best solution for this area. So what we will do is, as the city, in coordination with MEG, we will hire another consultant and look at other options. Since the last— since we first had submitted this back in 2018, active transportation has grown tremendously, and there are better options, and there's better improvements that we could utilize here. We've talked about putting in a scramble crosswalk, which some of you may have seen in areas like Nashville. It may not necessarily work here, just because we don't have enough volume of vehicular traffic. Now, I guess with that being said—

Could you clarify a scramble crosswalk?

A scramble crosswalk Crosswalk is when all phases of the signal would go red, you would have an extended pedestrian time to cross and they could cross at an angle.

I think bottom line, as staff, we think there's something better. We think this is yesterday's thought. And we want today's thought, future thought, thinking into this intersection.

But we need to go through this formality of entering into these agreements so that we can begin to review this with a new set of eyes.

If you go underground for the canal, doesn't that solve most of the trail?

Like they do several other places, they go underground.

The problem is a lot of utilities. Yeah, well, in this area, when the canal was coming through, that was the thought, was to put in a tunnel. But it's complex with the existing utility infrastructure we have there with sewer and The other component is that would be really long, and there's an angle point in there, and preferably they like to be able to see from one side to the other and have it be open, so that way it's a little bit safer. I mean, that there was a concept of it at one point, it was going to be long, and they were going to essentially put some sort of a structure in the middle of the intersection to provide some light for that area, but the costs were way too high. The project moved forward and we ended up with this, with the intersection. Okay, so ultimately—

I would say the $1.4 million, is that something— is that like, can't exceed that? Or can you go back and try to get more? So I think that might be your—

Right. So we have that amount, and our match money is 6.7% of that. So we are obligated to about $95,000, which, which we have. The thought of going through and reevaluating and doing somewhat of a scramble to that crosswalk is going to be significantly less. Okay, so what would happen is we would have extra dollars left over that we could either apply to other projects. If we don't have that need, it would go back into the magpie and would go to another project for another community. So right now, it's just what we're going through is the formality of this interlocal agreement with the county, saying that the county or that our city council understands the project, understands what's going on. We're going to enter into this agreement, and then the city, in partnership with MAG, we're going to pursue this, this project.

But they won't view it as a bait and switch at all, right?

No, no, because MAG is on board with my thoughts, because as we have looked at this, we've looked at the roundabout, we knew it was coming. I think we all agreed that a roundabout wouldn't necessarily be a great solution here. Because vehicles are still— when you're designing a roundabout, you want to keep vehicles going about 20 miles an hour through a roundabout, which is great for cars. It's not very good for pets. And it might be great for Tom on his bike just flying through it 20 miles an hour, but the family that's going through with their kids on training wheels, it's not a great environment.

So in a nutshell, we're just here to execute an agreement with the county.

And then Jim Price with MAG will be the project manager that dives into the design and comes up with a new system with the consultant. And then we'll come back if— and build this hopefully. And because it's an interlocal agreement, it requires your involvement. That's why. That would go on the consent item. So does anybody have any problems with that? Not a problem. I love this because I actually use it. intersection a lot. I went to high school in the '60s, definitely crossed all the time. So the idea of being able to cross the street safer without having to stop at all is great. Have you considered a walkway?

We have. We've looked at that type of a design. And again, if that were— if we come back with a preferred alternative would be a pedestrian overpass, then we would also have to go back to MAG and ask for a substantial amount of money. But before I would do that, I'd have to make sure the council agreed because we're still on, on the hook to match 6% of that dollar amount.

So, okay, well, unless anybody has any other questions, I think we're all good with that. It'll be on the consent item and go from there.

Thank you for that presentation.

Thank you.

Okay, next we've got Jason Lynch. He's going to go through some proposed amendments to the Orem General Plan. Thank you, Mayor.

I've been in town for years working on the city planners.

Appreciate the opportunity to be here.

We have a couple handouts. Hey Grant, let's wait till— Grant, we'll wait till after our presentation.

Nixon doesn't want us to ignore— That's right.

I know, Tom.

Let's start with the pictures.

We appreciate the opportunity to come. What we're here today is to kind of give you a background of what where we've been and where we need to go. The state legislature has required us to do some things, and that's— we want to kind of be upfront and let you know what we're bringing forward in September. A couple years ago, 2019, Senate Bill 34 was passed. Prior to that, if you were on the council, we used to do a biannual report for moderate-income housing. So every other year we'd had to come to the council You get approval for moderate-income housing. There really was not a lot of standards at that time. We just kind of came up with our own plan and moved forward. In 2019, Senate Bill 34 expanded that and required cities to do an annual report on November 1st of every year, and we have been compliant with that since 2019, giving the criteria they outlined in the state code. State Street Master Plan, other things were part of those elements. that we could use within this interval. Last year— well, this year, I guess, session of 2022, House Bill 462 kind of took that and made it a little bit more significant as far as what cities need to do in complying with moderate-income housing requirements that the state deemed needed within not only Orem but statewide. So they came up with expanded strategies created more flexibility, but also put in some requirements that the cities now have to comply with. We're talking statewide, not just— So there are several criteria. One is now the reporting is due October 1st instead of November. But it also requires us now to adopt that moderate-income housing plan into our general plan. In 2019, we— in 2018, when we amended the general plan, we adopted our housing report for that year as an exhibit in the general plan. And that sufficed 2019 Senate bill, but that does not now suffice the requirement for us to now create an element in our general plan that specifically talks about moderate-income housing. So we need to adopt a report, which we'll get into what we've selected to move forward with, into our general plan. And that needs to be done by October 1st. There's a lot of elements that go into that.

I'll be very quick.

The state had a turnover in their employee, and so they've just got that on board. We just got trained by this individual a couple weeks ago, which is why we're now in a time crunch.

We're here before you to let you know what's coming in September.

That requires that not only do we have a plan, within that we have to have actionable items within the plan. So it has to be something that's ongoing. You can't just say, well, we'll look at it eventually and get to it. It has to be something that on an annual basis a grant is going to be reporting to the state that we've accomplished X, Y, and Z of this report, or we've accomplished this and now we need to add additional elements or elements to the plan. So it's something that they want to actually see strategies move forward and not just something that's stagnant in our general plan. Now they've provided 24 strategies which we'll hand out at the end of this presentation to let you look at all those. We've highlighted the 4 that we're going to move forward with, or proposed to move forward with. And then in addition to also adopting the plan October 1st, we also have to have that reporting of how we've accomplished in this past year what was required last year. And so Grant will be getting that submitted by October 1st.

The stipulation now in the state is that they actually have a coordinator in the housing I'm assuming that someone in the state is going to look at it and see if we've done enough.

So that's my point right now. So Bill Coburn, you know his name, he's in the Housing and Community Development Office of the Division of Workforce Services. He's actually the one that will actually review every city's plan. And in fact, we have to have him review it before we bring it to the council to make sure it complies with what they're wanting, so that there's actionable work words like we will or, you know, we shall or whatever. You can't just say I'm going to eventually look at it. Again, you know, it has to be specific actionable things. It has to be proof—

Date-specific?

At least year-specific. Okay, so we'll talk about some of the things that we're looking forward to, and it's going to be a couple-year process. So we'll have those actionable items. So this year we'll report we've done this, next year we'll report it, and it'll take us a couple years.

The thought is if cities don't do something, but the state may pass some legislation.

Actually, and I'll talk about it in just a second, we have some carrots and some—

Those are the 2 questions you told me to ask, aren't they, Jay?

Yes, thank you. Just lead right into this.

Perfect segue.

So there are some abilities. So the carrots is that if a city chooses to do more than 6 or more strategies, there's some priority funding considerations. There's funding from the Governor's Office of planning a budget, some COVID monies and others that the city's going to apply for to help them do projects or plan for projects. So that's kind of the carrot. The minimum requirement for the city, because we have a front-runner station, is we have to have at least 3 plus 1 with the front-runner station. So we have to have at least 4 strategies. Development Services is proposing that we begin this process with 4, so we meet the minimum requirements, and we can discuss with council, you know, the years, how we want to move forward with that. There are some restrictions though. If the city just chooses not to do the report or chooses not to update the general plan with this element, then the city— or the state has come out and said that the city, or UDOT, who controls the TIF funds, the Transportation Investment Funds, may not program projects within that city. So we're not picking out Warren, but any city that chooses not to do this will be in jeopardy of losing some of the TIF funds and talking millions of dollars. I'll show you some projects that we've done. Also, then the governor's office will not be allowed or may not award financial grants to the city. So just by way of information, these are some projects under the TIF, Transportation Investment Funds. The 16th North is one of those TIF projects. Geneva Road is a TIF project. And you can see under there, so that's, you know, it's a big stick. That's a big stick.

$40 million. Yeah.

So, you know, whether they do it or not, it depends. You know, I-15 projects may not, because it's a universal, you know, road, may not be penalized by Warren. But something specific to Warren, like a 16th project, could be subject to issues for future funding. That's basically what they're getting at. And transportation funds as well. So any trails, things like that, run through the transit funds, So what's proposed is we're proposing to amend the General Plan Chapter 4, adding in an element that talks specifically about moderate-income housing. Like I said, we're proposing the 3 strategies, and I'll get into—

or 4 strategies, excuse me.

I'll get into those. So these are the 4. There's 24 total. A lot of them are dealing with how the cities will either rezone, zone, or develop systems that help increase moderate-income housing. E, which is the first one that we're creating, talks— is more related to our accessory apartments, and I'll get into that. We're already doing accessory apartments. That's part of our current reporting that we've done last year. This year, we've— the council, if you recall, has modified some of the standards. We've kind of loosened some of the standards so it's easier for people to get an accessory apartment now. We've also limited, based on state requirement, the fact that we don't require impact fees for those Also, so we've made some progress in that. In this one, we want to also consider going forward is maybe having detached accessory apartments in some zones. That's something we're still looking at, still going to study. That's something that we'll talk about. High-density housing—

So Jason, that would be in addition to E, or would that be like—

So E, that's part of it.

That includes—

yeah.

And that's part of The proposal of what we're proposing in the text, we'll give you a copy of that as well. F talks about high-density housing, so we do have 3 PBs on today.

I'll just go to those right now instead.

So it's a lot of text, but basically showing that our progress within the accessory apartments and the fact we want to look at going forward to 2023— to your point, Tom, is 2023-2024— look at possibilities of doing detached.

Can you remind me, PD zone was a 3-acre minimum?

What was the 3-acre minimum?

So that's Strategy 1. Strategy 2 is mixed-use residential. We have 3 PD zones currently. We have more than that, but 3 that still have some vacant properties. PD-34, which is the mall. PD-21, which is the— excuse me, down on Geneva Road, which is the overcrossing area. And then PD-22, which is the north There's a little bit of property left remaining on that, but the majority of that is built out. So we currently allow for high-density housing in certain areas. And as part of the state law requirement, when we have a fixed station for the Frontrunner, we have to have— and this is part of the new state law that just was passed in 2022— station area plans.

So as part of this goal, we will be looking at this.

Phase 1 will be the Intermodal Station right now that we have.

E21.

For a station plan for that. Majority of that is already built out, so a lot of it is just looking at what we can and can't do around that station. So that's part of Strategy 2. In addition to that, as part of our station area plans, is looking at potential housing mixes, whether that's some missing middle, whether that's duplexes, triplexes, maybe live-work areas. Does these types of housing make sense in a PD zone on State Street? University Parkway, next to a train station, those types of things. So we'll be looking at that, and obviously everything that comes back will have to go through the City Council, Planning Commission, City Council. Strategy 3 is a housing transit reinvestment zone. I think many of you have talked to Sean Clark.

He's the developer that owns the property off University Parkway, that vacant piece that's right by University Downs.

Anyway, he wants to do— the state has set aside some funds, but there's a whole dynamic process of how this goes. So a consultant will have to be hired. So part of the text is to work with John to see if that's feasible for the city to do. So that is one.

Was this a parking structure? You could use money to build a parking structure.

Yep, part of the increment would be part of it. We still have to do a study to see if there's going to be enough increment on just that one. property, or a change to make that feasible. So that's something that we'll do over the next 6 to 8 months to see if that's feasible.

So my question is, this being a strategy, you mean determine— you don't have to implement it if it comes back it's not feasible, right? You just have to do it?

We have to show actionable items. So what we're saying is we're going to take 6 to 8 months to see if it's even something we want to do as a city, because the city ultimately by this law has to make the application. We have to be the applicant. We don't have to pay for it, but we need to figure all that out. So this gives us an idea that says, hey, we're going to look at this, we're going to implement it. Right now there's no HTRC zone in the state. So they passed it a couple years ago, they're wondering why isn't it working. Well, it's pretty complicated when you look at the details, so we need to work with this legislature to see what we would—

But you're not penalized if you determine it's not, right?

We would essentially pledge we're gonna, we're gonna put forward A good faith effort to have a conversation about it each year.

Okay, so next year— so we still have that 4. So let's just say next year we decide that the HTRZ zone is not applicable, then we'll have to come up with another strategy to put in our quiver of 4.

But you're not looking at anything on state streets, all part of the PD zone. So identifying the 3 PD zones— the HTRZ has to be within a certain radius of a fire station, 20 miles. I think it's a 3-mile— Half a mile for a Frontrunner station, a third of a mile for—

That's right.

BRT intertrack stations.

So as part of a requirement, so the state is requiring us to do station area plans because we have a fixed Frontrunner station and we have a BRT line with 3 stops. There's 4, one on the University campus, which we don't have to include, but the 3 on the Parkway would have to be included You have a stationary plan. All those plans have to be adopted by the city by 2025. So we're going to—

So tell me what that means. You're going to improve the actual station?

So we're going to do an actual master plan for the stations.

So what's around the stations, or the actual—

Within a third of a mile of each of those stations. We're going to have to look at the land use. We're going to have to look at, you know, is there potential zoning? Is there something we can do mixed-use-wise? Is there a lot of income housing that We can include some of these elements. So a lot of us are talking with the state. I mean, some of it is single-family homes, right, to the south, Cherry Hill neighborhood. Some of it, we'll just have to determine it's, it's not feasible to do anything in that area. So they allow us by state law to say if it's impractical to redevelop, then we can state that it's impractical to plan and keep those single-family. If there's something, let's say we have a car dealership that has a lot of land, or there's some other areas that could be redeveloped. And with this, we'll consider that as part of the process with Planning Commission and City Council to see if it's feasible to do something other than—

like the old water conservancy.

Water conservancy is an ideal—

Right.

To say if there's, you know, 2 or 3-story apartments or townhomes, is it appropriate to mix with the commercial?

So the LDS Temple would probably be within This half mile?

Excuse me, the LDS temple right there?

Probably outside of that, actually.

From, from—

because I said, you know, we've talked about really nice housing there, you know, nice, like a Chapman home, twin home, sort of nice thing that would go there. But that wouldn't—

Well, obviously, I don't, I don't think we're required to do something specific, i.e., a specific Type of use, but we're required to look at it as part and develop a station area plan.

So you're correct.

Part of what I'm saying is we've already looked at the housing around that.

There were some attractive—

We're actually going to— not part of this, but a side note— we will be bringing back some general plan modifications, or at least some considerations around town.

And maybe, Greg, you can speak to the grant process that you've just gone through with MANG. And you actually received some funding to do this. As part of the HB 462 legislation, $5 million was allocated for cities across the state for technical assistance to, to, to ease the burden of creating these station areas for every city that has them. So because we have a 2-year, 2.5-year timeline to Complete all of the plans. We've applied with technical assistance with MAG, and we're in the beginning stages of that process. They received our application; they're considering our application. Phase one of this would begin in January of next year for the front runner station. There is an existing stationary plan that was completed previously from a consultant and with UTA and our staff and.

MAG.

So we just have to— the first step is to take that plan and make sure it has to meet the current law's requirements.

So that's our first phase.

So they've informally represented to us that we'll get some money for that, which is—

We're hoping that money will just pay for—

Money to pay a consultant or money to pay for—

I don't know, what kind of money you think?

We don't know yet. But, you know, those kind of— some plan like this could be $300,000 to $400,000. $400,000 for all these. Maybe I'm out of the ballpark. We estimated $250,000 for all the plans.

$100,000 in Phase 1 and probably $150,000 in Phase 2 because it has multiple plans.

Additional matching funds, and this would just be a grant from—

Yeah, no matching funds required.

So yeah, ultimately, basically they're saying you need to do this, but they're also putting money towards cities to be able to help them. hire consultants, they'll have a pool of consultants, and then we can go through the process presenting it to Planning Commission, City Council. So that's part of this requirement that we need to do, and that's what we're—

Could you go back to strategy 2 just for a second?

Of course.

And just the final further, what that means exactly, where.

So picture, uh, we're talking about we have 3 current PD zones, the mall, and then we're going to require these station area plans So along University Parkway and along Tree Row, is to look at within those plans, are there areas within those areas, so a third of a mile outside of University Parkway, are there areas that we could look at considering maybe doing twin homes? We look at doing some, you know, townhome-type developments, or are there other types of developments in this missing middle? Not high-density housing, not single-family, but is there some type of development Whether it's a live-work, mixed-use office, maybe some residential. If there's some areas within that, the city council could say, hey, that would make sense if it's, you know, this density, it's this height, you know, and kind of work that into the plan. That's kind of our proposal, is to say let's at least consider these areas because you have, you know, transit, you got the BRT, you got Frontrunner, and so people are most likely use that if they're going to live on that corridor. would use that, whether they're a student, whether they're young family, those type of things, use that as a significant means to get around.

Jason, is it safe to say we're kind of getting 2 strategies in one with this? This is tied to stationary appliances.

Strategy 2 is tied to station— or strategy 4. So because they're, you know, we figured it was to meet our 4 requirements, we're already doing some of these. To tie 2 together would be a way to easily attain the requirement, but also look at ways to redevelop, or at least consider redeveloping in the future.

Jamie, um, is there any— I don't know if you've talked to one of those people that we're talking about redeveloping a couple of Canyon Park buildings. I reached out to him, yes. Uh, they seem really serious. I'm just curious if there's any benefit we can get from that concept with these requirements. That is one of the elements possibly that would satisfy the requirements, is redeveloping existing commercial Yeah, I did reach out to him a couple weeks ago. He actually was going to have a conversation with his pole office contact in California and get back with us. Okay, that's the way to put it.

So part of our— yeah, moving forward, so our reporting next year could be, if we choose to move forward with Canyon Parkway, is to say this is what we've done.

We've actually resolved part of that, and we could then add that here. Sure, we're making progress.

So definitely look for those things.

Yeah.

And if there's more menu strategies, you'll see it when we give you the list that we may qualify for. And it's your discretion to choose if you want to select more to, to get us over that, up to that minimum priority consideration.

So going up to 6, that gives us More money eventually?

Well, it could potentially— gives you the ability to say, okay, the city is interested in more money. So that's why we're saying let's do 6 strategies and try to get moderate-income housing into the city. The state's saying, okay, if you do 6, then you're serious about that, we'll encourage you to do that, incentivize you by allowing you to get priority over another city that doesn't have that.

So if we have 6 cities that submit for the money and only 2 of them So if there was a project, if there was money that was available for state allocation, everything else being equal, and one community has adopted 6 of these strategies and the other community has adopted 4 of the strategies, then deference would be shown to the ones who adopted 6 versus 4.

So would something like the canyon parks be an additional strategy that would get you closer?

We'd probably adopt it as part of number 2 and just Basically strategically say that we're, we're using that as an action.

But if you need 2 more strategies—

I mean, there's some senior housing element that we're looking at as well. There's certain ones that we have on our back list of things.

Yeah, senior.

I mean, I'm always in favor of the seniors. There's definitely demand for them.

So as we move forward, as we introduce the fact that now we're required to do this, we figured we'd start small. We have the minimum 4.

We can talk over time with the council to see if you want to add more. We understand and appreciate how concerned you are with building the appropriate housing types in the community. The last thing we wanted to do is come to you with 9 strategies, 4 or 5 of which are ones you're comfortable with, the remaining 4 are like, I'm not sure about it. Well, let's, let's just start in the shallow end. And walk in rather than let's all jump into the deep end. Are there any, are there any strategies? I mean, one of our issues here is, and this is all about, you know, affordable housing and density and all that, but we've got a lot of neighborhoods that are older neighborhoods that are, you know, kind of getting older and disrepair and being rented out or whatever. Are there any strategies that give you a path that Help those neighborhoods, you know, upgrade those neighborhoods.

Yeah, I mean, as far as rezoning, considering, you know, options to use some type of missing middle, whether that's twin homes, townhomes, those types of things. Yeah, there are strategies to be used for if we choose to do that, right? Maybe incentivize them by increasing density slightly to get them to have a little higher density. And I think that's something we can look at, but there are definitely strategies to get to that 6 or whatever if the council wants to go that route.

Definitely.

So one last thing, and then we'll close it up. In the general plan, current general plan, you can see on the left, there's what's called mixed use, the blue, which matched the State Street Master Plan. What we're wanting to do is simply take it back to prior to the State Street Master Plan, so the general plans that were in place prior to that. And then we'll just, as we look forward to State Street in the future, we'll just have a slate that was not part Prior to that. So basically, this is just a map change, changing the blue back to the community commercial or regional commercial, which is the dark red, light red.

But still keeping the beautification components that we—

Nothing to do with the zoning, it's simply just a general plan.

This is kind of a housekeeping issue that we didn't realize how to address.

And then just finally, I know that we're They seem like we're trying to crunch this through, but there is a deadline of October 1st. If we don't, the mayor will get a letter from the state saying we're out of compliance.

We don't want to do that.

So what we're proposing is going to the city— excuse me, Planning Commission on the 7th to have this same type of discussion, and then coming back with the City Council on the 13th with kind of a more final draft of here's what we're proposing. Planning Commission public hearing on the 21st, City Council public hearing on the 27th.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Yeah, I have a quick question. So a few months ago we had a public meeting with a mixed-use, uh, proposed buildings, um, right at the crest of the mountain where the old church used to be. Would this fit into that?

Depends on what, how, what method we use to pick these zones.

If we come up with PD or some other model, I think that we could incorporate this. Something that we're working towards.

We definitely—

anything we can take to show what we're doing, trying to do this with monitoring from housing, we definitely want to engage partners.

Thank you. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

Oh man.

All right, so run through the agenda. Yes, for application, we've got Don Wallace. And then we'll have personal appearances for 15 minutes.

This is it right here.

It's like no law, not 90, maybe 30. Um, And then we got item number 7.

We will do the consent items.

And for the consent items, we've got a resolution, property parking permits for Springwater neighborhood. Talked about that in here. We've got a resolution amending late fee schedule violations of 7 civil infractions. And then we've got a resolution, interlocal agreement with Utah County that we talked about tonight. Let me move on to scheduled items.

We've got item 8.

8.1, appointments to boards and commissions. Uh, we got the Transportation Advisory Commission. Who's got that now?

Lenny.

Oh no, sorry, I mean Jeff.

Jeff, I'll just, I'll just turn that to you. Harry, she's talking about his chin. And then we got—

sorry, I looked at you.

Why are you not talking about it here? That's where he gets personal. Item 8.2, public hearing resolution, um, economic development strategic plan. So we'll have a presentation and that will be open for a public hearing, is that correct?

Yes.

Okay, and then 8.3, we've got, uh, amending Article 22-5-S3 and rezoning that before the State of Orem by rezoning property located at 507 North 400 West from R7.5 to R6.5. Jason, we saw obviously what you sent out. Do you have any other thoughts on that?

So they're proposing it because of the lot width to be able to just do 4 standard lots. They could, by size of the lot, do 4 lots, 2 deep lots and 2 regular lots. They would rather have 2 lots facing the streets, which is why they're requesting a little narrower lot. They're still very large lots. They could do 4 lots that way, or they can do 4 lots the other way. So density-wise isn't an issue, it's just a matter of—

And Terry, was the Planning Commission pretty good with this? Okay, thank you for that background. Okay, let me move to item 8.4, public hearing ordinance. That's amending courses of flood damage prevention in the state of Oregon pertaining to base flood elevation requirements.

We—

so we're gonna have a public hearing on that, but we talked about that already. It's pretty straightforward.

It's really FEMA's essence. Anything that's built in the floodplain, which we have very few floodplains in the city, but the homes are built up 1 foot above that baseline. It's just codifying the order to match what they want. It only affects those that are truly in the floodplain.

We don't have maybe 1 or 2 homes. Okay, so we'll— you'll present that, we won't have a public hearing, and then we'll vote on it. We've got, uh, item 9.1. That's just for your— that was included in the packet. Okay, so we don't need to do that.

No.

And we go to whatever Jamie had to share with us, and then we're going to adjourn. Did we get any questions on that?

Just a brief comment. Don and Joan are both in their 80s and just nice people.

Live to go on forever and ever and ever. He's excited. She's nervous. So did you get them?

Yeah. Okay. Any neighbors?

Yeah. Okay. Moving on to item number I'm not sure which commission you're going to go through, but you're up today, Spencer. Okay, I guess I'm up. So I serve on the Senior Citizens Advisory Commission, and they are doing meal programs now for lunch on Monday and Tuesday since they had some— I had some funding cuts. And it's been working out really well for them money-wise, so they're in the black.

I think it's just Monday. It's only Mondays.

Maybe it's Monday. So they're looking at doing more through the week.

I'm sorry, I go every week with my dad, so it's—

And then she sent me pictures of the food. It looks incredible. So Gina's doing an excellent job, and I think, um, you know, we might look at that as moving forward. Maybe they might do their own lunches or something. Maybe they can make money that way.

Where's that food come from?

Do they do it on site? Yeah, they're doing it. Who knows that they make the other—

I can say it's good. I ate it yesterday. It's $5 with a baked potato bar. I think they have decent recipe. And also what I like about it, it's fresh, right? They're making it right before you eat it. It hasn't been sitting in a warmer for hours.

It's good. And then I'm also on the Public Safety Commission, which we just barely organized in April. We had our first meeting, and I think our next one is coming up probably in September, end of September, October. So we're going to meet quarterly, and we're just getting off the ground. So, and it's a privilege to work with, you know, Mark and Josh. We have a good committee. I think Spencer Rands is now the committee chair. Also on the Beautification Commission. I guess Reed is going to shrink his duties a little bit, turn it over to— but it's been good work with Reed. But on the beautification, our portfolio, which is pretty good, normally we've had a hard time filling those positions, but they're handing out awards for that. you know, beautiful yards through September.

And then we'll go into the holiday awards for Christmas lights. And then we're working with the Natural Resource Stewardship Committee to recognize wise water users. So they're working on that newsletter, and we participated in the Summerfest.

So it's a, it's a good active committee. Then I'm also on the Recreation Commission. committee, um, working with Price. And, uh, as we know that, uh, the big uproar, I guess, during the summer was the UV rays and the Forum Swim Club.

And we met many times and, uh, worked out a solution.

So I think everybody's happy and we're getting a swim wall also with a couple of lanes. So I think that's been very positive.

And then also our lakeside, we're going to put lights there.

I mean, 2 soccer fields, and then basically that whole park would be— at least the softball fields would be artificial turf, so we can use it more year-round somewhat. And then as you move to the nice baseball fields here, figure out what we're going to do with them.

But, um, Dave, are CARE funds being used for those lights, or what is it?

It is part of the strategy too. Yeah, and getting county tourism money as well. So we have meetings scheduled beginning of October with Commissioner Lee to essentially make an application for about $1.5 million in county restaurant tax.

Remind me what we're generating off of that right now.

Do you know?

Oh, more than $2 million. margin here in New Orleans.

Yes, and most of us will go to Provo Convention Center and other places.

We're trying to fix that. We're trying to, we're trying to just make sure that that investment is coming.

That's a very reasonable thing.

I think Bryce was, you know, he did that when he was in Provo, so he understands how to get the tourism money. And if we can have tournaments here and get the restaurant tax, I think that's going to be very positive.

So that'd be great.

You'll learn how to get a lot of our support. But, you know, CARE tax-wise, we finished the rec center.

So you got projects going back to this. What would the $1.5 million that we're hoping from the county go to? Would it be something like lights?

We're hoping to take some CARE money and couple it with the county money to do the lights and the artificial turf.

Okay.

On 2 fields down there. Those will be artificial turf so they can play longer and then work it out.

But they have to— they have any long-term, um, because I mean, before the money all went to the fitness center for, you know, many years, did they have a big picture?

They want to build something big?

Well, yeah, so it's basically improving all our fields we have down Lakeside. Um, I think we're going to maybe improve the parking too. I mean, it could be a regional soccer facility.

Yeah.

We're coming in for, you know, so then if, you know, if you have big tournaments, and I think that's, that's the key to big draw. And so we get that money, I think, you know, I mean, we're already a destination in the, you know, with the mall and being centralized. So I think we're great. I enjoy working on all the committees, and hopefully they, they like me too. That's it. Okay, and I will give Dave an endorsement on this committee. especially with the sports, because the sports have— well, it seems like there's more drama in the sports than any other spot, and he always jumps in the middle of it and helps sort it out and bring it together. So we appreciate that. And Bryce has been really good. I mean, he, um, you know, it was interesting with UV Rays and, and the city and how it came together. And we, you know, we watched, talked through it, and we made it work, and I think to our benefit. So I thought it was good.

It was a win-win, but I think we won.

And Dave, seniors are going to Wendover tomorrow and they still have seats if you want to go to Wendover. That's about $25.

Okay, I'll let them go to Wendover.

I guess I'm lucky I got a daytime job.

Okay.

All right.

Jonathan, and, uh, with that, I think we'll adjourn to our meeting next door. Thank you.

Test, test, test, test.

Yeah, if there's this—

yeah, good.

Yeah, so hey, thanks for coming. Here you go.

Stealing in a debt.

We will watch. Come on, make sure it's crazy.

I'd like to call this meeting to order. We appreciate you coming out tonight, and we want to excuse Lynnae Millett. She's had other things to take care of tonight, personal things with her— her daughter's going on a mission soon, so she's helping her and working with her. Otherwise, she would be here. I'd like to start out, we've got a couple of guests here. We'll have Don Wallace give the invocation to start with.

Before we begin this meeting, I'd like to express appreciation to you council members for the time and effort you put in to make the living that we see here in Orem come to pass be very pleasant. Thank you. And thank you for you technical people that do the backup. We're grateful.

Thank you.

Heavenly Father, as we begin this meeting tonight, we express appreciation for the many blessings we enjoy. We're grateful for this free country and the many freedoms it brings us. We're grateful for the pleasant conditions we live in this great city of Orem. We ask a blessing to be with those that are Participating in the activity here tonight, that they'll be able to say into those things that are in their hearts, and they'll be able to make known the needs and the wants that they have and the solutions that they propose. We bless our council members that they'll be inspired to do and say those things that would be best for our us as citizens. We thank thee for the time and the dedication that they have given to their responsibilities. Please be with all of our city employees and their needs. We're grateful for the dedication for those in the offices and those that serve in the extended areas of their responsibilities throughout. We thank thee for Our police and for the dedication and service they give us. Please bless them with safety. As we enjoy the blessings that we have in this great city, we thank thee for the many opportunities and blessings it brings us. Help us to be good members and good citizens. These things we pray humbly for. And we do it in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you, Don. Now we'd like to have his wife, Joan— I couldn't tell if it's Joan or Jean— Joan. She'd like to come up and lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Please rise.

Pledge with me.

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

Okay, thank you for that. Next we'll have personal appearances. And let me just read through the guidelines. Time has been set aside for the public to express their ideas, concerns, and comments on items not scheduled as public hearings on the agenda. Those wishing to speak are encouraged to show respect for those who serve the city. Comments should focus on issues concerning the city. Those wishing to speak should have signed in before the beginning of the meeting. Please limit your comments to 3 minutes or less. We'll start out. We've got 5 people that have signed up tonight, and we'll start out. First on the list is Bladen Lautensack.

Good evening.

Hello again. Um, let me just begin by saying that, um, I'm here again because I think it's important that I express my thoughts, my feelings as a former teacher. I think it gives me a unique perspective with regard to our effort to, uh, again organize and form our own school district. Um, my, my intent is to help educate parents and citizens, as well as the council, on maybe things that have not been read or understood. And I think it's important as we move towards the vote in November, hopefully so that we can create our own Orem Unified— I call it the Orem Unified School District. Again, in speaking as a former teacher, Um, I think I bring a unique and varied experience, um, having taught in 2 smaller districts and one large district, the large district being LA Unified. I believe that this experience gives me a distinct advantage of absolutely knowing why a smaller district here in Orem is, is absolutely the better way to go. I've taught kids who have come from homes that vary from the middle class to the wealthy. I've taught the kids who've come from low-income areas, kids who were bused in from South Central and East LA. I've taught the Crips. I've taught the Bloods, kids from the gangs and from the ghetto. I get it. I get it. And I think I have a pretty good perspective. Let me say this. Why a smaller district? Let me just give you 2 or 3 thoughts that I have. Boy, the time goes quick. Number one, I think smaller districts have the ability to be more in tune with the needs of their students and their own community, as well as being able to be more personable with an understanding of The needs of the teachers, addressing and fulfilling their individual classroom needs. An example of this would be obviously smaller classrooms and better materials to teach with, not the $50 budget that I was given in LA to teach 5 periods of high school biology for an entire year. So I've been there, I get that. Number 2, smaller districts provide the ability to have more control and oversight of its curriculum. And I'll talk more about that on another day. I'm running out of time real quick. And last of all, we've talked a lot about the funds. I'll just end with this, that I think it's important we recognize the majority of our funds that are being— what's being paid to the districts coming out of Orem, and we need to move in a direction where we're keeping more than 13% that the feasibility study showed.

Thank you.

Next we've got Cindy Nelson.

Evening, Mayor and Council. You've heard from me before. This has been a project that's been ongoing for several years. And I believe it's coming to resolution tonight, is the permit parking in the Springwater area of Orem. We are grateful for the work that has been done towards this. The overwhelming majority of neighbors in our area are— I wouldn't say for permit parking because there's still some frustration that we had to get to this point, but we're ready for a resolution to the problem that we've had with parking in our neighborhood.

Thank you.

And I would just ask, because it was the City Council and the mayor that voted to approve those high-density apartments that are across from our neighborhood with insufficient parking, I would ask that one of you follow up with those apartment complexes after— if this permit parking resolution is passed, that, that you will follow up with them and make sure that that those students that are parking in our neighborhoods have a place to park. If you read the reviews of those apartment complexes online, there's a lot of frustrated people on that side of Geneva Road too, and they are also Orem residents, even if only temporarily. So I, I would just ask that as we move forward and as we all get our permits on our cars and, and are able to solve the problem in our neighborhood that you would also look out for those Orem residents as well. Thank you.

Next we've got Leslie Havili.

Thank you, Mayor and Councilmen. I appreciate this time. The reason why I'm here is my husband and I bought a home here in Orem in 1998. We have managed it ourselves all all these years, even times when we've lived out of state, coming at least once a month to check on the property, take care of the lawn, et cetera. And I recently became aware of a landlord licensing agreement that has come into play. We moved back into that house in 2020, and not only— it's a triplex, and so my husband and I moved in along with our 2 minor children, and our 2 adult children moved into the basement apartments of that home. Um, and the reason that I, I come before you is because I feel like that license agreement does not apply to me because I'm not renting out my home. It's my adult children that are living there, and I do have like their birth certificates. I have record of, you know, their mailing addresses as those units, but I'd like to ask for your pardon in this, that I feel like it doesn't apply to me. The other reason why it's a concern for me is in September of last year, while my husband was on a business trip, he contracted COVID in Virginia and he passed away. And as a widow, I'm still dealing with a lot of issues trying to settle that estate, and finances are tough for me. And So I just asked for your pardon, and hopefully that you'd be willing to waive the late fee that happened this last month, as I recently became aware of this licensing, and that you would allow me not to have to pay that, as I don't feel like I apply in this situation.

Okay, thank you. Jamie.

If, if I could have you at the back of the room, if I could have Stephen Downs, who's in— who's outside the building, if I could just have him touch base with you outside the council chambers, and if you could provide him your contact information, then we'll see what we can do. I'm not familiar with this particular situation, but if you wouldn't mind giving Stephen some more information. so that we can see what we can do to help you.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Yeah, it seems like there's 2 things.

He's at the back of the room now. So if you want to go—

Yeah, it sounds like there's 2 parts. One is figuring out if that charge applies, and then the other is if the penalty— but anyway, both of those should be addressed. Okay, next we got Marie Lowe.

Good evening, Council. I'm going to talk to you something probably totally out of left field. I'm here because I've spoken with hundreds of UVU students, as well as my wife and some ecclesiastical leaders at UVU, 3 bishops and their leadership, about living at the Green, and they have not asked me to speak. on their behalf, but I'm here because I'm very frustrated listening to the students in particular, but also their leaders. The challenge with the Green is that there are no rules with respect to who lives where and, and how that happens. And so my wife visits Sisters in the Green, she visits Women in the Green 1 to 2 times a month, and she'll say, tell me about living here. And they say, I'm so frustrated that this is not student housing. I'm frustrated because it's not natural. It's not safe. And I'm really upset because when I talk to management, they won't do anything about it. And again, I had a daughter who was in Italy. Oh my, I get 3 more minutes?

The clock hasn't started.

This is great.

I have a daughter who went on a 5-week program in Italy this summer. She was the only one from Utah on that program. She lived with 4 other women and she said it was natural. It was safe. It was comfortable. The students at UVU do not live in natural and comfortable and safe environments. An example, one woman was telling my wife, she's a 20-year-old student, saying, I went to go visit my friend upstairs. He's a floor above me. And in walks this 50-year-old man. It's like, it's kind of like, what's with this dude? Oh, he lives here. Another woman, another young student will say, yeah, I got 2 40-year-old people living with my 20-year-old friends right next door. Or I've got married people that are living across the way from me, and next to them, we've got 4 people that live together. And again, I don't care what people's circumstances are, but it needs to be natural and safe and comfortable, and it's not. And so again, a little bit out of left field. The challenge I have is if I go talk to UVU about this, they're gonna say, well, we don't own this. This is owned by a private development. So my question, what I'd like to ask those of you who voted for this potentially, or the city, if there's something can be done, because I know this was zoned to be student housing, or that was the intended use. If there's something the city can do about that, I would like that to be investigated, to be corroborated. Don't take my word for it, to figure that out. And I will tell all of you that UVU, I think, contracts with of the 5 buildings, and that building is organized. People do feel safe, and it's natural, and it's comfortable there. The other 4 buildings, they do not, and management doesn't seem to care. So if, uh, if you did vote for this, I would encourage you— if there's nothing we can do legally about this, I would encourage you to find someone who you can influence to see if we can remedy and rectify this situation. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next, last, we've got Scott Hendricks.

Thank you, Council and Mayor, for giving me an opportunity to speak in relation to the parking permit down at Springwater area. I'd like to say I've lived in that area for 27 years. Despite the many decisions by the council that I would say has degraded the quality of life in that area. Related to multi-family housing, high-density and medium-density housing, which there's a great need for, I think there's resistance to it, and it all falls to one fundamental problem: the city code does not require a high enough number of parking stalls per bedroom in the developments that we approve. I commend the City Council for having put together in 2019 a study that identified what they felt like the demand should be and the supply should be. I would say, having looked at it, it's flawed. It has errors. If I had more time, I'd tell you what they are. But, and I don't even think I really have time to read from page 24 and 25 that fundamentally said the city staff and the data in the study agree that generally there is a need for 1 parking stall per bedroom in these kinds of developments, although they no sooner said that than they recommend 0.75 per bedroom as— or 2 per unit is a— is The minimum. It's not enough. And anybody that thinks that it might be enough, I challenge you to just go around any medium to high density facility in the city and see the spillover parking that's there. One of the flaws that I see in that study was they didn't count all the spillover parking. They counted the spillover onto 800 South. Well, it's spilling over onto my side, Geneva Road and 800 South. The cul-de-sacs that extend off there and other places to the north. And so when they say that, oh, there's enough parking generally provided in the code for the demand, I say baloney on that. Most people— you'll see on page 24, I don't have time to read it. But I completely concur, everybody needs a car to get around in the Students are going to bring those cars to here when they come, even if they use transit to get to UVU. They're going to leave their car parked there all week long, and it's going to occupy a space. And I have pictures that can show you we've seen that. And until the city makes the decision to have a high enough level of parking for these developments, you're always going to have resistance from the neighbors. to have it. I think we need it. I don't want my kids to have to live in Delta, but we need to require developers to build enough parking for it to work. Lastly, it pushes. I've seen the need push from Geneva Road on down, and the more you limit it, the more those are just going to push further. So, um, That's why we're on board, even though I'm at Springwater Drive, clear down at the end.

Thank you.

We've got 3 consent items on the agenda tonight. Do we have— is there anyone who has any questions or issues with those consent items, or we good to vote on those?

Mayor, Mayor, I'm good to go, but could we get a picture of this spring water area and location?

Just a refresher.

I've reviewed it. Is that possible, Jason, to pop up or not? Is that a difficult request? So it's primarily across from the Access Apartments, is that correct? That's where I was mentally putting it.

The neighborhoods in the neighborhood in question is to the west of Geneva Road.

Okay, thank you. I think I've got it, Jason. I'm sorry to put you on the spot like that. Mayor, if you're looking for a motion for the approval of the consent items, I so move.

Okay.

I'll second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The consent items pass. Let's move to the scheduled items. Item 8.1. I'm going to turn this to Jeff to handle this.

So one of my appointments is to serve on the Transportation Advisory Commission, and we are proposing to appoint 2 individuals, Marlon Coe and Kathleen Turner. Marlon Coe has actually been serving on the commission and thought he was going to be moving and decided to stay. And so we're going to reappoint him. We'd like to keep Marlon on the Transportation Advisory Commission. He's been there and done an excellent job. Also, Bernie Turner, who has been serving on this commission, has asked that he might be able to step down and His wife Kathleen, who has been at almost every meeting ever since COVID has been there at Bernie's side, and, and as we've been meeting together, she's been there as well. And so we would like to— also very involved in each of those meetings. So we would like to— First of all, thank Bernie for his service on this commission. for his good service for many, many years. And then we would like to make a motion to appoint Marlon Coe and Kathleen Turner to serve on the Transportation Advisory Commission.

Second.

Oh, you're looking for me?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the appointment passes. Thank you. Let's move on to item 8.2. We're going to have a presentation on the economic development strategic plan with Kathy Lewis and Brent Weiler. If you guys would like to come up, and then we'll have a public hearing after this. Okay, it looks like we've also got— just in full disclosure, we got Kathy here. We've got Brent Weiler and Aaron Finley and Nate Prescott. But we've got 2 of you on Zoom, right? Okay, so 2 remote and 2 here.

We appreciate the opportunity to be here to share with you the Economic Development Strategic Plan. I'm Kathy Lewis, Economic Development Division Manager, and this is—

Nate Prescott, the Economic Development Analyst.

I wanted to give you a little background. The Economic Development Strategic Plan is a plan to help small businesses. The focus of the plan is on strengthening and supporting the Orem business environment to help businesses thrive, and the current plan was created in 2014, and it was meant to be a 5 to 7 year plan. And a year and a half ago, the Economic Development Division in the city hired the consulting firm Thomas P. Miller and Associates to create an updated economic development plan. We have with us virtually today Brett Weiler, the Director of Economic Development, and Erin Finley, the Senior Project Consultant. consultant from Thomas P. Miller and Associates. They're via Zoom, and if you have any questions throughout this presentation, please feel free to refer to them for technical questions and questions on the plan itself. They're happy to answer questions. By way of background, for over 32 years, TMPA, or Thomas P. Miller and Associates, has been providing consulting services throughout the United states and internationally. They've been working with local and state governments, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and community and industry associations. But what TPMA really specializes in is empowering communities through strategic partnerships and data-informed solutions to create positive and sustainable change. The city hired and chose TPMA because of their proactive energy in engaging our business community and our stakeholders in this process. In May of 2021, the city issued a request for proposal for the strategic plan update, and in June we received 5 proposals from firms. And thereafter, we interviewed 3 of those firms with a panel of 7 staff members. And out of the 3 consulting firms, TPMA was chosen to do this comprehensive strategic update. And in August, the contract was finalized with TPMA, and then in September, they began their research and they began conducting interviews, and they visited the City of Orem and did on-the-ground extensive research. And over the course of several months, TPMA led engagement sessions with 2 virtual stakeholder workshops, 4 in-person workshops, and in preparation for those workshops, we issued individual emails to the City Council, to City Council members, to the Planning Commission, and to local business and stakeholders. And as you might remember, our first presentation on an update for the Economic Development Strategic Plan was in May, and then followed by— or maybe March. No, I guess it was— was it in March? And then following that, we did A presentation in the work session of the City Council meeting for you. And it's also been— this plan has also been reviewed by the Planning Commission extensively, and they have recommended the plan with specific revisions that we'll talk about later.

So, as Kathy mentioned, we held 4 in-person workshops right here in this room. We had great attendance. We had over 50 business-minded stakeholders attend one of those 4 workshops. We had great engagement, and they were all able to participate and provide valuable input and ideas that really helped to shape the vision and the goals of this strategic plan. We're just going to go through some of the attendees from our stakeholder workshops, so We had city councilors Dave Spencer and Lenee Millett attend, and they were all actively engaged. We had the Planning Commission members all attend at the time, and they were all engaged and participated. As a side note, council members Larray and McDonald both expressed their desire to attend. They were just out of town at the time, but we had great input from all of them, and they helped shape our vision for it as well. We had great turnout from our businesses here in Orem. Here's a list of most of the businesses that attended. As you can see, we had numerous local businesses participate, and these were very interactive in-person workshops. The workshops included breakout groups, discussions, and question and answer times where the participants' unique perspectives were able to to help shape the framework of this plan. We also had a great turnout from community partners outside of business— businesses and city representatives. We had participants from Utah Valley University, from World Trade Center, and many different organizations from different chambers of commerce and regional partners that really helped to inform and provide some solutions and help to our plan.

We'll now talk about the project cost and funding source. And just to help you understand, this project occurred over the course of a year, and it was extended by 4 months. In October of 2021, we requested an extension to enable our newly elected council members to fully engage in those stakeholder workshops in February. So it did extend it out a little bit timewise. We also added an additional stakeholder focus group to further engage our businesses as they reviewed a first draft of our plan. Now, as you can see from this chart, the funds that were used to pay for the project were acquired from what's called defederalized revolving funds from the Department of Commerce, the Economic Development Administration Division. And these defederalized funds, they have to be used in accordance with the approved economic development purposes of the Public Works and Economic Development Act of the Department of Commerce, or the PWEDA Act. And the economic development plan was one of those approved uses of the funds. So as you can see, the total, the total project cost, cost $118,768, and none of that was attributed to funds from the city. That was exclusively from these defederalized funds from our revolving loan fund program. Now we'll talk about the strategic framework itself that's in the plan. Now, TPMA, Thomas P. Miller and Associates, they utilize the best practices that are taught by the International Economic Development Council in creating these 4 pillars that are strategic in the plan. And IEDC, or the International Economic Development Council, is really the leader in establishing the industry industry standard nationwide for economic development. And the consultants identified 4 strategies or goals, or strategies or goals, action items, and metrics for success that are under each of these different focus areas. And we won't go into all of those goals because there are approximately 50 goals in the plan. And as you recall, during the work session, we reviewed the plan, and you've had copy of the plan that you can refer to. If you have any specific questions on those goals, we're happy to answer those, and our consultants are on the line to do that too. But we wanted to share just a few of the highlights of the strategies in the plan. So number one, the business retention and expansion focus. It provides strategies to strengthen local businesses, and it encourages future business expansion and job creation. And one of the goals that I'm particularly excited about that were created under this focus area is to create an extensive map of local and regional economic development providers and services. Now, not all of our businesses, but many of our businesses are aware of the services that we provide as a partner in the Business Resource Center, but there are also a lot of community resources that we would like to put together into an asset map to provide that to our businesses so they can refer to as they need help. There are really low-cost workshops, classes that are provided in our community, in our local colleges, within our community, through private organizations, and we want to try to gather that together to provide that as a support to our businesses. The second area of focus is business attraction. And that really provides strategies to attract businesses that can capitalize on our local assets and complement our existing business environment. And a goal that I really particularly liked was a suggestion to review the quantitative data, the qualitative data, and the retail gap analysis that's found in this plan that would help to inform a future target industry analysis. And what that target industry analysis would really do is help us to know what types of businesses could we market to. Could we essentially create a cluster of some sort here in Orem that would really help to help our business environment to grow?

Our 3rd framework was entrepreneurship and innovation. This area just gives strategies of how we can bridge the gap between our entrepreneurs and fully functioning Orem businesses. And one of the tactics that was outlined in that section that we're really excited about was a tactic or a section that was called Connecting Educational Organizations Such as the UVU Entrepreneurship Institute to Local Businesses and the Orem Business Alliance for Support for capstone projects and internship opportunities. We have all these great entrepreneurs that are graduating from UVU. And we want to bridge the gap and capture them and help them to establish their businesses here in Orem. And so this is one way that we might be able to do it. And it has some guidelines for that. So we're really excited about that tactic. The 4th framework was quality of life. It's a huge asset for us here in Orem. And it draws people from all over the country here for the quality of life. This area gives strategies for increasing public engagement, stimulating new economic growth, and improving the general quality of life for Orem residents. And one of the tactics that was in there that— another one that we were excited about was possibly exploring the opportunity for the Utah Main Street program. The Utah Main Street designation, possibly doing it at— on State Street. The Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity launched this program in 2021, and it's an opportunity to revitalize the community's economy, appearance, and image for their commercial district. This program in the future could provide the funding for a facade program for State Street and could really go a long ways towards beautifying State Street.

Now, together with the TPME team that's online with us, We presented this plan to the Planning Commission, and they recommended the following revisions to the plan. The first is they recommended inserting this highlighted sentence in— that's highlighted in red— in the beginning of the Economic Development Strategic Plan, just to clarify that this is a guide and a plan, and it's not a binding document. The second recommendation that the Planning Commission gave Is to delete the bullet points that you see here in red that are referring to duplexes, fourplexes, townhomes, and medium-density development. And this is found in 3 places throughout the document. And if this is a revision that you choose to implement, we'll delete that throughout the document. And the last has 2 parts. The Planning Commission recommended adding the words non-residential in the sentence between mixed-use and development to read, in addition, city leadership should look for ways to facilitate more mixed-use non-residential development in targeted and strategic locations. And in addition, at the bottom of that paragraph, they recommend deleting that red and highlighted sentence there. So based on feedback that we received and the recommendations on the Planning Commission, the Economic Development Division recommends that the City of Orem by resolution amend the stated revisions in Chapter 5, Economics, of the Orem General Plan and approve the Orem Economic Development Strategic plan with further revisions as needed. And now we welcome your questions, and we'd like to open this up for discussion. Any questions you might have for us or for our consultants who are on the line?

We'll open this up for questions.

Go ahead.

Okay. Okay. First of all, thank you for the time, and I appreciate the background work. I served 8 years as an economic development Development Director in the City of AF, and I did read every page of this document. And if you saw my notes, I have, you know, many notes. But I do think overall it's got a lot of good executables and short and long-term goals that I think we could reach. And like I said, it's advisory. I like it because I think it would give you some— I really want us to be a business-friendly community, and whether it's small or large, we know that a great Having a great job is a boon for the city, right? You have more discretionary income. You're able to buy bigger ticket items, a car, a piece of furniture from our city building. Having good jobs just increases the viability and keeps all of our taxes low. And let me tell you, when I used to talk to small businesses, I always asked them what their pain point was and what kept them up at night. And occasionally you find a similar problem. And honestly, if you can try to solve that They appreciate it. I'd love to do shop local programs or a restaurant crawl or something where we're getting people into these small businesses because we all know that COVID hit them really hard. And whatever we can do to show that we support them, I commend you on your Orem Business Alliance meetings. The ones I've attended have been very educational and done a really, really good job. And going to ribbon cuttings is so fun because it's the culmination of a dream from a lot of these people. And so thank you for what you have done and what you will will do, and I commend you on, on this.

And I—

and for me, being business-friendly, whether it's retention, attracting new, expanding what we have, let's continue to do that so that Orem is an attractive place to live and work.

So thank you. Thank you. And by way of information, um, uh, creating a shop local or buy local program is one of the goals under the business retention and expansion section.

So Jeff, did you have a question? That was Terry. Okay, go ahead.

Okay.

So thank you. So Kathy and I had a good conversation the other day, relating to what you're talking about, Debbie, all about, you know, the interest in attracting new business, keeping current businesses here. I had some other questions and concerns that Kathy and I talked about. And I'll mention a couple of those, which I don't think is part of— doesn't fit in what we're talking about as far as attracting businesses and keeping businesses.

But the—

I'll give you a couple disturbing statistics. I'm not sure if it's not disturbing to make everybody panic. But did you know that the average life expectancy of a female In Utah County is lower than the state of Utah. That's on page 5. Anyway, Tom, it's okay, Tom, don't, don't panic. The obesity population percentage in Utah County is higher than Utah. Okay, I'll give you this. This was in the report. Heart attack or heart disease death rate is a lot higher in Utah County than Utah. Anyway, I'm kind of joking, but But this was in the report, but I—

there's—

there were 3 things that, that came up to me because some people from the Planning Commission called me, and Kathy knows this, she was in the middle of trying to help them change some of that wording. The Planning Commission was concerned because there was talk about multi-level housing in the report that they weren't comfortable with, and they went— they— was it 4 meetings, 3 or 4 meetings. going back and forth about trying to say, we're not comfortable with saying that the master plan ought to talk about more multiple units in the city, because the report does show our numbers have gone up a lot as far as that homeownership's gone down and rentals have gone up in the report. I mean, they did a good job explaining that. So some people from Planning Commission reached out to me and say, we're not comfortable with that, but that's kind of what we're supposed to send to you guys. So, The last planning meeting, uh, Haysom Sakar talked about that, said that that was not— well, I won't read it, but it's a long— it's a paragraph about that's— that wasn't our intent to say that we promote multiple units in Orem. It's, it's going back to what Kathy's talking about. We're promoting businesses is what our focus is. But, um, that, and then the other one was, um, and I know these gentlemen are out of Chicago, so it's a little— Michigan Avenue's a little different than State Street in Orem. But they talked about being a walkable city. I had to smile about that because if I'm going to run over to Lowe's and pick up a couple of 2x4s, and then after that I'll walk over to In-N-Out and get me a hamburger, and then on the way home I'll go over to Costco and get me a couple gallons of milk, I'm probably not going to walk that. We don't walk to go across the street. I mean, sorry. And if you're on I-15, there's very few people in that inside or commuter lane because we're all in a car by ourselves. And that's kind of the Utah culture, or maybe it's the West, I don't know. But I appreciate what they said. But what I'm going to is the next point where they talked about the importance of adding more buses and public transportation in Orem, which again goes contrary to what the City Council in Orem is voted on in January, and adding more apartments is also contrary. So I throw that out because I support the big— the majority of this plan is talking about let's do— let's attract businesses, but shame on them to throw that other stuff in there, the walking and the throw in more apartments and throw in, you know, and I know they're trying to appease to some of the people that, you know, in the group that from the city staff and whatever that's trying. But, but I then I'll say a couple positives I thought were really interesting on the report. Let's see if I can find the page. And there's a lot of positives in the report. I just— some of those things concern me because I didn't want to act like we're endorsing going backwards with some of those things. But Oh, this is interesting. It's on page 49. It talks about the age of the homes in our city, and it showed that 21% of our homes in Orem were built between 1970 and 1979. That's a 50-year-old home.

What's that?

From 1970 to 1979, there was 21.7% of all the homes in Orem were built between '70 and '79. And then, and also on the report, between 1980 to '89, 15%, 15.2%, and 1990 to 1999 was 21.8%. So if I take those 3 together, that would be about 58.7%. So about 59% of the homes in Orem are 30 years or older. I thought that was really interesting to see. Because then I started looking at my neighborhood and see what does that mean to businesses and the future development. In my neighborhood, there's 1, 2, 3, there's 6 homes now where one was a single mother who died. Now it's a family with 5 children. Another one was a couple that moved to Mapleton because Orem's too crowded. Family with 4 bought their home, remodeled it, and bought their home. The Harris family— I guess I didn't say their names. They both have died. That home was bought, remodeled, 5 children. Smith family is a couple that moved to Provo. Well, their oldest son graduated from BYU. When he graduated, the 3 of them moved to Provo. Family was 6. The Wood family, they both died off. Family of 6. Oops, sorry, I'm saying names. But anyway, the other one, this is Ollie Allen that had Allen's grocery store, if everybody remembers that. Ollie and his wife died. That's a family of 2 plus extended family of 4. So I think we're— and I think most of us are seeing that in Orem. We're an old aging community, but we're also— we're regenerating. That's the other way. We are starting over again, and we have new energy as people are moving in. So I think, which is a great selling point, Kathy, when we're talking to people about Orem, it's not a dying community, it's a revitalized community. This is a place to come and set up business. So, no, I appreciate the report. I'm kind of rambling. I just wanted to make sure that the Planning Commission's concerns were voiced, that they were not supportive of more high density or more medium density, nor, you know, some of those, some of those, or the mass transit. But, but thank you for what you're doing, and, and please let businesses know we are open for business. business, and we welcome business. That, that's the lifeblood of our city.

Thank you.

Thanks for your work.

Thank you. And we're encouraged with our Orem Business Alliance programs that we have. We have good turnout, we have highly engaged business community, and we're excited about those opportunities we have to work directly with our businesses.

Thank you.

Kudos to Councilmember Peterson and Larray, who have dog-eared these reports into and really studied it.

I believe I—

first of all, I'm thankful also for the Planning Commission's comments that you did incorporate. I think they incorporated some pretty critical ones there, Terry, in their report. So thank you. I mean, we're all saying Orem's open for business. It's one of the greatest places to live in the community. It's safe. It's business-friendly. Our city staff and our— and we live in a state that has a business-friendly community. And we have, to your point, Nate, local universities who produce entrepreneurs, and many of them want to stay here. So thank you for continuing to working on this. And my guess is this is a work in process, why maybe a different group that helps us analyze it in years to come. This is not something that just sits on the shelf and gathers dust, but something that we will work to and, and make corrections. You're right, we walk less here, some more than Terry, but, but I don't carry 2x4s home from Lowe's. either, so, or 2 gallons of milk home from Costco. So thank you for your efforts on this and, and continuing to, to make sure we use this as a guide that it's meant to be. Thank you.

Yes, and thank you, Councilmember McDonald, for your opportunity you gave us to meet the director of the Entrepreneurship Institute, Brianna Hale. Yes, and you made that connection for us, and we think that's going to be a great partnership in bringing the students together to our businesses.

Perfect. Anyone else?

I just had a couple questions. I was curious, and maybe it says it in the, in the study, how do you, how do you measure the goals? And what is the timeframe that you're measuring them over?

That's a really good question. There's a metric section in those goals. So there are objectives and goals and a metric for measuring. It's a whole separate section that measures, you know, the quantity of times or, or the amount of work that's done, or so that's a— it's a whole separate section. And what we intend to do in the future is every 6 months give an update to the council on how we're doing on this plan using those metrics.

Okay, yeah, that'd be great. I mean, that's the biggest piece. Go ahead.

Just to add, page 34 has our full implementation matrix with timeline and our metrics for success. It really breaks it down and gets deep into it.

Okay, perfect.

Okay, sounds good.

Thank you. One other question. You mentioned this Utah Main Street project. Is that something that they've talked with you about, Jamie?

Not specifically this project, but obviously we've had conversations in the past with the council about, for example, facade improvements. development programs and providing resources for existing businesses, for example, along the State Street corridor to reinvest, or even a revolve— we've talked about a revolving loan program as well, just kind of infusing local businesses with opportunities to reinvest, whether it be exclusively their money and providing a bridge for them, some sort of short-term financing, or even a grant program.

Okay, yeah, because that's something that we're gonna be diving into the thick of. So any resources you've got that way, we'd be very interested in.

So this Main Street program is unique. It was created in 2021 by the Governor's Office of Economic Development, and it requires different stages. So it requires a city to invest in 2 different stages over the course of several years, with engagement from the economic development manager and from maybe a city commission, and it requires buy-in from an, you know, agreement from the city council. And after a period of 1 or 2 years being trained and being part of the program, then a city can qualify for funding, for grant funding for facade improvements. So the application process for this next coming year begins this fall.

But—

So in American Fork, we set up a special service district, and what it was, it was we took the general commercial that was on Main Street there, and we put a percentage of the taxes that they actually brought into the city. In my mind, it was 10 or 20% of what they actually did. And then the idea was that they could borrow that of a greater fund. It was the taxes they were generating, a percentage of it, and then it was the special service district itself. So there are many vehicles— this program, that program— there are many things you could do to help, because one of the things we really want to make State Street is a more beautified, better signage, you know, better materials. And so I think there's lots of ways we could get there, and I appreciate this Main Street program. The Main Street program I did years before had a lot more commitment from your city. Your city had to really buy in, and you had people who would come out and do this redevelopment. So it was, it was a major thing, and you had put in some serious funds. So this sounds like a different, better program.

Yeah, like I said, we'd be very interested in as much information as we can get on that from you, because that's going to be a major initiative. So that'd be great.

Absolutely.

Jeff?

I am excited and intrigued by your entrepreneurial capture. And, you know, as I'm sitting here thinking about or listening to opportunities along State Street or Main Street. And to beautify that, you know, we have so many entrepreneurs here in Orem and Utah County that I know would be such great mentors to help these young men and young women as they come out and start a new business. Are there opportunities to use some of the open office space that we have Are there programs that we can kind of bring those together so that we can help fund or find funds to help these new businesses get started and at the same time have a place to start their business in our— one of our main streets or on along State Street as part of that entrepreneurial kind of helping them get off on the right foot?

That's a great idea. You know, right now in our Business Resource Center, we have what's called called the Incubator Space, and it's very low-cost space that businesses can lease from the Business Resource Center. And we also have at Canyon Park Tech Center, we have what's called the Nest, and it's again a little bit of a step up maybe from the Incubator Space at the Business Resource Center, but it's beautiful, small, very affordable office space. But that's a great idea then to have another jump, you know, for businesses that are ready for a little bit more. Or to move into other office space that's up and down State Street.

So, Mayor, I would propose— and there's a few other— I mean, some of the things like on page 45, their numbers are way off on percentages of residents and percentages of growth. And just, just taking their numbers and showing their calculations, they're talking about Orem's had a population increase of 25% in 20 years. It's less than 1% a year according to their— it's gone from— Tom, get your calculator out— it's gone from $84,000 in the year 2000 to $98,000 in the year 2020. That's not 25% growth anyway. But I would propose, Mayor, I would support this if they eliminated the talk about adding more multi-level housing, if they talked about adding more buses. I mean, if they eliminated that conversation, the buses, the multi-level housing, and talking about Orem becoming a walkable city, those 3 things I wouldn't support. You know, I prefer they clean that up and came back to us with where that feels a little bit better.

Councilmember Peterson, can I ask a quick question? I wasn't able to find— oh, okay, we're talking about Where it talked about buses in particular. I found places of multimodal strategies and bike share programs and maybe a transportation campaign to help inform, you know, residents about transit options, but I couldn't find—

I did page 31, the second paragraph, to attract tourists, says consider to expand the public transport Options, but there's a better one than that.

Let me find it here.

Page 32. Let's see, it's the third paragraph down. Project team does not consider Orem a walkable city. Then you skip down, says city leaders should consider forging stronger relationships with with UTA, UDOT, Utah Valley University. to enhance multi-transportational options. And then it goes down and talks about that, public transport options, etc., etc. So that's, you know, there's, there's plenty of buses going from BYU to UVU right now, but the one, the ones going up and down 8th East in Orem, they're absolutely empty. You know, it's like So, and if you're saying let's put buses on State Street so that the cars can't get in to go to the businesses, I just wouldn't support that as part of the master plan. I mean, as part of this plan, but I mean, that's just me. Maybe others are okay with that, but I— in fact, Kathy, the front, the top of that page on 32, where it says the action steps, work with UTA and UDOT to enhance the transportation options, etc., etc.

I think their intent there when they said multimodal. It was to do bike share programs, and then also to implement educational opportunities for increasing ridership on existing transportation. I didn't ever find where they encouraged increased buses. I wasn't able to find that.

So that was my understanding too, is that it was just trying to get more people to ride the bus so that they're not empty. So that, so that we're using the existing resources that are there, not so much increasing.

Can you add that in what Terry wants to say? You know, it's supposed to help increase ridership, what we have, and not—

Yeah, absolutely. Because if it's confusing, let's don't leave it in there because we see we have 2 different interpretations, 3 different interpretations of what we're reading. And they did give us a little gold star for the bike They like the bike paths, which I think bikers would not agree with that. But, and, and we have sidewalks probably in nearly every street in the city. So we do have a lot of sidewalks. And I walk a lot, I walk a lot, by the way.

But some of their other suggestions were to implement more visible wayfinding measures, to consider promoting walkability, bike share programs, suburban trails throughout the community. So I think we could clean that up easily, that language, because I think their intent is to make use of existing transportation options and to increase those other multimodal options.

So if they said it that way, that would be better. I mean, us bringing Cheesecake Factory to the city would add a lot more than worried about if we have a sidewalk going from here to the Cheesecake Factory. We'll drive, we'll drive there if we, if we want to.

If they—

if we have it.

Yes. So, so would that resolve that if we had our consultants work with us to create language that clarifies that, that we're not requesting or we're not advocating for additional busing, but— or buses, but that we're advocating for other multimodal options such as, you know, promoting information and a campaign to help increase the ridership on existing transportation. Would language like that help?

That feels better to me, since we're already paying a heck of a lot of money in taxes for those empty buses. It'd be nice if somebody, you know, promoted them, but, but I don't want more. I don't think any taxpayers want more of those empty buses we're paying for.

Right, and I don't think that was their intent. We'll help, we'll work with them to clarify that language.

Thanks.

Okay, so how did you want to say something?

I guess I'll say, since, uh, Jeff jumped in at the very end, required to, but I mean, uh, Terry's spoken long enough, but I'll, I'll give my 2 cents. But no, I appreciate Kathy and Nate, and I've been to, you know, a couple of the, the lunches, and they've been very good, um, and, uh, very well attended. But I, I think we need to realize Orem is a destination, and we the mall. And, and we're in the center of Utah County. So I think we are right there. And I think we have— Dillard's came because we're in the center and the mall, and also Trader Joe's and Takano's came from Provo. We have RC Willey there. But I think we need to remember that the mall and 13 South, I think back in the day, it was like 42% of our sales tax. And we rely heavily on our sales tax. So if we can broaden our State Street Economic development plan and get businesses on State Street that can drive sales tax, I think that would be a winner, because we can't rely everything on the mall and 13th South. So, and then maybe we can get a Cheesecake Factory for that. So thank you for your time.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so moving forward, so Steve, oh wait, but we have to have a public comment.

First.

Maybe I'll just comment what I was going to say, you know, in order to avoid having to make revisions and bring it back again, if we could find language that would allow us to pass this tonight. Just wondering if we could have language that basically says, maybe it's in parentheses or something, this is essentially— by this we don't mean encouraging— we, we intend encouraging ridership of existing public transportation and not necessarily additional public transportation. Is that essentially what you're trying to say?

I prefer to have it cleaned up and have it written, you know.

And if you would prefer, that's fine. I'm just trying to save us another meeting on this if it's possible. But if you'd prefer to—

Well, probably another $10,000 too, because we pay them $10,000 every— you know, it was $108,000 plus $10,000 plus— but no, I just don't— I don't want to pass something that is confusing because Jeff had one interpret I have another one. Dave Spencer said something else about what we're reading about buses, so I prefer that it's really not something that's confused— confusing when you read.

Why don't we see after the public comment if we get a vote to pass it tonight or not? You have a public comment, right?

Yes.

Let's see where we go.

Okay, so we'll open the public comment on this.

Mike Carpenter.

I just agree with Terry.

We don't need more buses that are empty.

It's been that way for decades. In fact, if anything, we should cut back on the buses, save some taxpayers some money.

Also, I think that that Main Street thing really needs to be looked into because the state has, you know, really tight hooks on anything they offer up.

for free.

So let's be really cautious before we jump into any program that Captain Pronouns offers. So thanks.

I agree with Terry. I think we need to clean up the language. I think that's, that's the direction to go in. I'm all in favor of a cheesecake pen.

Are we voting on Cheesecake tonight?

You know, can I make a comment? I talked to the Cheesecake Factory years ago about coming to Utah County, and they said once we get into all the big cities, then we'll start going to smaller. So Salt Lake got 2, and so I'm thinking we're next. So it's possible.

Any other comments from public? Okay, we'll close the public comments part of this meeting, of this discussion.

So, yes.

If we make these revisions, can—

could it go to a consent item if we reviewed it, or does it have to come back through a whole Oops, you know, you've had the public hearing, so, and you don't have to have another public hearing, so I think you could probably do it by consent. That's a future meeting.

And my degree of comfort on this is this is a guide, not a how-to book. And so while I'm happy to do the clarification, but it is a guide, not— it's advisory, not binding. And I'm not excited about spending additional money, even though thankfully it was no Orem City money. But yeah, I'm happy to have some minor changes because this is a guide, so I could actually pass what we have today knowing it's only a guide. But if there wants to be a parenthetic change on it, I'm okay.

But I don't—

in fact, I'd make a motion to approve it so that we don't have to go back to it, or I'd be okay with what you suggested, I think, Steve, with a minor— let's go get it back around and we can take a review.

And Tom, I guess that's just a different philosophy. I'm not willing to pass something I don't agree with or support just because it makes it more convenient for us. If I'm opposed— now, I would love to support it with all the things Kathy and I talked about the other night with increasing business, but I don't— I'm not going to say I'll support this even though I don't support part of it.

I don't—

that's not how I work. It has to be I have to support it.

Let's see, it's a vote on it. It seems like— say, Steve, it seems like we could essentially send it back to get those changes made, have those changes be submitted out to the council. Sure. And then just have it be a consent item.

Yeah, you could do that, right?

That would be the simplest, probably. So is everyone okay with—

Question.

Go ahead.

Is there a reason we have to go back to the consultants to do the changes?

Is—

can't you guys just do this?

Yeah, we could.

Meeting with Terry or whatever.

Yes.

So I don't have a template for the plan itself. And so it might be difficult with the changes if they're extensive, that would require reformatting.

But, you know, well, I say give it a whirl on the city, you know, since you're already an employee, and save our money for the other things.

So again, I mean, they— if I may, TPMA has effectively handed the plan over to us.

Yeah.

So it is a—

it is now our plan.

Yeah.

So if we wanted to amend the plan and take half of it out next week, we could. Or if we wanted to add another 20 pages, we could. It's now effectively in your hands, so you can do with it what you will.

So, Kathy, I would be happy to sit down with you with the current concerns I have and see if that meets the, the okay with the rest of the people on the council. But you and I could sit down through that, and then again, if there's things that other council members disagree with, then they can put it back in.

And I'm happy to meet with you too at the same time as that one.

Yeah, we've got like one, and Dave, I can do that too. That would be 3 we could have.

So is this a motion to defer? Is that what we're looking to see?

So I was just going to offer I have one other alternative, and that would be just to simply strike that language. If you, you know, that would resolve it tonight if you want, or again, you have the option to go back and modify.

I think Terry wants to— I think we should, I think we should sit down and modify. Okay.

So we just— so just a motion to continue the item to the next meeting.

Okay.

May I make a motion to continue this until our meeting? Do I have to say a date?

Preferably, yeah.

What is our next city council meeting? Till September 13th meeting.

I'll second that.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you for that.

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you tonight.

Okay, next item, 8.3. We've got amending Article 22-5-3 and the zoning map of the City of Orem by rezoning the property location— located at 507 North 400 West from the R-7.5 zone to the R-6.5 zone, and Jason's going to present that to us.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. Pull this up. So tonight, as, as you stated, Mayor, we are proposing to change— or the applicant is proposing to change their property from an R-75 to an R-65 zone. Property is located at 507 North 400 West. It's just under an acre. 0.99 of an acre. You see it's currently zoned R-75. What they're proposing is to go to R-65. Let me go to the plan. Is to develop it into 4 lots. They're pretty substantial sized lots averaging just under— just over 10,000 square feet. So they're pretty good sized lots for the zone. What they're wanting to rezone it for 4 is the 65 feet of frontage in order to be able to get the 4 that actually— the 2 on either street front the street. So it's going to be a typical home that fronts onto a public street. The other alternative they could do under the current zoning is just do 2 deep lots. So have 2 lots in the front and then have 2 deep lots behind. As staff, we've looked at that and they could physically do that. They would prefer to have a normal layout of Lots, and that's why they're here tonight to get the rezone.

Just to clarify, Jason, it isn't to change the square footage total. It's the width of the front.

The width of the front.

And that's an R—

R-6-5. 6-5 requires 65 feet of frontage, and that's what they have with this layout, which, which, yeah, requires a zone change. You can see the current configuration on either of the streets. They would be required to obviously finish the street with a curb gutter sidewalk when needed. And the Planning Commission did review it and do recommend that the council approve the rezone as requested.

How did the neighbors feel?

I think the applicants are here. If they want to come up, they can. They did have a neighborhood meeting, and I believe everyone was in favor, but I'll let them speak to that.

They loved it.

Is this by ties? Is this by the Risers? I'm trying to think where it physically is. You don't know the Risers?

Okay.

Okay.

I think it's— I think it's his in-laws, his in-laws, the Knowles, that live on that street.

Okay.

Oh yes, yeah, we brought it up with the neighborhood meeting and Renee and David were both there. Dave, yo, hi.

So we had several neighbors in attendance.

And, uh, they were more for it being single family.

They want to be single family.

Uh, there's an overlay to do it for a fourplex for the 55, and they were like voting like, or nudging us not to do that.

So we said we'd do this if they would—

if they're on board, we'd do it that way. So they unanimously like hoorah for that. And I mean, hurrah.

So, so what would you build on there exactly?

Just 4 single-family homes.

Okay, so there's straight-up single-family homes. How are they laid out with the 65-foot width? How does that—

how does it—

Just, there'd be deep lots and it'd just be probably thinner house.

Okay.

Just, it'd have to comply with setbacks, but whatever a builder could figure out.

And you're going to— you're tearing down the house that's on the other street, correct?

Yes.

Show that picture, Jason.

The one they've got on here.

Yeah, you had the picture. Yeah, so this one here, this is going to tear that house down.

Yeah, our, our goal was to see if we donate to the fire department, they could do like a practice burn or something like that. If I could like light the fire.

Got wires over it.

And is that behind that chain-link fence? Is that where the property is?

I know that's, uh, no, no, that's the other street.

It's looking at once from the east to west and west to east.

So the bottom picture is the house, and, uh, that's where the trees and horizon are.

Yeah, so there's a street on this on the east and one on the west, so they'll front on 2 different streets.

You get 2 houses on 450 and 2 houses at 400.

Okay. Any questions, concerns? So we need to open this up for a public hearing, just to see if there's any comments. There's no comments, we'll close the public hearing. Do you have anything else, Jason? Are we good?

No, that's it.

Have a motion. Somebody like to make a motion?

What's your timeframe on this? This goes through to build?

We don't have a specific one. We were interviewing builders. I mean, we're—

this is our first step, so we're new at this.

First time.

So the process will be, once it's— if it's adopted, then they would go back through for a preliminary plat approved at the Planning Commission, then the plat could be recorded.

So they've got a few weeks, and it doesn't have to come back to us.

Does not come back to the City Council.

I'm happy to make a motion for single-family housing and making a position that we amend Article 22-5 and the zoning map of the City of Orem by rezoning the property located at 507 North 400 West from R-7.5 zone to the R-6.5 zone.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

I have one question. No, sorry. Does that change— just change that property, or does it change the whole neighborhood?

Just these 4 lots.

Okay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The ordinance passes.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, the next item is amending portions of Chapter 10, Flood Damage Prevention of the Orem City, pertaining to the base flood elevation requirements. Jason.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. So one of my duties as the Planning Division Manager is I also act as the floodplain coordinator for the city, and part of our annual review— what, there's a 5-year review with FEMA Which we review our flood insurance. Then there's an annual review that we do that talks about our community rating system. The purpose behind that is that when somebody is in the floodplain and needs flood insurance, the rating of the city or the community they live in determines the cost of the insurance if you get it through FEMA. Right now we're at a rating of 7, which applicant gets about a 15% break on their insurance if they need FEMA insurance. So we try hard to meet the criteria that they set forth for us. We, a couple years ago, we revamped Chapter 10 that talked about floodplains and things. In our last review, which was a couple months ago, they asked us to make some minor changes to the text that we have. We, we had it in there that they had to be a foot above the floodplain elevation. So if somebody builds a home, they need to be above that. So if in the event there is a flood, flood, the home isn't inundated with water. It wasn't specifically clear for them, and they wanted us to go through and make it specifically clear that it states 1 foot above, including any mechanical or other equipment in a basement. So anybody that builds on a floodplain, all that equipment would have to be 1 foot above that elevation. So that's what we've done. All these changes represent that throughout the code. There's nothing other than that specifically talks about the 1-foot or the machinery or equipment that would basically allow us to come into compliance and get the needed points to maintain our rating as we move forward into the next cycle. So that's why we're here tonight. It's simply a request for that. The Planning Commission did review it and do recommend that the council amend the ordinances as proposed. So be glad to address any questions.

So if we do that, what does that do to Flood insurance as far as cost?

It actually will keep it where it is now, right? So we were— they're asking us, FEMA is that, and the state coordinator is asking us to make these changes so that we don't lose points. So basically go through and we, we submit different things that we're doing with our stormwater and different things to prevent flooding, and they basically take it and rate what we do and give us certain points, and that has— that's how we get a break on our insurance. So this caveat was part of that point system. So by doing this, we'll maintain our rating that we have now, which allows a 15% reduction in flood insurance.

Did you say 50 or 15?

15. 1-5.

15.

Yeah.

And what, what, what is it currently as far as—

is there a—

I mean, this is 1 foot. Is it anything right now?

So no. Well, it is 1 foot, but it doesn't clearly state to their satisfaction that it's 1 foot.

Oh, so you're just further defining it.

So yeah, just clarifying that It's more specific and direct. Now it says 1 foot instead of inferring that it's 1 foot.

Okay. Any other questions? We'll open this for a public hearing. Somebody's got to have something they want to say.

Yeah.

Okay, well, we'll close the public hearing. And does somebody want to make a motion?

I'll make a motion that we amend portions of Chapter 10, Flood Damage Prevention, of the Orem City Code pertaining to base flood elevation requirements.

I'll second that.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Motion passes for the ordinance. All right, we're about done here.

We've got—

if Jamie has anything he would like to share with us.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of things. The first one is on Thursday at 11:30 at City Center Park, we have our annual employee appreciation party. This is the event where we serve our employees lunch and we also recognize specific employees with our Heroes Award for— Heroes Awards for essentially exemplary service. I just wanted to make sure that you knew about that and knew that you are invited, and it would be great to have you participate in that, in that event. Again, 11:30 in City Center Park, and lunch will be served. And this is also the, the, the annual awarding of our Hawaii trip. Based on the generosity of the Orem family. They have for many years dedicated a week of time in a, in a essentially a condo unit in Hawaii for one of our employees to go to Hawaii. And our employees have an opportunity based on a drawing to win that prize. So it's very generous of the Orem family. We're thankful for them and that's always the big draw. Everybody eats, and once the Hawaii prize is awarded, then everybody bids aloha. So it's a great event, and we'd love to have you attend. In Utah National Parks, they have what are called the Big 5. In Orem, we have what we are now affectionately calling the big 3. These are our big 3 projects, namely Heritage Park and Tank, the Hillcrest Park, and our City Center project. We're moving forward on all of those projects. We had, for example, a 4.5-hour meeting this morning with each of the departments that have— will have a presence in the new City Center, talking about space allocation and trying to fit all of the needs and some of the wants into the building for each of our respective departments. We have a plan to bring that to you, to share with you during our next City Council meeting. So what I'm kind of saying is we've kind of gotten to the point where we're at the 10,000-foot altitude level. Today we got to about 5,000 feet. They're going to go back, they're going to revise it. We're going to show you the 5,000-foot elevation level, and then we'll continue forward.

And since Orms is at about 4,300, we're almost there.

Yeah, yeah, we're almost there. You're right, you're right. Our, uh, our Heritage Tank project, that one is a little bit discouraging because we've run into some problems with our well and drilling the well and some of the materials that are needed. For the well to pack the casing, it is going to delay us about 6 to 8 weeks. So we are not going to be able to move forward on the well portion of the project as quickly, quickly as we'd like. As it relates to Hillcrest Park, we're actually having conversations now about fencing off the property and beginning the demolition process. So there's a lot of asphalt, there's a lot of concrete, And of course, once we're done with asbestos abatement within the building, the sections of the building that we need to take down, we'll start to take down by way of a bid package that the architects and contractors are working on now that we'll release probably in September. In September, we— I know several of you have received emails about trees on property.

property.

I assure you, we've worked with our urban forester, Josh Storey. He's identified a number of trees based on essentially natural life or are going to be problematic with some of the programming that we're looking to implement in the park that are going to need to come down. But we've actually tried to work around some of the trees on property so that we can incorporate them into our plan if they make sense, and if the natural life of these trees is, is more than a few years, and if they're healthy. But you are going to see us taking down trees, and that is in part to accommodate some of the design that we have and some of the amenities that we are putting on the property. It's also to accommodate— Terry was mentioning the age of some of the homes, for example, in the community. The natural life of some of the trees, for example, in this community are kind of all in the same time frames, and so we've got to be mindful of that. And then finally, just, uh, we've, we've had conversations in the past about 1600 North and Geneva Road. And the last couple of years we've received about $60 million to complete expansion of Geneva Road south of University Parkway, and of course 1600 North from essentially 12th West to State Street. Just when you thought you were this close to the project, we've had obviously everything associated with labor concerns and supply, supply chain issues, so on and so forth. And that estimated cost for the 1600 North project has grown from $40 million to what we believe is about $55 million. And the Geneva project, we met last week with UDOT as part of a regular meeting that we have with UDOT on a monthly basis or a bimonthly basis, and they noted that that cost of the project is also increasing. So kind of discouraging, not to be, you know, completely frustrated. I think we are probably going to back— going back as administration and hiring some of the consultants that we had working with us on the Hill a couple of years ago. I think we're going to engage them again and go through a process legislatively to see if we can bridge the gap sooner rather than later. If we were just to leave those projects on essentially schedule, UDOT schedule, we would probably be looking at for 1600 North hitting that project right around 2030. And then the Geneva Road project, we would probably need to value engineer that, and that project probably would run as far south as maybe we'd like it to run. So I think time is of the essence for some of this work, so that we can, for example, continue to see the progression of the Geneva Road project to the south. And if we can hopefully accelerate the 1600 North timeline and get it, get it closer than, than 2030. So, and that's all I had, Mayor. Thank you.

Let me ask you a question. So I drove by the property the other day where the well is. Is Arlen still living there?

Yes, he is.

Wow.

Yes, he is. That was by agreement. He wanted to continue to live on that property and to use that property. And that's why you see that fence there that separates. That was part of the agreement that we had with him.

Because I was there at a softball game. So I was there fairly early, then leaving pretty late and there was no lights on. But that's a pretty serious fence next to his garage. Like what, 50-foot? I don't know what it is.

Yeah.

It's 30 feet.

30 feet. Okay.

And yeah. So that fence is not there to separate his property from the well property. That's a sound fence. And those blankets are there to essentially soften the noise for the neighbors in the surrounding area. But that fence, because of the fact that We're having supply chain issues. That 30-foot-tall fence will have to remain for another, about another 2 months.

Yeah.

And Jamie, if I could just add, Mr.

Farley is very energy conscious.

So that's probably why his lights are out.

What's that?

He likes to save energy even in the winter.

He keeps his heat very low in his house.

So yeah, we, we actually were in the same Sunday school class together when I moved to Utah in the 5th grade. So I knew Arlen.

So did we come up with a— on the fence that backs the neighbors? Are we—

we are, we are doing the Simtek, or we're gonna go with the Simtek fence?

Yes.

Good.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Jamie. And thank you everyone for coming, and we'll adjourn this meeting.

Motion. I so move we adjourn.

Second.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Now we adjourn.