City Council · 2022-09-27

All right, let's go ahead and start the meeting.

Everybody, welcome to part 2, and we'll turn the time over for you guys to tell us about Hillcrest Park.

Excellent.

Thank you, Mayor, City Council. We appreciate the opportunity to be here this afternoon to provide you with a little update on the Hillcrest Park project. We have part of our design team here, Brent Potter and Corey Shoup with Redline Design. They will walk us through some of the updates they've been working on the last little while, and then we can address any questions that you might have. I'll turn the time to these fine gentlemen and let you do your thing. Or Brent, which one?

I'm gonna have Brent. He's the one that leads all of our meetings on this, so he knows more about it than I do.

So he's every little nook and cranny.

Yes.

Excellent.

Uh, I think it might be easier for me to stand and point things out.

Um, so, Britt, maybe just to note, we meet as a project team every Monday. So every second Monday we meet in person, and then we have an electronic meeting the other weeks. So those meetings generally 90 minutes to 120 minutes. Yeah.

Who—

you're in those meetings? You're in those meetings?

Yeah, Parks, Public Works, Recreation.

WPA Architecture was in those meetings as well as Bud Mahal.

Okay, that's great.

We do excuse WPA Bruce Fallon. He was already committed to another— yeah, the architect. Thank you. Already committed and couldn't make it tonight, but Part of the update has to do with him as well.

So we'll be doing our best. Do your best to cover him.

Right.

So what you see on the screen now is, uh, probably looks very familiar to everyone in the room from the last meeting to this meeting. Um, not many things have changed on the overall layout of the site and site amenities. There's been some tweaking of things here and there, splash pad locations, pathways, locations of certain elements such as the hammocking area, and there were pathways changed and things shaped or sized a little differently for a couple of reasons. One reason was to save some of the existing trees that are on site. There's a large honey locust tree right almost center of the site. The city is currently keeping that tree watered. It's a really large tree that we think adds a lot of value to the park. And then the whole east side of the park, along the east property line, there's quite a few trees that we are salvaging on that side as well. The other Large difference in the site plan were changes due to fire code and to the architecture of the building. The front of the building had some slight modifications in an effort to reduce costs. So now, prior to this rendition, there was a central access, access to a vestibule, which has largely been eliminated, which now creates more of a linear line to the main corridor that will be the main entrance to the building. We can go over that in the architecture in a minute. We've also taken into account a future well house in this plan, so some of the This section of the site has been modified a little bit. The playground right now, we've got 2 sections for toddlers, larger kids, older kids, and you can see that it's empty. We have received bids on the design for the playground, which we will be reviewing in our final review.

Oh, there's just one of you.

We'll be reviewing the bids and moving forward with that tomorrow at 4 PM. So there's no final design yet for the actual layout of the playground.

Can I ask a question here? Last time, maybe there was some confusion about our bathrooms and working all that. Did we work out the bathroom situation?

Yeah, we can— I can address that once we move on. We have, we have 3 slides. So the next slide is the internal or the Sorry, the external portion of the building. We'll speak to it a little bit. The differences— the main difference would be the center section where there used to be a vestibule. This part of the building came out a little bit more and it was a big glass facade. It's been slimmed down a little bit to primary entrance, secondary entrance, and This will be— this will all have trees in front of it, kind of.

It's a large wall, it needs some green.

And then the other changes on the bathrooms on this eastern side, which is now separated, very clearly separated between male, female, 2 separate sections. So yes, that has been addressed.

Thank you.

That was important to Linnea and I.

Yeah, so what was the end result of the— has it been addressed here?

What does that mean?

We can— it's men and women's rooms, right?

Yeah.

Yes.

So we have 2 separate entrances with this separation. So entrances from the outside, entrances from the inside, utility closet, which is now— they're completely separate. And then we have family bathrooms outside of that as well. So there are 4, maybe 5, but it's all been—

How many family bathrooms?

2.

There are 2 bathrooms accessible from the exterior.

From the exterior.

So one is men and one's women's?

On the family ones they are not.

But not family, but the others?

Yes. The others are men's and women's crew.

And then you've got stalls and urinals in the men's, and you've got the stalls and the women's. What's that island thing in the women's? What's the thing in the middle?

Oh, this is just service.

That's where all—

oops—

that's where all the pipes come up.

Oh, okay.

So yeah, it's pretty boring but very essential.

Yeah, you're talking about that, just that area, right?

Whenever I touch it, it seems to move.

But yeah, just—

By the sinks.

Yeah, I thought that was—

Yeah. But yeah, okay, that makes sense. Thank you.

It's mechanical.

Thank you. Yep.

Any further comments on the front of the building? I know that WPA spent a lot of time working that and trying to get that down.

I think we are to a point where we're comfortable with that.

We're pretty pleased with the fact that there is one main entrance. And it's denoted very significantly in that sense. That door faces the approach, whereas the other one leads toward the classroom and hallway on the more westerly side. So they've done a fine job.

Just comment on that wall here, the wall you're talking about where the lunchroom/auditorium is. Could you put some windows in that? I mean, it'd be— there's a—

that's a large wall of nothing. I mean, it'd be nice to get light in there.

There has been a lot of discussion. We actually eliminated some of those as we were value engineering it down because they turned out to be very expensive because of the structural integrity of that entire existing box. So is it possible? Yes, it's just, it's expensive.

So we got the estimate from Budd Mahomes, north of $14 million. Our budget for this project is $12 million. We worked with obviously Blue Line, and, uh, but the cost to get it down to about $12.5 million. So that was one of the conversations that we had, was cutting out some of these window structures because of the cost associated, one with cutting them into the wall and then securing— not securing them, but structurally shoring them. Structurally shoring them.

So the other question would be skylights.

Would that be another way to get natural light in?

You could do that as well. As we understand it, and maybe I'm speaking out of line here, but there's a relatively new roof system on there that we're hoping to maintain.

Once we interrupt that, it's basically a whole new system again, and that would be another very pricey item.

You will recall also in prior conditions that we had some windows cut in along the east side and the west side. They too were eliminated because of cost. So to bring more light into the gymnasium area, we'll put some lighter paint on the ceiling. Can you offset some of that just with the interior lighting?

LED lighting?

Yes, it's very well lit. Yeah.

Could you paint a mural or something more exciting than a blank wall on the That's where you're planting trees, though, right?

That is landscaping.

We do have right now 5 more vertical columnar trees in that space.

There's a seat.

There's actually— yeah, there's a—

go back.

There's a little plaza right out in front of that.

I'll zoom in on that.

Can I trust you?

No.

Will they be full-blown trees?

I mean, some of those trees are going to take 10 to 15 years to get tall.

Uh, I mean, if that's an area— I mean, you know, normal installation of tree costs, you know, $350 per tree. I mean, maybe that's not too big of a cost issue to buy bigger trees for areas that are more—

spec is usually what, 2.5-inch caliper trees? Could you put our big city logo with Family City USA? You could just park a few of the cars. I can do that.

I need some tips. So yeah, it might be a little hard to see, but there's a corridor between these 2, and this kind of acts as, you know, in between basketball games, you know, a place to hang out. There's sitting walls on either side, so there's a little bit of a vertical element for people to use. And then yeah, we have the planting bed with Large.

So things you're not seeing in this plan is we have a flagpole, we have trees, there's actually that row of trees against that wall, then there's that gathering space with benches, and then there's another planter area with additional trees.

So it's to the right where the lettering— like, what's the little smudge right there on that? Is that like gonna say— yeah, that would be crest or Oh, there it is.

I mean, that final lettering would be up to the city.

We were trying to make some of the lettering consistent with what we have at the fitness center. So see the signage on the fitness— Forum Family Fitness Center? We'd use similar font and typeface, font size. Differentiator.

And this park, everyone doesn't go through this building. You can go into all the facilities wherever. This is just if you want to go use whatever's in that building, right?

Yeah, when you're— when you're Junior Jazz, let's just use that as an example, is assigned to play in this building, that's the building will be labeled and very easily identifiable. That was one of the things that we wanted to make sure with having that entrance face outward, it's very clear. There are a number of other areas to enter the building, but having a main entrance was important to us. So it was labeled and very clear so that there's a large drop-off area out front. A lot of parents bring the kids up, drop them off, grab the other kids, run around town. And so we felt like this was a decent solution. A lot of the coloration as well is trying to tie into your other rec centers.

Well, people assume it's a gym. I mean, would you put basketball labeled? I don't know, I'm saying, is it obvious?

You mean, like, could you label the only building on site? So if you are scheduling, for example, a game, a basketball game, the natural flow would be—

yeah.

And then we— there is, uh, may not be very clear, but we do have space There's— there will be a sign for the park.

That's weird.

Out here by the road, we'll have a sign out here. Just, you know, I guess we can put whatever on this way or something.

Yeah.

And then there is another secondary sign at the north end once you come through on University, but That one.

There's a small, an even smaller sign right up in that very top area, way up in there.

It's just a little, you've arrived sign. Other questions, comments?

So that little corner which there's a house on right now, but have you done any kind of what-ifs Like, what if they sell any of it?

They sold that to the city.

Is there anything that—

so we, we approached them. It's a commercial business and they're not interested in selling, so we haven't incorporated it into that plan.

We haven't explored it.

We've not studied it because it wasn't part of the project area, but yeah, that's something that if they did decide to sell it, yeah.

So just to bring you up to speed on some of the other happenings on that particular site, uh, in the last couple of weeks, if you've been down around that area, you've noticed a lot of activity. Public Works crews have been down there removing asphalt, removing concrete, a little sod. The pavilion is now gone, tennis courts removed, restrooms— actually, the restroom building's knocked down today, and we've got Tucker Landscape down there removing any of the trees on site. Our part, meaning Public Works part, needs to be completed by October 17th so that the contractor can move in and hopefully start doing the demolition very soon. So demolition bids are due actually on Thursday of this week. It'll probably take about 30 days to bring a contractor on board for the demolition, and then they'll start getting after the demolition of the building. So things are happening. So what happens in the winter when it gets cold?

Will they just do—

will you just do most of the building? Will you still be able to pour other things? Well, it depends on the winter, obviously. Much of the demolition can be done no matter what, in regard to the weather. As the building is demoed, there are some tunnels underneath the existing building that will need to be— concrete will need to be removed and then backfilled in there. So that'll take a little bit of time. That will likely take us through a good portion of the winter months. And then there's some site grading we can have also during the winter months. We'll stay away from putting down any concrete. And that's cost because when we Concrete down in the winter, you've got to blanket the ground before you pour, and you have to blanket the concrete afterwards. That just adds cost to each of those processes.

And kind of to answer your question, we did end up splitting the project into 2 separate bid packages to be able to get the work that can't be done over the winter bid out prior to winter. So all the on-the-ground stuff that will happen in the spring, basically, because we split it up, things can happen sooner.

And if everything goes well, and you have no supply issues or whatever, what's your timetable of completion? Cross your fingers.

Just out of curiosity, As far as the Hillcrest building itself, the school, is there a net savings saving the building, or does it cost more to keep it the way it is?

I'm just curious if you just—

I'm just curious. It's obviously where we're at, but was there a net savings or net cost to preserve the building?

I'm not the architect, but I can just refer to what we end up having to do with restrooms. We do a lot of municipal parks with restrooms. You're saving a lot of money by using that gym. A restroom alone is $300,000. And so you can only imagine what it would cost to re— to, to push the whole thing over and redo it. Uh, you'd be millions of dollars in order to, to reconstruct it and basically get the same thing we've got today.

So we're $12.5 million for the Park the way it sits, it can be another 5 miles to replicate what you've done.

Yeah, if you were, if you were to wipe that and do a whole gymnasium.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what we looked at.

Even just when we were first conceptualizing what that cost will be to recreate that existing footprint. Even back then, we were estimating $4 to $5 billion. So multiply that by today's inflation, and it increases.

Today's inflation plus the delay. Steel is absolutely insane. They've got one project, it's got switchgear on it. They told us a month ago they're now 3 years behind.

So it went from 1 year to 3?

3 years. So now we're in construction and they just basically turn the lights off and we'll wait it out.

Is that, is that big circular area, is that just like for playing soccer and grass?

Large open space, anything you want to do out there.

You said you relocated the splash pad, is it still the same size?

Is it a—

Yeah, when we basically aligned it with the one before, it moved maybe 15 feet and it was slightly askew, and we straightened it out. It's You wouldn't have noticed had I not said anything. So no, still the same size, still the same concept.

Just straighter.

Just so— what, from the—

so we had to add a fire lane with some permeable grass pavers thing. Basically, the sidewalk that we're using for the fire lane is now right in line with It'll give a nice view to the splash pad, whereas before it was a little off to the left.

Okay, so when's the completion date?

Give us a guess.

Fall of '23?

Yes. Any other questions, comments?

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

That's good. Thank you.

So a number of, a number of months ago, the mayor and I were talking about, uh, wanting to have a discussion and overview of boards and commissions. We have a series, obviously, of existing boards, and there was a question as to the effectiveness of some of the boards and the staffing of those boards. And obviously, if There are boards, for example, that are more active than others. Are all of them necessary? Are there— is there a desire on the part of you as a council to work with, for example, Karen, in creating new commissions and committees? Different than all of the boards and commissions that have been identified below. What you see here is a document that Karen has put together, and it identifies each specific council or commission, notes board membership, notes when their terms expire, notes the staff that is assigned to each of the respective committees, as well as talks about the effectiveness of each of these committee and commissions. and then provides, if, uh, you know, a little input from staff as to how we might make these committees and commissions a little more effective, if there's a need or a comment associated with how we can make them more meaningful. So we are presenting that to you for your review tonight so that you have an opportunity to review the committees and commissions that are currently active. And, uh, I just want to give a few minutes to Karen because she's the one who's compiled this information, has had conversations with staff relative to each of these committees and commissions, and provide her an opportunity maybe to, to provide some input as to, um, prospectively where we are going.

Hope you don't mind if I just— You're ahead of the table. So, um, yeah, I tried to be consistent with, with how I looked at each one. There, there was only one in this group, the Recreation Allocation Commission. They are alphabetized, that definitely helps get through this. The Recreation Allocation Commission was put together— or yeah, committee, sorry. They were put together for a specific purpose, to help select new long-term sports league partners for the city, and now the process has been changed, so it's no longer necessary. Bryce, our recreation director, said this is probably no longer needed, so that's— and right now I don't think anybody's even on this Committee, so this is a good one to just clear out, to clean house. Most of the rest are functioning fairly well. There, there were a couple in there that need a little boost, and the Historic Preservation Commission is just getting going again, so that one will fill out very shortly. And then there are several in there like Planning Commission, Board of Adjustments, those ones that are required by law. So, so definitely part of our regular process.

Karen, I think Terry serves on like a Utah planning board that isn't on here. I serve on the Youth Council. These are, these are forum-specific, right?

Yeah, yeah, we dropped off. So I dropped off ones where you're liaisons, but for an outside group, or the Youth Council is just a very different group. And then the Metropolitan Water Board just functions very separately from the way all these other boards and commissions do.

Okay, thank you.

But, but what is nice is, is that our IT group has put together an amazing little program that helps us track all of these things. So we know who's on the board, and it tracks the application process, and it streamlines this for the staff who— I mean, this is a lot to juggle at times, all these different applications that come in. So I was really impressed, you know, especially coming from— Provo doesn't have a system like that for tracking it. And so this was really amazing to see what you have to keep track of it and to let everyone know who to talk to about, about the different boards and commissions, who on staff, who on the council. And of course, I have enjoyed listening as you guys give updates on the different boards and commissions you serve with, because that's the point.

Karen, I'm The Utah League of Cities and Towns is one that you didn't mention, right?

Oh yeah, that, that's definitely another one. That's— yeah, that's a separate board, but your league is on too. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't be on this one because you wouldn't eliminate that one, obviously, because it's theirs.

So, but it would, but it would be useful to have all the different council—

oh, and I could add that.

Yeah. Organizations are on.

Right, it does help in balancing the workload for the council members themselves, so I'm happy to add that.

Which ones they're on and how long they've been on it. Perfect.

I can, I can round that up, but this definitely gets you started. If there are more questions that you're looking to have answered, let me know so I can reach out to the staff on these, but I felt like there was really good information to get you started on understanding at least what each group is providing. Oh, one of them, let's see, I think it was the Board of Building and Fire Code Appeals. One of the suggestions they had was, I believe it was lengthening— oh yeah, they would like to allow board members to serve more than 2 terms because it's such a specialized board. You need people with experience in the construction industry, and that makes a big difference for them. They don't meet very often, and so they're not going to get worn out, but sometimes it's hard if you put a limit on the number of terms on certain boards. So that's something to keep in mind as you go through. The Board of Building and Fire Code Appeals. Yeah, they meet very rarely, but it's, it's kind of a proactive move to have Orem have its own to resolve those issues.

Is Mark Sanderson here? We can ask him. 5-year term?

It's managed through our development services. Yeah, next month, October 11th, we're actually bringing that as an amendment to the council.

Oh, okay, great. It's not necessarily adding on terms, just allowing them to extend. So 3-year term, 3-year term, continue the 3-year terms. Okay.

But just not limited to 2 terms, which it's doing currently.

So can you just run through real quickly and say which ones are mandatory city required?

Oh, yeah.

So, so Arts Council, not mandatory.

Very good.

Well, and I'm not sure that I would say any of these are not valuable. Just, it depends on what you're looking for. Beautification, not mandatory.

Oh, just those.

Okay, come back, we'll talk about the ones that are optional.

So right now, the ones that are mandatory: Board of Adjustments, Board of— well, Board of Building and Fire Code Appeals isn't mandatory, but it's—

Well, that's in our—

it's mandatory.

It may not be in—

Not in city code. Oh, okay. It's at the state level. That one was a new one for me. Yeah, so they—

I mean, like they said, they meet so rarely. Maybe we want to base it on number of meetings versus number of years.

Yeah, that would be a good one.

And I think planning commissions would be the only other ones, right?

And Board of Appeals—

or Board—

sorry, that's Board of Commissioners. I already said that one. Um, the Care Advisory Commission you would need for the care grants. That's, that's their main purpose. Um, and then CDBG Advisory Commission to be part of that CDBG process.

There are some, there are some of these boards that are required, for example, if we are to make application for a grant. So for example, if we are working right now on relocating that log cabin that we pulled off State Street, locating it in Heritage Park, we're trying to make application through the state of Utah, state history preservation office. That does require us to have a historic preservation committee if we're going to be considered Tree City USA designation. We're required to have some sort of committee commission for trees. Beautification Commission serves as that conduit to achieve Arbor Day Tree City USA designation. I'm trying to think of some of these others that are— that serve a purpose, obviously, other than just requirements. Summerfest, obviously, that's a huge deal in the city. Not required, but we couldn't make it happen without a very capable committee.

I guess my question is just which ones are mandatory, and then that leaves the rest, and then of the rest you know, we can talk about this individually, but, and as far as what— I mean, maybe we want to have all the boards. Uh, my question for the group is, do we want to keep all these boards? Are these boards functioning effectively? And are there any other boards that would be helpful to create?

Right, and I, I did actually ask that of the staff involved in the current boards and asked if they could think of anything, and there are a few suggestions. Suggestions in there. But some of them are— some suggestions from one board were probably in opposition to suggest— or the recommendations of another. There's one suggesting maybe a bicycle or active transportation group, and yet on the Transportation Advisory Committee, they prefer not to specialize at that level. They like to keep it bigger.

So yeah.

So sometimes, um, but I'm happy to come back with more specific information on and group it by required, you know, and having it for other reasons. If you want some sort of a presentation, then we could request that.

But I mean, my main goal in bringing this up was just to kind of go through the board and say what makes sense. maybe everything makes sense, and then what doesn't, and then what, what else would benefit the community?

Oh yeah, it's good to regularly review anyway. Like I said, that recreation allocation line could have been eliminated probably a few years ago, and so it is good to review.

So was everything else in your research putting this all together effective and working?

Yeah, and it's, it's pretty impressive what each group is doing. And actually, I think the one that probably impressed me the most was Transportation Advisory Commission because of the diversity of that group and not trained. I've seen some of the issues in Provo previously where if you have a very active group that's going one direction, sometimes you don't have someone to balance it out on the other side and have them work it out. And they feel like This commission is really fantastic about having that diversity. And so not everybody wants the same thing, but by working together, they can understand it from the driver's point of view, from the bicyclist's point of view, from someone walking, and, you know, different ages, different, different genders, everything, so that you get a more comprehensive view. And, and they're making recommendations that are often a compromise for probably everyone on the committee.

Mm-hmm.

So that, I mean, I liked seeing that most of all. But yeah, I didn't see anything else that jumped out as feeling less than functional or anything that you'd probably want to look at too hard for trimming, unless you're seeing something as advisors to any of these groups that concerns you. But as far as building anything extra or adding an extra committee, yeah, I would tread lightly on adding just because, I mean, everyone has quite a few duties already. It's a, it's a lot to put— I mean, which one of you wants an extra committee? Unless it has— oh, okay, Mr. Spencer. Yes. But Yeah, well, and that's, that's the thing is, is what would it do that has a huge purpose that's not already being addressed? And I, I haven't seen anything that's not being addressed by current committees.

Like for the Transportation Advisory Commission, we actually have 2 people on that commission that are cyclists. So I don't know if that was intended or luck of the draw. But it's good to have They're kind of representing that community and saying, you know, have we thought about this?

Or—

Right.

So maybe that's something that we could— if there needs to be a little bit of overlapping, that we can have somebody in a particular interested area serve on the commission just to make sure that that group is also— that their perspective is being talked about and represented and shared rather than having multiple Commissioner. Right.

Well, and I think that's a good recommendation as you move forward with any appointments or reappointments to make sure, does this board or commission have the balance you want to see? Is it pulling from those different communities the way you want to? Because I know, like, the Arts Council, for example, everyone has a different impression of what is art. So is it representing what you want to see, the various communities of art in this community? You know, is it representing that, or are you— or is it all photographers? Is it all just painters? You know, you want to make sure you're getting those, those different perspectives. So I think that's what's going to be what I would focus on, is making sure that you're getting a good variety in each of these groups, that they're not— that it doesn't become groupthink. You don't have all of the same person going in the same direction, because without that push and pull that you get, like with transportation, having an avid cyclist talking to someone who will— who really relies on their car, they're going to figure out solutions in a way that a room full of car drivers won't and a room full of Full of cyclists. So that, that's my big recommendation is watching, okay, what does each person offer? Make sure that's the question that's being asked as people are appointed or reappointed.

Does anyone on the council have any suggestions as far as any boards that they feel are not that effective?

Just the heritage. So I wonder, would you want to ever combine the heritage and the historic commissions? Because frankly, the historic one, Preservation Commission, I've not done anything on that. Like you say, the cabin is a new thing that we're going to be dealing with. Do you see a consolidation there?

Well, I think the Heritage Commission is really focused on our veterans, programs and recommendations. So Memorial Day are kind of 2 separate purposes, and I guess we needed to start for the break.

Yeah, right.

So yeah, I think the names are misleading.

You just don't have any money, so we haven't called anybody on that.

That's possible.

Nothing for 9 months, so we got something to do. Let's do it.

Yeah, yeah, because I mean, even if you had called it like heritage events committee, then you would realize, oh, it's more event-related than just them.

Is there a reason we don't call it veterans? Yeah, veterans.

It's just in our code. I don't under— I don't know the history of why it ended up being Heritage Advisory. It's just, it's always been identified as that in the code.

Yeah.

It's always just been heavily linked with the American Legion program. That really is the focus, just heavily on you and Christy, because we sell them as a core kind of forum.

That's it. I mean, American Legion has—

those participants have been getting more experienced, more mature, and so they've had a tough time replacing some of their members.

We might want to consider naming them something.

I mean, for me, I carry the Library Historic Preservation. It sounds really similar.

So Patriotic Events Commission.

There you go.

Well, and if you were to do that, it sounds like it would be something you need to change in the code.

Jamie, do you have any Thoughts?

I was doing this for a long time. Yeah, this is, uh, this resource that Karen's talking about. And Karen, I'm going to be on my phone trying to remember, is it boards.org or ac.org? So bc.org. This is a resource that's available to all of you, so you can log on. Yes, you can use your login and password, which is the same that you do to get into your email. You can log on, you can see who current committee members are, when their terms expire. You can also see who's made application to serve on this committee or this commission. So if you know, for example, in one of your committee or commissions you have somebody resign or somebody who's termed out, and you say, well, I wonder who would be available to appoint— people, when people make application, they self-select where they want to serve. Based on where they self-select, they go into the database. So you already have a pool of candidates that you can draw from. Now, if you have a group, or if you don't have enough candidates, or you don't like any of the candidates, well, then we can actually go out and seek additional candidates. But that's a resource that's available. So if you're interested in, you know, do they have experience in piano versus poetry versus painting, In the Arts Council, for example, they include their, their resumes and what their skill sets are, what they're interested in on their applications. Occasionally we get a direct response to someone asking us to serve on a committee. Where do we send them to? To this—

it's the same address, bc.orum.org. So if they go to bc.orum.org, they can fill out an application to be on the board or commission, staff are able to log into that site to see the back side of it.

So what happens on the back end? Let's say you have Joe Citizen that makes application to serve on a particular board or commission.

Yep.

Then they make application and email is sent to the staffer, and I think to you as a committee member. Hey, there's somebody who's applied.

I don't think I've ever got this.

Yeah, it may just go to staff. Yeah, but we know, and then we say, okay, there's a new person that's available. And then our staff, I know, has been working with you when vacancies become available to say, hey, these are the candidates, what do you think about these people? And then you ultimately make that recommendation to the mayor, and once it clears the mayor, it goes to Jody and Tess and is placed on an agenda for appointment.

Is there a way that a person would find that, as far as if some random person wants to?

Yes, yes. So they— there's a, there's a section on our webpage where it talks about boards and commissions, and if you're interested in serving, what area you can. Correct.

So does someone follow up with someone saying we don't have any positions right now, the next available will be— so I mean, or they just go in this vacuum, then, you know, I'm just wondering what the follow-up with people who apply.

There's a notification, I think, as soon as they apply saying not every—

there may not be a vacancy at all.

You'll be contacted if there's a—

so we acknowledge receipt and then we say you may, you know, if there's not a vacancy, probably not going to hear from I noticed, and maybe, maybe I'm just not finding it, but so when I was looking for people, they asked for people who had applied for the particular commission that I was looking for, but then I didn't—

do I go— what if the—

for the people who said I will serve anywhere, how are theirs— are they put into every commission then?

Yeah, I think there's an application per commission that you want to be on because it gets directed to different staff members based on that.

They can check the boxes, I believe, in the application.

No, no, I think—

well, because there were some that would say, I'd be willing to serve anywhere, or, but I want this one too, or this one, but I don't think it asks for like 2 or 3 choices. So the people who say anywhere, where do I go?

Are they—

I don't think anywhere is necessarily—

If that's not an option, yeah, that option. But I do know too that we have it, we have the applications expire. And I wish Christy was here. She knows, she just told me that it expires every so many years, because, you know, you build up this list of applications, and then people have moved, or people have, have lost their interest or have no time in their schedule. So that's, that's the other nice thing is we can keep the applications fresh. But I know the recent effort we made to get the word out about the Historic Preservation Commission, you know, we got a lot of responses because, you know, we got it out there, told people, hey, we're getting this going again, and we directed them right to that page to apply. And if you— if there is something you're looking for, we can help with that on the communication side. Because something you'll hear a lot from, from the public will be, you know, why aren't there more people like this on this committee or board? Well, it's hard to— it's hard to appoint people who haven't said they wanted to yet. And just like you can't vote for someone who isn't running, you can't, you know, you can't really appoint someone who isn't willing. So we need to get the word out on a regular basis to fill these.

So I see that it'll show up and you have to kind of self-select if you want to select on Now, I don't think it limits how many you want to sign up for.

It does have a new one. It has a Metropolitan Water District.

Well, that one is a very different process.

It's—

I think it's not governed by the state.

No, that— so that's a separate government jurisdiction. Yeah, it's a separate district, but it's— you're the ones who appoint.

Okay, great.

I just didn't include them in here because it's a very different process.

It's hard to compare. So if you wanted, if you wanted to volunteer for all of them, you could click on every single one and then it would get funneled into each person's file. Okay. I do have a question for Dave Spencer. Our newest committee is the Public Safety, correct? That's our newest board. How active are they?

Uh, we meet probably once a quarter.

So we're due for another meeting now.

We've met twice, established in the spring.

Are you looking at policies, procedures? I don't know what— To be honest, I mean, the first meeting was just to get to know. The second meeting, it was decided to establish a chairperson and 3, 3 members that really run the committee, and then Chief Adams and I are a part of that. And we really—

we're just now waiting for that individual to reach out to schedule the meeting and have an agenda.

So as far as being active or inactive, it's brand new.

And so there's— it's starting.

Are there any issues that we need to be aware of, like, I don't know, use of force, or—

Nothing right now.

Nothing. Just interested.

Okay, um, one last question. Are there any boards that anyone would recommend creating or you've thought about? I've got one. It doesn't have to be a board, but it's a conversation. Um, I've had several people tell me that there used to be something where the city would call for people to come out to a service project. You know what I'm talking about? Anyway, yeah, and they would, they would all meet up and they would go do service and that sort of thing. Just something to kind of bring people together in the service. And there is a push, um, post-COVID, when everyone's in their house, to people getting more engaged with each other, right? And so to the extent that that creates some kind of a good community service, working together, camaraderie kind of thing.

I wonder if it was part of the previous version of the neighborhood. program, maybe. There was a cleanup portion of that. Oh yeah, I'm guessing.

Yeah, there's the blitz where they would go to a certain street. Sure, I can speak to that.

I think maybe that's what it was called, the neighborhood blitz.

Yeah, I got to pick a block that needs TLC.

Yeah, we did it for 7 years and 5 years, and we would organize on one day for the community to come out and help.

So is that a subset of the library? No, it was in the community neighborhood services. We chose neighborhoods that were in the low and moderate income status so we could use CDBG funding. We ultimately went through all 5 of the neighborhoods and then we started going back through them, and at the time it was felt that the neighbors needed more support in code enforcement, so the program kind of shifted.

Okay.

Char used to be the director of the Community Neighborhood Services Division. Oh, that's right. There we do have in our Public Works Department a volunteer coordinator. Laura Bascom is our volunteer coordinator. So when we have groups, uh, who want to serve, she's the one that coordinates those activities.

We used to be responsible for it.

Now Tyler has that responsibility. But is that—

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's right. In fact, she was heavily utilized on the, uh, the recent Day of Caring, National Service Day.

There were several groups that she helped. So Laura was kind of the primary in organizing one of these groups. And with where we're at now too, we utilized the We use JustServe through the LDS Church as a platform because that's a big audience. And so we push projects through there, which makes it much more organized and effective to get people out.

Can I bring up something that Jeff Lamb said? He wanted to do a cultural event. And I don't know if that needs its own committee, but I love the idea of bringing people together. Do you remember exactly what your vision was for that?

Well, yeah, the thought was to have a cultural celebration of different ethnicities— Native American, Hispanic, Polynesian— an opportunity to bring everybody together and showcase talents and food and all those kinds of things.

We'd actually talked about doing something this fall, but it kind of got waylaid by other things.

So Yeah, I mean, that's something I still would like to do. The Harvest Fair did a pretty good job of that yesterday. You were there?

I was.

Stephen was there. I saw Debbie. I don't know if I was there.

So the library did a really good one, the one that— the Hispanic Festival. That was really nice. They had, um, different countries do their traditional dances.

It was, uh, Día de los Muertos.

And we've done a couple of other events, but I know that we sat down and talked with Adams and other potential outlets to work on the project.

So I mean, there could even be— unless you already got the system in place, but it could be events, it could be service projects, just community coming together activities. I don't know if we have a structure for that, or we can create a committee or something.

Like a community engagement.

Yeah, it'd be nice to have different populations represented from that, like you said, Native American. Well, you know, you got Swiss Days, you learn how to do the little dances up there. You can do a lot, right? You can make a lot of money doing that.

So anyway, something to think about. Karen, you can put it on your radar.

Will do.

As far as just to summarize, um, So if you could, if you could, um, rework this a bit, just as far as all the different council members and what they're part of, so we can see it.

Oh yeah.

At the moment, Helen isn't on there. Um, and then take off the recreation allocation advisory committee, right?

And I'd like it—

doesn't, doesn't action need to happen to eliminate that committee then?

So let's take a look at to see if that is in any way still necessary. And if it isn't, then we would come back and we would amend the code and we would write it out of the code.

Right?

Does that work?

Yeah.

I'm gonna do the same thing with this Heritage Advisory Commission, Historic Preservation Committee, trying to name them, at least one of them, something More tied to what it is, and you can change that at the same time.

So that would probably then be more the Heritage Commission rather than the Historic Preservation Memorial.

You get creative words with it. Just so it's easy when somebody goes through it and they're trying to figure out what they want to volunteer.

No, that is helpful to be clear.

Clearer on what these different boards and commissions do. So, okay, I can, I can get that together and bring it back.

Okay, sounds good. Thank you for working on that. All right.

Okay, let's go ahead and—

let me go ahead and grab our dinner, and then we can come back and go through the agenda review. Somebody like to give a blessing on food?

Father in heaven, bow our heads before thee in gratitude. Thank thee for the opportunity of being together at these meetings. We're thankful for the wonderful city staff and the great work that they do to make this city such a safe and wonderful environment to live. Grateful, Father, to be able to partake of this food. Grateful to those hands that prepared and provided it. Pray that thou would bless this food, that it will help us to be healthy and strong, that we might use that strength to do good and to serve thee and to serve our fellow man. Say this in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

So we found out by Oh wow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, okay.

Is this her first, second?

Is that the same?

That's hers.

Yeah.

Where are they living at?

They're in Houston. Our kids go to the same high school. Yesterday he said goodbye.

Bye, Rivet.

My niece has a kid. He's like, bye. They're just cute. I did learn something about my grandson yesterday. We are, uh, I was there till about 7, 7 something. Was Pete in the mascot the whole time?

Probably the last 45 minutes, maybe.

Okay, I was telling him my lesson, just scream bloody murder.

Any chance of Miro landing in Hoover's Landing?

We were talking about that.

How would we be the ones to tie that down?

Should we have like a local mascot competition throwing balls?

Yeah.

With other cities?

Plus, that's true.

I gave—

I know I'm grandfathered in on my assignment.

So I haven't seen a really old— You're sure it's not America? That'll do either way.

You have to admit, when you go to the game, that 4th quarter, what they do with the drums and fire— I mean, it's pretty impressive. We were sitting by Jameson has taken some of the classes from a couple of former Cosmos. These are unbelievably athletic. Yeah, I don't know about that. I might just take over.

Is that right?

Some of them have bands.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, did you see that? Doing a trick. Yeah, thank you so much. He couldn't take this off. He said, suck my head off, like, I would rather die. Then they had him the next day. The coach gave an update, an injury update, and included the mascot.

I'm going to Nebraska games Saturday, which— football's terrible, but it's all good. Husker Nation does have a lot of fun.

That's a fun stadium.

Yeah, thanks.

Yeah, so I'm kind of interested to see how they can—

How was your student manager, Terry?

Not really.

It was good.

Not really. They fired their coach. My dad still has season tickets.

Oh, okay.

My brother takes them, and then I have friends who have tickets, so—

okay.

We'll be there.

Sorry.

So yeah, I seriously can't.

I just can't. We're all hungry. Okay, so when you going to Denver, Lincoln? Friday.

So we can interrupt though.

You're driving?

Both.

Flying to Denver. my sister, and then she wants to drive to Lincoln. It's her birthday and she doesn't like to be alone.

Her husband killed himself 7 years ago, so we go somewhere on her birthday.

So how far is it from Denver?

About 7 hours.

You gotta go across.

Yeah, it's a beautiful drive.

Right along the coast. And having just made that drive, I would respectfully say that I've been pheasant hunting in Nebraska lots of I will tell you this, it follows the Platte River and it's the ugliest part of Nebraska that that highway— freeway— Okay, so Debbie, I have to tell you a funny story. So my daughter was in Nebraska, right? So she came home and then we went back a few weeks later. Okay, we're in Omaha taking our rental car and the person said, so what brings you to Nebraska? We're like, oh, we're just through Omaha. We said, oh, we're just on vacation.

We always say this, it's a great place to live, but you may not want to visit.

It isn't for everyone. Great people, great schools, very religious. My first year at BYU was a repeat of my high school year.

Oh, it's been blizzard. Literally one time we took it out of our front door, we literally had to dig tunnels.

Oh my goodness.

So for a kid, it was great.

But I lived there. I got this big idea about starting a snow shoveling business. Bad idea.

Well, you worked, you earned your money.

I do very much earn your money.

You're going to lose on volume.

But you know what, it, um, I have lots of fond memories and Really, really good schools, so I'm grateful for it.

Omaha has a few scary—

yeah, it's a nice city, but there's some parts of Omaha— my first husband grew up in Papillion.

I don't know if you know this town, Papillion.

La Vista, it's a suburb of Omaha.

Was there any shoveling out? You shoveled in Papillion at all? Did you shovel it up?

No, we didn't.

This was 55 years ago.

Oh, okay.

It's your first failure at the start.

That was my first entrepreneurial idea. That was a really bad idea. Yeah, because you go, you negotiate the price before the season started, and I didn't realize it was like a foot and a half of snow.

You're not in country. Yeah, it wasn't a bad idea anymore. You know you're cold when they're asking you when your bones are cold. Like, your bones are freezing.

It goes right through you.

Goes right through you.

20 below.

And below.

I've never been cold until I was cold as a child.

My dad was— I won't say he's cheap, but he was— we had a lot of kids.

Thrifty.

He was a professor, we had 7 kids. He would just tell us, just put on an extra layer, it'll be good to sleep. But Dad, have you seen my breath?

That is not cool.

So we would sneak up.

Is that right?

Yeah, he just—

no kidding.

Omaha has beautiful things. Um, block that has literally huge oxen with wagon and pioneer. I think it was born up here in Exotics, but it takes up a whole block. It's all in motion of the wagon train and the vice centers throughout downtown.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you can go to, uh, We're from Georgia.

They have the college school cheerleaders. They do. Yep.

And a place called Exarban, which is Nebraska spelled backwards, and they have like racing, horse racing. I don't know. I'll reach out to him next week.

There was a couple years ago Nebraska was ranked like worst state for tourism, and they they leaned into it.

Their slogan for the tourism campaign is Nebraska is not for everybody.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we say. Yes, yeah. It's a great place to live, but you may not want to visit.

Yes.

However, we do feed the world.

So there is beauty in fields and cattle and corn and alfalfa and sorghum.

And the fireflies.

They're amazing.

Oh, amazing. I do miss fireflies because we used to make jewelry.

We would pull off their little glow things and make them as jewelry.

I miss fireflies.

I miss my dad's torches.

Better that than someone else.

Yeah, that's my torch.

So I grew up in Indiana, so I remember all those things.

So how good's your Indiana team going to be against my Cornhuskers this year?

You know, I don't know. I don't follow Indiana temperatures very much. I'm not sure. I don't think they're very good.

You're saying you may have a chance?

Yeah.

Josh, when you go to Poland again, I don't have a trip left.

I've read the book where he talks about hunting and snowboarding. I got my priorities.

Is it hunting and snowboarding?

We're snowboarding already.

Yeah, I mean, that's the stuff that's coming up.

Oh, okay.

I was gonna say, wow.

All right, let's reconvene our meeting.

Thank you.

We're going to, uh, just quickly go through the agenda. Make sure we've got everything set. Uh, I'll just run through this. So 6 PM, call to order, invocation, pledge, and here's preferred by the council. And that will go to an annual report on the Library Advisory Commission. And we got personal appearances item number 7, but we're going to change that. We've got an issue, uh, as far as what we can broadcast and what we can't. And so it's been determined that we shouldn't broadcast the, uh, item 8.6. And so because a lot of the comments will probably be about that same topic We'll just move the comments in front of 8.6, and then we just won't broadcast that entire part, those comments for 8.6.

So, Mayor, just a clarification, by broadcast, I mean we're not going to livestream it, but we are going to still have a video recording, right, which people can obtain after the meeting by email, right?

So we'll record the entire meeting just like normal.

Yep.

It's just we got pushback. Yeah, on the broadcasting. So we're gonna Pack the comments and the resolution in the same place.

Okay, so I'm not streaming this meeting at all.

Oh, you're not?

That's what I was directed to do.

So I think, I think you're good to stream. I think the idea is we'll stream, livestream until we get to right before 8.6 with the personal appearances. We'll stop livestreaming right before the personal appearances. And so we won't livestream personal appearances and we won't livestream So you have everything else, maybe this part? No, I haven't. I think this is the first time. So I'll start live streaming the meeting when it starts.

Okay, so we'll do everything exactly the same. We'll just turn off the live stream at another part. Um, go to 8.1. So it's appointment, thanks, commission, uh, reappointment. And we've got appointments to Summerfest Committee, 8.2.

That'll be mine.

Yeah, I can— I'll just come back. Yeah, that'll be great. Okay, and then 8.3, we've got a public hearing on an ordinance.

Is that something we've talked about before?

I don't remember that. Have we talked about that? I don't know.

We did this week.

So we're gonna just have a hearing on that.

So we—

so we'll have a hearing and we'll have a vote. Is that right?

What is the gist of that?

Setting the sign zone for the church. Center Point Church. So what kind of sign are we allowing? We just have heard a lot lately about the billboards along in that area. Not billboards, a typical sign you see a lot for any business on the freeway. That's the type of thing. The smaller building is 13 feet tall. I have a picture.

That might be something it'd be better to have a little more information on.

That was a big topic for planning commission for a while.

So just— didn't you send that to us already? Pictures in our minutes?

Okay, sorry.

The Planning Commission did recommend—

okay, we've got item 8.4, public hearing resolution, I think portions of Chapter 4 of the general plan.

This is the follow-up from last meeting where we identified the 4 strategies. Okay.

And this is due October 1st.

Yeah, this is the one you suggested we read, Mayor, before we come back to it, isn't it?

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. This is that—

all the—

some in red ink, some in black. I read and gave my comments to Jason.

Didn't we have the minutes? Did everyone not get through those yet? We had a whole bunch of minutes.

They're not here for approval, so I guess we can't. Jody sent out an email saying something that they need to be pushed back for the next Okay, thank you. I reviewed them and talked to Jody.

So what is the process on that? Does everyone review the minutes and sign off on it?

We haven't done it in the past.

Oh yeah, everyone's welcome to. So Jody sends the link out, you can check those documents. If there's anything glaring that was off, we can get adjusted before it ever shows up on the agenda.

But we just haven't had the feedback group come back yet, so we're good.

Draft ones are posted where they have to be posted. We haven't put any on the council meeting until council's comfortable.

Okay, so how do you know when the council is comfortable?

They'll let us know. Yeah, we were on last time they got pulled, so that's how we knew they were.

So do we have a good communication loop on that? You're putting that up there and you're getting pulled?

That—

yeah, that's all.

I just don't want there to be a lag.

Same. Okay.

Yeah, we had 3— 3 meetings were sent to us at the same time last time on holiday weekend, so I think that was part of the issue.

Right.

So do you want to say I'm okay, move forward, or do you want— we don't say anything, then assume we're okay? Yeah, yeah.

So when they got pulled—

so when we got—

when they got pulled last meeting is when we got the assumption that it was And they actually did communicate with Jody that she needs on Thursday. Jody publishes when changes are made.

She has—

she wouldn't have time to get the agenda published by the typical end of before the weekend starts. Okay, so we're good. We're not violating anything. We're ready to get them done too. We want to make sure you're comfortable with it as well.

Okay, so I just want to make sure we got a good communication. Yeah, back to you.

So when all of you are okay, signing off on minutes is when we're going to put them into the agenda.

Yeah, because Jody said in that one email she could tell no one had opened them.

So I tried to open them and it was locked. Yeah, that's why it's good to have a time frame or something. I think there's a time frame, but like, I, you know, I wouldn't look at the minutes because I know other people are looking at them.

If they're locked, if you're not logged into your Quorum account, if you're logged into your personal account—

I thought I was—

then you don't have access to it.

So I'll try it.

That's probably why. One of the trouble spots, just troubleshoot. She will grant your personal one.

Okay.

Because I signed in as my personal and couldn't get logged in. So I asked her, then I went back in and signed as my form and had no problem.

So that might be—

I thought I was in my arm.

Maybe. Okay, so I'm just trying to make sure we've got this communication set.

We need like a city councilor that's like responsible to say we're done with these and Going back to it.

So some of you are, some of you are a little more focused on the minutes than others. We just want to make sure that all of you have the opportunity. So, okay, so, you know, if you don't respond, I mean, we know that there are several on the council who want to review the minutes, and we know others based on experience you haven't really been that, I guess, engaged in minutes. So we're just waiting for those who are focused in the minutes to say we're good to go.

Okay, so you feel like you've got a good look on that?

I think so.

Normally, if we don't—

if you have the minutes out there and you don't respond, then that's it.

The default is you accept, correct? Yeah, exactly.

But I just didn't have a chance to reply or read them.

I didn't want to approve minutes I hadn't looked at.

Okay.

But I tried this time.

We have, we have 45— from what I understand, we have 45 days per council policy to approve the final. So I mean, there's time.

Just—

Bill, I'll appear next meeting on the 11th.

All right, so we'll just go forward with that. If there's any problems, let's talk some more in just a minute. Yeah, we get more. Um, 8.5, resolution expressing intent to combine warm dispatch services with probable dispatch services. That will be a vote.

I just have a question, or I know there was some concerns that dispatchers had mailed the mayor some questions. Have we resolved all of those issues so that they're all—

Absolutely.

So I met with the chief and Dave Spencer, and we kind of went through all those questions and all those concerns, and, and to my, uh, my concerns were answered. So if any of you have—

Karen was responding back to the emails, right?

Is that right?

Yeah, I, I went ahead and responded back to those who had contacted you, and I could send you a copy, but Part of it is, is a lot of accusations about not being involved in the process. And it sounds like some of the people who had emailed in just weren't up to date on all the negotiations going on. So I don't think there's any concern. I mean, obviously, not every person is going to know what step we're on.

I think the pay's been worked out.

Yeah, yes, Chief Adams answered all the questions and I think we're good to go.

Yeah, yeah, we felt like it. And as far as the pay and compensation, the city made some concessions.

Okay, very fair to the dispatchers.

Okay, that's good. I know there's just concerns, I just want to make sure they were resolved.

Absolutely.

Generally, they'll do really well.

Are we still on to go on that, whatever that October installation was?

And then we've got item 8.6. So that's resolution of the City Council of the City of Woonam outlining its opposition to the 2022 general obligation bond for the $595 million proposed by Alpine School District. My plan on that is just to let each counselor just kind of like report in on— I know we've got anything controversial like this, but let each counselor say what they think about this. Um, we'll just kind of go down the line, and then we'll vote whether or not we want to accept the resolutions.

So, and so it's like we cleared the legal concerns that some citizen wrote to— I assume you saw those, Greg?

Yes.

I mean, Steve. Oh man, I'm going back 2 generations.

I'm sorry.

Greg Stevens.

Yeah, I had that one figured out.

I'm so sorry.

She's pretty though.

That might have been nice.

He just dropped off his Christmas list.

Sorry about that.

We have—

we had a very— well, we had a, uh, a person basically, uh, send an email with the concern, right?

Right.

And I think we could still broadcast and be just fine, but in the interest of not starting a war, yeah.

This way, as long as our legal is good, I'm good. You've reviewed everything?

And then item 9.1, monthly financial summary.

That's, that's not anything, it's just informational information.

So does anyone have any questions or concerns? Are there any city councilors who are going to report anything? I don't see your name on here.

No, I don't think I did mine.

Okay, usually once a month there'll be a name when it is that time, once a month. But it's also just, um, if there's anything else they want to bring up, but it doesn't have to be something.

Okay.

And then I just— I did get an email from Jason saying he was going to talk about something.

3 items coming. I want you to let me Email just outlines those items.

Okay, so that, that's not something you want to go through right now?

That's just—

I can if you'd like, but yeah, if you have questions on email, you're welcome to let me know.

Okay, all right.

Just want to make sure that you're aware of what's coming, right?

Okay, perfect. I think we're out of time, so Just kind of just make that.

Are you good?

We'd like to welcome y'all here tonight. And call this meeting to order. We're going to start. I was assigned the invocation and the pledge today, so I called somebody I knew. And so my father, Alan Young, will be doing the invocation, and my sister, Christy Moulton, will be doing the pledge. If you'd like to come up and— And for the record, my dad's 93, so he's still going strong.

It's an honor to be here. I'm grateful. Our dear Father in Heaven, we are so very, so very grateful to thee for the opportunity to be living in a free land, one that many people lost their lives to be able to serve the country and enjoy— help people to enjoy the freedom today. Father, there's so many— there's so many problems today in the school system. It wasn't that way when our children were in school. They didn't have to fight the evil things that are being said and done and taught in the school system. Here's an opportunity, we pray, to be able to change at least one portion of the state's school system to be able to rid us of some of the evil influences that are going on in some of the schools. I've heard so much about the many evil things, not necessarily from family but from teachers and others. We pray, Father, that our citizens will really put some thought and prayer into studying the issues so that the freedom and the blessing of a good school system, good teaching, good education— let's don't be greedy. Let's don't do things that are going to harm our kids. Our kids are the most important product that we're serving. They're the ones that in just a few years will be carrying the message of that they get from the teachers in the school system. If it's negative, the country will have negative leaders. If it's positive, they'll have positive leaders. Please be—

please be with our people, our people.

That they make the right decisions at the right time.

on November 8th.

There is so much good going to come from Orem having its very own school and board. We appreciate that so much. Be with us now. Bless us. Bless the people of Utah. Bless the people of Orem. And bless these United States where we've got so many things that need to be changed throughout the entire country.

Amen.

And this we pray in the name of our Father and Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Thank you. Christy, would you lead us in the pledge? Please rise.

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

Thank you. We'll go to item number 6.1. This is an annual report from the Library Advisory Commission. If you'd like to come up and present to us.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. We appreciate this opportunity. I'd like to introduce Amber Larson. She's the chair of the commission this year, and Jonathan Wyas is the vice chair. I'm not sure if anyone else from the commission is here, but we've appreciated their service, and we are appreciative of Councilmember Millett for being our council representative.

Thank you.

Push it on. There we go. I'm so sorry about that.

Just pull a little closer to you.

There you go.

How we doing?

Okay, make certain everyone can hear me. Thank you so much. We're proud to be able to present to you today the fiscal year 2021-22 report to Orem City Council, and I'll just kind of go through this briefly. If you have any questions following our presentation, we're more than happy to address those at that time. As Lynnae mentioned, I am Amber Larson. I am the current chair for the Library Advisory Commission, and next to me is Jonathan Reyes, our vice chair. Matthew Bowler, Matthew Brown, Corinna Lewis, Mary Stovall Richards, and Chelsea Young are also on the commission as of this year. We're all pretty new except for Mary. I believe she's been here for a while. All right, just to give you a few of our service statistics for, for the fiscal year, because, um, we want to show, uh, Orem Library's continuing commitment to the city of Orem in literacy and what we can bring to you. Here's just a few of those statistics of what we've done this past fiscal year, even, you know, post-COVID. We had over 300,000 people visit our library. Over 31,000 computer sessions were utilized, so we do have quite a few patrons using our technology. 72,000 pages were printed. We are still a hotspot for people to stop to be able to utilize the ability to print off pages when they don't have that in their home. And about 1,500 patron sessions were utilized on also by patrons using the technology in our marker space. Our study rooms, almost 2,400 sessions were utilized over the past fiscal year. Our study rooms are very popular, hot and jumping. And this is where we can really show you our circulation and how much the people of Orem really do utilize the library. Over 1.1 million items were checked out. 1 million total circulation items were checked out over fiscal year. And if you take a look, 68% is still physical copies. Even though we have moved into a digital age, we do have a huge presence with e-materials. A lot of patrons enjoy using our library online, but we still have a lot who utilize our physical stacks, which it's still a place for people to come open a book, crack it open and read. It's, for me, it's always a positive thing to see people still wanting to not just read it on a tablet but also be able to look at the physical copies. Our library databases were accessed 442,000 times for online research and study. This is proving to continue to be valuable research for our station, for our community. Additionally, you can see that we had over 55,000 visits to our online digital library just for yearbooks, Orem history books, Orem historical photos, and the Orem art collection. The Orem Public Library still has been and will continue to be a good place to stop to see our historical presence with the communities and see where Orem has been and where we continue to go. It's a great repository for these things. This is also something that I asked our librarians to include because I want you guys to know how busy these ladies are and gentlemen. We had over $100,000 worth of grants received by the library last fiscal year. Now these are, I do have to mentioned, many are one-time-only grants. Some can be continuously applied for, but here's a quick breakdown of where these monies have been able to be allocated and to continue to support our funding for the library. Most notably, $56,000 to purchase e-materials through OverDrive. That's, that's a huge chunk of money and something that's very positive for our community. And I'll just leave that up for just a moment and then we can go back to that if we need to later. We had over 30,000 patrons attend our library programs last fiscal year and the library hall was used 223 times for library use, 209 times for For city use and 12 times for rental. So we do rent out the library hall. It is used almost on a daily basis, as you can see by these numbers, actually more than a daily basis if you add those together. We have some pictures of that wonderful Turtle Island Quartet that was very popular, our STEM program and our art program. Our summer reading overview this year. We went for oceans of possibilities and had just almost 2,800 participants register for this program. Adults and ages 6 to 11 kind of led the pack on those, but we did reach out and did have some of our teen and our very young ones participate as well. And over just a little close to half of those participants did finish the entire program. We had one 1.6 million minutes of reading reported, and looks like about 864 people showed up for our pool party finale, so that was popular for those who finished. We continue to work with our teen and our tweens through programs. The library has set up a library council, and that has been going for quite some time, known as TLC, with 10 to 15 members helping to plan, prepare, set up, and host teen programs. And here's just a couple of the events highlighted from this past fiscal year. We have Teen After Hours, which include monthly movies, games, and activities that are held on Saturday evenings after the library is closed. We have Teen Anytime activities with puzzles, activities, crafts that can be done whenever is convenient for participants to come to the library. We also have take-home activities, challenges, experiments, crafts, and activities that these teens and tweens can actually take home and do with their families. Teen game nights and assisting with other programs by ushering in and other activities. I believe Charlene mentioned that sometimes we even pull these guys in to do a little bit of service for our library, which is very helpful. They are very service-oriented teens and tweens, and we're grateful to have them. The library offers a program for tweens that includes the Tween Scene for monthly activities, as well as reading challenges and other age-specific programs and events. And I think we're doing a pretty good job trying to reach out to these ages where literacy is so critical. And here are just a few photographs of some of those activities. So here's the Teen After Hours Halloween party. and our tween art scene making. We have also been working hard to do literacy outreach to schools. The library provides a number of outreach programs to our local schools every year. Many of these programs focus on reading, literacy, and fun activities such as crafts and art. Here's some pictures from Windsor Elementary with our staff spending some time reading and making crafts. And some of our additional outreach includes taking professional musicians and authors who come to the library for grant-funded performances to local schools to interact directly with the students through performances, class appearances, and assemblies. And here's a picture of the Turtle Island Quartet as they performed one of our classical concerts For library patrons, and then they followed later to a visit to Orem Junior High for their orchestra class, which is always fun to spice it up for those guys. Okay, thank you, by the way, for your continuing support of the library. We really do appreciate everything you do.

Does anyone have any comments, questions?

You've reported great on the past. Now I want you to predict the future.

Sure.

Love to.

We talk about libraries and, and there, it doesn't sound like we're using any less from what your report says. Sure, you might be able to weigh in here, but, you know, we hear we're more and more digital, we get so much from our phone or laptops. Are we, are you anticipating in the future the same demand on the library?

Is that a fair assumption?

I think that's a fair sense, very fair assessment. I was previously, several years ago, worked for Orem Library and also UVU Library right as the digital age was starting to creep in, and there was a real fear that digital was going to take over and libraries would become irrelevant. I, in the past 10-15 years since that happened— that's how long it's been— I've only seen at least a continued presence or more of an increase with libraries. So I think it's a fair assessment to say yes, we will continue continue to see our patrons not only want digital because of the convenience, but the physical copies as well.

I'll just add to that. I think we've also seen them— the library did a good job in a social media post a few weeks ago about our library's media collection, particularly our DVD collection, and actually seen great demand for that. The fact that we might even have— we're looking into getting more DVD players people who have gotten rid of those at their own home but still want to access the collection. That's become a thing that we might look into as well.

I can still check out 8-track tapes too, or—

I'm not sure about that.

How are we doing on that, Charlie?

Maybe I can check on eBay for you.

Yeah.

Debbie?

I just want to say thank you. My grandsons who are 2 and 4 were part of your summer reading program, and that was a really good opportunity for them.

they were—

their mom was excited to participate in that program. And they did earn enough to get the pool party. So I just want to say thank you. And I also noticed that your Orem Reads is a romance-themed— I'm not sure what the book you were reading, but it looked really fun and had some fun authors coming. So thanks for some great programming. Yeah, you're welcome.

Go ahead.

I just want to say it is a pleasure for me to serve with you guys on that commission. It's just amazing to see the knowledge that's in that room, Nishar and all of our volunteers, and the dedication they have to serving our population here and helping our, our kids. I love the teen and tween service opportunities because not only does that provide service, but it also builds confidence in them as they serve. And I just love how the library lifts our community in that way and the dedication and diligence that is happening there for those kids. So thank you for that opportunity.

Thanks, Renee.

I just have a couple questions. I was curious, seeing the library hall and how much it's used, and there was like 12 times rented and then 400 times where it was just used. I'm just curious, for the benefit of the citizens, what the criteria are to be able to use the library hall.

Turn that over to Charlene to answer.

And we developed a rental schedule that is part of the budget fees and charges every year, and there are different classifications, so depending on use is a different charge. We're currently working with the City Attorney's Office on refining some of our rental policies just because we've been open for a year now and wanted to take a chance to refine a few things, but We have it outlined as to the price, and there's a different price for different activities.

So, so when it talks about 12 rentals but versus 400 uses, is that not accurate? Is there— are a lot of those rentals?

No, we, we just did 12 rentals in the first year. There's a lot of city use that we probably had not anticipated as much, so we work around a lot of other activities, and we, like, we don't rent it during the Summerfest, and we don't rent it during certain baseball tournaments because we don't want to overtax the parking and different things like that. So there are a few times that it is not available for rent, but we are heavily programmed with both library and city use, so sometimes it's about fitting it all in.

Okay, so I guess what I'm trying to understand, if there's just different people or groups that want to use it within the city, that would be a rental basis, right?

We've had, we've had a wedding there, we've had a school use it for a showcase and then their graduation. It was a charter school. We've had some dance instructors have their recitals there, so it just kind of depends on what the use is. And then how they use the facility. We don't do weddings in the auditorium, but we do them in the lobby. We do, you know, we did the dance recital in the auditorium, of course, but it just kind of depends on what the activity is, how it fits into the fee schedule, and then the scheduling of the availability of the building.

Okay, and then the other, the other 400 uses, those were mainly like city meetings, or help me understand?

We had a lot of library programs that there. That's one of the main reasons why we built the building. So we had everything from story times there to all of the activities that were mentioned. We bring people in to provide programming to the community, just kind of a wide variety of things the library provided. And then the city has used it for a variety of things. They've used it for city meetings, they've used it for trainings, they've used it for employee opportunities. We've had open houses there, we've had different kind of types of planning meetings, all different things there. So it just kind of is used as needed by whatever group, whatever size. We, we're grateful to have the facility. We're grateful to have it as a resource in the community, and we've been pleased that the city has found good use for it as well.

Okay, good. One other question while you're up there, Char. I'm just curious where Orem's library fits in the scheme of all of the libraries in Utah in terms of size and number of resources and all that?

We're one of the larger single-branch libraries. Provo is also a single branch, so Provo is a bit larger than we are, but many of the Salt Lake libraries are connected to a county or a city network system, so they have more shared resources that maybe they're a smaller branch, but they have a larger access to resource resources kind of an approach. We definitely have an excellent library from the support of the City of Orem for many, many years, and we are grateful to be able to continue to build on that. We have a lot of use, we have a lot of people coming in, and we really appreciate having such a place in the communities, either, you know, meaning something to them or to be able to offer different opportunities for them. We will probably always be a single branch library because of our central location, but we are looking at some other things. We talked about expanding as we can into maybe a locker situation for people to pick up at other convenient locations that are more north and south, and then perhaps east and west, just depending on budget and availability and all those different kind of things. But we are definitely trying to focus on We really focus on making it quick and easy for people to access the library. We went to a holds-on-demand system. We used to ask you to come in and pull an item if it was available on the shelf, but over the past couple of years we have implemented a program where we will actually pull a hold for you and put it in the front shelving unit so that you can just grab and go, and that's been very popular. So we have a really excellent staff that's always looking for ways to serve. They've done a, they've done a good job.

Okay, thank you. Any, any other questions? Okay, I think, I think we're good. We appreciate what you're doing and the good things.

Thank you.

Okay, the next item on the— next item on the agenda is the personal appearances. We've got a little bit of an unusual situation tonight. We're going to have a resolution towards the end of this meeting. It's item 8.6. It's a resolution where we'll discuss Orem's support for the upcoming bond proposal. And what we've been advised to do— this isn't our preference, we would prefer just to have an open meeting— but we've been advised by legal counsel that when we get to that part of the meeting, because it could be perceived to be advocating or against a ballot issue, that we'll have to not have that televised. It will be recorded. And it will be available for people to request to watch, but as far as the actual recording tonight, won't be live. And with that in mind, a number of the concerns on the personal appearance kind of tie into that. And so what we're going to do is move the personal appearances right in front of item 8.6, which is toward the end of the schedule. And so we'll have the personal appearances before that. Those will be turned off, and then we'll have item 8.6, which will also be turned off. And like I said, that's not our choice. We would much prefer an open meeting, and this information will be available, but we're going to proceed that way.

Mayor, just per Steve's direction, that's probably something appropriate to do by way of motion. So to shift From item— to move item 7, personal appearances, to right before, for example, item 8 or item 8.6. Okay, if you do that by motion.

Okay, somebody—

can I ask a question too before we do that?

Is there any—

would it be appropriate if someone else had a public comment that has nothing to do with the school district situation? Would they be allowed to do that now?

Separate from that?

Yeah, I'd rather not break it up because it—

I was just thinking if someone had something to say that didn't have anything to do with that and didn't want to stay for the rest of the meeting, but that's fine.

Okay.

Mayor, I have a question. Do we need to have the city attorney have us have a motion to just move the— where things fall on the agenda? Is that a motion that has to be made, or can we just move Things on the agenda.

Yeah, I think it's, I think it's probably something you got to do by motion. I mean, it'd just be a motion to move item 7 to right after item 8.5. Simple as that.

Yeah. Well, outside of the work, because we just did it in the work meeting, right?

Well, we talked about it. Yeah, we talked about that being what the council would like to do, but I think that ideally we should do that by motion.

I'm happy to make that motion if you want, Mayor.

Okay.

If I get the wording right— wrong, let me know, please. I move that we move personal appearances from item 7 to right before 8.6 on our agenda.

Second.

Okay.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Motion passes. All right, moving on. Our first scheduled item is item 8.1, and this is an appointment to the Planning Commission. And would you like to say something about that, Terry?

So Haysom has been serving on the Planning Commission for 3 years. He's up for reappointment. He's now currently serving as the chair of the Planning Commission, uh, does a great job. This is a very big responsibility. They meet twice a month, plus all the research they do outside of their meetings where they're studying the issues and going and seeing properties in the city. So, hey, some— the Planning Commission is a very independent group that does what they think is best, and I appreciate their honesty and sitting in the meetings and seeing how they function. So I would strongly recommend that—

Hey, some—

be reappointed as a member of the Planning Commission.

Was that your motion, sir?

Yes.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

The appointment passes. Let's move on to item 8.2. And Debbie, would you like to take care of that?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Shelley C. Strand has— this is a reappointment. She has been in charge of the event Orem's Got Talent, which has been a wonderful opportunity for local talent, and she's done an excellent job. So we are pleased that she would be willing to do it for 3 more years. I don't think I see Shelley here, but I'm pleased to put forward her name as a reappointment to the Summerfest Committee. So I guess I'll make that motion to reappoint to the Summerfest Committee Shelley Seestrand.

I'll second that.

Okay. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I— the appointment passes. We'll move on to item 8.3. This is a public hearing ordinance amending Section 14.1.4, sign zones, and a sign zone map of the Orem City Code extending to the sign zone E to include a Portion of the Center Point Church property located at 1550 South Sand Hill Road. We're going to have Jason Bench give us a presentation on that.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. Can you guys see it on your screens?

There we go.

So this property is located at 1550 South Sand Hill Road. It is Center Point Church. You can see here on the— so Center Point Church is located at this location. Stevens-Henniger, if you're familiar with the college that was there a while, long time. Dealership is located here, the old home base. If you go back years ago, that's this location here. So what they're proposing is to have a freeway sign. They want more visibility for their church activities that they're having. Currently they're not located in a sign zone, and so they're— they default to a monument sign, 6 feet high, 36 square square feet, which they have on Sand Hill Road, but they want to be able to cater to more of the traveling public, let them know the events coming. And so they're requesting that the sign zone be extended south to include their property. During the Planning Commission discussion, there was a discussion and a motion by the Planning Commission— recommendation, I guess, by the Planning Commission— to keep that sign zone 5 feet north of the front of their building. So this line here would represent approximately 5 feet in back of their building. So it's only this portion that they would want to put that sign. So one recommendation— so we, we basically propose that this whole area be extended down. One option the council could consider, if I draw a line, is to take that line There and only do the portion that's next to I-15 rather than the front portion that's facing Sand Hill Road. So the original application was to put the sign— you can see the yellow dot was where they wanted to originally put the sign. With the discussion with the Planning Commission, with 5 feet back at the front, is somewhere in this location. So the sign itself would be hidden by the building itself from Sand Hill Road. But would be visible from I-15. So here's a perspective of where they would want to place the sign. You can see that the Stevens-Henniger does have a sign as well, as well as the dealership and others along I-15 typically have freeway signs that advertise their business only. This is not a billboard, it's simply a sign that meets the requirement for a sign zone within the city. Billboard is a separate issue, so that's not what they're asking for tonight. And Jason, it wouldn't be lit, or— oh, I think you're showing— So it would be an electronic sign, yes. Okay, thank you. So it would be a maximum— this one shows 16 feet tall with 49 square feet is what they want. So if they were to shift that back behind the building, you would not be able to see this sign, at least from Sand Hill Road, but it would be visible from I-15. So here's— you can see the building there. This would be the west face, so the green area is the landscape area that they would put that sign. You can see from Sand Hill Road that it would be hidden from Sand Hill. The Planning Commission did make a recommendation that the Council consider, well, to amend the sign zone with a condition that that be signs will only be within 5 feet of the front and go north, not include any of their parking lot to prevent any sign coming, you know, down into that area. So be glad to address any questions.

Yeah, can you show again the perimeter of this, the zone change? Where are you saying it's 5 feet perpendicular to the freeway?

So what they're, they're saying 5 feet this way. So as it encroaches south, the zone itself would be, you know, the front of the building, 5 feet to the north. That's where— how far the sign zone would come down. So let me draw a line just to demonstrate what I'm meaning.

So Jason, question: there was, there was someone at the Planning Commission that was concerned and wanted the sign to be moved to the north part of that lot, correct? So that would be in this area right here, or right above where the retention pond is to the north.

They wanted it right here. The city does have some stormwater lines that would not be able to put any footings or anything here, which is also open this way. But if you put it in the grass detention area, it would be hidden by the building.

So is he— he's not, he's not happy with this then? The neighbor that was concerned about his view being blocked?

Yeah, he was okay with it being next to the building. So between the building and I-15, he was okay with. He just didn't want it south, or so it would be visible. And let's say they wanted to put it out here, then it would be visible to the neighborhood. So he was okay if it was up in this area here.

And it's an electronic sign?

It would be an electronic sign.

Does— I know we have problems with our billboards being too bright, and there seems— and there's limited regulation on that. Do we have additional regulations?

They would just have to follow the electronic sign requirements, which does— I can't remember, I don't have it in front of me, but there are some limitations on the brightness that it can be.

And is that per city ordinance, or is that per city?

So billboards are different, that they're operated by UDOT, or enforced by UDOT.

We will have more control over this one, correct, from an ordinance perspective.

Yeah, and you can see other— there's other electronic signs that are not billboards on I-15. Similar standards.

Jason, is it a double-sided sign or just—

it would be double-sided, although the north face you probably wouldn't be able to see it too well traveling south.

So it's, it's 12 feet, the pole's 12 foot, and then it goes 4.5.

What was it?

Yeah, so that's a total of 16 feet high. And then the square footage of what they're proposing of 10 foot 9 inches by 4.5 is 49 square feet.

So 16 feet is the ordinance maximum height?

It is not.

What is the maximum height? So the ordinance we're putting in place—

So with the— so let me just draw a line to demonstrate. So from this point, approximately— that's a really bad sign or line— but within 5 feet of the building, it's about 220 feet. So the sign zone is based on frontage. And so this sign zone E, based on frontage, there's a maximum square footage, but this one with 220 feet could get a maximum height of 30 feet with a total square footage of 266 square feet. So it is designed to cater to freeway frontage.

So we don't have to worry about it being moved towards the neighborhood in the future if the building's not there, or if they want to put it somewhere else.

And the one option, like I demonstrated with— is with this red line is rezoning, taking Sign Zone E South, but only including from that line west I-15. So you're basically just putting this portion in the sign zone and leaving this portion out of the sign zone. So that sign would not be able to be on next to Sand Hill Road. It would have to be next to the freeway, if that makes sense.

Where exactly on this map would this Is the sign going to wind up?

So where that arrow is, approximately somewhere in there.

Okay, because I mean, it seems to me like you'd want that— that's where you'd want it to be. You wouldn't want to kind of hug closer up there because otherwise it's kind of in front of that other building.

Yeah, and the minister that was here at the Planning Commission, I think, was okay, satisfied with— they just want the sign to advertise their different activities that they're having. it would be appropriate if they can find a location within that grassed area. I think they'd be fine with that.

So Jason, did they want— but they could have it 30 feet tall, you said?

They could, based on ordinance, yes.

No, you said 30, right?

30 is the max.

Is the max.

And so right now it's 16.5 feet.

That's what they're proposing, yes. And the building is approximately maybe 20 or so. If you go to the elevation, you can see the northern portion is a little taller than the south portion, but it's about 20, 20 feet.

So that none of the lights would glare, um, into any neighborhood?

It would not, no.

And I'm assuming it's not gonna be as bright as a billboard, like lights up the whole evening sky?

Yeah, I don't think they're that type of neighbor. I think they would try to be good neighbors.

And then why do we want to carry that sign zone into Stephen Hendiger's?

So Stephen Hendiger already has— basically, the sign zone needs to be a cohesive sign zone, meaning that we can't do a spot sign portion. So we're basically just trying to have it connect to the existing sign zone that's to the north. So we could do a strip of some sort, so it's along the I-15 frontage to pick up what they need, but then not allow other signs in other areas. So if we were to take that line and maybe tweak it a little bit more to run in front of Stevens-Henniger, I mean, that would probably be okay as well. Stevens-Henniger already has a pole sign because years ago— I don't know if you can see, let me pull on my mark, the highlighter. So Stevens-Henniger parcel is right here. Their actual parking lot portion of their parking lot is in the sign zone, so their sign sits about right here. So it was purposely brought down for Stevens-Henniger so they could have a freeway sign. But that was prior to the church. That was farmland when Stevens-Henniger came in, if you recall. So the church has since been built.

So if we don't include that line, then what does it do to that property? They just can't have a sign?

So the sign could be anywhere within this area, even on Sand Hill Road.

No.

So if we take this portion out—

no, but I mean, if we don't do the line, if we don't do that red line, we just do there.

So they would be in the sign zone, then, E, which would allow the pole sign.

Yeah, in the parking lot next to Sand Hill Road, potentially.

The whole purpose of sign zone E is to cater to I-15, so there are some— it has to face, it has to, you know, front on whatever that definition is, but typically the sign has to be readable from I-15. That's the whole point of signs. I mean, could you—

like Lenee mentioned, maybe could you do parallel to I-15?

So you— I guess you could come down something like— and Steve will have to correct me.

You take the back of his building and just take it Come down something like that and then go south.

You could do something like that.

I don't know if it benefits it, but it would basically—

Steven's already has that sign, so if somebody wanted to come in and redo that, they would still have that ability. And then the church would also be able to pick that up in that triangle portion, which is really all they're wanting. And as a city staff, we don't necessarily want it to go south. No, because we don't want others to have that.

I mean, you'd encroach into the neighborhood, and that's what we don't want to do, right?

So we encourage the Planning Commission to the front of the building, they wanted at least 5 feet back, which we're supportive of that as well. So—

Well, almost the same thing with that building up to the north, right? To the— I would move your line over to the front of the building, maybe 5 feet back, and do parallel to I-15. Can we still pull in the center point?

So like this?

Yes. And then down, then it is definitely an I-15 sign, and we're not— we get away from the problems of it, you know, going into the neighborhood.

Yeah, I don't, I don't see that as a problem.

It's the church's need, correct, where they're putting their signs.

And then it gives the council a little bit— well, the city a little safeguard of potential signs in the future.

Okay.

Okay, any other questions?

Yeah, quick question. So the dealership to the north, which is already in the sign zone, their sign is right out by the freeway. It seems like they have one on Not a, not a lit sign, but they have another kind of sign on Sand Hill Road, right? Remembering right?

Yep.

Kind of, yeah, monument sign. So would the church or Stevens Henniger be able to do a monument sign?

Yes.

On Sand Hill Road, but just not something that's bright and lit up?

Correct.

Yep.

And have they expressed an interest in doing that at this point?

Or—

I believe I'd have to go out, look. I believe the church has a monument site, if I'm not mistaken.

Okay.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Okay, any other questions? I mean, we need to open this up for public hearing, right?

Okay, so let's suggest we ask the applicants here and invite them to come up and speak to the application if they're here.

Okay, is the applicant here? I don't think they're here. Okay, so we'll just open up the public comment for anyone that has any comments about this issue.

Thank you, Richard Ship.

I used to live on Sand Hill Road when I first got married, so I am really in favor of protecting that neighborhood. I like the last one, the parallel along I-15, I think that's by far the best. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, we'll close the public comment. And then we just would need to clarify exactly what we're voting for.

So I just wanted to point out that, you know, the applicant is proposing a certain height and size of a sign. But if the sign zone is actually amended to what's being proposed, they could build a higher sign and a bigger sign, as Jason has pointed out. And I think he— if I got the numbers right, I think he said they could go a max 30 feet.

30 feet.

And a sign size of 225 feet. If that's not something you're comfortable with potentially happening, then one possibility would be to ask the applicant to enter into a development agreement basically indicating that if this sign zone is approved, that they would agree that they would build a sign with the dimensions that they have shown here. That way you can have some, some security in knowing they're not— you're not going to get something very different from what they're proposing.

Right, I believe that's exactly what we would like to do, unless anybody opposes that.

Yeah, obviously we'll have to The applicant's not here, so we don't know if he's willing to agree to that, but so maybe the, the proper thing here to do would be to continue this item and we'll try and contact the applicant and work out a development agreement with them.

Okay. Okay, sounds good.

Yeah, I move we continue this item, Mr. Mayor.

Second that.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the item's continued. Next we've got Jason again. Item 8.4, amending portions of Chapter 4, Housing, of the Orem General Plan. If you'd like to go through and explain that.

You bet.

Thanks, Mayor. So this is something we've worked with the council over the last several weeks. Planning Commission did make a recommendation last week to recommend that the council amend the proposal that we're doing tonight. So a couple things we're also amending is the population demographics. We do have some numbers back from the census.

Oh no.

Although all the numbers aren't back, so we're representing some numbers that we have. So just updating some demographics based on the 2020 census. So these numbers are taken directly out of the census, so we're not adding anything different from what they have. So we're amending the population demographics, outlining comparisons in the different age groups that are within the city, taking out the population chart. We'll come back once we get more complete information on updating some of this other information. Taking out a reference to the State Street mixed-use districts out of, out of the general plan as well. And then these are the 4 moderate-income housing strategies that we've worked with the council to come up with. The E, which is the top one, is our accessory apartment requirements, which we already allow in the city, so we're basically taking credit for that one. X is Or senior housing overlay zone, which we also allow currently in the city. So we're also taking credit for that. And then Q is one that we're going to do a potential housing transit and reinvestment zone, working with a developer down by Wolverine Crossing area. That may or may not happen, but that's something that we can count as one of these criteria that we need for the state's requirements. And then V is the development of adopt station area plans around the Frontrunner Station and around our BRT stations, which we have till 2025 to complete. So these are the 4 that we've chosen to move forward with, and then we've basically— we'll enact 4.4.2 in the General Plan that would be outlining these 4 criteria. Basically, what this— what the each one is and then what we will do specifically for that. And again, the Planning Commission did review it and did make a recommendation that the council amend it as proposed. Be glad to address any questions.

So we did add— did you just want to highlight where that is in there, where we added the owner-occupied housing Yes, affordable housing. Oh yes, can we talk about that?

Yeah.

But yes, our intent of the council would be— it's under this one here— to encourage owner-occupied twin home type developments in the station area plans.

Any other questions? I think we've worked through this a lot to get to this point, so I think we're—

And to you, yes, right there.

Okay, let's just open up a public hearing for this particular item. Are there any comments from the public?

While they're coming up, Mayor, maybe just a little bit of background. The state is mandating the cities come up with at least 4 of these, so every city in the state is doing the same thing that we're doing tonight. We're just trying to fit these into our things that we're already doing and making it work with what we're doing, getting credit for what we're already improving, you know, doing towards moderate-income housing. So we're not the only ones that are required to do this. It is a statewide requirement.

So, right. Okay, we'll close the public comment part. And somebody like to make a motion?

I'll make a motion that we amend portions of Chapter 4, Housing, of the Orem General Plan, including updating Section 4.1, Population Demographics, Section 4.2, Existing Conditions, And enacting Section 4.4.2 pertaining to moderate income housing strategies.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The resolution passes.

Thank you, Jason.

Okay, next on our agenda. Item 8.5, we've got a resolution expressing intent to combine Orem dispatch services with Provo dispatch services. If Captain Sorensen and Lieutenant Preskever could come present.

So, uh, as we talked about in the work session, um, we, uh, uh, our, our dispatchers, we are very short on staffing. Um, the state legislative, uh, and the State Tax Commission are looking to eventually move to 2 PSAPs per county. And with all the direction, we're looking for a better opportunity for our employees and better service for our citizens. We believe that we've done the research, financial logistics, and with everything that we've come together, By this consolidation. We believe it's better for our employees, and it's going to be better for the citizens of Orem. There's going to be a shared staffing model that Chief Sanderson talked to you guys about with the fire department. We'll be able to have— basically all the border calls will be able to be transferred and have a quicker response with Provo and Orem. and Linden. But the biggest thing that we're looking at is the transfer rates. So that's why— how our citizens get a better service, right? If you're in a certain area and you call 911, you might get Provo dispatch, you might get Orem dispatch, you might get Central. By consolid— by this consolidation, if a phone call comes in, it's coming now to one center. So one center doesn't have to transfer that call to another center. And so by doing so, reducing that person that's in dire need of help, instead of transferring them to another center, we're getting that citizen of Orem immediate service and that immediate help that, that we need. And so our employees will benefit greatly. They will have an opportunity to have vacation time, holidays with their families. They are working, uh, I mean, we had one dispatcher 2 weeks ago work 80 hours of overtime in one week. Um, that's a 120-hour work week. Uh, they're exhausted, they're burnt out. Um, and as administration, the fire department and the police, uh, the police department, um, we feel that this is the best the best direction for our employees, but also to have that opportunity for our, our citizens to have that better service.

So.

Any questions?

I do, Mayor.

Okay.

So I just want to be reassured because we, you know, we've all probably had some contact with dispatchers that weren't happy with the process. So are those folks— well, you don't know who those folks are, reached out to us, but how are the dispatchers feeling about this? Is this, is this in their best interest, and are they supportive? Because that, that's not everything I'm hearing.

Well, we have 2 of our lead dispatchers here today that are here in support of it, and if you'd like to speak with them directly, um, you know, you can address them. But, uh, we have done our due diligence as far as making sure that the pay is matched, that they are being made whole. During the shared staffing model and then into the consolidation. But yeah, I would obviously change is hard for anything. These these employees have been our family for years, and this is this is not an easy decision that Chief Adams and Chief Sanderson that we are making. But we're doing it in the best interest of the employees and the citizens of. And, you know, when you've bled and sweat for an organization, some of them for 20 years, that's hard. That's a hard thing to just say, this isn't your home anymore. And that's, that's a hard thing for anybody. And I think they've all struggled with that and, and rode the wave of emotions. But the— when you talk to them and you talk about the it makes sense for them and their families. And so that's where we're at.

Any other questions?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. I just want to say that this is an issue that we've been working on for quite a while. And Like you said, change is always difficult, but this is, in my opinion, in the best interest of the employees and the citizens.

Yeah, I have a question. I mean, our concern, just to make sure that, you know, if we get down the road and it's not working, we have the option to pull back and bring it back into Orem. That's correct.

So, so there is a, there is a license that's tied to it. The resolution talks about specifically combining our dispatch rather than consolidating. At the same time, the way we would enter— essentially what this resolution does today is it expresses an intent to move forward in developing a contract where in the short term we would actually become a customer of Provo and they would provide dispatch services for us while we develop what we call an interlocal local agreement that would essentially establish a form of government governance that would give us a very active voice in how the operations of the dispatch center happen. So we would go from being a customer to an owner in this relationship. But given where we are right now as it relates to staffing, as it relates to some of the equipment that we have, And frankly, the difficulty we're having in recruiting people, it makes sense for us to consolidate and contract in the short term and then work towards a partnership in the longer term. And by longer term, I mean 18 to 24 months.

And the lead dispatchers, you guys are good with it?

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions? And like I said, this isn't something we've taken lightly, and this is something the city and the city council has been working on for quite a while. So would anyone like to— Debbie?

I move that by resolution, resolution, we express intent to combine Orem dispatch services with Provo dispatch services.

Second.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The resolution passes. Jamie, do you have any communication items?

Yeah, I just have a couple of things. Mayor and Council, I talked with you about earlier today about the Heritage Well and the fact that we had recommenced the drilling of the well, but unfortunately Unfortunately, the contractor, 800 feet into the ground, lost the drill bit associated with the drilling. I'm happy to report that we've now retrieved the bit and we are drilling once again, and we should be done with the drilling through the night. So as you know, it needs to be a continuous process. So all was, all was not lost. It was found.

And how far, how far, how deep were you drilling?

About 950 feet.

So we lost a bit about—

or the contractor lost a bit about 850 feet. So we had 100 feet to go.

Do you know what they're going to do to prevent that from happening again?

No. So what happens is they'll remount the hole and then they'll essentially put in a casing and then they'll pack the casing with all of those material— that material that's on site, those bags that are on site. That's what they'll pack around the casing to protect the shaft itself and to protect the the well. So after tonight, we won't need to core down again and drill through because we'll be down to the appropriate, I guess you could say, width of the hole. So good news. Several of you have— I communicated with you yesterday about City Council meeting in November. We traditionally hold one City Council meeting in November. It has been scheduled for November 8th, but of course, as we know, November 8th is an election day. The suggestion was made that we shift that meeting to a different day. The recommendation was made that we move to November 9th. I've heard from a majority of you saying that November 9th would work for you. So I'd like to recommend to you, if you're okay with it, then we'll instruct our city recorder's office to plan on November 9th as the meeting night, which is a Wednesday. And we would— that would be the one council meeting that we will need, that we will hold and schedule regular items for, for the month of November. It will be necessary for us, though, to hold an additional meeting to canvass the election results because we have a ballot question on the ballot this year, we need to actually formally canvass that result. And so we will need to do that 14 days after the election, which puts, puts us at November 22nd. Now, that is not something that we necessarily have to do with all of you in attendance. We can schedule an electronic meeting and we can take care of that electronically, but I just wanted to say one meeting, one general meeting, in November, and then a meeting to canvass the election.

Um, 2 weeks after?

Yes, and that's by direction. The, the county recorder or the county clerk who conducts the election has represented to us that the final numbers will be available the day of, 14 days after the election, the 22nd. So we would have probably received the election, the final election results, probably around midday, and I would anticipate that probably towards the end of the day we would need to hold a meeting for a few minutes allowing you to canvass the vote. Just another note, and I know our, our IT director is here, but we are in the process of making changes to our email and our password systems here within the city. As you well know, unfortunately, cybersecurity is an increasing threat, and we need to make sure that we're protected against threats. And so we're requiring all of our employees, all who have a password to gain access to city resources, city system, your email systems, to have a 12-character password. And that 12-character— and I think Carlo has sent out, or at least Jake has sent out some additional information relative to— it needs to be 12 characters, it needs to include a cap, it needs to include a number, and generally it needs to include a symbol. So all of that is going to be necessary, and we're not requiring employees to do it the very next time they log on, but we are giving them a drop-dead date. For me, my drop-dead date has already passed. For you as a city council, your drop-dead date is Thursday at midnight.

Oh, good.

So I'm going to encourage you between now and Thursday at midnight to go into the system. When you log on to the login screen for Microsoft and you— there's an opportunity for you to change your password. You're going to need to change your password. If you have questions, and I will resend this to you, you can contact Jake in IT or a member of the help staff in IT, and there's even a video that we've provided that allows you to walk through how to change it.

So—

7007.

229-7007. And if, if you get to 12:01 and you're locked out of your system, Just know, give them a call Friday morning, we'll make sure you're taken care of.

Okay.

Yeah, so yeah, maybe you want to be locked in. And finally, we just want to wish Councilmember Spencer a happy birthday. Wish him many happy returns on his birthday. So happy birthday, Dave. And that's all I have. Thank you.

Okay, uh, can I make a motion that we adjourn? Yes, I make that motion that we adjourn.

Second.

And we do have some treats for Councilmember Spencer, so you're welcome to grab one. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you for coming.