City Council · 2022-10-11

We love you, but we have—

No, come back.

Should we start? Yep, we're getting started.

Are we ready, Jamie?

Yes, we are.

Okay, I think we're gonna start it off. We have a quorum here, so let's go for it. Our first item on our agenda is Neil Schwendeman. He will be presenting for North Point Solid Waste Special Services District.

As Neil's walking up, I'll just, uh, introduce him a little bit more. So he, he, uh, came on with North Point as the director there. Has it been 2 years already?

Yeah, 2 years ago.

And, um, I appreciated kind of the additional level of sophistication he brought, but also his focus on communicating more and better with, with the member cities that are part of the North Point Solid Waste District and what that represents. So Neil is the executive director and he oversees not only the transfer station in Linden but also a construction demolition landfill out past Saratoga and Eagle Mountain. And then also the district is kind of a part owner in landfill in Alberta, essentially southwest of Utah Lake.

Wow.

But yeah, Neil's been super great to work with, and he just wants to do these annual kind of update reports to all the different member cities and bring us all up to date on what's been going on and what specifically Orem— what our relationship is with the district, and then let us know kind of current plans and, and I guess crystal ball thoughts looking, looking forward.

Well, thank you, Brent, and thank you everyone else for letting me come and present to you. Like Brent said, I want to do this on probably about a yearly basis, probably in the spring after I have our yearly numbers so I can update all the numbers that I'll be showing you today. And as Brent, we were talking earlier, he introduced me, and yes, I do like to talk trash, so it's all good. So just a little bit of history with North Point. In 1976, the district was created. It was originally called Utah County Solid Waste Special Service District. In 1984, Springville, Spanish Fork, Salem, Mapleton, Elk Ridge, and Woodland Hills all joined South Utah Valleys. In 1993, the transfer station was built and the landfill was closed there in Lyndon. At that time, the waste was then hauled by rail to the ECDC landfill in Carbon County. In 2001, the name changed from Utah County Solid Waste to North Point Solid Waste. And in 2006, we switched from rail transport to truck transport, and the waste was then delivered to Wasatch Regional Landfill in Tooele County. The rail became unreliable around that time.

Jesus.

In 2012, the district purchased the Cedar Valley Construction Demolition Landfill. Brynn mentioned it was, uh, it's located in Fairfield. And in 2013, the district updated its interlocal agreement consisting of American Fork, Cedar Hills, Highland, Lehi, Lindon, Orem, Pleasant Grove, Saratoga Springs, and Vineyard. And in '14, the district joined New Era. That was the, that's the Northern Utah Environmental Resource Agency, so the group that Brent talked about as being a part owner in the Bayview Landfill. And in 2016, those New Era members purchased the Bayview Landfill down in Alberta, and in '18 we began shipping our municipal solid waste, or MSW, to Bayview. And in 2020, Roger Harper retired and I took over. I've been, um, I said 2 years here. I've been in the waste industry for 18 years.

So here are—

you see the pointer?

Well, you can see up on the top up here, Wasatch Regional Landfill, and this one down here, ECDC. That's where the waste used to be shipped to. And you can see the 2 landfills out there, North Point C&D Landfill and New York Binghamton Landfill. Those are where the the waste is shipped now. So much closer, more efficient place to ship.

It all gets moved out? All that gets moved out.

Thank you.

By rail, I'm assuming? Are those all pulled on?

It's all semi-trucks.

Oh, so there's no rail over there.

What's that?

It actually used to be. South Utah Valley takes their waste to We don't take the price. Yeah, so is it cheaper to go by semi to those closer ones or by rails the further one away?

I don't know what the, what the rates were by rail.

We don't— our rail spur doesn't exist anymore. That is a moot point. Rail fuel is just as expensive as— Is that right? And thank you for our transportation expert.

And ECDC is the only landfill that I know of that has The rail spur. I think they still take some waste from California. So some of the services or operations that we provide at North Point in the municipal solid waste, we get a lot of residential curbside. All of the member cities bring their residential curbside to us. We also have commercial front loads, roll-off, which are the big commercial construction type dumpsters. And then we get a lot of small commercial and a lot of public self-haul. In the construction demolition side, we have a separate area for that, and that's mostly commercial roll-offs, small commercial, and public self-haul. We do a lot of green waste, mostly small commercial, public self-hauls. We get a lot from Orem city residents. Orem has been great to work with the residents on bringing that green waste in, and so we see a lot of warm residents with that. We also have an agreement with a contractor to come in, grind up that green waste, we pay him for it, he hauls it out, composts it, and then we get some of that back and sell that compost material. We have— we— he makes more compost than we could ever get rid of ourselves, so he has a contract, I believe, with Scotts, and he sells it to them. We also take in clean concrete, so we have an agreement with the contractor to come in. He buys all the clean concrete that we pile up on top of the old landfill. He crushes it into 2 different products, a road base and a drain rock, and that works great so we don't have to ship out that heavy material. We have our household hazardous waste program where we will allow residents to come in and drop off household hazardous waste such as paints, chemicals, cleaners, batteries, etc. There's most of— they bring in small quantities, it's no charge. We limit some of the quantities to make sure we're not being taken advantage of by some small businesses that want to claim that they are residents and bring it in on a daily basis.

I do have a question about back here, clean.

What's the definition of clean? Without oil on it?

Without—

So without rebar.

Oh, rebar.

Okay.

So it can be crushed up and that rebar doesn't cause problems with the crusher.

And then some of the recycling we do in-house is tires, metals, and electronics. So here's some of the getting into the fun information. So for 2021, for the City of Orem, residential curbside green waste for your city brought in 26,577 tons. We created 23,712 tickets for the public self-haul coming in. There was 7,142 tickets created by city vehicles. We took in 3,035 coupons from the City of Orem, and there was 1,206 direct green waste customers, so the public customers directly hauling it, none of the curbside.

green waste.

And then the graph up there, you can see that Orem is the largest contributor of all the residential curbside tons at about 25%.

Is Lehigh mostly construction trash? They don't have a huge population.

Um, that's, that's curbside waste. That's the residential curbside.

And maybe, yeah, I don't know.

I know they have a curbside green waste program too, so I'm not sure what the differences there are. This is the curbside tons coming from Orem. You can see that spike in 2020. That's pretty typical of all the cities that are coming in. People cleaned their garage during COVID

Yep, that was the COVID spike. I did.

It's still dirty.

It's already gone up.

So a pretty standard growth rate. There's still a few years that spiked more than others, but a pretty steady climb. This is the curbside green waste tons that came in. It's interesting that in 2020 those dipped. Maybe everybody was hauling it in themselves instead of putting it in their cans.

Not quite sure.

And this is a history of the coupons that have been used throughout the years. So I'm assuming that Orem has just reduced the amount of coupons, or maybe when they started paying for that.

So this shows honestly the success of our spring cleanup and our fall cleanup program. So the coupons are the duck passes. So as we provided more of a direct, close way for people to help their ducks, they haven't needed to go down to the transfer station. Trash down there. And that—

those cleanups work well.

I know we communicate with staff frequently about those cleanups and make sure that things are happening well.

Do you accept the coupons at the cleanups for that, or they can just come in?

Yeah, so we'll often even pass out the coupons there with some of our staff that man those parks. Just in the event that we think that someone has something too big or they have different kinds of waste that we don't necessarily take at the park location, we'll just give them one of those coupons to send them directly down to the transfer station.

And that's great because my experience over the last 18 years when you have cleanups— I was formerly in Washington County and we'd have cleanups in the cities and we'd put those big roll-offs out there and leave them out there for the weekend and there would be piles of trash all over. So the coupon thing is great to do that. Here's the numbers just for direct green waste customers coming from ORRM. A little bit of a dip in '21, but again, 2020 I think was an anomaly. And this is our overall tons at the transfer station.

You see those numbers?

I just threw numbers on those end ones, but that's okay. In 2012, we were quite a bit higher, but that's about the time that Alpine, Eagle Mountain, and some other cities chose not to be part of the district. And then in 2012 is when we purchased that construction demolition landfill, and you can see how our numbers over on this side have Risen quite steadily for construction demolition, obviously, with all of the growth and whatnot in the county that continues to grow. We take in a lot of tons. So here is what I could glean from our records, some of the history of the fees that we've charged the cities for the curbside waste coming in. So in 2010, we were at $29 a ton. In 2020, we actually dropped back $1.50 a ton, and I think that was in essence from charging all of the self-hauls coming in a minimum fee, or increasing that minimum fee to pay for the waste that they were bringing in, so that way the true cost of the residential curbside was what the city was paying for.

$31.50 a ton.

So what is our future? In '21, we started updating our master plan, and this year we completed that plan. The scope of that plan was to determine the feasibility to expand our current location in Linden or to build a second transfer station somewhere within the district. And then, if it was feasible to expand the current facility, to provide recommendations on that expansion. determine the condition of the facility and recommend improvements, and then to provide estimates on all aspects of the master plan. So some of the findings that we found is we need to install some new stormwater infrastructure and paving repairs. If you've been to the transfer station, you know that the siding on it is in need of some repair. There's some structural issues inside the building, that some of the metal beams need to have some repairs done to them. And then we need an engineering assessment on the concrete tipping floor. Over time, those floors wear out and need to be replaced. Some site operational improvements also include— well, that would help improve workflow and customer services— and to relocate our household hazardous waste facility on site, relocate the compost bunker, add a push wall into our public building so we can push the trash against that wall, smash it up, and get better load rates of the material going out so we can be more efficient. The plan— the results showed that there was 2 viable options that existed to expand our current facility that would handle the projected volumes for the next 25 years, and that showed that expanding the current site remained the most cost-effective option instead of looking at going to another site somewhere else. Here are some of the pictures of our current facility. You can see the— in that upper left-hand corner there, the siding that's all gone. That, that's where a push wall would need to be put in place so we can not have waste being poked out the back of the building. This upper middle, that's just a view of the back of that building. The upper right is the concrete floor, some of the cracks in it. Again, the lower left is that siding, and then the lower right is our construction and demolition area, the loading area.

You can see where the water will pond there.

So those are some of the improvements that need to be made. But what could our facility look like with an expansion? You can see the— that back portion where that truck is backing into, that would all be an addition. So we have 2 loadout areas. You can see kind of in the corner right up here, that's our existing tunnel. So the trucks drive through a tunnel, they're on a scale, we load them. With the way we're doing, we have to push from this building over here into the other building and then load them.

And having a push wall and this other loadout, hey, we could smash up that trash and have added capacity to load trucks.

So a little bit about New Era.

Just a little bit of kudos to Neil. So just so you're aware, we were initially looking at how to allow for the transfer station to grow and accommodate growth so that First discussions were about finding a whole new piece of property somewhere close by. Thanks to Penn and Neil's creative and detailed work, we were able to now find a plan that, like you said, is much more cost-effective and gives us plenty of time to build into without taking a whole new piece of property. Thank you.

So a little bit about New Era. What we're doing right now at the Bayview Landfill This year we're lining a new cell, which is approximately 26 acres. So in a municipal solid waste landfill, you have to have a lined cell that consists of excavating down to your base level, making sure there's no rocks on that.

Once—

if there is any rocks, you have to put a little bit of soil on top, make sure there's no rocks. They put down a fabric barrier that has bentonite in it, and over the top of that is a 60 mil plastic, which they actually weld together. On top of that is a drainage layer that's made up of a mesh plastic and some, some fibrous fabric, and then you have to put 18 inches of soil on top of that. It's approved by the state, and then you're allowed to place waste in that cell. So we're doing that this year. That should last about 5 years before another cell needs to be lined, and that 5 years is important because the next Bullet point there is we're also installing a gas collection system, so we'll be sucking out all the landfill gas, and we have a flare system that will burn it off. But we also have a company that we are working with that will build a gas-to-energy project, and we will sell the gas to them. But the 5-year thing is, anytime that you have— once you install a gas collection system, anytime you have waste in place for longer than 5 years, it has to be part of the— it has to have some influence of influence of that gas collection system pulling out that gas. So we'll design those kind of in 5-year increments. So once we fill up to the top, we can drill a well, and then we don't have to worry about that well trying to fill around it. We also acquired 140 additional acres at this Bayview site there with Citla, and we extended our lease with Citla through December 31st, 2082. And at that— when that time comes around, I'm not planning on being around, but the lease could likely be extended at that time because there still will be capacity. And the current estimated capacity of the landfill is 99+ years.

So all the work that's been done recently is, is huge for the capacity we have to handle our waste in the future.

So in summary, the estimated cost of the transfer station expansion is in the range of $7 to $9 million. We're currently looking at our plan, estimating future funding sources, and probably going to work on the RFQ to get more detailed information about our plan, when we're going to expand the facility and whatnot. So the board is in the process of evaluating the timing for those expansion improvements. And Bayview's landfill capacity allows us, New Era, to control our disposal rates for the foreseeable future. Since I've been here, and I think since the— since New Era was formed, our disposal rate at the landfill is $10.50 a ton, which I believe is the lowest rate in the entire state. That's a huge bonus for all of us. And in conclusion, I'd just like to thank Warm City staff. Like I said, we have a great working relationship, great communication. There might be some people in this room that I communicate with on email and never met face to face, but it works well. And then thank you to Brent for all of his time and effort spent on the board. We appreciate his input. And also thank you to Jamie. Anytime I've needed to meet with him and He's always been available and helpful when needed. So thank you. And if you have any questions, I'm ready.

Well, they look at that, man. Um, if I'm looking at your board members, it looks like they're all either city employees or elected officials from the cities you serve. Is that correct?

Yeah, so there's, there's 9 cities and there's 9 members from each city, and then there's 3 from the county that are appointed.

I noticed Bill Lee. Yep.

And then Dave Shawcroft.

I don't know, Mr. Shawcroft.

He was a county attorney. He's since retired.

Thank you. And will he stay on or will he likely leave after the—

I think he's likely going to leave and they'll appoint a new—

another county commissioner. So you get broad representation. That's what I was pointing out. I knew some of the names, but not all.

Any other questions?

A question about your stop wall.

What's—

what does that look like? How thick?

How high?

It's got to be a pretty substantial wall. What's it made of?

Yeah, I— so before I did the master plan, it was, um, I had an engineer come up and draw some plans up just for a push wall in that building, and it was— it was about 10 feet, 10 to 12 feet tall. A couple feet thick, full of rebar. It was made out of concrete rebar. So yeah, that'd be pretty substantial. I know in discussing the master plan there with the expansion, and there was talk of putting in a temporary push wall, and I'm curious to see what that would look like to be able to take and move something you're going to push and smash trash.

Yeah, they're pretty substantial. One other comment too. I've noticed every time that I go down there to take a load of whatever, the—

it's a—

it's— I mean, there's so much wildlife around there. I've been down there at times the next year walking around the transfer station on the other side of the fence. And then also the, you know, if you're a bird watcher, As you're waiting in that line there to get into the facility there, I mean, there are just all kinds of varieties of birds and animals. I think it's really neat that we've got that kind of thing going on together, you know, that here we have a transfer station and we have all this wildlife that that's their home. Even, even the old landfill, the hill right there, the geese they're always all over that thing, and the deer, so it actually provides a little bit of a habitat for them. Yeah, I've noticed some pretty impressive bucks over there. It's like, wow. So anyway, I just, I thought that was worth mentioning. Any other questions?

Uh, just a couple of things. I wanted to just express appreciation, Neil, for for the work that he and Bryn and others on the board have done as it relates to maintaining, controlling costs of, uh, obviously garbage and disposal of municipal waste. Really what Neil does is kind of the back of house, so to speak, and by that I mean that Waste Management is our front of house provider, and they're the ones who come to our curb and pick up the trash, and then they transfer it down to this station, and then Neil takes care of it beyond that. And obviously there's the actual transportation and transfer cost, and then there's landfill costs that he's talked about being the lowest in the state. And that landfill cost and those tipping fees at the transfer station and our contract with Waste Management is coupled with some other things, specifically our spring cleanup and our fall cleanup programs. We load a certain amount of The cost of those things into our overall waste program, then that becomes the rate for our customers on a monthly basis. And we have a very competitive rate, and we've worked very hard to keep the rates as low as we can get them. And Neil knows, Fred kind of hammers him all the time about, well, where can we save here, and what can we do about this, that. The concern that I have, that we have prospectively, is not with North Point and transfer operations. The concern that we have right now and that we're trying to work through is with our relationship with Waste Management. We're coming to the end of a 9-year agreement with Waste Management, and this is not an ideal time to go out to bid. In fact, last week I was at the Utah League of Cities and Towns, and I happened to have a conversation with the representative from Waste Management's lead competitor, which is the— yeah, the large— the second largest hauler in the country. And he looked me straight in the eye and said, you do not want to go out to bid right now.

Because—

and this is from a competitor.

Right.

He's saying, I've known you a long long enough, and I just want to tell you, whatever you do, do not go to bid right now. Well, that kind of puts us in an awkward situation because we are at the end of term with Waste Management, but at the same time, their largest competitor is telling us you're going to get hammered if you go out to bid right now. So we are working with Waste Management right now to try and find a way to potentially extend our residential relationship with Waste Management. I'm not sure if we can do it. We're trying to have a conversation about how we might do it and still comply with obviously our ordinances and state laws relative to purchasing. But if we go forward in this environment with a bid, then it is going to result in pretty dramatic increases in the cost of our residential pickup. And I don't think that's in the best interest of our customers. At the same time, just like we're grappling to build and buy fire trucks and ambulances, they can't get a garbage truck. And they can't get people to drive their garbage trucks. And so there are all these costs that are associated with waste and residential pickup that we are struggling with. Neil is not part of that struggle, that part of that equation. But there is a significant kind of trouble spot on the horizon that we're trying to manage, trying to find a way to work through, and I just wanted to make you aware of that. I believe our relation— our contract with Waste Management expires next end of— yeah, so 2023. So we're, we're getting very, very close to having to pull the trigger. on a bid exercise or trying to find a way to extend this relationship, at least into the relative future, until things kind of calm down and markets adjust and we find ourselves with more of a stable bidding environment than we have had most recently.

That's one. I've waited in line to dump my own waste for probably upwards of 45 minutes.

Is there anything in your future plans that will alleviate that wait time?

So yes, part of that is relocating like the household hazardous waste facility so that those vehicles that all they have is household hazardous waste, they don't have to go up into the building. We've also been implementing some things now. I have a new scale house supervisor who is for lack of a better term, cracking the whip on getting employees out of the scale house. We have some handheld credit card machines. You know, you pull up to Chick-fil-A and they got a whole menu there, right? And they can get you through. Well, it's no different here. On any customers that are the self-haul that are going to pay the minimum fee and don't need to be weighed, we have our credit card machines. I put a menu in there so they can pull up Orem City. Is it MSW?

Is it C&D?

Is it green waste? They can just click on that, they can take the card, pay for it. And so her goal, especially on Saturdays, is to make sure someone is out there whenever that line is, you know, starts to get long. Someone gets out there and gets—

starts getting them through.

So we're at a good time right now where it's wintertime to get them assimilated into going and doing that, so when summertime comes around, it's not quite as hard.

So.

Thank you.

Neil's gotten sick of me cracking the Chick-fil-A method.

It's a good method. They go through a lot of cups.

Wonderful.

Any other questions? Perfect. That's really good. I don't— I really appreciate all you guys do. I don't think that we think about that as much as we should, but it's wonderful to have been in other places where their trash is not necessarily removed. In an orderly fashion. We really appreciate that you guys do a great job here in Orem.

We want to keep it out of sight, out of mind.

That's the best way to handle it.

That's great.

Thank you. Thank you for your time.

Okay, next on the list we have Carrie Rugg, our Human Resources Director.

She will be doing a presentation on employee civility training.

And we'll all sit here very civilly while you prepare.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

The other alternative is go like on a Tuesday.

Saturday.

Tuesday is at about 6 o'clock. I'm kidding. Saturday is always the best.

But you're right, I have to have a spirit.

We don't want to see you on the news.

Councilman caught for poaching. He was at 6.

Yeah, there's a little bit of issues.

Well, while Stephen's working on that, I can Just start talking about it. So, um, I just wanted to introduce Jason Adamson. If some of you haven't met him before, he's the city's risk manager. He works in our HR office and does a phenomenal job on the risk management side, but another hat that he wears with me is the organizational development, so employee development in the city. So we just wanted to share with you a little bit what we do for our employees. I ran a report this morning, and right now we have 1,136 employees here at the city, and 460 of those are full-time employees. So we have a big organization, and one of our main goals is to make sure that we are helping employees develop so that they have the opportunity to promote and grow here in the organization. So we don't want them to just get all skilled up and then us, we want to make sure that they have the avenues to be prepared to take on future opportunities here in the organization. So we're just going to go over some of those things very quickly. We monthly, every first Thursday of the month, we have 136 supervisors that supervise employees here in the organization. We have a leadership and management training for 2 hours on the first Thursday of every month. Most of those are virtual trainings, but sometimes we do meet in person. Here are some topics that we have discussed this year. We, we do half or a quarter of the 2 hours, we talk about management issues, so the day-to-day operations of the city, maybe FMLA issues, things that we've noticed on timecards that we want to be aware of, so the management side of it. And then the other half, we talk about our leadership opportunities, so we talk about building better habits, upstream thinking. having productive meetings and so on. So we do that once a month. And then something that we have just started within the last year is called Building a Better Wharton, and that's for all 1,136 employees once a quarter. We have a 2-hour session. We bring all of our employees in. We call it BABO for short, and all of our employees know what BABO is. But once a quarter, we bring employees all together at Library Hall, and we do some training sessions on some important topics. So for this year, we started it out by having Noelle Pikus-Pace come in. She, as you're aware, is a former Orem resident and an Olympic athlete, so she came and talked to us about her Olympic journey and about having a positive attitude, and that was really inspirational for all of us that were able to attend that. Kathy Loveless also came. She is a former competitor in Miss America, and she talked to us about the magic of building a better Orem because she's also a magician. So the mayor missed out on us talking about the magician on that. And then one of our most favorite ones is what we call Orem Listens, and that's where we ask many of our employees here in the organization to come in and volunteer and give a 5-minute presentation on the leadership or a workplace topic that they're really passionate about, and that was really successful. So we will be doing forum lessons here again in January. So in October and November, we'll be doing our next Building a Better Orym session, and we're doing it off the book Mastering Civility in the Workplace. And Jason is going to pass around to you each a copy of this book. It's a really quick quick read. We invite you to read it. It's very interesting. We've also included— because I like to give out swag— you've got our Build a Better Orem astronaut, and on the back it says that I am building a better Orem. And the reason why we use the spaceship and the astronaut is, I'm sure that you've heard the story of JFK when he went to NASA while he was president. and he was touring the facility late one night, and there was a janitor cleaning the floors, and he said, what do you do here? And he said, well, sir, I'm putting a man on the moon. And the importance of that is that every single one of us here in the organization are— we are building a better Orem regardless of what our title or our day-to-day activities are. We are together united to building a better Orem. So we would like to invite you on the book as well. We have The 2 dates that we are doing these Build a Better Orange sessions. It's, it's mandatory for all of our full-time employees, but all the rest of our employees, we're highly encouraging you to come. We'd love to have you join us and rub shoulders with some of the employees that maybe you haven't had an opportunity to meet yet.

And Carrie said it's 2 hours?

Yes, it'll be for 2 hours.

Yep.

So Jason and I will be moderating the conversation. It's October 20th at 9 AM or November 3rd at 2 PM, and we'd love to invite you to come and join us for that.

No, it's just an exciting thing, you know, with, with the feedback that we've received from the employees, the frontline. You know, myself having— I'm working on 16 years now with Warm City, and throughout the years, that's one of the things that we've noticed is we get into turnover and, and new positions that open up with supervisors and different things that a lot of A lot of employees don't have the skill set or even have the knowledge of what is waiting for them the next day as a supervisor. And so we identified a need, and over the last several years, especially over the last couple years, we've really pushed this program to cultivate— again, like Carrie said, leaders from within— cultivate our employees, give our supervisors the tools and the resources they need to be successful.

successful.

And it's, it's really been quite popular. So again, we invite you to be there and hope to see your smiling faces. Any questions? Dates, October 29th, November 3rd too? Yep. You guys, you guys send out an invite for both of them?

Yeah, we can actually just put them on your city calendars if you'd like, and there you can choose which one you buy. Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

Thanks.

Okay, our next item is a presentation by Deer Creek Intake Project. The presenters are Keith Denison and Jeff Butch from the Provo River Water Users Association.

So, Mayor Cortana, Council, I'd like to introduce the project team for Provo River Water Association. We have Keith DeNoss, Jeff Budge, and Brad Jorgensen. Sorry, just to briefly present. I've worked with them for the last 15 years as a board member, and the Metropolitan Water District of Orem has a seat at the table. Orem has a seat at the table as a PASG shareholder. There's 100,000 shares associated with this project, the Provo River Project. Out of which we have about 6% of that.

Hey, Chris, maybe you could just give it—

or Keith, maybe you can give an overview as to what Provo River Water Users is.

Why is there no other program?

I don't need that to start to tell you about us. Provo River Water Users Association was organized in 1935 for the purpose of sponsoring the Provo River Project, which is a Bureau of Reclamation water project. We all know where Deer Creek Reservoir is. As was mentioned, 100,000 acres— 100,000 shares in the association, each representing 1 acre foot of stored water in Deer Creek Reservoir. I always joke that the Provo River Project should have been called something different because we get our water from not just the Provo, but the Weaver River and the Duchesne River, so 3 different river systems. So if we have a bad year in the Provo system and maybe a better year on the Weaver or Duchesne, we're still okay. But it's a, it's a fun project. We have the Duchesne Tunnel, brings water from the Duchesne River. The Weaver-Provo Canal, the part of the Weaver River across the county expansion to the Provo River above Jordan Hill Reservoir. So we've been around for a long time. We're doing a big project, as you know, up at Deer Creek Reservoir because infrastructure is aging. You can see in this picture here before the reservoir was inundated, that valley there, you can see what it looked like. This is a picture on the upper right of our existing intake before it was flooded. So some really exciting things to see in some photos. So Deer Creek Reservoir serves about half the population of Utah, not just from Provo River Water Users Association, but also the Central Utah Water Resources District through Jordanelle water that's delivered through Deer Creek Reservoir, or Central Utah actually has the right to store water in Deer Creek Reservoir on a space-available basis as well. And there's also water we call direct flow water that is not stored in Deer Creek or Jordanelle, but just comes straight through and is delivered to irrigators and cities. And about 1.6 million people— that takes just over 3 million people—

Did some of their water come water from Deer Creek?

that comes through here. Of that, the vast majority is treated for drinking water. This might come as a shock to some, but used to be many, many years ago, we were probably about half and half M&I water and irrigation water. But as you know, lots of development, use of that water has changed more from agricultural to now municipal and industrial. What consumes more water, 10 acres of orchard or 10 acres of homes? It somewhat depends upon the density. So let's say their houses are 8,000 square foot lots. You put in 5, 6, or 7 acres. It's pretty close, actually. You probably have to do the analysis of what the duty is at the time. In our area, we have a lower duty in the upper valleys, and then a little bit— I think it's 4 acre-feet per acre in the Utah Valley and 5 acre-feet per acre in the Salt Lake Valley. So it kind of depends on that as well, what the duty is for the area in question, but it's, it's pretty comparable actually.

Okay, thank you.

I mentioned we supply water to 1.6 million people. It's a vital component of Utah's economy. These facilities that we're looking at replacing and refurbishing right now are over 80 years old. It's time to get them ready for the next 80 years. You all know that our population is increasing along the Wasatch Front, and so the time is Now to be ready for that to come, and this project will help us do that. I'll let Brad talk about some of the drivers for this project and why we're doing this project. Thank you.

So, as Keith indicated, we're over 80 years old with many of our infrastructure components for the Deer Creek Project and the Deer Creek Dam. We get an opportunity to take a look at that at the very start of the Presentation, there's that picture up in the top right-hand corner of the old intake, and that's before the water inundated it. But typically—

or sorry, not typically—

that tower is always 47 feet tall, and with a full reservoir, you're about 90 feet down to the top of that reservoir. Right now we're about 50 feet down because of the elevation of the reservoir. But as we evaluated and took a look at the the age. We look at some of the other concerns, the invasive species threat.

There's, uh, we're familiar with the quagga mussel down in Lake Powell.

Well, one of the next destinations after everybody gets a chance to go and bring their boat to Lake Powell, they get a chance to go close by and hit Deer Creek. And so we are trying to be very proactive on addressing any concerns on that.

So any of the things that, components that we're working on we'll have—

we're making sure that we can address that for future issues. Some of the construction innovation that we've been looking at is in the wet. So it's pretty easy to build many things in the dry, but in the wet, that's a whole new environment that not many of us here in the West have had an opportunity to work with. And so when we looked at some of the challenges and associated with draining the reservoir and doing the construction at Deer Creek. We were very pleased to be able to work with a designer that had experience doing some of this construction in the wet, and we were also able to secure a general contractor that had experience that way too. And so some of the issues that we identified, we'll identify the project here, Seismic upgrades. So we live in an area that was, 80 years ago, these things were not really being addressed.

Next slide.

This is just kind of an overall cross-section view of our dam area. So this down in the bottom left-hand, I'm sorry, left side of the screen, that's that intake tower, that original picture.

That's just a image of that.

Going through on the outside of the dam, outside of the embankment, we have a 144-inch, 12-foot diameter tunnel that leads to the center, which is what we call our guard gate chamber. In that guard gate chamber, we have 2 guard gates that the 144 lead up to and bifurcate into 2 penstocks. And those guard gates are holding back the water, and that water goes through the penstocks and enters the power plant. So construction in the wet was a very important feature for us to be able to take a look at because right now we recognize what happens when we don't have water, and if we went ahead and drained all of the water out just to do the project, We don't know how long it would take to be able to get the reservoir filled back up.

But didn't we do that a few years ago when they did— when they built the new road?

They did bring it down quite a ways.

Because they were worried you took too much out.

We would need to lower it much, much lower than they did that work. So it'd be about 8,000 acre-feet of water left in this puddle instead of the 153,000 acre-feet that's a full Deer Creek Reservoir. So it'd be significantly lower than it was.

So you don't have to do that again.

We don't want to do that.

That's what we're staying away from. So it's exciting for us to be able to work with the wet, but it's also, yeah, recognizing when do we have to wait to fill it back up. So we have, working in the wet helps address one of those concerns. So as I indicated, the intake tower, or sorry, the guard gate chamber there in the center of the dam, Are located in this area in the center of the dam, has— that's the only thing that's holding back the water. So that 80-year-old infrastructure includes the guard gates, and those guard gates, for us to be able to work on those, we have no means to be able to do that because we cannot isolate them. And so part of our project is identifying how we can isolate the guard gates, and that is working with that existing intake tower. So once we have the existing intake tower isolated, then we can get in, refurbish the guard gates, do what needs to be done there so that we have the ability to have some, I guess, a lot more confidence in those guard gates that are 80 years old. So one of the means to be able to help us to be able to isolate the guard gate is Or sorry, the intake tower is we have to be able to drop a bulkhead down in that existing guard or in the existing intake tower. And for us to be able to do that, we can't just dry up the river. And so if the reservoir is down in elevation down below the spillway, we have no means to be able to feed the river. And so this project that we've identified with our designers has a bypass tunnel. That bypass tunnel is running parallel with the existing 144-inch of bifurcated tube headstocks, but it's at a little bit higher elevation. This is outside of the dam embankment, it's off to the left, the left side, and it has— will have the ability to do a microtunnel. Microtunnel boring machine will go through and we'll have a launch portal On the downstream side of the dam, and then we'll end up in the wet side on the reservoir side. And this will provide us a means to be able to convey water downstream and continue to feed the river even after the project. But once we get this in place, this bypass line, we'll have a chance to be able to direct all flow through the new bypass line, and then we can go ahead. introduce our bulkhead. And so our project consists of having an ability to have a redundancy, redundant line feed around, around this infrastructure, this 80-year-old infrastructure, isolate the intake tower, which then allows us to be able to have the guard gates in a point where we can refurbish them.

Right, you're the experts. This doesn't weaken the dam any to have that extra And I just—

I'll, uh, this is all outside of the dam, so this is on the shore, on the edge of the dam.

It's showing staff, but it's over to the side. Okay, thank you.

So we'll take this, we're looking at a through picture profile, but everything's over on the left side.

But both the old tunnel and the new one are way into the bedrock to the side of the dam going through.

It looks like it's going under, but it's not confusing.

No problem.

When you said the left, you're looking downstream. Go across the bridge, you're going up, so you can see it over there.

Yes, yes, downstream, downriver, that's what we—

that's how we identify those.

Next. So this is our schedule to be able to work with. We've been working with our designer since 2009—

or sorry, 2019.

And you may have seen some of the work that's taken place. We were out on the reservoir taking some core samples. That was in 2020.

We pulled in a CMGC general construction manager general contractor to assist us with the design.

That's been very, very helpful for us to be able to utilize their expertise as we're drawing out and identifying the design. We can have the contractor Help us understand cost availability or material availability, costs associated with some of these things. And so our project is identified that we will be doing, we'll start spring 2023, and that, that's— this project will last through the end of 2025.

Do you have a cost yet? Estimation?

That's when I get to start. They leave that question to me when people start asking the hard questions and even throwing the rotten vegetables.

That's right.

So we have a cost for this project. It's grown over the 4 and a half years or so that we've been working on it. Everything, as you learned earlier today, has become extremely expensive to do. And you can't even get the parts and pieces in a lot of cases. And so the cost of our project has escalated over time, but part of the good thing about the project that we're— or how we're working this project is the CMGC process. We brought our contractor online. We solicited quotes and proposals from contractors and selected a contractor when we were at 30% design. So that the contractor could then begin working with the design engineers to find lower-cost methods of accomplishing the task. They can keep their finger on the pulse of where the prices are going on everything. When we get through with what's called a guaranteed maximum price, that's our next step now.

We've received our 100% design drawings.

And the contractor is now working on a price that that he feels he can do this project for. We'll negotiate with him on that price to where we feel that he's giving us the best value, and then we'll begin the project. The estimate that we had at 90% put us at $90 million. We anticipated that we might make it to $100 million, and so that's where we came up with the numbers that are shown on the slide here.

Right now.

We are currently identifying things that we can reduce the costs on, on the project. As you know, contractors really like to keep themselves protected when they prepare their numbers so that they don't lose money on a project. And we don't want them to lose money on a project, but we don't want to overpay for what we're getting. And so we're going through, and the contractor and our engineer and our staff are working together to reduce the contingencies that are inherent in the project right now. Just recently, we got a quote that was $2 million less than the quote before, simply because we now have 100% designs, and the insecurity in what we're building has gone away because we're at that level. So the suppliers are willing to reduce their costs closer to actual cost than they were at the 90% level. The breakdown that we have here, the preliminary engineering and studies that we've done over the last 3 years, 3 and a half years, have been approximately $3 million. All of the design investigations, all of the pre-design, the studies, etc. We're anticipating that the final design The work that the contractor is doing for us right now in the pre-design phase, or during the design phase, and then Reclamation's review of our drawings— we are a Reclamation project, so everything has to go through their design team in Denver— that is anticipated to top out around $6 million. The construction of the The actual work that the contractor will do, we're anticipating about $81.5 million. Funding, we've had to go out and procure loans and other sources of money for this project. We've approached Board of Water Resources. We have $65 million in loan money from them at 1% interest. So, we felt really good about being able to procure that funding.

for it.

And then we've got a $6 million contingency. Where that puts us right now in the project, in our funding, the association went out very early and procured a $7 million bond to begin the design work and all of the pre-study work. So that's, that's money that the association borrowed and has started paying back at this point. The $65 million I mentioned is the Board of Water Resources loan. Central Utah Project, as part of their agreements with the association to utilize space in Deer Creek, has committed to $17 million, basically 17% of the total cost of the project. And right now, we're still— for a $100 million project, we're still $11 million short in in having actual funding in hand. We have been approved for a loan from Reclamation to— that will cover that. However, Reclamation money brings in a lot of different strings, it's federal money, and so if we can reduce the cost of the project through getting rid of the contingencies and that $11 million goes to $5 million or $6 million, Then we also have applied for a grant with Reclamation for $5 million. We don't have notice of that yet, whether or not we have been selected to receive that, and we won't know that until first of the year. So the money is out there. We're not worried about having that $11 million. It's just whether we pull it from a federal pocket or we go back to Board of Water Resources or the Drinking Water board to procure that money. So the project is healthy, and we're hopefully moving down from $100 million, and we'll begin construction next year.

So will there be any—

will our Orem residents feel an increase somewhere through the Water Conservancy, or will this impact household budgets?

The repayment stream for the association is through the shareholders, and so Orem will be assessed the repayment portion through their shares of stock ownership in the association. And that's how that trickles down to the residents. I'm not—

That's one of the things I wanted to just highlight is obviously this is going to come by way of assessments that we pay.

We're shareholders within— we're significant shareholders within Provo So our responsibility in part will be to pay for these improvements, and that will obviously translate into rate adjustments for our ratepayers. What's Orem's share?

About 6%. 60?

6%.

And then what's the, um, are we guaranteed that we hold that 6%? If we pay for this, are we going to have— are we going to own it?

In the future, will we ever—

will that be diminished in any way? The 6% will remain 6%?

This isn't increasing capacity. No, this is just repairing and replacing existing infrastructure and providing redundancy.

And providing—

so our portion of it will be $6 million, depending on the terms of the variety of loans and grants and so forth that Provo River Water Association is obtaining, our obligation could be around $300,000 to $400,000 annually for 20 years.

I guess, I mean, our investment in this, will that be an investment that we continue to maintain?

Oh yes, yes.

That works.

You own 6% of the shares of the association, and you will still own 6% of the shares of the association when it's all over. Our biggest shareholder is Metropolitan Water District of Salt Lake and Sandy, and they own—

Almost 62%.

Almost 62% of the association. So their bill's going to be a big one. We have a private irrigation company that owns another 18%, but they are predominantly Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District-owned.

So that's, that's how the share ownership breaks down.

Provo City has some, Orem, Highland, you know, there's 19, 18, 19 shareholders.

One thing we were able to do with our $65 million loan from the Board of Water Resources is get them to agree to an interest-only prepayment for the first little bit so we could kind of phase in the the increases to shareholders. So I know it's going to be painful, but it's not as painful as it otherwise would be for this expensive of a project. So we're able to gradually work our way to that repayment level. It's going to take a number of years to get there, so you'll feel it, your citizens will feel it, but not like they would have if we didn't have that stair-step approach. Thank you very much. We consider ourselves very fortunate to be a 6% shareholder in this project because many communities throughout the state don't have this opportunity, and we have some of the best water in the state. And obviously there's costs to maintain that, but even the cost that we are paying is significantly less than the cost other cities are paying now to develop water resources. So While I'm not trying to minimize the amount of, you know, the increase, the $6 million, it is very economical as compared to some of our peers who are struggling to develop resources throughout the state. We're in a very fortunate position. We have 2 reservoirs in the canyon, and it helps us with the ebb and flow of the drought and so forth. And we have a, we have a great relationship with Keith and Provo River and and the team that's established there. We work very closely together on financing and all of this, and a team effort, I think. This is an 80-year-old component. It happens to be the linchpin for 1.6 million people on the Wasatch Front. If it fails, those 1.6 million people don't have water unless there's something drastic that takes place to make that available.

So it's imminent.

You know, in the design back in 1935, albeit they were very— they were great forefathers and forward-thinking individuals, forefathers, foremothers too, but very forward-thinking. But it's right on the heels of the Great Depression, right? And they're thinking about these things that we're now looking at today. So we've been very great.

We've been blessed very greatly, I think, by the forward thinking that they've had.

But then again, 80-year-old components that are man-made will fail at some point. Everything that's in the ground today will fail at some point. And so we appreciate this effort that's ongoing right now.

When do you think you'll actually—

you're in the design phase, but when will you actually be constructing?

Yeah, the 100% design documents have been provided to us, so we're giving our comments to the designer. We'll get to 100%, we'll receive 100% cost estimates very shortly, which we hope are going to come in below $100 million. We actually think they will.

So are you thinking winter or spring?

Spring.

Spring.

It's really close.

So just kind of a weird question, you know, there used to be that the caretaker lived in the little homes. I don't remember what that's called.

Yeah, the Weeks Bench just below.

Yeah, do you guys— was that— is that ownership of yours, or?

It's still owned by the Bureau of Reclamation in that area, but those residents there are now employees at the state park.

Okay.

We're glad they're there.

They actually are a good presence.

The girl I went to school with, her dad worked in the little power building down there.

Nice.

Any other questions?

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Fabulous. Once again, we appreciate what you do. I like having water at my top for clean water to drink. Okay, should we, um, you want to go with the food now and then do the agenda review? Okay, let's go ahead and do that. Can we have anyone give us a blessing on our food, a volunteer for that?

I'll do it. Our dearest Father in Heaven, we are so very grateful unto thee that we're able to come here today, and especially when we're able to learn of these benefits that we have through our forefathers and Through the hard work of those who are here today, things that make our lives so much easier and strengthen and uplift our community. Grateful for the service of these individuals and all who help us enjoy this great nation that we live in. We thank you, Father, for the food that has been prepared for us. Pray for a special blessing to be upon it. That it may nourish and strengthen our bodies and that we can use that strength in serving thee. These favors and blessings we pray for in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen.

He's asked me to continue with this following agenda. So let's— the agenda review and preview of the upcoming agenda items. In just a moment, we'll have Councilmember McDonald talk about the boards and commissions report on that.

If you just want to say, you know, you don't have anything to say.

Okay, so let's—

in our meeting tonight, we will We'll have a—

sorry, yes.

So what's coming up in 2 weeks is the River District rezoning. So it was approved in Provo, they're going to come in 2 weeks. Did you say it was approved in Provo or what it was?

It was, okay.

And then we'll also have Bruin Boulevard. I forgot about it. The PTAs were recommending that the street 160 South, south of Mountain View High School between 4th and 8th, be renamed to 160 165 and what? Bruin Boulevard.

Mountain View Bruins.

Yeah, so that'll be coming in. So those 2 items will be coming next time.

Okay, in our work meeting?

Uh, in that regular session.

Will we get to see the Riverwoods project?

So we talked briefly about that 4 weeks ago.

Is that what the email you sent?

I sent you an email.

Okay. Yeah, just the date. Is it approved by Planning Commission? It was— there was no recommendation. It was about 3 to 2 split vote, so it's not a majority of 4 votes. It just comes to you with no recommendation. Okay, so, but we'll have in this packet whatever the current final version of this before the meeting. Jason, with the Bruin Boulevard, will all high schools now have— because Forum has either way.

Tippinogos has 2 ways.

I thought it was already done. We were finding records approved by the council, so yes.

Okay.

I took a question.

Like you said, it was a 3-2 vote.

Do you know what the, what the, what the reasoning was for the difference?

A couple of the members just didn't want to see the town hall in that area. I want to see more of, uh, commercial.

Which way was it?

3-2.

3 was in favor, 2 were opposed, and we didn't have a full quorum. There were only 7. We had a quorum, but we didn't get a majority, a 4 vote. There's 7 on it. No, there's, there's 6 right now. Oh, there's 6.

Okay, thank you.

One was out of town, so we only had 5.

So are they tied to that townhome plan?

Uh, that's kind of what they want. That's what they— correct.

Could they change it? I don't know, something, anything. The design that we're getting?

Yes, because it will be tied to the PD itself. Okay, so whatever the council approves, if you choose to approve it, those elevations and things will actually come. And if they decide to sell it, they will have to build those exact same things.

Okay, so the density doesn't change based on what's being presented to us. The style doesn't change.

What's approved is what you would generally allow.

That was a big issue, right?

They had to make it very strict that whatever they present, they have no way to change it.

Because that is tied to the appendix, so that's part of the difference.

So when they come in for a plan that doesn't look like that, we will tell them to come back again, or they can come back to the council and try to change it if they decide in the future.

But whatever is approved in this PD zone, they would have to do it.

Okay, and they got the road fee worked out, right?

Yes, we're actually working through Earl there, working on a development agreement with him to talk about some of those issues, having access to the Provo Health, potentially improvements on 18 North, and the trail that Provo has as well that occurs, required at the county gate as well.

So those things would be done through development agreements prior to—

Okay, that's in process. Okay, I wanted to bring up one other issue that I talked to Stephen Downs about today, and that's our signage issues that we're having with the campaign signs being reported and removed. And there seems to be— I got a lot— I don't know about you guys, I got a lot of texts this weekend of vandalized signs, signs being stolen, and they didn't know if they were stolen or if they were removed by Orange City. So And speaking with Stephen, I mean, I emailed you all this today, this afternoon, or this morning, and my suggestion— and we can talk about this— but my suggestion was that maybe we handle this in the same way the policy that we have in place for candidates. I know when I ran, the policy that was described to me was that if there was someone reports a sign, or if a sign is found that is on city property, Jody would then contact, in that case, my campaign contact, and then we would have 48 hours to remove the sign. And if not, then Public Works would remove it. And the people could get their sign at the Public Works building. So the suggestion that I had is that we do something very similar. We have both groups. It seems to be mainly centered around the propositions. We could have groups for both sides, a point person or an email available. that there is a complaint about a sign, the first point of action is to email those people and say, you need to move your sign, or find out if it needs to be moved. And they could either respond, I have permission, or I'll go get it. Or if they don't remove the sign, then 48 hours later, the Public Works or whoever is assigned—

The net.

Whoever could go and remove the sign, and it would be available at the Public Works building for retrieval.

That's if it's on city—

if it's only the city property, because if it's private property— yeah, no private property.

You've got to handle their own stuff, right?

Yeah.

So the city's ordinance specifically states that signs are not permitted on public property. We as a city have not been actively enforcing anything other than city-owned property.

So in case, for example, you know, canal companies, other jurisdictions, public entities who may own property, we have not been enforcing those ordinances or that ordinance in the same way. Much of what we have been doing relative to city-owned property is for the purposes of maintaining those properties. So we have to mow we have to maintain things on those properties, and we have to go in and pull in the signs at that point. We do have some areas that we are under contract with UDOT to maintain certain pieces. For example, along 800 North, for example, that's not forum property, but by agreement, we have a responsibility to maintain those properties.

So in that situation, We too have pulled signs on occasion, but we are not making it a practice unless it is in the way of us maintaining and operating those properties.

So my question is, the little park strip between the road and the sidewalk, is that considered ORM, or is that—

I know people maintain that.

On 8th North?

Typically on the sidewalk, like on 8th East, if you maintain it, you You put a sign there?

No.

City's home or on like a major corridor like Center Street?

Well, I've just seen a lot of—

I know from an insurance perspective, if someone started maintaining the sidewalk and someone fell on the sidewalk, then the insurance company would be on the hook and the city would be off the hook. You know, once you, once you start, once you maintain a property, your first line of responsibility on that. So—

But in terms of ownership, Debbie, it's not always consistent. Sometimes that property might be owned by the city or the state. Other times it might be owned by the property owner. Okay, well, I—

So for example, along Center Street down by Mountain View High School, there is a section of the property that essentially between the football stadium and just right as you get on the west— I guess it's on the east side of the high school— there's a park strip there on the north side.

It's about 6th West. So we actually own and maintain a portion of that, and then the remainder of it is under private ownership.

So the section where we maintain it and it's public property, we have removed the signs. But if you go the next block on that same corridor, that's private property, we have not touched it.

Well, I saw a Cole Kelly sign inside the property, and I thought, that looks like that's on public property.

So our ordinance says that if it's on a fence as well, We have not been enforcing it. We're, we're not trying to get across with anybody. We're trying— and it's not just campaign signs. It's earn $100,000 from home. It's we put up Christmas lights.

It's auctions.

It's garage sales.

And it's political signs.

But obviously, the topic of conversation right now is political signs.

So, Jamie, like the Mountain View issue, is that something where the city pro— actively drive around looking for signs? No, we're just maintaining those properties. So we can't mow them, edge them, trim them when we have signs all through.

So that's where we have been pulling the signs.

So I got a question for Josh.

Josh, this is what a citizen sent me a picture. They do have on their security camera, a car that was taking a private sign from their property.

So I will tell them that nobody's called us.

I'm hearing the rhetoric Nobody has called us once.

So, so they just told me about it and I saw it, so I'll bring it up and I will, uh, tell them to report it.

They need to report it.

You know, if you just call the—

rhetoric and tell somebody actually reports it, that's what I'm saying.

So if you call the non-emergency number 801-229-7070, you'll get our police department and we can fill out a police report and then we can send out a police officer to investigate and we open a case file.

Okay, I'll go ahead. I just want to say I felt like last night I was doing my due diligence hosting a fire prevention meeting that we were supporting, that there were 2 signs in the mow strip at the park location that— I mean, based on the advice and the discussion, I didn't want to pro or against a campaign issue. So I removed those signs prior to the event. On city property, and 2, I didn't want it to appear the city was supporting or not supporting the potential ballot issue. So I have those signs in my truck and taking them to Public Works. So denied. So we've been going through, just so you know, just based on some questions that have come up. We've got complaints via email, some via phone to our 311, some via text, our texting system, our coding system, and during our— some through our ticketing system. So look through all those complaints. They're being addressed regardless of what the sign says or which side it's on. So there is no kind of selective enforcement for sure happening. There is one side that's reporting more heavily for sure. We went through it, there was— we found 53 complaints. 40 of them were about vote yes signs. One of them was about a vote no sign. 12 of them was just general hate their signs. We don't know based on the complaint which side it's on.

Doesn't matter.

We verified that it's property. If it's not, we tell the resident, hey, this isn't our property, we don't maintain it. you can contact them. But Jody and I've had multiple emails says it's illegal for you to take it down. So she lets them know that they can't just go take it down. They would need to contact them. If it is city property, she's forwarded them on to Chris Turkey. His team is taking them down. So yeah.

Public Works, or is it our neighborhood preservation?

Oh yeah, both teams do. So our neighborhood improvement team are the ones out there kind of enforcing them. So when we see one that's obviously on our city property, we can take it out. When we get a complaint, we verify that it's on city property, and then those are generally— So I think, Steve, I think those complaints will change now that the other side's ordered a bunch of big signs.

They'll quit complaining about that they didn't have signs, and we'll take those down too.

But you won't see those complaints anymore because now they've got their big signs ordered. I'm sorry. Yeah, so, um, so I guess what I'm saying is We won't care what the sign says. We'll take it down if it's on city property. That's the practice.

Well, but we can't—

can we—

I mean, I just want to— are we okay with doing the same policy that we had in place for campaigns? Can we notify the people, give them 48 hours to remove the signs? And then does that— because one of the complaints I heard is they were like, I don't know if the sign was stolen or if the city took it, you know. And twice there were signs that were taken down that were in a place where they had permission, and there was a misinterpretation of the property line because it was by some utility boxes, but it was actually on private property or enough of a gray area, right? So are we okay with that? Jody, what do you think about it?

Right here.

I could, if I can put a contact where it's a problem. Just get in contact. Yep, we will get you.

I think I know.

Sometimes I've done it with campaign, like, you know, like the mayor or city council, because I knew who I'm contacting. Hey, you've got a big sign up on city property, go take it down or we will. I've notified them, but that's kind of hard when it's a Prop 2 because there's not really a specific person. Well, but I'm saying campaign, I will get you a contact person. I know people on both sides or so. I know we all do.

As a matter of practice, it sounds like this is something we have done tied to an election. By ordinance, we don't have that flexibility.

Okay.

So if you want to direct us to follow this course, we're more than happy to follow that course, but it needs to be by council majority that— because we're not— the ordinance says we enforce the law, and the law is no signs on public property. So if you want us to deviate from that, we're happy to do that, but we We need to have your consent to do that so that when individuals call and they complain, we can say the council has made a policy decision that during this time period from now to November, let's say November 8th, that we are going to follow this operational procedure.

And the downside of doing that is people then are going to know they've got a free 48 hours.

Yeah.

Right? Potentially, that's going to be the issue. I mean, you can put up a sign, they'll notify you, got 48 hours to take it down. Okay, it's free, 48 hours. Does that become a problem?

But that's the policy we had in place for my campaign.

I know.

I just, I don't think we're changing policy here.

It's not a policy.

It's a matter of— It's not policy. It was a courtesy that I gave. It was a policy that I was told as a candidate.

The city had.

Well, there's—

I guess what I'm saying is there's nothing in our code that speaks to that policy.

It was an operational—

Okay, I guess I'm trying to clarify, this is not something I'm making up here.

This is something that happened last fall.

And I'm saying there's a— there was an accommodation for that, but it's not in ordinance.

It's not in law.

Right. I never said it was an ordinance. I'm talking strictly policy here.

I don't think you're talking about city property.

I think you're talking about where it's a question if that's property, you know, that's private or city, and is it 5 feet too far? But all of a sudden the sign's gone, the city decided it's city property, instead of talking to the business that's right behind it and notifying them this might be on city property instead of your own.

Isn't that—

I think some are pretty cut and dry. Yeah, we know if it's city property or not. It's the frustration of someone who puts a sign up and then it gets taken down twice. When they had permission for that area to have that.

I just have to pose the example of last night, that big public event, multiple communities attending.

Everybody—

if somebody would show up on that city strip along with all the residents and put a whole bunch of vote no signs, there's nothing we can do but leave them there. No, I'm not saying that.

I'm saying if it's obviously on city property, I think you just said you can take those down.

Okay, okay. The direction we've given is that if it's unclear as to whether or not it's on city property or private or any other group, then do not touch it. That's, that's the direction we've been— has to be absolutely clear. I mean, I think from what I've seen, there's a lot of them that are just in the park strips that are like along 8th North and And they're obviously on the street side of the sidewalk. It looks like somebody just came along and plopped signs along the way.

And they're from both sides, right? I mean, they share—

Yeah, I know. I don't— I'm not saying it's one side or the other, but— and I don't— I don't think that the city is being favorable to one or the other. I think it's the same with these signs. If they're on city property, pull them.

But if there's a question, let's contact them and see.

If there's a question, yeah, that's the key.

If there's a question, because I mean, I had a number of signs that were clearly not on city property, were pulled by the city when I was running.

So yeah, I will just say there are times where to us there's no question, to them there is a question. We may pull it because Dustin was on question.

Yeah.

So that's okay. That will happen.

I'm just—

I'm just saying, can we try to— I just hate the staff, like, you know, one of my neighbors got in the middle of this just this last week, right? Because if we— if there's a question, I would just say, can we send an email?

If there's a question, you can get a form of mercy and email them. Somebody from the city will call.

Is that okay?

If it's a question, if we get inside that we are not sure Email, or we'll continue.

We will just—

we'll work to make sure we—

Right.

I usually work with Chris because sometimes we have things that are on UDOT property but we maintain it, and we can't maintain it.

So if there's a—

I'm not quite sure, I'll send it to Chris because he'll know better than I do whether we maintain it.

But other than that, I sent pictures to the county, to plenty of people saying, this is what I'm looking at. Here's UDOT, here's the property owner.

Depends on where the sign is, but we can't take it down because neither one of them is our property.

I think you go a long ways by the ones that are clearly on city property. Just take them down. That's easy. But it's, it's when city property converts into private property, and that's where you get into problems, right? So we will, we'll do that, and we'll, we'll give our— I assure you, we will put our best foot forward. With the thousands of signs, there are going to be times where, you know, there's a misstep, but this is a good direction for sure.

Okay, let's see. So let me go over the agenda real quick. So, um, prayer by Jim Hawks, Pledge of Allegiance by Kelly Kirkpatrick, um, mayor's reported items. So the annual report for the Recreation Advisory Commission will be continued, Dave Spencer, um, because we don't have the presenter here. Um, We're going to move that comment. Bryce?

No, he's— yeah, they are chairs.

Our chair is trapped in Chicago.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, I'm sorry, I said Dave, but he was talking.

I'm going to make a motion to move it to the next 25th.

Okay, and then we'll also entertain a motion to move the personal appearances in front of the 8.5 resolution in order to facilitate facilitate the recording of the meeting and to do the resolution like we did last week.

I have a question there.

Some of the people who were talking were not about the resolution, it was about the library. And are we going to let those—

do we want those people to wait?

Yeah, so Steve had last week—

last time he recommended we just keep together. We want to do the same thing.

I said we just keep together because sometimes what they put on there that they're talking about is completely different than what they talked about.

Yeah, that's fine.

We'll just move it.

Just go from there.

Yeah.

I just felt bad for people who had to wait quite a while.

Okay.

It's probably a pretty short agenda to get to that point. Probably won't take very long, I'm guessing.

Okay, sounds good. So 8.1 is a public hearing on an ordinance, and 8.2 is another public hearing on an ordinance for the outdoor play areas. 8.3, public hearing on an ordinance for preschools. 8.4, there was a problem with reaching the development agreement with the church, so we're going to be continuing that item.

8.5 is the resolution of the city council for the support of the school district.

That one, at that point, we'll take public comments before that and then do that resolution. Okay.

And if Jason can bind those 4 into one, that would be good.

Jason's at the dinner hall.

Okay, should we do that?

Yep.

I support castration. Oh, my suit.

All right, we'd like to get this meeting going. I'd like to welcome you all here tonight, and we'd like to start with an invocation from Jim Hawks and a Pledge of Allegiance from Kelly Kirkpatrick. Who invited— I did.

Our Father in heaven, we are grateful this evening that we could meet together as citizens of this wonderful community of Orem. We're grateful that we live in a democracy when we can choose those who would best represent us. We pray for them. Bless them with wisdom and with good judgment. We pray that, we pray that the proceedings of the council meeting this evening will be free from contention and that people will be kind and considerate of one another and be open-minded. We pray for the citizens of our community. Continue to bless us with peace and bless us with prosperity. We pray that Orem will continue to be a beacon as a city that people will choose to live in, one that is family-friendly. We pray thou will bless those who are oppressed and those who suffer in any way. Bless and comfort them. We pray that the proceedings of this evening will be acceptable to thee and in accordance with thy will, and we do so in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you, Jim. And we'd like to have Kelly Kirkpatrick for the pledge. Please rise.

I have a tradition of asking if there's any members of the United States military in the audience. If there is, Congress enacted a law in 2015 that says you may salute the flag whether in uniform or not.

Present arms.

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, Jim and Kelly, for doing that.

Appreciate it.

Next, we've got item 6.1 on the Recreation Advisory Commission.

So, Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that we, we move that to October 25th to our City Council meeting, and since our head of the Recreation Commission is out of town at this time.

I'll second that.

We have a vote.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, resolution passes. Next we have personal appearances for 15 minutes, but we're going to need to move that To follow the same format we did in the last meeting. Someone like to make a motion?

I'll make that motion. I move that we move— or that we move item 7— oh, is there an item number? That we move personal appearances on the agenda to occur in front of item 8.5.

I'll second that.

We have a vote.

Nay, I'd rather we didn't discuss things that needed moved.

Nay.

Okay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the motion passes.

Next we've got— we move into our scheduled items. Our first scheduled item is ordinance— is 8.1, a public hearing on an ordinance amending portions of Section 2.1-5 of Building and Fire Code Appeals pertaining to the number of high— number of length and— To, to number and length of terms a board member can serve. Would you like to present that, Jason?

I would. Thank you, Mayor. We have the slideshow. While he's bringing that up, this is a relatively simple request. The Board of Appeals meets very rarely. In fact, the last time they met was over 8 years ago, but it is required by the state to have that board in If somebody wants to appeal any building code or other appeal based on the Uniform or International Building Codes. So what they're requesting is we have a specialized group of individuals that are serving on this committee, and it's hard to find individuals, and so they want to be able to keep them and every 3 years either reappoint or find somebody different, but at this point allow them to be reappointed over, over and over because they really don't meet that often. So the request before you tonight is that we amend that to allow them additional terms over and above the 2 terms that are currently in the ordinance. Be glad to address any questions.

Are there any questions?

I just have a quick question. So would their term officially start— their 3 years, would it start— so if they— if someone was appointed to fill in for someone that had been in for a year, And then they were appointed to fill in, would their 3 years start at that point, or would they continue for 2 years and then be reappointed?

It would be a full 3-year term.

Yep.

Thank you.

Any other questions? This is a public hearing. Do we have any comments or questions from the public? We'll close the public hearing part. And would someone like to make a motion?

Mayor, I'd like to move that we amend portions of Section 2-1-5, Board of Public— meet the Board of Building and Fire Code Appeals pertaining to number and length of terms of a board member can serve, as shown here. I'll second.

Okay, can we have a vote?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

The ordinance passes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Let's move on to 8.2.

Sure, the next item is a kind of a cleanup to allow for home daycare the ability to— or requirement, I guess, to have a self-latching gate for outdoor play areas. Right now we don't have that as a requirement, but we'd like to add that into there. Also number 14, which is a commercial daycare requirement, which would require outdoor play areas to be in a soft area and not in an asphalt, concrete, or other hard surfaced area. So those are the 2 changes we're proposing. The Planning Commission did make a recommendation that they be approved. Be glad to address any questions concerning those 2 items.

Go ahead, Debbie.

So have we had any problems with children getting out?

So we—

I mean, a self-closing, self-latching sounds like we need to make sure we keep them in. Is this responding to a problem or just something we think needs to be cleaned up?

Something that needs to be cleaned up. We have it in other requirements as well, just to make sure, like swimming pools, things like that. It's just a safety feature for those that are outside playing, that they are able to— if somebody goes out, the gate automatically closes, so we don't have it open and kids wander out. Okay, it's more of a safety feature.

Did you have a comment, Jeff?

Yeah, just a question.

So what, what is a soft area? Is that Anything that's not asphalt, cement.

So yeah, we've had an applicant recently that has come in and wanted to put a play area on an asphalt parking lot. So with the heat index and different things like that during the summer, we just felt it wasn't appropriate. It would be somewhere that's already landscaped or dirt area where they can make and create a play area, not within a parking lot or some other hard surface that would be, you know, detrimental, I think, to the health, safety of the children.

Any other questions? Let's open this for a public hearing. Is there anyone who would like to come forward and say anything about this? There's 2. If you'd like to take your turns and come up.

So the only question I have would be something like if somebody's running a preschool at their home or something like that, in my area there's a lot of them.

Saying then that for an organization like that, they would have to comply with this, is that correct?

Correct. Okay.

So, so I guess to clarify the question, so the home child daycare facility is also a preschool?

No, that's what we're— the next item is separating those 2 out. So daycare would be a separate business versus a preschool. So the home daycare services, which is the top under 8, is strictly those that are operating a daycare, not a preschool.

Okay.

I have a question. Would people who currently have daycare— this would not— I mean, they'd be grandfathered in, or would they have to come up to this?

Correct, they would be grandfathered in. This is when they either apply for a new or close and want to reapply, things like that. We would make them—

because we're not going to go around and check at all.

No, we're not.

All right, thank you.

This is just a new licensing—

correct— issue.

Yep.

There was somebody else that was coming up. Oh, all right there.

Okay.

Sorry, just for clarification, I'm concerned about the commercial childcare. Are we having a separate round for that one or this one? Um, I'll just go ahead then. Um, so my name is Eliza, Dr. Eliza Penninger. I'm the director of Learning Adventures Child Care Center. I also believe that I might be the applicant that this gentleman is talking about. I'm also an instructor in early childhood education at BYU. So I opened a child care center, Learning Adventures, last year, in large part to serve a very underserved community. There's lots of research showing how many children need care, and there's just simply not enough care available for everyone. Due to some misfeasance of my former business partner, we had to close. Fortunately, we were able to sell, sell the business Unfortunately, because Orem City does not allow business licenses to transfer to new owners, we had to reapply, even though we had just gone through the vetting process for our fence permit not 2 months before, followed all the regulations, and in fact went above and beyond those regulations. to provide extra safety measures and be more in accordance with the spirit of what was being asked, not just the letter of the law. At that point, we found out that this language was going to be changed. This created very big problems for us because it would cost me roughly a third of a million dollars because it would require— since we're not grandfathered in, it would mean the closure of our facility. It would mean losing the lease, not being able to find another commercial daycare space with the required soft play area available because there just isn't that much in, in the Orem city limits. So this creates a very big problem and causes a lot of families to seek unlicensed, potentially unsafe child care facilities as opposed to having plenty of access to licensed child care facilities. I want to be very clear that we are not That I am not opposed to the spirit of the changes in this language. However, the last line about asphalt, concrete, and pavers is sufficiently unclear that it could potentially cause problems, even if I were to put down artificial turf over concrete.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can, can Jason address that issue?

Yeah, Jason, can you address that issue?

So yeah, the lady that just spoke did come in about several months ago and opened a daycare facility at— I think it's her, the building South State Street behind, in their parking lot. They developed a play area on top of the asphalt. That was approved because at the time we didn't have any restrictions or requirements that would prevent that from being on the asphalt. Once that was approved, we did as a city make application to make that— this modification before you tonight. So any future application that would come in would be required to meet this requirement where it would be a soft play area, not on top of asphalt. As she explained, she subsequently did business Went out of business, they lost their business license, they came back in. The Planning Commission at that time had already reviewed this, and by our ordinance, anything that's after Planning Commission, it's pending legislation, and they would have to comply with that until such time as the council determines whether that's approved or not approved. So tonight is the night that the council is deciding that, but the Planning Commission has already recommended that it be approved, so therefore this business does need to comply with These standards unless modified.

So she had this turf-looking thing. Is that— is there a reason why that would not— cannot be put on top of asphalt?

If it's on top of asphalt, concrete, or pavers, that would be a hard surface in our opinion.

So even if you try to minimize the hard surface by making it softer, that still wouldn't work? No, you'd have to—

not in my interpretation.

You'd have to pound out the concrete or do something.

It would need to be a soft surface. That's correct.

Okay.

So has she put in an application?

Like last— I believe it was last week, or could have been 2 weeks ago. But since that her previous application was expired, withdrawn because her business went out of business, that is no longer valid. So it wouldn't be a non—

So if the business goes out, then the permit's canceled, or does it stay?

It does not transfer to a new owner. They would have to apply for a new business license as she explained, and then they have to meet whatever current standards—

isn't she the owner?

She was the previous owner. She's since sold the business to another owner who's come in for a business license. That new owner now has to meet current standards. This is not obviously adopted yet, but the Planning Commission has made a recommendation to approve it, and our ordinance requires this be the rule unless the council does something different.

So, can I ask a question?

Um, so does the whole area have to be the soft surface play area, or can they have hard surface?

The play area would need to, based on the way that it's written, needs to be a soft, soft play area. So I imagine they could have like a park or whatever does have, you know, sidewalks or things like that leading to areas. So I'm sure they could have something like that, but not the entire thing couldn't be hard surface.

So, so what do the kids currently Or what in the old business were they playing on? Were they just going out and playing on the asphalt?

It was— they had fenced in an asphalted area and I think brought in some— I don't know if it was bark or something like that to put on top of the asphalt.

So it was bark on top of the asphalt, right? And so maybe educate us on the benefits of different soft surfaces, you know, bark on the asphalt versus—

Our whole, I guess, intent behind this was to prevent people coming in and converting an asphalt or concrete parking lot to a play area. If you've— this past summer was very hot. And so, you know, the heat bouncing off an asphalt parking lot is going to be extremely hot. And so it just didn't seem appropriate to have a play area on asphalt or other hard surfaces that could, in my opinion, is not amenable to playing with kids out in the open. I mean, needs to be grass or needs to be some other type of soft surface to allow a little better heat index, I guess, would be the—

So does this address how big that play area has to be?

It does not. It just has to be an open play area.

Any play area outside needs to be a soft surface, right?

So do you have any coverings? Sorry. Any coverings out in the back where the player would be?

The play area has several large trees to cover much of the asphalt, as well as— if I can address some of what he's brought up— according to childcare licensing standards, there is a certain temperature where we as providers, licensed providers, are not allowed to have children go outside. So, you know, he's talking about the hot asphalt. If the temperature outside does get above 91 degrees, um, then especially if we have any children with any kind of health problems, we cannot take the kids out because of just the general danger. Um, of being outside when it's very hot, and that is the child care licensing regulations from the state.

Okay.

If I'm able to address one more thing. Yes. So I have some studies here about measuring softness of play areas because soft is a very big issue. And so with artificial turf, these— many of these studies show that with proper installation that it is better to have artificial grass, which is in large part very good for the environment because you're not using as much water and It's very easy to clean, especially if an animal gets anywhere near it. Then, if it's properly installed, that there's ways to measure the softness, but that having a firm surface in which to install that is important so that it's not slipping around and causing even more of a danger to children who are Very, very hard on playing surfaces.

Okay.

Yes, Terry.

So I'm just thinking about this soft surface issue. I went to 3 different elementary schools, and the first elementary school we went to when I was really young was in St. George. Pretty hot. I didn't know that we were being deprived. We always were on asphalt. We played foursquare on asphalt. We played tetherball on asphalt. Then we moved to Washington, the same thing. Then we, then we moved back to Utah where we stayed, and all 3 of those elementary schools, we were always on asphalt, and no one told me how bad off we were. So I'm hearing the soft surface, but I'm just a little confused because most of the things that I did in elementary school was asphalt.

If I can address that briefly, I mean, elementary school has a combination of surfaces. Right, they have a whole large area of asphalt, they have a lot of basketball and other things, but they also have grass areas as well. A preschool in this— or a daycare, that's their entire play area. So they're limited to whatever is going to be required, and if that's entirely hard surface, there is no other option for grass. I know as a small kid that's no problem, probably. But if that's the only option, then there is no other option. If somebody at Northridge Elementary wants to go play on the grass, they have grass next to them. If they want to play on the asphalt, they could choose to do that if they want to, but they have a choice. Here they would not have a choice. That's, that's our only question. I mean, it's, you know, whatever the council determines is fine. We just thought it would be appropriate for a daycare to have a soft surface.

Say, Jeff, is there—

I mean, you know, you look at the parks and we have bark, so bark on top of concrete is not considered soft. Shredded tires on top of concrete or asphalt would not be considered soft. Is there a way that they could have some padding underneath the artificial turf?

Yeah, unless the council determines that, you know, X amount of inches of whatever material is deemed soft. I mean, that's another option. So if the council says, you know, 3 inches of bark meets that definition, we could add that language in there. or if it's any other type of material that would be— that based on that definition would be soft, then I don't know that that's inappropriate. There just needs to be something identified in the ordinance that says if you meet this criteria with this material, it works.

Jamie.

So, Mayor, just to Councilmember Lamson's question, obviously we're in the business of building parks and maintaining parks. Our specification is generally a sub-base of material, and then we put that on top of that, a fabric material, and then we put 8 to 12 inches of soft fall material. So we are talking about something that extends below the surface of the, of the, uh, the ground. So, you know, it— and then we actually have to refresh those surfaces with relative frequency because, as you might expect, those surfaces compress over time as as kids playing on them and such. So if you are looking as to, well, what would we do as a community within our parks and our play structures and systems, that's how we structure our facilities.

So I understand, you know, the whole idea of the hard surface, but to me it seems like this turf idea is kind of a compromise in a way. You could still have the the asphalt, but I think it was about 3 inches.

How thick is that?

Yeah, it's 2 inches and a half and has filler inside as well.

See, to me that seems like a reasonable compromise in a sense. We wouldn't have to take out the concrete or the asphalt, but if you put something that would soften it, to me it seems like that's, that's the intent of what we're trying to do here. And I— that's how I kind of feel like it would be a good compromise. And I'm I'm comfortable with that. The idea is to make it safer for kids, right? That's the ultimate, right?

I think the key thing is maybe a shade element of it, you know, because the AstroTurf in direct sunlight's hotter than the mother. So there has to be some kind of covering that would protect the kids. So I'd be okay with AstroTurf, but you'd have to have some kind of covering.

So would you be okay with other types of materials as well? Like a few inches of bark.

To me, I don't think bark— in my mind, bark's not soft.

So, okay, I guess that would be the question. If we want to go that direction, maybe be specific on what materials you would allow to meet that definition of soft, and then we just add that into the ordinance.

Is there an option? Is there an option where— I mean, because, okay, so the situation is, is we've got that we definitely need you know, many daycares as we can get. There's a huge demand for them that's not being met. But at the same time, we want our kids to be as safe as possible when they go to daycare. So it seems like the, the issue is in the soft surface verbiage as far as what that means. And is there a way to— I mean, obviously, if a daycare can afford it, it's best to do the very best one. But is there an affordability index or something? I'm not sure where you— why you get to, you know, $300,000 of expense to get where you're going. I don't know if you can address that. I'd be curious about that too.

Yes. So the way that I came up with that number is because we sold the business and would have to adhere to this new interpretation, which in our opinion is vague enough that, you know, depending on who's doing the interpreting, could have a very strict interpretation of it, then the place that I have leased, I could not then, you know, sell the business to somebody else. I couldn't re-lease it to another childcare facility. facility, which means I'm then out for the entirety of that lease.

So you're talking about the lease?

The lease, because the whole property would be, you know, unusable, and there's no guarantee that anybody else—

So what would be the cost just to comply with the ordinance, just that piece of it?

So we've done some checking around this. happens to be the very least expensive turf, and it would cost us roughly $3,000, a little over $3,000 for our just under 1,000 square foot play area. So if you're thinking about an even bigger area, this is about $2 a square foot. That cost adds up very quickly. And when you get it professionally installed, they do have what's called infill and a padding material that they include with that. So it's— I mean, the company we talked to does it for parks, schools, lots of other situations where children will be playing on it, hospitals that care for children, those types of things. But it can go up to $10 a square foot, which that, that kind of cost, most daycares— and I'll just talk to my 20 years experience— couldn't afford that because of the already restrictions that make it very difficult to obtain child care licensure because the child care licensing people require so much square footage. You know, so if you're trying to provide care for more than 20 children, then you have to have a very— a fairly big section of play area. And it took me 7 months to find the area that I'm in right now because commercial areas in Orem don't have natural green space or soft surfaces. Our only option, being centrally located, was to take a portion of what was the parking lot and turn it into an offset lawn by use of artificial turf. It's, you know, it's secluded. It, it's got giant concrete barriers. I dare say it's, it's safer to be in that area than it is my neighborhood park. And with the, with the shade issue, the trees are mature, and, and by the childcare licensing body, shade is required, a certain amount of shade per square footage. Is required, and we are currently in compliance with that.

So you're saying it would cost about $3,000? Yeah, to do what you're trying to do.

Yeah, okay, at the very cheapest.

And Jason, what would you say, you know, for what you envision in the ordinance, what it would cost to do something comparable to meet the soft requirement?

That's up to the applicant, I guess, and the developer, right? When they come in, if this is in the ordinance, they would need to find a location that would work for them, or understand that they would have to either take some asphalt out or find a location that already has soft surface. So we weren't really looking at a cost, but it's something that any future business coming in would know what the requirement was and be looking for those types of facilities.

What's your opinion on using the turf?

I don't necessarily disagree that that would work. I just felt that we needed something in there other than just an asphalt parking lot because it didn't seem to be appropriate for me to— if that's your only choice, an option is to have a hard surface. That didn't seem to be reasonable to me. So if there's a way to have some media, you know, in between where you can have this material and it meets the definition, I'm all for that.

Okay, so I mean, would this material meet that?

I think so.

Okay. So maybe that's where we go with this, is just to further define the soft surface play area, right?

Yeah, and we can either bring it back, or you want to decide now? We can, we can always continue and come back if that's the direction the council wants to go.

Do you want to figure it out now, or do you want to come back? I mean, we can go either way. I just don't know if you've got the information.

If it's simple enough just to add that artificial turf, a certain thickness, and there's enough shade, and there's, you know, shade. Then that would work.

So, so, Mayor, just a suggestion, talking to Ryan, and I haven't run this by Jason, so Jason can comment on this too, but one way to resolve this might just be to eliminate the last sentence under 14. So then you would still have the requirement that they'll have to have an outdoor soft surface play area. But delete the section about it can't be on top of asphalt or concrete, so that way they could potentially use the artificial turf on top of a parking lot or something like that.

And that would qualify as soft.

Then, then you would— that would qualify, or whether it's bark chips, wood chips, you know, whatever, you know, is enough to get a soft surface on top of the hard surface.

But that would have to be inspected by the city and approved, right? I mean, when We just want a blanket.

Well, yeah, I mean, the difficulty is we haven't really defined what a soft surface means here, right? So maybe—

Actually, there's a very nice and lengthy study defining the concept of softness in those play areas, and we are using this infill system described in this article. And in addition, when I was working on getting the permits for this play area a couple of months ago, we actually talked about the provision for a soft surface, and, and we had a conversation about that. You know, we talked about sand. Well, you have the problem of cats and health issues. We talked about the possibility of wood chips and bark, and the problem was raised by the, by the person on the planning committee that The wood chips get into the drainage system. And so what was I going to do about that if I used that? I suggested a barrier around it. But really, the AstroTurf is a very good solution. My brother, who is a civil engineer specializing in ADA issues, consulting and compliance, said that there may be an ADA problem with having this exclusively in the area. And ASTM playground standards And the U.S. Commerce Product Safety Commission Public Playground Safety Handbook discusses these issues as well. And it also shows a diagram indicating how much padding or undersurface preparation you need in order to reach a desired level of softness. You know, and what it suggests too here is that The softness should be commensurate with the activity going on above it, you know. So if a kid is going to jump off a, you know, a 20-foot ladder, there has to be a substantial amount of padding, you know. If it's— and if it's limited to other activities, then the padding is less. We don't have any of this playground equipment. We don't have swings, we don't have carousels, ladders, and so on. And, but so this right here should be, you know, should be adequate.

Okay.

Debbie, what do you have? Do you have like a little tykes thing? Like, what do you have?

So primarily our activities are things like soccer, throwing around a football. We are in the process of getting small tykes or trikes for the smaller kids. We focus on less the big play area, you know, slides and such, and we focus more on the physical development that comes with, you know, doing jump rope or kicking a ball.

So the sod would work for most activities?

This would be sufficient because the kids only are going to fall when they trip over their own feet, you know, just that far. They're not falling off of anything.

Okay.

Large.

So maybe we're comfortable eliminating that last sentence. Okay, works.

Mary, I was just going to suggest to you, maybe, maybe it would be a good idea to continue this item and we can look at these guidelines and standards that have been discussed and reference those and come up with a definition of what constitutes a soft surface.

Yeah, I think that'd be good to make sure we get it right. Yeah.

Okay.

Would someone like to make a motion on that?

I'd like to propose that we go forward with our licensing, as we are, you know, trying very hard to not only meet the letter of the law, but the spirit that is, that is proposed here. And frankly, this is the only thing stopping us from serving many children.

Steve.

Conditional permit that they could operate in the canyon that they will put this in?

No, there's not really a way to do that. I mean, if they're going to get a permit, they have to comply with current standards, and they would be subject to what's been proposed here. But, you know, one possibility that Ryan is suggesting is— well, I'll let you, I'll let you make your suggestion.

Perfect.

Yeah. Maybe go ahead and vote tonight without that last sentence, and then they would meet the current standard and we would come back in another meeting with a definition. So they're kind of in a hard spot because when we proposed this, we were trying to do a good thing and make sure that going forward our daycares had safer protections, but we weren't aware that they were being put into a hardship and they were selling their business and it put them in a bind, so This is all kind of developed not in the way any of us intended, so this would allow them to move forward, and then we could come back and make sure that going forward any new daycares would fall under that new standard.

Okay, that sounds like a good plan to me.

I like that.

We'll go ahead and close the public comment section. Thank you. And then we'll take— somebody like to make a motion?

I will make a motion that we amend— are we on 8.2?

Yes.

I'm reading the right thing. Okay, amending Section 22-6-9, Home Daycare Services Child and Adult, SLU Code 6263, pertaining to outdoor play areas, and enacting Section 22-6-9, Commercial Daycare Services Codes 6261 and 6262 pertaining to outdoor play areas, minus the last sentence in the ordinance.

Second.

You seconded already, Mayor.

I said, do we have a second?

Sorry. Aye.

Nay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The ordinance passes, and then we'll Probably see it again. Thank you.

The next item, Mayor, is— and City Council— is a splitting out of the preschool requirements. Currently, the ordinance has both daycare and preschool under one ordinance. Daycares do require state licensing, where preschools do not. And so business licensing has been dealing with both at the same requirements, and so it's been frustrating to applicants to try to comply. So they comply with the daycare or preschool when they're combined. So this item separates the preschool out and creates its own land use requirements, which are similar to what's already been required for preschools. It just now puts it in a separate location. So if somebody's doing a preschool only, they know what the preschool requirements are, and vice versa with daycare. So this is simply just an item that allows for that simplification and basically the same rules that we are currently requiring. For preschools. Be glad to address any questions. The Planning Commission did make a recommendation that this be approved. Any, any questions?

So all you're doing is taking that and separating into those 2 categories, but it's identical?

Correct. Okay, so it's allowing, yeah, an applicant to come in and know these are my requirements instead of trying to splitting out which one's daycare, which one's preschool.

Okay, any questions from the council? We'll open that up to public hearing. Any comments or questions from the audience? We'll close the public comment and we'll move to a vote. Somebody like to make a motion?

I'll make a motion that the City Council enacting Section 22-6-9M, Residential Preschool, SLU Code 6265 and Standard Limited Use Code 6265 Residential Preschool.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The ordinance passes.

So next item, Mayor, is the sign that was continued from last week. We're still working with the applicant to get a pre— or a development agreement signed. They have signed it. We're just looking for authorization that this individual has the ability to sign on behalf of the church. That was not accomplished by the time this meeting started, so we'd ask that it continue for 2 weeks. I move that we continue this, Mayor, for 2 weeks.

The 25th.

The 25th.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The ordinance gets continued. Okay, thank you, Jason. Now we'd like to move on to the public comments part of the meeting. For this part of the meeting, similar to what we had 2 weeks ago, we were advised by legal counsel that we had to essentially continue the meeting but take off the live streaming. So at this time, we'll turn off the live streaming, and then we'll move into the public Comments.

And Mayor, can we just point out before we stop the livestream that people who want to get a copy of the entire recording of the meeting can do so by sending a request to our city recorder, Jody Bates, and then she'll send them a link to the entire recording of the meeting.

Okay, perfect. So the meeting is available, you just have to make a request to city recorder. So